COULD you believe it that amid the din of sabre-rattling and the talk of imminent Israeli attack on Iran, there are a few Israelis who believe in love and reaching out to Iran?

Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz tells a fascinating story of a couple who started ‘Israel loves Iran’ initiative on Facebook recently.

According to the paper, Ronny Edry and his wife Michal Tamir, uploaded posters to Facebook, depicting images of themselves with their children alongside the words, “Iranians, we will never bomb your country, we (love) you.”

Each poster had the caption, “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 harm.”

“I am not an official representative of my country. I am a father and a teacher”, wrote Edry, adding that he wishes to send a message on behalf of his neighbours, family, students and friends. “[W]e love you. We mean you no harm. On the contrary, we want to meet, have some coffee and talk about sports.”

What got him to embark on this unique venture is also interesting. Edry realised that constant talk of threats and war lead to stress and a state of paranoia so one crawls ‘into a sort of shell’ and thinks ‘how lucky we are to have bombs’ to able ‘to clean them out first.’ Therefore, he decided to ‘try to reach the other side; to bypass the generals and see if they [Iranians] really hate me?’

After initial rebukes from some right - wing hawks very quickly the posters became a hit: “I never imagined that within 48 hours I would be speaking to the other side,” Edry told Haaretz.

His support at home is hitting the roof but, more importantly he has since started receiving a constant stream of messages from Iranians, reciprocating his sentiments.

Could someone in Pakistan (and India) start a similar initiative?

S. G. JILANEE Karachi