The Best Revenge Is None: Bassam Aramin on Grief, Loss, and Peace

This father did not let his grief become hate.

In 2007, Bassam Aramin's ten-year-old daughter Abir was killed by Israeli Border Police gunfire near her school. He never considered revenge.

Aramin's own path there ran through throwing stones as a teenager and seven years in prison, then co-founding Combatants for Peace with former Israeli soldiers, before Abir's death tested everything that work stood for. His own words for the choice he made: "the best way of revenge is none."

Meeting Rami Elhanan

Aramin talks about meeting Rami Elhanan, an Israeli father who lost his own daughter, Smadar, to a suicide bombing a decade before Abir was killed — and how the two men became family instead of enemies. Their story is chronicled in the book Apeirogon.

Calling the Enemy a Victim Too

He calls his daughter's killer a victim too, without calling him innocent — a distinction he holds carefully, and the clearest expression of what it actually takes to see the humanity in someone your own history tells you to hate.

Legacy Through the Parents Circle Families Forum

Aramin now serves as Head of International Relations for the Parents Circle Families Forum, an organization of Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost loved ones to the conflict and now work together for peace. American Friends of the Parents Circle supports their work from the US, including ways to donate directly.

Saying Abir’s Name

The conversation closes where grief like this usually has to keep going: continuing to say her name, and asking whether she still guides him. Healing, in Aramin's account, requires safety first — but it doesn't require forgetting.