200,000 watch Israeli-Palestinian memorial service online
This year's joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony was streamed online because of the pandemic, but the controversy it raised was nothing new.
Some 200,000 people viewed the joint Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony commemorating the victims of the conflict. The April 27 event, which usually attracts thousands of participants, was held this year online over the novel coronavirus threat, livestreaming simultaneously in Hebrew and in Arabic from studios in Tel Aviv and Ramallah.
The Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony was conceived 15 years ago. A bereaved Israeli parent whose son died fighting in Lebanon sought in 2006 to establish an alternative ceremony to the one traditionally organized by the state and the army at the plaza of the Western Wall. Two civil society groups took up the mission: The Parents Circle, a forum of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families seeking reconciliation between the two peoples, and Combatants for Peace, an organization of former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.
