Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan share their powerful story of loss, personal empathy and peace.
Both Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan have lost children to violence in the conflict between Palestine and Israel. Aramin is a Palestinian academic who spent seven years in an Israeli jail for his role in the Palestinian resistance. Elhanan is an Israeli graphic designer who served in the Israeli Army as a young man.
On the first day of the school year in 1997, Elhanan’s daughter, Smadar, was killed by two Palestinian suicide bombers. In 2007, Aramin’s 10-year-old daughter, Abir, was killed by Israeli border police in front of her school.
United by this shared grief, Aramin and Elhanan have supported each other in healing from unimaginable loss. Their moving story has been shared around the world, and was the inspiration for Colum McCann’s Booker-Prize-longlisted novel Apeirogon.
Now, for the first time, the pair appear together in Australia for a special World of Words event, hosted by Sally Warhaft.
Presented in partnership with Plus61J Media