INTERVIEW WITH BEATE ZILVERSMIDT
Beate Zilversmidt is originally from the Netherlands and moved to Israel in 1987.
Beate: I am a 61-year old woman who has children and grandchildren in Holland. I was born Jewish under Nazi-occupation, and, as a child, I survived by being hidden by different families who took part in the Dutch Resistance. I think that this strange beginning definitely had an effect on the rest of my life. For example, I cannot think of war as something patriotic, or romantic. I always consider war to be a disaster, not a solution, and I have a need, like the people who saved me, to do what I can to peacefully act against the injustices of military systems.
As a matter of fact, in the 1970s my then still-little son was one of the reasons why I didn't want "to make alya" (i.e. go to Israel) as my then-husband wanted to do. Even then I believed that mothers have an important role in educating their children and I wasn� able or willing to prepare my son for being a soldier in a war-zone. I am therefore deeply moved by the refuser movement, and the role that parents play in supporting their sons who prefer military prison to military action. This sort of support didn't exist in the 1970s.
In 1987, after my children were grown, I made "alya" alone - to the Israeli peace movement. Now, I have to travel to Holland to visit my family but I live in a suburb of Tel Aviv and work out of my home for Gush Shalom [Israeli Peace Bloc].
Gush Shalom does many activities for peace, some more successful than others.
While Sharon has succeeded in delegitimizing Arafat, Gush Shalom still proclaims that Arafat is the partner with whom the government of Israel must sign a peace agreement. This proclamation does not always make us popular. Nevertheless we have been to the Ramallah Compound ("Muqata") as human shields several times. According to what Sharon himself has said, our presence was a factor in the considerations which led to the decision not to send lethal missiles to the Muqata.
Gush Shalom was also the first group in the peace movement to break the silence on Jerusalem and speak out for sharing Jerusalem: West-Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel and East-Jerusalem the capital of Palestine.
One of our most successful and popular actions is informing people which items are created or grown by Jewish settlers on illegally acquired land. To this purpose we publish a Boycott List of Settler Products to alert people about which products to avoid buying so as to avoid supporting settlers.
We have also raised the alarm to Israeli soldiers about their possibly committing war crimes; some soldiers may have been encouraged by our words and refused to participate in such activities.