WarSclerotic

An Israeli couple, Ronny Edry and Michal Tamir, have initiated a graphic design campaign featuring pictures of Israelis alongside a message of love and peace. Pairing with “Pushpin Mehina”, a preparatory school for graphic design students, the couple have raised awareness through posting their photos on their facebook page. . The main message reads, “Iranians, we will never bomb your country, we heart you.” alongside a picture of an Israeli. Each picture is accompanied by the following text, ”

To the Iranian people To all the fathers, mothers, children, brothers and sisters. For there to be a war between us, first we must be afraid of each other, we must hate. I’m not afraid of you, I don’t hate you. I don’t even know you. No Iranian ever did me no harm. I’m not an official representative of my country. I m a father and a teacher. I know the streets of my town, I talk with my neighbors, my family, my students, my friends and in the name of all these people …we love you. We mean you no harm. On the contrary, we want to meet, have some coffee and talk about sports.To all those who feel the same, share this message and help it reach the Iranian people.”

Erdy, speaking to Haaretz, said that he never thought his initiative would pick up so much momentum. However, the response has been substantial- garnering messages and photos from Israelis and Iranians. Within 48 hours after Erdy’s initial post, he received letters and pictures from Iranians, expressing their support for Israelis, and their objection to war In response, pictures have been posted onto the facebook site, Talking to Haaretz, Erdy said,

I thought that when you’re constantly surrounded by talk of threats and war, you are so stressed and afraid that you crawl into a sort of shell and think to yourself how lucky we are to also have bombs and how lucky we are that we’ll clean them out first,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Why not try to reach the other side; to bypass the generals and see if they [Iranians] really hate me?'”

The campaign is seeking to challenge politician’s harsh rhetoric of war and break the assumptions that Israels and Iranians hate one another. It is a citizen effort to engage the people and spread the message of peace. Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” and is being accused by Israel, to build a nuclear bomb. Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has likened Iran to Nazi Germany in their attempts to destroy the Jewish people and, speaking last week to the Israeli Knesset, has hinted that he would launch an attack on Iran, if Israel felt their security was threatened. In response to all the publicity Erdy has posted a video, and a blog and is asking for funds to buy media in order to spread his message of peace.