“We Want Peace” on YouTube

Hagit Tarnari, one of the dedicated pro-peace Israeli participants in our recent U.N. University conference on nonviolence in Amman, Jordan, made a little video at the end of the conference and has posted it on YouTube: here.
I’ve watched it three times, and find it incredibly moving… It brings all those people’s faces and strong, dedicated personalities so vividly back for me.
Among the people in the video you can pick out:

    * Vasu Gounden, the Executive Director of Accord in Durban, South Africa,
    * (me, looking very tired toward the end of the fourth day of the conference,)
    * Jan Benvie from Scotland– a leader in Christian Peacemaker Teams who co-led the whole afternoon’s proceedings with me on the second day of the conference. (She was on her way to northern Iraq, where she and two other CPTers have been investigating the possibility of re-establishing some of CPTs Iraq programs from Suleimaniyeh.)
    * Rabbi Moshe Yehudai, a lifelong pacifist and wonderful brave soul who also describes himself as a Zionist,
    * Nasser Sheikh Ali, a member of the Liberal Forum from Jenin, Palestine,
    * Murad Tangiev, from Chechnya, Russia, who has been working at the UNU and helped with the administration of this conference,
    * Neven Bondokji from Jordan, a talented and brave young woman who’s been working with CARE, trying to establish basic humanitarian/relief services for some of the hundreds of thousands Iraqi refugees in Jordan,
    * Dr. Koteswara Prasad, the Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Center for Peace and Conflict resolution in Madras, India,
    * Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Bukhari from Jerusalem, a Sufism teacher who is also the head of Jerusalem’s 400-year-old community of Uzbek Muslims, and
    * Hagit herself, at the very end.

You may or may not notice that not many of the two dozen or so Arab state citizens who took part in the conference appear in the video. Everyone was, obviously, given a choice whether to appear or not. All the people from Palestine and the other Arab countries who came to the conference participated fully, and in a respectful and friendly way, with all the other participants in all the conference’s formally scheduled activities. But these are people who want to continue to make a difference for good in their own societies, and I imagine it was with that in mind that some of them chose not to appear in a video that we hope will be widely available to a global public. But some of them did, and their participation makes the video particularly powerful and effective.
What a great way this video is, to share some of the energy from our conference! It was shot by a Jordanian cameraman who was at the UNU building working on another project, and came over and donated his time and expertise to Hagit’s project. I’m not sure who did the final editing and production work– I think, Hagit.
Great work!
JWN readers: please share the news about this video as widely as you can!

14 thoughts on ““We Want Peace” on YouTube”

  3. Doesn’t anyone remember that the Congress still sitting has given Bush permission to ignore the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and precedent –in other words the unilateral right to take action against any country —
    I am pleased with the outcome of the Nov. 7 election but in the meantime and until legal challenges to those laws and regulations passed nothing has changed.

  4. عارض رئيس الوزراء الإسرائيلي إيهود أولمرت الفكرة الفرنسية بعقد مؤتمر دولي لإحياء عملية السلام في الشرق الأوسط.
    وقال أولمرت عقب لقائه الرئيس الأميركي جورج بوش في واشنطن أمس “لا أعتبر أن المؤتمر الدولي هو الإطار الملائم للمفاوضات ” موضحا أنه ما زال متمسكا بخطة خارطة الطريق التي يفترض أن تؤدي إلى إنشاء دولة فلسطينية مستقلة.
    وتسعى باريس إلى عقد مؤتمر دولي حول الشرق الأوسط، كما أكد وزير خارجيتها فيليب دوست بلازي قبل يومين. وفي سبتمبر/أيلول الماضي تحدث الرئيس جاك شيراك عن “مشروع مؤتمر دولي” حول الشرق الأوسط.
    Again and Again just to prove for you Israel doesn’t like peace with here neighbours here we go Israeli PM Omlert in Washington refused French call made by French foreign Minster to arrange international summit to resolve the Arab/Israel conflict.
    Is there clearer than this Israelis dose not like any international involvement to resolve this problem why? You tell me…

  6. Interesting article about the Lebanese film festival.
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787470.html
    Films must be censored so that they omit any reference to the word “Israel.”
    That is a sobering thought. It is definitely something to remember when someone complains that we don’t have “open debate” in the United States on the topic of Israel.
    In fact, we do, although the complainers don’t like the outcome. By contrast, in other lands, merely mentioning the name of Israel is forbidden. Quite a difference in freedom of speech!
    And if we want peace, it is Lebanon’s type of hateful censorship that has to be the first to go. Don’t we all agree that dialogue is a necessary condition for peace?

  7. Why There’s No Chance an Israeli-Arab Peace is Now Possible — and Why That View is Wrong
    Yossi Beilin, member of the Israeli Knesset and chairman of the Meretz-Yachad party, is the controversial realist-optimist of Israeli politics. In this special session, Dr. Beilin’s only public appearance in Washington this visit, Dr. Beilin reflected on the dynamics in Israeli, regional, and global politics that make a revived peace effort not only a necessity, but also a working proposition. Dr. Beilin debunked the naysayer thesis that given the current political climate, Israeli-Arab peace is a non-starter.
    A member of the Knesset for eleven years, Dr. Beilin has held ministerial positions in the governments of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak. Dr. Beilin has been a leading proponent of the peace process, initiating the secret channel of talks that resulted in the 1993 Oslo Accords, leading the movement for a withdrawal from Lebanon, negotiating at the Taba talks with the Palestinians in, and heading the talks with Palestinian Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo that resulted in the 2003 Geneva Accords. Recently, Dr. Beilin has been calling for a 2nd Madrid-style conference that would bring together all the regional actors in a peace push. Given the current political realities, can the Israeli politician most associated with pragmatic pro-peace politics still deliver the goods?
    Video of this event is available at right, while an MP3 audio recording can be downloaded below.
    http://www.newamerica.net/files/naf110906a.mp3

  8. “Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Europeans…the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.”
    http://www.mapsofwa r.com/ind/ imperial- history.html

  10. Apropos everything, here’s the “money shot” from Immanuel Wallerstein’s latest essay, “Mother of All Defeats”:
    We can also be sure that bombing either North Korea or Iran is off the real agenda (including for Israel). The U.S. armed forces and the U.S. electorate will not tolerate it (not to speak of the rest of the world). Where will this leave the United States as a world power? It will probably result in a big push towards drawing inward. Already, in the 2006 elections, many candidates won by opposing “free trade” and Iraq was a dirty word. The political temptation will be to go local in emphasis. One of the major side effects will be a notable reduction in U.S. support for Israeli foreign policy, which will be wrenching for Israel.
    Full piece is at: http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/197en.htm

  11. There is no real possibility of total peace in the middle east. The actions of the last forty years have insured not just years or decades or even generations of “terrorist” activity, but millenienia of such activity. Every dead Palestinean creates 10 new “terrorists”, 100 new “terrorist” supporters and 1000 new “terrorist” sympathizers. Creating a homeland for the Jews was one of the best and most humanitarian decisions of the 20th century; creating it in Palestine was one of the worst. God is not a real estate agent and certainly did not deed any particular piece of dirt to any particular tribe. We are now reaping the whirlwind of the fateful decision to create a homeland on the backs of other peoples and we will continue to do so for many ,many generations. But, what is done is done and we must all deal with the existing reality as best we can. There is no turning back. Almost everyone on both sides, with the exception of those politicians and war profiteers on both sides who benefit, want peace. The conference was a great example of the vast amount of goodwill on both sides, but no leaders with real power or clout attended. Where are the leaders who will be brave enough to step forward to lead?

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