11,635 Children: A Ceremony of Remembrance and Witness
We invite you to join a sacred ceremony of remembrance. For two continuous days, beginning January 26, 2025, we will read the names of children killed since October 2023 in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Israel. Over 17,000 children under the age of eighteen have lost their lives during this time, the large majority from Gaza. We will read 11,635 names – these are the verified names we have been able to collect from the most recent lists available.
by Dina Awwad-Srour and Emma Sham-Ba Ayalon, 23/1/2025
Through suffering, I have learned that we must share our love with the whole of creation.
(Etty Hillesum, Jewish writer)“
I wish children didn’t die. I wish they were temporarily lifted up to the sky until the end of the war. Then they would return home safely, and when their parents asked them, ‘Where were you?’, they would answer, ‘We were playing in the clouds’.
(Ghassan Kanafani, Palestinian poet)
We invite you to join a sacred ceremony of remembrance. For two continuous days, beginning January 26, 2025, we will read the names of children killed since October 2023 in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Israel. Over 17,000 children under the age of eighteen have lost their lives during this time, the large majority from Gaza. We will read 11,635 names – these are the verified names we have been able to collect from the most recent lists available.
The ceremony will span approximately 40 hours, with 231 people from around the world joining together to read name after name, honoring each young soul lost. Reading each child’s name, regardless of their nationality or religion, we insist on honoring the sacredness of each life. It’s an act of rebelling against systems that want to make us believe that some lives are more important than others.
Preparing this ceremony has broken our hearts repeatedly. There were moments when our eyes could no longer focus on the lists, when we had to pause to weep. We invite you to join us in this space of witnessing and grieving. While recent news of a ceasefire brings relief, we carry profound sorrow for the countless innocent lives lost.
We’re writing to you as two friends of Tamera, Dina Awwad-Srour and Emma Sham-Ba Ayalon, two female peace activists, one Palestinian, the other Israeli. Our journey together began many years ago with a shared vision to create a peace research village in the Middle East inspired by Tamera. We found shared inspiration in Etty Hillesum, the Dutch Jewish writer who perished in the Holocaust. We believe that Etty’s words carry the wisdom of deep humaneness that the world needs so urgently now. Five years ago, we traveled to the Westerbork transition camp with Zen Peacemakers and participated in a bearing witness ritual honoring Holocaust victims by reading their names. Now, we continue this act of remembrance, refusing to remain silent in the face of atrocity, understanding that if there’s a shared path of nonviolent co-existence for our people, it will begin by acknowledging each other’s pains and mourning together.
We draw strength from Etty’s example of maintaining humanity even when fear, hatred, and revenge threaten to overwhelm it.
The ceremony begins Sunday, January 26, at 7:00 AM, Israel-Palestine time: UTS +2, and concludes Monday evening, January 27 – International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz, where Etty lost her life.
To watch the ritual, visit our ‘Etty Hillesum’ website or join our YouTube channel. We hope you’ll be with us.