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Tag: Arab

  • Play Book of Israel’s Far Right in America Exposed: The Pro-Peace Community Should Learn

    Frank Luntz has done it again, putting his prodigious talents to work for reactionary causes, finding amazingly simple–though not simplistic–communications strategies to obstruct basic truths and delay a little longer the march of history. All the major issues that the world now sees as obvious and plain as day–climate change, tobacco as a killer, for example–were at one time subject to the brilliant obfuscations of communications manipulation. Now Frank has turned that to the purposes of the so-called pro-Israel community, which is not and does not represent a pro-Israel position but rather a pro-settlement and pro-war position.

    Newsweek has exposed Frank’s playbook, over a hundred pages of it. The pro-peace community, the community that considers itself pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian should study this method and turn it on its head. Exposing it and reversing its use is the best way to neutralize its fundamental dishonesty.

    In the report, Luntz describes

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  • Marc on Friends: A New Video Series Coming this Summer

    Here is a short clip from the upcoming video series about Friends Across the Divide. It is a series of stories of pairs o f friends in the Middle East who have worked together for many years to build strong bridges between Jews and Arabs as they struggle together for peace and justice. The power of pairs of friends to change history, to impact deeply rooted conflict, is one of the most important themes of Marc’s new book on citizen diplomacy. See here for a full description of the book and its reviews.

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  • GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL CONTRACT: THE ONLY WAY FORWARD

    I continue to be completely immersed in Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country. I must admit that when I met him once, appeared on a panel with him and spent some time with him I was a little bit in awe and did not know quite what to say. Now that I know the depths of his life, his triumphs and losses, his father, I wish I could speak more to him.

    But the one thing that emerges from the reading again and again is the same lesson I have been gathering from all over the globe. I can sum it up in an Aramaic sentence from the ancient Talmud that describes a chaotic world of lawlessness, L’es Din ve’l’es dayyan, which translates roughly as, “There is no law in sight and no judge in sight either”. What amazes me from Palestine under occupation to Rwanda to all the …

  • BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: Women Cleaning the Mess Men Have Made of the Holy City of Hebron

    THIS LETTER FROM ELANA ROZENMAN:

    February 26th, 2009
    TRUST- WIN visit to “Cordoba” school, Hebron

    The ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the aftermath
    of the violence in Gaza and southern Israel has put a strain on the ability
    and willingness of many Israelis and Palestinians to engage in
    peace-building activities. In that context last Thursday morning a group of
    Israeli women (Jewish and Christian) set out from Jerusalem with enthusiasm
    and some trepidation to meet with Reem Alshareef who is the Muslim director
    of the Cordoba school in the H2 area of Hebron which is under Israeli
    control. For pictures, press here and search under ‘Women Hebron’.
    The Israeli women were from the left, the right, and the center politically.
    All of them are in our wonderful book “Sixty Years, Sixty Voices: Israeli
    and Palestinian Women” (www.sixtyvoices.org) One was an Armenian Orthodox
    woman who is a …

  • TURKEY’S RETURN TO GLORY

    This article just appeared in Today’s Zaman and in Zaman which is Turkey’s preeminent journal. As you can see this has been part of my ongoing efforts to introduce and encourage far more intermediaries in the Middle Eastern conflict who can be effective, trustworthy and more even handed that Western intervention. This is meant also to encourage the United States, Hilary Clinton, and others to follow the lead of where the most moderate voices of the Islamic world are going. This is also a development of my work in Syria which has encouraged cultural revival that is peace-oriented, practical and visionary at once.

    Turkey’s return to glory
    by
    Marc Gopin
    For reasons of history, culture and geography, there is a surprising opportunity for Turkey to assume a position of central global leadership in the 21st century and thereby further all of its legitimate national interests.

    This is shocking considering the

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  • “There’s too much to admit here,”: Yelling at Bereaved Parents in an Israeli Hospital

    Veteran journalist Orly Halpern writing an excellent piece in the Globe and Mail, deepens the story on the Gazan peacemaker/doctor whose three daughters were killed. The shocking reactions of some Israelis to his agony is an important clue to understanding the deterioration of the political/psychological atmosphere in Israel, and why the country, and its dwindling supporters, may be headed for a clash with the rest of the world.

    “I prefer to believe the Israeli army, that a sniper shot from his house, and not [to believe] the doctor,” one Israeli posted on an Israeli news website.

    “Is there such a thing as an Arab who is not Hamas?” asked another.

    “How can anyone not believe this man?” a third wondered.

    Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish grieves at a Tel Aviv hospital this month. The doctor, whose Gaza home was shelled, worked in Israeli hospitals for more than 20 years.

    Ezzeldeen Abu

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  • A PLEA TO ISRAELIS BY AN ADMIRER FROM THE FAR EAST

    THE FOLLOWING IS A LETTER BY MUTSUKO SUGITA, WHO RECENTLY SPENT A MONTH DOING PEACE WORK WITH ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS. HERE IS HER RESPONSE TO MY PREVIOUS POST ABOUT THE GAZAN PEACE DOCTOR. What is important about the letter is that it comes from a place of admiration and solidarity but at the same time a willingness to honestly share the world’s disappointment with Israel, as well as possible lessons from Japan’s experience. Here it is:

    I also felt strong shock when I watched Doctor’s story on the CNN last week. It is a living hell.
    “I wanted every Palestinian treated in Israel to go back and say how well the Israelis treated them,” he said. “That is the message I wanted to spread all the time. And this is what I get in return?” “Why did they do this?” I don’t know. I really don’t have an answer …

  • The Gazan Peace Doctor and A Solution for Israel/Palestine?

    At first I was shocked when I read the story of the Gazan peace doctor who has been working with Israelis for years, whose daughters were decapitated and cut to pieces in front of him, from an Israeli shell aimed without care or caution at Hamas.

    But then I went through a second stage of reaction when I was warmed by how amazing a reception he received in Israel. His surviving wounded daughter was operated on to save her eye as he was surrounded by sobbing Israeli Jewish colleagues. Here are excerpts from the story:

    “I dedicated my life really for peace, for medicine,” said Dr. Abuelaish, who does joint research projects with Israeli physicians and for years has worked as something of a one-man force to bring injured and ailing Gazans for treatment in Israel.

    “The Israeli Defense Forces does not target innocents or civilians, and during the operation

    …

  • BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: AN ISRAELI CONVERSATION WITH HAMAS

    Rabbi Froman, who we have written about before, is determined to convince the Israeli leadership to speak to Hamas. The pressure to do so is mounting, even now in the capital of Israel’s only real ally, the United States. It is especially mounting due to the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, and the war crimes that are likely to be exposed in detail by the Western media’s entry now into Gaza. But Rabbi Froman always has one idee fixe, namely, that religious people need to lead the way into the conversation with Hamas, an odious idea for government people in general. Rabbi Froman is one of the most courageous and controversial peacemakers in Israel. Notice how he empathically engages his Jewish listeners. What one cannot see here is how he does exactly the same thing as he engages his Arab audiences. This combination is a rare gift and goes …

  • BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: A Letter from Syria’s Hind Kabawat

    TECHNICAL CHALLENGE WARNING: WINDOWS INTERNET EXPLORER WEB BROWSER HAS A FLAW AND IS  UNABLE TO DISPLAY MY WEBLOG PROPERLY. TRY FIREFOX AND OTHER BROWSERS, AND ASK MICROSOFT TO BE MORE COMPATIBLE. THANKS!

    Blessed Are the Peacemakers is a new series in marcgopin.com that will feature writing by or about significant peacemakers who are confronting the conflicts facing humanity with courage, creativity, and passion.

    The essay below is written by Hind Kabawat, the foremost peacemaker of Syria and my partner of five years in Middle Eastern peacemaking:

    WHAT THE MIDDLE EAST NEEDS IS THE “AUDACITY OF HOPE”

    For the last five years or so, I have been actively working with Jewish colleagues in the US and elsewhere to help broker a lasting reconciliation between Israel and its Arab neighbours. But in the wake of the carnage in Gaza, it is impossibly difficult to be optimistic about the future of the …

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