Another Way Of Looking At Things, Compassion for difficulties, Inspiring Story, Longform, News & Politics, Uncategorized |
February 28, 2023
Two Men and a Woman Imagining and Reimagining the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Re-envisioning the Israeli-Palestinian peace process from a new lens....
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Book Club, Breaking False Dichotomies, Compassion and Empathy, Compassion for difficulties, Hold Dualities Together, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
October 20, 2022
Building Peace, One Powerful Personal Story At A Time
The only people now who are deliberately and seriously working for peace are the peacebuilders...
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In the midst of a very eventful summer for the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently found that she’d unexpectedly gone viral on YouTube. During Merkel’s otherwise pedestrian TV appearance on Good Living in Germany, a 13-year-old Palestinian refugee named Reem asked a heartbreaking question about facing deportation from Germany to her native Lebanon. When Merkel noticed the girl cry, she reached out to console her, saying that she’d done well. But the moderator took exception, saying this was not about doing well, but about Reem’s anxiety. Merkel insisted she was......
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Just about everything wrong with American/Western diplomacy in the Middle East in general, and with Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy in particular, is embodied by the study in this New York Times report, “Profit as an Incentive for Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” The Rand Corporation (a nonprofit that researches public policy, with clients including the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) actually spent two years and $2 million compiling a 228-page study on the “opportunity costs” that would come with an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Their conclusion: If an independent Palestine was to emerge tomorrow,......
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News & Politics, Wisdom Warehouse |
October 16, 2014
Conflict Kitchen: Eating Our Way to Understanding
Do you realize how little we know about the countries with which we’re in conflict? Outside of the polarizing rhetoric of politicians and the narrow lens of media headlines, what do we know about countries we consider our enemies? An eatery in Pittsburgh has an innovative and savory way of addressing this. Conflict Kitchen, a takeout restaurant opened by artists Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski, only serves food from countries the United States is in conflict with. Operating seven days a week, the restaurant rotates its menu – and its design scheme......
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News & Politics, Videos, Wisdom Warehouse |
August 13, 2014
Israeli and Palestinian Women Design New Patterns for Peace
Whatever you feel about the political biases of the 24/7 media, the fact that the only news we see about Israelis and Palestinians is of hate, violence, destruction and death makes it easy to despair about the seemingly insoluble conflict. Despair is not just the greatest sin, but it’s really a failure of human imagination. The vitriol and enmity that grows each day, as people are traumatized by war, is very real – but it is not the only story. There are plenty of Israelis and Palestinians building bridges. Hearing their stories,......
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“Nazis, Nazis, Nazis,” said Steve our 40 year-old, charismatic, Australian (by way of a half dozen countries) guide as we began a walking tour of Berlin, “that’s all most people think when they come to Berlin.” My family and I were in Berlin for a week – our first time in Germany – and Steve was so right. Berlin is young, hip, culturally rich, fun and edgy – and for the week we were there not fifteen minutes could go by without thinking Nazis, Third Reich, Holocaust. Memorials, museums, the guttural sound......
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Here’s one of the wisest books I’ve read in a very long time: Like Dreamers – The Story of the Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi. Wise because it combines sharp analysis of Israelis’ continual wrestling with one another over what the nation is all about with a deep compassion for all of the players in the region’s ongoing conflict. Notably that includes those who have differing opinions – particularly, on the Israeli side, those who are ardently anti-Zionist. If you care about Israel, Palestine or......
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News & Politics, Wisdom Warehouse |
September 25, 2013
Why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Grandchildren Give Him Hope
On Monday night I had the honor of being at a dinner at the Plaza Hotel in NYC hosted by The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace billed as a “conversation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jewish American Leadership.”? About fifty people attended: Palestinian leadership, American political leadership including Martin Indyk, Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Jewish organizational leaders, and American Jewish notables including Professors Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Kahneman, Noble Prize recipient, and Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs. The meeting......
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