Beyond Year Zero: Collective Memory, Shared Mourning, and the Path to True Peace
Reframing October 7: From Rupture to Reflection
Two years have passed since the attacks of October 7, 2023, when Hamas struck Israel and triggered one of the darkest chapters in the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict. The grief remains raw — 1,200 Israelis murdered, over 65,000 Palestinians dead, countless wounded, displaced, and traumatized. But to truly honor the dead, we must confront a deeper truth: history does not begin on a single day.
When we label October 7 as “Year Zero,” we erase decades of siege, occupation, dispossession, and fear that preceded it. Memory must not serve power — it must hold all griefs equally, remembering Israelis and Palestinians alike as victims of a shared human tragedy.
The Politics of Beginnings: How Narratives Shape History
Every war, every rupture, begins long before its “official” date. When historians and media fixate on a single moment — like February 24, 2022, for Ukraine’s war, or June 28, 1914, for World War I — they simplify complex realities into digestible myths.
These myths serve political convenience. They create before-and-after boundaries that comfort one community while erasing another’s suffering. The lesson is clear: the architecture of remembrance is never neutral. It reflects who controls the story and whose pain is permitted visibility.
Time, Memory, and Power: Who Writes the Timeline?
Time can be wielded as a weapon. By defining a “start,” political powers reshape public consciousness. François Hartog’s theory of “regimes of historicity” explains how societies mold time to serve present agendas.
Declaring October 7 as Year Zero centers Israeli suffering while pushing Palestinian trauma to the periphery. It becomes a narrative tool of exclusion, a moral hierarchy of grief. But if time is to serve peace, it must include all who mourn, not only those deemed politically acceptable.
Sacred Rhythms: Healing Through Shared Time
The solution lies not in forgetting, but in redefining how we remember. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel described the Sabbath as a “palace in time” — a sacred rhythm where communities pause, reflect, and reconnect. This notion transcends religion: Jewish Sabbath, Christian Sunday, and Muslim Friday all express continuity and collective renewal.
When remembrance follows such rhythms, it heals rather than divides. By contrast, when we commemorate through rupture — through “zero points” and anniversaries of war — we deepen the fracture.
Lessons from Indigenous and Eastern Cosmologies
Across civilizations, time is cyclical, not linear. The Hopi and Navajo peoples tie time to cosmic and agricultural renewal, emphasizing harmony and balance. In Hindu cosmology, time unfolds through vast cycles — yugas and kalpas — where creation and destruction are natural rhythms.
Such cosmologies teach us that every end is also a beginning. Peace, too, is cyclical, built through recurring acts of empathy, forgiveness, and remembrance. These worldviews reject the illusion of “Year Zero” — they remind us that continuity is the essence of healing.
When Memory Becomes a Weapon
Memory is sacred, but it can also be weaponized. Some use historical trauma to justify new forms of domination. As Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss warns, invoking Jewish suffering to endorse oppressive policies undermines Jewish ethics themselves.
The same danger looms in all national narratives. The Holocaust should remind humanity to reject dehumanization in every form, not to validate new cycles of exclusion. When memory becomes selective, it betrays its moral power.
Shared Mourning: The Foundation of Reconciliation
To rebuild peace, remembrance must be collective, not competitive. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and Christians must find ways to grieve together. Ceremonies of mutual mourning — even symbolic ones — can begin to dismantle decades of mistrust.
When remembrance embraces all lives lost, it transforms history from a battlefield into a sanctuary. True commemoration is not about choosing sides; it’s about restoring humanity.
From Zero Points to Living Memory
Political “zero points” freeze time in trauma. Sacred remembrance restores motion, allowing societies to breathe again. As Heschel envisioned, time can be a sanctuary — an ever-renewing palace built by compassion.
The path forward requires inclusive historicity, where both Israeli and Palestinian griefs are woven into a single moral fabric. The future cannot be built on amnesia or selective empathy; it must grow from shared mourning, truth, and acknowledgment.
Toward a New Architecture of Time
If peace is to endure, humanity must redesign its relationship with time itself. Instead of marking wars with anniversaries of division, we must build rituals of solidarity. We must remember not to reopen wounds, but to close them — together.
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