For Mai Albini Peri, grandson of Chaim Peri who has been held hostage by Hamas since October 7, the fight for peace is not only a moral imperative – it is a way to echo his grandfather’s voice.
Peri learned a lot from his grandfather, who used to drive Gazan children to hospitals in Israel and curated a gallery where he showcased Bedouin and Palestinian art, about activism and peace-building. His grandfather also taught him a lot about empathy.
“I was raised to put yourself in the other side’s shoes no matter how much you don’t like them and how much you don’t agree with them,” he said.
“When you don’t disregard the feelings of others, you are exposed to all kinds of experiences and wrongs,” added Peri, who is not afraid to express his sympathy for Gazans who he said are suffering terribly.
“They physically don’t have homes to live in, because we blew everything up. Children there don’t have food,” he said.
“I don’t think you have to be such an enlightened and pure person to recognize suffering,” Peri said.
“People make it about sides. You are with them or you are with us. ‘What? You think the people in Gaza are suffering? Are the people in Israel not suffering?’” he said, mimicking the rhetoric he hears surrounding the people in Gaza.
“We [in Israel] are also suffering,” he responded. “My grandpa is suffering, my whole family is suffering,” he said. “And the people in Gaza are suffering – it’s not mutually exclusive.
Empathy is unlimited
“You can be empathetic to everyone. That is the beauty in empathy – it is not limited,” he explained.
But people have a hard time not making it about sides, and are very afraid to see that there is enough empathy for everyone, he said. “It’s very hard for them to look at an Arab and see a friend and not an enemy.”
PERI’S GRANDFATHER, Chaim, was taken hostage from the safe room in his home on Kibbutz Nir Oz. The morning of October 7, Peri remembers his grandmother writing in the family group chat that she and his grandfather couldn’t talk and were turning off the phones, before he saw images on social media of terrorists near their home.
“I saw a Gazan news anchor reporting meters away from my grandparents’ house,” he shared.
Peri kept asking himself where the army was, because the situation did not make sense to him.
His grandparents’ safe room is within another room, their grandson said, explaining that it was hard for the first terrorist who entered their house to find it. When he did, Chaim threw open the door and pushed the terrorist so hard that he fell and then ran away.
“That is when [my grandparents] realized that he would come back with reinforcements,” said Peri. “My grandfather didn’t try to hide. He stood in the opening of the door. When they came, they said to him in English, ‘don’t resist, come with us.’ He had seconds to understand that they couldn’t see my grandmother.”
Chaim’s cooperation with the terrorists and him leaving the door to the safe room open is what allowed Peri’s grandmother to go unnoticed by other terrorists on the kibbutz and eventually be evacuated by the IDF, after crouching in her shelter for seven or eight hours, he explained.
He later learned that Hamas terrorists were able to wander the kibbutz for hours, the IDF only arriving after the terrorists had left.
Peri and his family heard updates about his grandfather from hostages who returned to Israel as part of the November exchange deal, and a Hamas video was released in which Chaim is seen with other hostages. Since then, the family has not heard any updated, reliable news about him, his grandson said.
PERI SPEAKS at rallies and events for the hostages often, and regularly talks about peace. Knowing he is echoing his grandfather’s messages and saying what Peri thinks he would say if he was there, gives him strength and confidence when he does this.
He doesn’t talk about peace for the pleasure of the crowd. “I am saying it in the name of the hostage who is most important to me. I am continuing to share his message even when he is not here,” he said.
“If my grandfather was here, he would not be calling to flatten Gaza. He would say the things I am saying,” said Peri.
There are “people who say they want peace, but peace as far as they are concerned is that only one group of people will live here at peace with itself, without understanding that two people live here, neither of whom are going anywhere, and they have to get along,” he said.
Peri thinks that the fight for the hostages is inseparable from the fight for a new government in Israel. In his view of the situation, the real sides of the conflict are not Palestinian and Jewish, but callous leaders and their interests, versus their own people.
“The leaders on any side will always benefit from wars,” he said. “They will stay protected by their status, while civilians are the ones hurt.”
“This whole war dragging on, this whole last half-year, is only for their benefit. No one is getting hurt except for us: the Israeli evacuees, hostages, and over one million Gazans, who are living miserably between a rock and a hard place – stuck between Hamas and the IDF. They are suffering the most while people like Bibi and Sinwar live the high life.”
The continuation of the war benefits Israeli leadership, he explained. “If the hostages come back, there will be nothing left to fight for and they will have to answer to the public and vacate their seats,” he said.
Bringing the hostages back should be priority
PERI EXPLAINED why he thinks that bringing the hostages back is Israel’s most important goal. “At the end of the day, what is at stake is the character of the state. Why have a state if not to be protected?” he asked.
This is especially true for the state of the Jewish people. “We were persecuted around the world for 2,000 years. We came here saying ‘enough is enough.’ We need our own state and we deserve our own state so there won’t be any more pogroms and so there won’t be another Holocaust,” he said.
“The minimal, most basic thing is to know that if you are kidnapped from your home, the state will protect you, and do whatever is necessary to keep you safe. If I get kidnapped, I can’t currently say ‘it’s ok, the state will come save me,’ the hostage’s grandson lamented.
“There is a person fighting for his seat more than he is fighting for me,” he concluded. “We need to have that knowledge that the state will do anything for us. Not bringing back the hostages says the state won’t.”
