VShis International Women’s Day has a special flavor. We know to what extent wars and conflicts can fracture struggles and weaken achievements. We, The Warriors of Peace, are convinced that women, when they unite, form the most powerful shield against the destruction of the world. They are the resistance. They are the ones who hold on, who stay standing.
We, The Warriors of Peace, are a French pacifist and anti-racist movement bringing together Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist, practicing and unbelieving women of different origins and different cultures.
We are part of the pacifist movements of Palestinian and Israeli women. They themselves had already been inspired by the movement founded by women in Liberia in 2003 to work towards an end to the civil war.
It is this chain of international solidarity of women that we wanted to extend when we organized the first edition, on March 8, 2023, of the Global Women’s Forum for Peace in Essaouira, Morocco. The event brought together activists from around the world, including Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2003, as well as Moroccan, Afghan, Syrian, Palestinian, Israeli, Uighur, Rwandan activists, etc.
On October 7, 2023, the world turned upside down
On October 4, 2023, in Jerusalem, we participated in the “Mothers’ Call” march alongside thousands of Palestinian and Israeli women, activists for peace and justice. These women, beyond the walls erected to separate them and teach them to hate each other, gave the whole world a lesson in sisterhood, by walking together, hand in hand.
On October 7, 2023, the world turned upside down. Not our commitments. Nor our beliefs. That day, the first images of the massacre were images of violence against women. The bodies of Israeli women exhibited, raped, mutilated and murdered were among the first images of horror to flood the Internet. Hamas terrorists boasted live about their feminicides. And, today, we dare not imagine what the women who are still hostages must endure on a daily basis. Not condemning these crimes, not naming them is a moral fault. A lack of respect for our feminism.
From the start of the destructive bombardments by the Israeli army on the Gaza Strip, among the first images of horror, there were also defenseless women, mothers and children under the rubble. Women are at the heart of the humanitarian drama that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies are inflicting on Gaza.
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