A MOTHER SPEAKS OUT Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli who lost her only child in a suicide bombing four years ago, appeals to all parents to speak out for peace. THE DOMINION OF DEATH Nurit Peied-Elbanan, Yediot Aharonot, December 2, 2001 Dylan Thomas wrote a war poem entitted "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." In Israel, it does. Here death govems: the govemment of Israel rules over a dominion of death. So the most astonishing thing about yesterday's terrorist attack in Jerusalem and all similar attacks is that Israelis are astonished. Israeli propaganda and indoctrination manage to keep coverage of these attacks detached from any Israeli reality. The story in the Israeli (and American) media is one of Arab murderers and Israeli victims, whose only sin was that they asked for seven days of grace. But anyone who can remember back not even one year but just one week or several hours knows the story is different, that each attack is a link in a chain of horrific bloody events that extends back 34 years and has but one cause- a brutal occupation. An occupation that humiliates, starves, denies jobs, demolishes homes, destroys crops, murders children, imprisons minors without trial under appalling conditions, lets babies die at checkpoints and spreads lies. Until all the parents of Israel and Palestine rise up against the politicians and demand they curb their lust for conquest and bloodshed, the underground realm of buried children will continue to grow. Since the beginning of time mothers have cried out in a clear voice for life and against death. Today, we must rise up against the transformation of children into murderers and murdered, raise our children to oppose evil machinations, and force the politicians to make way for those who can sit at the negotiating table and agree to a true and just peace, who are prepared to engage in dialogue not with the aim of tricking and manipulating the other side, not to humiliate the other and force him to his knees, but to reach a solution that considers the other, a solution free of racism and lies. Otherwise death shall continue to have dominion over us. I suggest that parents who have not yet lost their children look beneath their feet and heed the voices rising from the kingdom of death, upon which they step day by day and hour by hour, for only there does everyone understand that there is no difference between one life and another, that it matters little what is the colour of your skin or the colour of your ID, or which flag flies over which hill and which direction you face when you pray. In the kingdom of death lsraeli children lie beside Palestinian children, soidiers of the occupying army beside suicide bornbers, and no one remembers who was David and who was Goliath, for they have faced the sober truth and realized that they were cheated and lied to, that politicians without feeling or conscience gambled away their lives as they continue to gamble with the lives of us all. We have given them the power, through democratic elections, to turn our home into an arena of neverending murder. Only if we stop them can we return to a normal life in this place, and then death will have no dominion. Nurit Peled-Elhanan teaches languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This message was distributed at a peace vigil held by : Palestinian and Jewish Unity (PAJU), (514) 322-9234