 Okay. All right. Michal, thank you so much for joining me here. I'll just introduce you a little bit. Actually, I don't have not actually, this is maybe our second conversation, but we met because I wrote an article where I shared your video in my name. I want no vengeance. And so Michal's son was murdered by Hamas on October 7th. And, you know, I had been speaking, I had written an article before that about, about, this has got to stop, you know, this, that the more killing justified by previous killing. Well, just lock us in a forever cycle of more killing. And, but, you know, people said, well, Charles, that's easy for you to say. But if it had been your own family, then you would be calling for revenge just like everybody else, you know, you're just shielded by your, by your fortune and privilege. So when I came across your video, Michal, it was very affirming to me, you know, because you had a right to say that, that maybe I didn't have, or at least an authority to call for an edge to the cycle. And so I was very moved by that and I shared it. And so I guess I'll start by thanking you for, for having the courage to speak out and thinking also, like, whatever, maybe, maybe I'll start with that as a question. Unless there's something else you want to say first, but, you know, because many who were affected, did call for revenge, and revenge is being carried out right now. So, so what moved in you or what spoke to you that you chose a different, a different path. Yeah. Sure. First of all, I want to thank you for both sharing my video and for speaking to me now and sharing my voice. So, I've, I've, I've never believed in war. I never understood it. And I don't know call me innocent, but I never understood why people should kill each other to, to serve the leaders of their country and what is all this separation I just don't understand it. And, and then this, the most horrible thing that could happen when you want happened, which is I lost my only son. And he wasn't a soldier, he wasn't fighting. He went out to dance in a festival with his friends. And, and never came back. And the day I received the news of his death. Of course I was devastated. The whole world just crashed in front of me and I crashed with it. And as I was yelling out to the skies and crying to the center of the earth. I met, I met this huge light. Which I, I won't say a lot about it because it was very sacred and the very private between my son's soul and my soul. But what I will share about it is that in that moment, the whole world became silent. And it was him and I. And in that moment I realized there is something I need to tell the world because until that moment I have lived my own very small private life on the edges of society I've never come out to the front to the light I've always been somewhere just doing what I can to help. I'm raising my boy on love and feeling that if, if I see people in pain or in need I will help them. And that is what I did until October 7th I helped people heal their wounds and their emotional wounds I mean and, and I've never been a public speaker I've never been an activist I just believed in this just do good wherever you are. And that's, that's how we heal the world and this whole. I've, I can't even believe that we met that darkness that my son and I had my son. I just met the darkness, I can only imagine what happened to him, but I lost him to that darkness. And, and, and I felt like I heard a message from him. His name is Laor, which means to the light. And it feels like he's showing us the way, showing me the way and asking me to show it to the world and at probably the next day I was sitting at his father's house and hundreds of people were coming there to, to the Shiva to, to hug us and to be with us and, and people were showing us a photo of a missile, missile missile, sorry, still not that perfect, saying in the memory, someone wrote on it in the memory of Laura Brahmo, which is my son's name, and this, this missile was sent out to Gaza to kill. And I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear someone putting my son's name on a killing machine. And then I realized I immediately out of my own wreckage and devastation and from my tears and my bed I just got up and took a video of me asking the world to stop this. I can't imagine another single mother going through what I'm going. And I know everyone is going through their own grief, but there's just no point in this. I don't believe in that. And I feel like there's the rage that people feel is, is what leads them to this violence to the to this darkness to this hatred. And I truly believe that underneath all rage and anger lies deep pain and fear. And we can work with pain and fear. We can't do anything with anger, but hurt more people. What is mostly what I what led me to this video, because I couldn't bear the thought that especially not in my name and in my son's name, someone would go out and kill more people and then they will come more people and just all this hurting. Yeah, you could imagine, you know, one of the relatives of one of the children who died in Gaza, writing his name on a missile, you know, and sending it somewhere else. And then someone else innocent would get in, you know, this is how it's happened for really thousands of years. And maybe the time has come for it to stop, you know, maybe like after after the attacks, and when I saw the responses, I fell into a very intense depression. Just seeing the whole thing happening again and I was like, haven't we learned? Haven't we learned? What will it take for us to learn? And the, but you know, maybe the fact that this is at the forefront of our global consciousness right now. It's in everybody's paying attention to it. You know, at least everybody has an opinion or people who had no opinion on, you know, Yemen, you know, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, you know, or any of these other places where horrible things have been happening, maybe in sheer numbers to more people than are happening than is happening in Israel and Palestine. They weren't paying attention to that. But now it's in the forefront of our consciousness and we're getting maybe an opportunity to make a clear choice to because it's put in our interface for us to say yes or no to. And that's why I draw some hope from that. And from my friend, you know, I saw when I was, you know, in the midst of this anguish. I spoke to my friend, Orlan Bishop, who's a very, very wise human being. Because I was just in anguish and he said, he said, no one ever dies in vain. These people who are, and this was before the invasion of Gaza, you know, before a lot of the retaliation had had started, but it just was just starting. And so he, so I said, you know, so many are about to die and he says nobody ever dies in vain that this is potentially an initiation for the whole planet because it is so visible, you know, because it is at the forefront of consciousness. And it means that we have an opportunity to honor those who died by making sure that it does not happen again. Like, in a sense, that's what they died for, so that it won't happen again, so that we hold life sacred and put that above being right. You know, I just wrote another essay a couple days ago called every war is justified, because somebody's justifying it. You know, so it is justified in people's minds. And these people usually use when they say something's justified, they're saying, well, in some objective sense, this is right to kill because of this reason, this reason and this reason. So what they're doing is an act of justification. Every war, every war, there's somebody justifying it, every killing, there's somebody justifying it, which means, in my mind, that the problem is justification, which means to make it right in your mind to make it right. Everybody has a way to make it right to kill. And, you know, maybe sometimes if you agree with the premises, maybe it is right, you know, you can make all kinds of reasons why it's right. But I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in what's right. I'm interested in, you know, a mother trying to dig her child out of the rubble of a destroyed building with her hands because she has no tools. You know, I'm interested in the whimpers of children and the cries of mothers and the wailing of brothers and sisters and parents, you know, like, can we be there, you know? And if the deaths of all of these people can bring us there, then they will not have died in vain. It's, as a mother of one who has died, it's so hard to understand that. But, yes, I don't know about if they died for it or no. I mean, I'm not communicating directly with God in order to know that. But I feel that you are right about this coming up to the front stage that no one is left without a side or an opinion. And if it's okay, I'd like to share something that happened to me last week. A friend who lives, she's not from Israel. She was in Israel. She has two children with an Israeli man and they left Israel and moved to back to the States and her children were very close with my son when they were living in Israel and when my son died, she wrote a beautiful eulogy and how close they all were with us and how they love him and love me and all of that. And then she started posting her pro Palestine in that case, flags and essays and opinions and, and I told her, I thought you were my sister I'm not putting a pro Israel flag on my profile. I'm not doing that. I'm, I'm laying the flag down, and I'm asking you as my friend to lay your flag down and, and converse with me and hear my heart, and maybe we can just the two of us between us, find a way to be together in this horrible disaster that has happened to us to your children, their grandparents are still in Israel. And by you supporting one side, you are flaming flames of hatred. And I begged for her heart I begged her to speak to me and just lay down the flag and talk to her sister. We were very close before that. And I have never engaged in any political discussion, and I don't do that. But because she was her friend, my friend, I asked her, can we please talk. Can you please just maybe find in your heart, a place for a third option, which is not pro this side or pro this side. Your children are sleeping safe in their beds in your house. Now, you have that, you have that gift that your children are still with you. Please listen to me. I'm not talking opinions with you. I'm begging for your heart. This is how we will heal the world. And I was attacked by her. As I grieve my, my, my, my son who just lost his life. And I, you know, at that point, I, I thought I might find some anger inside of me and say, oh, okay, let's cancel her. Let's dismiss her. Let's, I couldn't find it because it hurt me more to fight her back. It hurt me more to prove my point. It hurt me more to be right. I just wanted closeness and love with this human being who I know personally. She's not even a stranger. And this is what leaves me even more brokenhearted than I am. That people just cling to one opinion or to one side and say, I'm right. This is me. We're the good ones. You're the bad ones. This land is mine. This land is yours. The whole separation is, I truly don't understand it. I was just thinking, you know, if there was an alien invasion, then no one would care about if you're Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist. We were all unite in front of, in, in front of our new enemy. So why wait for, for more disasters and why separate ourselves and why I really, you know, I talk to people because in Israel, the people who know me and know my approach, they support and love me. But I had some really, really, really hurtful responses about my video, because people here in Israel believe that we need to, there's no one to talk to and there's no one to their side. They have, they teach their children to hate. And it's true. They teach their children to kill and hate and not see Jewish people as human beings. I believe that the soul, the, they're not soldiers, the terrorists believed that they are not killing human babies. I think, I don't know, I really don't know what happened there. And I can't know what they thought, but I understand that people think that the other side is not worth. And that the other side is not worth being called human, but a Palestinian mother who gives birth to a baby to a soft baby. I believe 100%. She doesn't want that baby to be killed or to kill or to hurt anyone. I think that is the answer. I think everyone who is not in the conflict shouldn't find, and that was, that's what I was trying to ask that friend of mine. You are out of the conflict. Your children are safe with you. Instead of putting all that power and energy into more hatred. Do the opposite. Put everything you can into listening to someone who's hurting. Put all your energy into being with that person. You know, when, when you work with children and they fight over a toy. You know, he's right because it was his toy and he's right because he saw it first, or whatever, but then you love those little children, and you listen to them, and you talk to them. And you give them their space, and you teach them to see each other. And you teach them that maybe they can play together with that toy. Maybe they take turns, or whatever. And you see this is a child and this is a child you don't take a side. And I feel this is all that is being asked here is that we stop taking sides and that we love everyone who has any power in them, use it for love. Raise the new children in this world on love and heal the mothers and heal the fathers. And, you know, I'm not innocent. I know that horrible things have happened. I, the most horrible thing in the world has happened to me. My boy, my love and light, my hope in this world, I have not had an easy life. And I put all my hope into a future, because I had a child. I left a childless mother now with nothing to do but keep on loving him. I have nothing else to do here, but keep this love alive. Otherwise, there is no, I understand. I understand that that that violence has been the answer for too many years. We must find a way. We must find a way to teach love to put all the worlds, if all the world will just stop everything they do. And instead of putting all that energy into into more weapons and more hatred and teaching the children to hate and people that don't even understand what they're saying, yell out in the streets on both sides. I'm not talking only on one side, speaking hate on both sides and teaching them love and sitting with them. That would, I have to believe that would save the world because otherwise what can we do here? Aren't there enough disasters and diseases and accidents that we lose each other for? Yeah, even if even if we weren't harming each other, there would still be plenty of tragedies in this world without us adding more to them. The, this, this taking sides that you were talking about, you know, with your friend. Taking sides provides some relief, like a temporary relief from the pain, from the anguish, from the bewilderment, you know, from, from the feeling that, that, that you were describing of just this perplexity. How can people do this? How can people do this? Like, it just doesn't make sense, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to even, to really even feel that. And to feel the, the, the pain of all that's happening and, and the, the hopelessness of it ever stopping. And so one way to exit that feeling is to take a side. And along with that side comes a story that if our side wins, then it won't happen anymore. And that we will impose good and right and justice onto the world. And, and we will solve all of the problems because good will win because we're good and they're evil. And so it's a, it's an off ramp from feeling what's actually true. And when you challenge that, you're, you're taking away, it's like taking away somebody's drug, you know, it's like taking away somebody's alcohol. You're, you're threatening that whole narrative in which everything is okay as long as we win. And here is the plan. Here is the plan. The plan is that good defeats evil in a war. And, and so you're by, by speaking for peace and saying no, no more war, no more taking sides. Show me your heart by saying that you are a bigger threat to them than even the enemy is. The enemy validates that story by their existence. And the worst the enemy is the better, the better, the more comforting it is. Ah, see, we are right. We are good. They are wrong. They are evil. And you're, you are, I think maybe one reason that people sometimes react violently to your peace offerings is that you are threatening that whole setup. But then there are those many, many who are ready, who are sick of this. Who sense on some level, the futility of the cycle of hate and vengeance and, and maybe they just need a little, a little nudge, you know, a little permission. And if you say it, one who has lost everything, then they know that it's okay for them to feel it too. And that's why I keep saying what I have to say, even though it's very painful for me to stand here and continue speaking instead of crawling back into my grief. Yeah. But I feel that, that I owe it to my son. And I, I can't live in a world where this voice isn't as loud as can be. And also, I really, I understand that this is a new option for people and it's too threatening, I understand that. But you know, in a war, there are never winners. No one wins a war, ever. You can't win a war. I can't imagine someone who has been killing other people and being okay with it and, and feeling, feeling like they want something. I can't, I can't believe a world where using your power to more destruction leaves you in a feeling of winning. It's just that there aren't any winners in a war, never. Yeah. You know, there have been very few American casualties in our recent wars. But you know, it's killed more American soldiers than the enemy is suicide. Right. Yeah. And, and for every suicide there's 100 cases of depression and PTSD. And that just illustrates how, you know, what you do to the other you end up doing to yourself. And, you know, we could make political statements about that, about. I mean, I talk about that from the point of view of my country all the time. You know, yeah, we've visited much violence on the rest of the world. And have not really been attacked, but the violence comes in anyway. Domestic violence, you know, violence in the streets violence in the schools violence in the home. You can't keep it out. And that's a, you know, my, my, my writing my philosophy has been about separation that's been the main theme of all of my writing for 20 years. And, and the illusion that I'm separate from you in that illusion what I do to you it doesn't have to happen to me. What we do to the Palestinians what we do to the rainforest what we do to the babies what you know well that's them and this is me. So it doesn't have to affect me. But the transition that we are in right now is into a new story that understands that we're not really separate that what happens to anybody in some way happens to me as well in some form that what we do to the planet. We do to ourselves that what we do to the enemy we do to ourselves that we're inseparable because we're not just the separate selves. And they're that we are mysteriously and intimately connected with each other on an existential level. You know, it's not just that we're related, but we are our existence is connected. And all of our divisions fall short of the truth and maybe, you know, maybe in in your experience that you spoke of at the beginning, the spiritual experience of connecting with your son on a soul level. Like maybe that that reminded you on the body level of the truth of non separation. I like to call the coming times the age of reunion, where we begin to step by step return to the truth of inter being inter existence. And sometimes I, you know, just lose faith, you know, and I and I forget that it's possible when when there's a big setback or what seems like a setback, you know, that's that's what happened for me after October 7. And so it's like, maybe we're not on the road, maybe we're not on the healing path after all, you know, maybe it's just going to spin worse and worse and worse. And that's why your video was was so helpful to me, actually, you know, it, it, it showed me know the return, the reunion is it is happening. Yeah, all you can say to that is amen. Yeah, I hope so. It is a very, very, very dark and difficult time now. For some reason, I keep seeing that light. My son's lights. I keep seeing him show us the lights. That's his name to the lights. That's his name again in Hebrew. It's law or means lights and law or to the lights. When he was born I thought it had a different meaning that he's bringing light into the life into his life. After hard and very painful times in our lives here and and now it's got a whole new meaning. But I, I truly believe that love is the answer towards what you're saying to that reunion. And by that, we managed to listen to each other and feel compassion to each other and love ourselves and our neighbors and then more and more and then more. That's the only thing. Just go back to loving, go back to loving wherever you can. All the rest is just scenery. And I want to, to add if I can that I want to repeat that. I think, or I believe, or I feel I don't even know how to say it. That everyone who has the privilege to do something needs to put all their energy into loving and into teaching love and into healing where it hurts so that there will be more space in our hearts to love. Because the opposite of love is fear and pain. And that leads to all the horrible things that we have experienced. When you feel, when, when you feel love, it heals all the rest. And, and if there's something I want to ask the world is if your loved ones are with you, put your energy into that. Yeah. When, when people describe their, I have a, I know a guy who had a near death experience. He was in a deep coma, you know, and his heart had stopped and then he was in a deep coma and he came back weeks later from that. And he described his experience. Drew Brophy, his name is, I, maybe I'll share the video, but he, you know, when he had his life review. He said, yeah, those at that moment, the only thing that you care about is, is those who you loved. And, and that's the only thing that matters. You know, how did I, how did I relate to those I loved everything else falls away. And if we could, like the relationships are what's important, you know, and, and if we could take that wisdom, you know, that's transmitted from people who have had those experiences or from people like you who have, have, you know, faced, I mean, what you have also is kind of like a death experience, you know, it just obliterates everything that isn't true. Everything that's not actually important, and it reveals the truth, which is love. And if we can, if we can receive some of that, I guess I'm just asking everybody listening to take a few moments to really receive that and to recognize the truth of what we call the same. Just recognize that truth. And, and it will never let you go. And yeah, so just returning your amen with a with a second one. And, wow, yeah, you know, I, I, I speak also of the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. And the only way to get there is like what you're saying is, is love. And it's so easy to do easy to do. It's so much easier than all the rest. It's just looking at someone and feeling, feeling them and looking at listening to them and sitting with them and then asking them, what do you need? How do you feel? Tell me more. I'm here for you. I'm sorry you're hurting. That's it. So easy. Yeah. Sorry, any, um, any, any final thing that you would like to share with people. Just go find someone to, to sit with and listen to today and tomorrow. Today, find someone hurting and listen to them. And if you're hurting, find someone that will listen to you. That's really everything that I'm asking for. And if you do have that privilege of not being in distress at the moment, spread love. Thank you. Thank you so much for allowing me to speak here. And for making this happen and hearing me. Yeah, thank you, Michael. And anytime that you have any request of me or anything that you want to communicate to the people who. Read and listen to my words and, you know, then please, please just tell me and I will do it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, and thank you everybody for listening. Um, and, uh, yeah. Um, I'm looking forward to staying in touch with you. Michael. Yeah. Thank you.