An online call for peace initiated by an Israeli couple has managed to achieve the support of 1,000 Israelis and Iranians. And it all began with two posters.

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“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,” [Ronny Edry, who began the campaign with his wife] said. “So I thought, ‘Why not try to reach the other side; to bypass the generals and see if they [Iranians] really hate me?’”

At first, the posters were castigated, said Edry. “After the first poster people started criticizing me, saying I’m an idiot, that I’m naïve. ‘Why are you telling them you love them? Why are you giving up before the war has even started?’” But very quickly the posters became a hit: the first image gained hundreds of “Likes” and “Shares,” and numerous people asked to join the initiative.

It was not long before reactions from Iranians began trickling through. “I never imagined that within 48 hours I would be speaking to the other side,” said Edry, who explained that most of the Iranians’ messages had been coming through in private, but that there had been some who invited him to be their Facebook friend.

For more, see ‘Israel Loves Iran’ initiative takes off on Facebook.