Femininity Knows No War
Immersing ourselves in the feeling of a mother's love gives us the ability to create peace at any moment.
It is high time for a peaceful uprising of women who say: „Not with us!“ In October 2016, thousands of women of Jewish and Palestinian origin set out from northern Israel and marched to Jerusalem. The purpose of the „March of hope“: the demand for peace. A beautiful video by the Israeli singer and peace activist Yael Deckelbaum shows this demonstration and became world-famous. Nothing runs deeper than a mother’s love. Here the author presents three songs that are at the same time touching feminine visions for peace.
We mothers could end a war at any moment. Let us simply tell our sons to lay down their weapons and come home. Who would object to that.
These are not the only words of Yael Deckelbaum, a singer and peace activist from Israel, that stay with me. She has been an inspiration for my peace and women’s work for so many years.
The first time I became aware of Yael was in 2016. I heard of miles-long peace marches, the „Marches of Hope“: here Israeli and Arab women march together for peace from the north of Israel all the way to Jerusalem. One of her best-known songs, „Prayer of the mother“, becomes an anthem and at the same time documents, in the accompanying video, the moving moments of the march.
Feminine Visions – Touching Moments with Yael Deckelbaum
Yael is a pioneer in a still very young women’s peace movement, a movement that for me is primarily about encounter and recognition. I recognize myself in the other woman, feel her mother’s love, her fears and her pain. On this level war is no longer possible. It would be the end of „good & evil“ or „friend & foe“.
At the same time it is a call to all women to take responsibility. To remind us again and again that we are all brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. It is time to dare the leap into an age in which we finally acknowledge that every human being has a right to peace and equality, and that it is the task of all of us to ensure it.
In the course of my peace work over the past three years, I have had the chance to meet Yael Deckelbaum in person several times and to exchange with her. Among other things, a wonderful interview about her work and the insights of her time in activism came out of this in the summer of 2021.
Feminine Visions – Touching Moments with Yael Deckelbaum
War is not a Woman’s Game- A call to all my sisters
In September 2022, as the „Women for Peace“ team, we staged an unforgettable concert with Yael Deckelbaum at the Genezarethkirche in Berlin-Neukölln. During this event a call went out to all the women of the world to take part in the video for „War is not a Woman’s Game“. Thanks to the wonderful people on site, the unique setting and, of course, Yael herself, a song of its own, complete with a video, came out of it.
The most magical moment of the evening, perhaps of my entire time in activism, happened at the end of the concert. A woman from Palestine stepped into the circle and approached Yael with the words „I do not hate you“. After a very intense embrace she was given the chance to tell all of us her story and to pray together with us that at the end of her life she may die in her homeland.
For me this is exactly what it is about: listening and sensing what it takes to arrive at the inner peace that is ultimately the precondition for world peace.