The United States and Israel maintain a "special relationship" founded on shared security interests, democratic values, and deep-rooted cultural ties. As a major non-NATO ally, Israel receives significant annual U.S. security assistance—roughly $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing and $500 million for missile defense—to maintain its technological edge.
BINYAMINA, NORTHERN ISRAEL — The Oct. 7 attack altered life across Israel, leaving few untouched by loss. In its aftermath, grief has often turned into anger, deepening divisions that have existed for generations. But amid the devastation, some Israelis and Palestinians are choosing a different response — one rooted not in vengeance, but in peace.
Maoz Inon is just one of them. An Israeli peace activist, Inon, lost both of his parents during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. Being raised in the communities of Kibbutz Nir Am and Netiv HaAsara, conflict was never unfamiliar to him. What he never imagined was that the final contact with his parents would come through a family WhatsApp group chat.
“No one answered us the entire morning,” Inon said. “Only in the afternoon were we able to reach a neighbor, who told us that my parents’ house had burned to ashes — and that there were two bodies inside.”
In the days following the attack, Inon and his family were confronted with a choice — one he believes many before them faced and failed.
“By choosing revenge, we’re only going to escalate the cycle of fear, hate, and bloodshed that Israelis and Palestinians have been trapped in for a century,” he said. “It didn’t start on Oct. 7.”
Still consumed by grief, Inon described feeling physically and emotionally shattered. For days, he said, he was “drowning in an ocean of sorrow and pain.”
It wasn’t till days later that he had a life-altering vision— one where collective tears healed bodies scarred by war and washed blood from the land, revealing what he described as “a path to peace and reconciliation.”
“When I woke up, I made a decision to walk on that path,” he said.
For Inon, the decision was not abstract or symbolic. He said choosing peace was the only way he could begin to heal.
A Life Built on Bridging Communities
Long before Oct. 7, Inon had dedicated his work to bringing people together across cultural and religious divides. He served as a tourism entrepreneur using it as a tool for understanding — one that could break down the physical and mental walls separating Israelis and Palestinians.
“I was very much involved and invested in tourism, but not just tourism for fun or for the experience,’’ Inon explained. “But tourism that was meant and created to bridge...between Jews and Arabs and local communities.’’
Inon said his approach was shaped by time spent living alongside Indigenous communities abroad, where learning came not from books or guides, but from sharing meals, homes, and daily life. That experience, he said, forced him to confront how little he knew about the Palestinian people living alongside him.
“When there is ignorance, there is fear,” Inon said. “And when there is fear, there is hate.”
For Inon, peace began with proximity — with knowing the other not as an enemy, but as a neighbor.
A Partnership Born From Loss….
Inon’s work eventually led him to partner with Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian peace activist who also understands loss. Abu Sarah’s brother was killed during the first Intifada in the early 1990s after being tortured in an Israeli prison
The two men, Inon said, were meant to be enemies — divided by nationality, history, and grief. Instead, they found common ground in their refusal to let loss dictate hatred. In the days following Oct. 7, Abu Sarah reached out to Inon with a message that would deepen their shared resolve.
As long as he acted from anger and revenge, Abu Sarah wrote, he was living the life his brother’s killers had chosen for him. Only by rejecting hatred, he said, was he able to reclaim his freedom.
Together, the two began amplifying a message they believe is often overshadowed by violence: that reconciliation, even among those most affected by conflict, is possible.
Amplifying Peace on a Global Stage
As Inon’s work gained international attention, he and Abu Sarah met with Pope Francis in 2024, sharing their personal losses and calling for reconciliation amid ongoing violence. For Inon, the meetings were not symbolic, but a reminder that peacebuilding belongs on the global stage alongside political and military decisions.
“If we must differentiate,” Inon said, “let it be between those who believe in equality, dignity, justice, and peace — and those who don’t believe in those values yet.”
Their individual efforts have now come together in a book, The Future Is Peace, A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land (Crown Publishing Group), out April 2026. In September of last year, both came together at a NYC-area live event where they spoke about reconciliation and peace-building, themes they explore in their book.
In a moment defined by grief, fear, and division, Inon’s choice stands in quiet defiance of what history has repeated for generations. Rather than allowing loss to harden into hatred, he continues to walk a path he believes is the only one capable of healing — for himself, and for a land still searching for reconciliation.
“I don’t want to make my parents victims of terror,” said Inon. “I want to make them victims of peace.”
Marissa Muniz is a senior at Baylor University. She completed this piece as a media fellow with Fuente Latina.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
