Jewish-Muslim dialogue, a necessity

Jewish-Muslim dialogue, a necessity
PROMPTED BY THE DOCUMENTARY "THE MONSTER AMONG US"
Mike Ghouse, Dallas, Texas

The Jewish Community Center in Dallas recently screened a documentary about Anti-Semitism in Europe called, “The Monster among us”, produced and directed by Dallas filmmakers Allen and Cynthia Mondell. Watching this film (as well as other films in the past) and listening to the responses of the audience has confirmed my belief that one of the primary obstacles to peace is simply inadequate communications stemming from the unwillingness to see another point of view.

If you find this article offensive, please clarify with me before you draw your conclusions, it is our obligation to repair the world. Prior to publication of this article my Jewish, Christian and Muslim friends have reviewed it to ensure it meets the intent as close as it can and it is to improve communications and a civil dialogue. The producers of the movie have reviewed and shared their point of view, which is included in the essay verbatim.Muslims should participate in Jewish events and vice-versa. Staying away from each other will not contribute towards peace-making that both communities so deserve. We have to come together without conditions and learn each others concerns and clarify mis-information and together find solutions. If we don’t, the who will?

Anti-Semitism is hate for Jews, and to his credit, the producer acknowledged in his comments that both Muslims and Jews are facing this abuse in Europe. As responsible citizens, we need to stand up against hate towards every one. I cannot have peace if others around me aren't peaceful.

To borrow a sentence from my friend Sheila Musaji “these films are to be viewed as opportunities for dialogue and not to further distance ourselves from the other.” We need to consciously guard ourselves from despair and disorientation and focus on hope and goodness to humanity that includes you and I.

I challenge the Muslim and Jewish community to watch this film together with a focus on just the film and its content, we must carry a civil dialogue and learn to take the jolts, then we would have developed the capacity to embark on finding a solution to the crux of the world problem - security of Jews and hope for the Palestinians, together we have an opportunity to find solutions. I am planning to have a showing of the film with a panel of Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others, if you wish to attend, please confirm via an email to: confirmattendance@gmail.com . Sponsorships of a neutral place for 300 People and refreshments are invited.

Continue to read the arcticle by clicking:

http://www.foundationforpluralism.com/Articles/Jewish-Muslim-dialogue-a-necessity.asp

You are welcome to write you comments at the end of the article, all civil comments will be posted.

Carter Peace initiatives

Article follows my comments;

Why can't the US listen to its wiser statesmen? Why do we have to stand against the world and make enemies instead of friends?

The Bush and Olmert adminstrations continue with their thoughtless dirty games. They want to talk about peace, but not with the party who the peace is going to affect? That is downright chicanery.

The acts of both these administrations are not reflective of majority of their population. The few extremists are shoving it down the throats of the people.

I wrote a similar note way back in November, prior to the Annapolis conference. http://peace-palestine-israel.blogspot.com/2007/11/peace-in-israel-palestine.html
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Jimmy Carter Was Right to Meet with Hamas

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on April 21, 2008, Printed on April 22, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82936/
Former President Jimmy Carter, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee described as his "untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts," is touring the Middle East, as a private citizen, in a bid to revive interest in a moribund peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. He's doing so at a time when their decades-long conflict is growing in intensity and distrust on both sides is running high.

As a result, Carter is once again under fire from conservatives. Last week, Republican Rep. Sue Myrick (NC) went so far as to call for the former president's passport to be revoked on Fox News.

Carter's crime was to sit-down with leaders of Hamas last week to explore the possibility of waging peace in the Middle East. For many Israel-hawks, it wasn't a first offense; Carter is guilty of viewing the Palestinians as human beings and for condemning human rights abuses on both sides of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. "Any side that kills innocent people is guilty of terrorism," he told an audience at Cairo's American University after his sit-down with members of Hamas.

Carter rejects the short-sighted idea that negotiating with one's enemies legitimizes or rewards them for their actions. According to the same logic, when a police department sends a hostage negotiator to talk down a gun-toting lunatic who's barricaded himself in a house somewhere, that department would be guilty of "legitimizing" armed lunatics. It's a ludicrous idea on its face, but one that's essentially embraced by much of the American foreign policy establishment when it comes to the international arena.

It's an ideological construct that defies both common sense and the "best practices" that have been developed in the field of conflict resolution -- best practices that were borne of hard experience. What Carter seems to understand, and his detractors appear unable to grasp, is that there is absolutely no chance of establishing and implementing a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians without offering Hamas a seat at the negotiating table.

One of the most obvious lessons from the international community's efforts at conflict resolution is that getting signatures on a peace deal is only half the battle (if that much). Implementing peace treaties is much more difficult, and recent history is littered with wreckage of agreements that didn't hold.

One of the ways to almost guarantee that a peace agreement will be impossible to implement is to negotiate it without bringing all of the combatants to the table. Israel and Fatah (the faction of Mahmoud Abbas, Chairman of the Palestinian Authority) can negotiate a deal, but if Hamas isn't invested in it, then they'll have no incentive to comply with its terms.

One doesn't need to have warm feelings towards Hamas to recognize this reality. The idea that one can choose one's negotiating partner, as opposed to negotiating with all of the parties to a conflict, is a fantasy. The fact that Hamas won a decisive victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections and is the legitimate voice of a majority of the Palestinian people reduces the notion to a bit of right-wing idealism that's thoroughly divorced from historic experience.

Carter, whose recent book Palestine: Peace not Apartheidbrokered a lasting peace deal between Israel and an Arab state. His work at Camp David in the 1970s not only led to a sustainable peace deal between Israel and Egypt, it set a precedent that was followed by other Arab states and eventually an offer by all of the Arab states for full recognition of Israeli sovereignty in exchange for Israel's return to its pre-1967 borders. In other words, not only has Carter contributed to the region's stability, he's also done more to improve Israel's security than all of his neoconservative naysayers combined. ruffled many right-wing feathers, remains the only American president to have actually

A common refrain among American and Israeli hawks is that Hamas must recognize Israel's legitimacy before they can get a seat at the table. While that sounds reasonable on its face, in reality it's asking Hamas to accept a key Israeli demand before negotiations begin. Meanwhile, Israel continues to build new settlements in the Occupied Territories, and continues its brutal siege of the Gaza strip. In other words, the position held by much of the Washington establishment is that Palestinians must make concessions before negotiations begin, but Israel is free to continue creating "facts on the ground," even when it's in violation of international law. It's a pipedream to believe such a position can lead to anything more than extended bloodshed.

Of course, what separates Carter from his detractors may be that he has a genuine desire for establishing peace in the Middle East, while many "pro-Israel" hawks favor (an impossible) military solution to the conflict, with Israel crushing the Palestinians into oblivion.

If that is their position, they should be upfront about it and admit that they oppose a negotiated settlement to the conflict rather than lashing out blindly at anyone who is serious about making peace.

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/82936/

Palestinians versus Tibetans

Palestinians versus Tibetans - a double standard
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/974170.html
By Gideon Levy

Tags: Israel

Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The president of the Israeli Friends of the Tibetan People, the psychologist Nahi Alon, who was involved in the murder of two Palestinians in Gaza in 1967 - as was revealed in Haaretz Magazine last weekend - chose to make his private "atonement" by fighting to free Tibet, of all places. He is not alone among Israelis calling to stop the occupation - but not ours. No small number of other good Israelis have recently joined the wave of global protest that broke out over the Olympics, set to take place in Beijing this summer. It is easy; it engenders no controversy - who would not be in favor of liberating Tibet? But that is not the fight that Israeli human rights supporters should be waging.

To fight for Tibet, Israel needs no courage, because there is no price to pay. On the contrary, this is part of a fashionable global trend, almost as much as the fight against global warming or the poaching of sea lions.

These fights are just, and must be undertaken. But in Israel they are deluxe fights, which are unthinkable. When one comes to the fight with hands that are collectively, and sometimes individually, so unclean, it is impossible to protest a Chinese occupation.

Citizens of a country that maintains a military subjugation in its backyard that is no less cruel than that of the Chinese, and by some parameters even more so, and against which there is practically no more protest here, have no justification in denouncing another occupation. Citizens of a country that is entirely tainted by the occupation - a national, ongoing project that involves all sectors of the population to some extent, directly or indirectly - cannot wash their hands and fight another occupation, when a half-hour from their homes, horrors no less terrible are taking place for which they have much greater responsibility.

The world has fallen in love with Tibet. How easy it is to do so. The picturesque figure of the Dalai Lama and the non-violent struggle he leads with his scarlet-robed monks is truly captivating. Indeed, the world has smothered the leader with awards and recognition, from the Nobel Peace Prize to an honorary doctorate at Ben-Gurion University.

The Palestinians are not as nice as the Tibetans in the eyes of the world. But the Palestinian people deserve exactly the same rights as the occupied Tibetan people, even if their leaders are less enchanting, they have no scarlet robes and their fight is more violent. There is absolutely no connection between rights and the means of protest, and from that perspective, there is no difference between a Tibetan and a Palestinian - they both deserve the exact same freedom.

Moreover, in the first years of the Israeli occupation, most Palestinians accepted it submissively, with practically no violence. What did they get as a result? Nothing. The world and Israel cloaked themselves in apathy and callousness. Only when planes started being hijacked in the 1970s did the world begin to notice that a Palestinian problem even existed. In contrast, the Tibetan struggle also was tainted with violence in the past, and it is reasonable to assume that violence will increase if the Tibetans do not attain their goal.

There is also no point in asking which occupation is crueler, the Chinese or the Israeli. The competition is harsh and bitter. The Chinese killed and imprisoned more Tibetans, in Lhasa there is less freedom of expression than in Nablus, but in general, the extent of Israeli repression in the territories is much greater today than Chinese repression in Tibet.

Nowhere in the world today is there a region more besieged and confined than Gaza. And what is the result? The world calls to boycott the occupier in the case of China, while absurdly, with regard to the Palestinians, the world is boycotting the occupied entity, or at least its elected leadership, and not the occupier. This, it seems, has no parallel in history.

Internationally speaking, the situation of the Palestinians is ostensibly better, since while all governments recognize Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, no government in the world recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Palestinian territories. Practically speaking, this does not help the Palestinians much: Contemporary bon ton is to support the struggle for Tibet, only Tibet. The Palestinians have not even one Richard Gere to serve as a mouthpiece. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is boycotting the Olympic games but paid an official visit to Israel, where she spoke not one word about the shameful conditions in Gaza under Israeli occupation. Is there any other way to describe this, except a double standard?

In a more just world, no occupation would exist - neither the Chinese nor the Israeli. But until that time, the Israelis have to look inward at their own home and protest what is being done there in front of the Israeli Defense Ministry, before they present themselves with colorful signs outside the Chinese Embassy.

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JPN: Palestinians versus Tibetans

2008-04-16 Recent world-wide protests have drawn critical media attention to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. While such attention is both important and overdue, it does raise questions about moral responsibility and political double standards.

We can put it this way: if the media were genuinely concerned to report on human right violations, they would show the Palestinians, Chechnyans, etc the same sort of sympathy they show for Tibet. The fact that their sympathy is so systematically selective suggests that it is not human rights violations that provoke their concern - and leads naturally to the question of what does. In the second article below, Uri Avnery explores the question of selective sympathy, and the factors that lead the media to fall in love with the Tibetans (who have also resorted to terrorism on occasion) while condemning the Palestinians.

Clearly, Avnery argues, the protests against Tibet accord with Washington's diplomatic interests in the region, its desire - driven largely by economic rivalry - to keep China at arm's length. In this climate, the US media is encouraged (or allowed) to be sympathetic to China's victims in a way that is not permissible in the case of the victims of America's steadfast ally, Israel.

This is by no means to detract from the urgency and justice of the cause of the Tibetan people under occupation, or the motives of the activists working to publicize their plight. It is only to say that human rights are universal and we should be wary of who is driving some of these bandwagons.

On the other hand, there are good reasons for concerned citizens to pay more attention to some causes. Clearly, we have a greater responsibility to protest policies carried on by our own governments - policies that we stand a chance of being able to change. For this reason, both Israelis and Americans (and particularly American Jews) have a special responsibility to protest the occupation of Palestine. Since our governments are conducting (and in the case of Americans, bankrolling) this occupation, we are the ones who can force our elected leaders to stop. We have a privileged position in these issues that we do not have in the case, for instance, of the Tibetan struggle. In the first article below, Gideon Levy explores the question of Israelis who are silent on Palestine but vocal on Tibet. The same questions can be extended to Americans in the cases of both Palestine and Iraq.

Again and by all means: free Tibet! But this outpouring of selective outrage rings false in countries supporting human rights violations elsewhere.

Judith Norman
Jewish Peace News http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Bloodbath in Jerusalem

Bloodbath in Jerusalem

"I Came, I Saw, I Destroyed"

by Uri Avnery
March 15, 2008

Mike Ghouse: Until the silent majority of Jews in America and Israel speak up against injustices, and until the majority of the Palestinians speak up. Peace will be difficult to come by. The extremists on both sides will keep killing the people, while shamelessly each majority engages in blaming the other. It is not the other, it is the extremists who are a blockade to peace. Their ideas have not worked in 60 years, why should it work now? They are destructive! People, take over the leadership and let peace makers bring real peace.

What happened this week is so infuriating, so impertinent, that it stands out even in our familiar landscape of governmental irresponsibility.

On the near horizon, a de facto suspension of hostilities was taking shape. The Egyptians had made great efforts to turn it into an official cease-fire. The flame was already burning visibly lower. The launching of Qassams and Grads from the Gaza Strip into Israel had fallen from dozens a day to two or three.

And then something happened that turned the flame up high again: undercover soldiers of the Israeli army killed four Palestinians militants in Bethlehem. A fifth was killed in a village near Tulkarm.

THE MODUS OPERANDI left no doubt about the intention.

As usual, the official version was mendacious. (When the army spokesman speaks the truth, he is ashamed and immediately hurries on to the next lie.) The four, it was said, drew their weapons and endangered the life of the soldiers, who only wanted to arrest them, so they were compelled to open fire.

Anyone with half a brain knows that this is a lie. The four were in a small car on the main street of Bethlehem, the road that has joined Jerusalem and Hebron since British (or Turkish) times. They were indeed armed, but they had no chance at all of drawing their weapons. The car was simply sprayed with dozens of bullets.

That was not an attempt to make an arrest. That was an execution, pure and simple, one of those summary executions in which the Shin Bet fulfils the roles of prosecutor, judge and executioner.

This time no effort was even made to pretend that the four were about to carry out a murderous attack. It was not claimed, for example, that they had anything to do with last week's attack on the Mercaz Harav seminary, the flagship of the settlers' fleet. Actually, no such pretense could be put forward, because the most important of the four had recently given interviews to the Israeli media and announced that he was availing himself of the Israeli "pardon scheme" - a Shin Bet program under which "wanted" militants give up their arms and undertake to cease resistance to the occupation. He was also a candidate in the last Palestinian elections.

If so, why where they killed? The Shin Bet did not hide the reason: two of the four had participated in attacks in 2001 in which Israelis were killed.

"Our long arm will get them even years later," Ehud Barak boasted on TV, "we shall get everyone with Jewish blood on his hands."

SIMPLY PUT: The Defense Minister and his men endangered today's cease-fire in order to avenge something that happened seven years ago.

It was obvious to all that the killing of Islamic Jihad militants in Bethlehem would cause the renewal of the Qassam launchings on Sderot. And so it happened.

The effect of a Qassam rocket is completely unpredictable. For the residents of Sderot, this is a kind of Israeli Roulette - the rocket may fall in an empty field, it may fall on a building, sometimes it kills people.

In other words, according to Barak himself, he was ready to risk Jewish lives today in order to take revenge on persons who may perhaps have shed blood years ago and have since given up their armed activity.

The emphasis is on the word "Jewish". In his statement, Barak took care not to speak about persons "with blood on their hands", but about those "with Jewish blood on their hands". Jewish blood, of course, is quite different from any other blood. And indeed, there is no person in the Israeli leadership with so much blood on his hands as him. Not abstract blood, not metaphorical blood, but very real red blood. In the course of his military service, Barak has personally killed quite a number of Arabs. Whoever shakes his hand - from Condoleezza Rice to this week's honored guest, Angela Merkel - is shaking a hand with blood on it.

THE BETHLEHEM killing raises a number of hard questions, but with very few exceptions, the media did not voice them. They shirk their duty, as usual when it concerns "security" problems.

Real journalists in a real democratic state would have asked the following questions:

Who was it who decided on the executions in Bethlehem - Ehud Olmert? Ehud Barak? The Shin Bet? All of them? None of them?
Did the decision-makers understand that by condemning the militants in Bethlehem to death, they were also condemning to death any residents of Sderot or Ashkelon who might be killed by the rockets launched in revenge?
Did they understand that they were also boxing the ears of Mahmoud Abbas, whose security forces, which in theory are in charge of Bethlehem, would be accused of collaborating with the Israeli death-squad?
Was the real aim of the action to undermine the cease-fire that had come about in practice in the Gaza Strip (and the reality of which was official denied both by Olmert and Barak, even while the number of rockets launched fell from dozens a day to just two or three?)
Does the Israeli government generally object to a cease-fire that would free Sderot and Ashkelon from the threat of the rockets?
If so, why?
The media did not demand that Olmert and Barak expose to the public the considerations that led them to adopt this decision, which concerns every person in Israel. And no wonder. These are, after all, the same media that danced for joy when the same government started an ill-considered and superfluous war in Lebanon. They are also the same media that kept silent, this week, when the government decided to hit the freedom of the press and to boycott the Aljazeera TV network, as punishment for showing babies killed during the Israeli army's recent incursion in Gaza.

But for two or three courageous journalists with an independent mind, all our written and broadcast media march in lockstep, like a Prussian regiment on parade, when the word "security" is mentioned.

(This phenomenon was exposed this week in CounterPunch by a journalist named Yonatan Mendel, a former employee of the popular Israeli web-site Walla. He pointed out that all the media, from the Channel 1 news program to the Haaretz news pages, as if by order, voluntarily use exactly the same slanted terminology: the Israeli army confirms and the Palestinians claim, Jews are murdered while Palestinians are killed or find their death, Jews are abducted while Arabs are arrested, the Israeli army always responds while the Palestinians always attack, the Jews are soldiers while Arabs are terrorists or just murderers, the Israeli army always hits high-ranking terrorists and never low-ranking terrorists, men and women suffering from shock are always Jews, never Arabs. And, as we said, people with blood on their hands are always Arabs, never-ever Jews. This, by the way, also goes for much of the foreign coverage of events here.)

WHEN THE GOVERNMENT does not disclose its intentions, we have no choice but to deduce its intentions from its actions. That is a judicial rule: when a person does something with a foreseeable result, it is assumed that he did it in order to obtain this result.

The government which decided on the killing in Bethlehem undoubtedly intended to torpedo the cease-fire.

Why does it want to do so?

There are several possible kinds of cease-fire. The most simple is the cessation of hostilities on the Gaza Strip border. No Qassams, Grads and mortar shells on the one side, no targeted assassinations, bombardments, shelling and incursion on the other side.

It is known that the army objects to that. They want to be free to "liquidate" from the air and raid on the ground. They want a one-sided cease-fire.

A limited cease-fire is impossible. Hamas cannot agree to it, as long as the blockade cuts the Strip off on all sides and turn life there into hell - not enough medicines, not enough food, the seriously ill cannot reach appropriate hospitals, the movement of cars has come to an almost complete standstill, no imports or exports, no production or commercial activity. The opening of all border crossings for the movement of goods is, therefore, an essential component of a cease-fire.

Our government is not willing to do that, because it would mean the consolidation of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip. Government sources hint that Abbas and his people in Ramallah also object to the lifting of the blockade - a malicious rumor, because it would mean that Abbas is conducting a war against his own people. President Bush also rejects a cease-fire, even while his people pretend the opposite. Europe, as usual, is trailing along behind the US.

Can Hamas agree to a cease-fire that would apply only to the Gaza Strip but not to the West Bank? That is doubtful. This week it was proven that the Islamic Jihad organization in Gaza cannot stand idly by while its members are killed in Bethlehem. Hamas could not stand by in Gaza and enjoy the fruits of government if the Israeli army were to kill Hamas militants in Nablus or Jenin. And, of course, no Palestinian would agree that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are two separate entities.

A Gaza-only cease-fire would allow Barak to blow it to pieces at any moment by a Bethlehem-style provocation. This is how it could go: Hamas agrees to a Gaza-only cease-fire, the Israeli army kills a dozen Hamas members in Hebron, Hamas responds by launching Grad missiles at Ashkelon, Olmert tells the world: You see? The terrorist Hamas is violating the cease-fire, which proves that we have no partner!

This means that a real and durable cease-fire, which would create the necessary atmosphere for real peace negotiations, must include the West Bank, too. Olmert-Barak would not dream of agreeing to that. And as long as George Bush is around, there will be no effective pressure on our government.

APROPOS: who is really in charge in Israel at this time?

This week's events point to the answer: the man who makes the decisions is Ehud Barak, the most dangerous person in Israel, the very same Barak who blew up the Camp David conference and persuaded the entire Israeli public that "we have no partner for peace".

2052 years ago today, on the Ides of March, Julius Caesar was assassinated. Ehud Barak sees himself as a latter-day local replica of the Roman general. He, too, would dearly want to report: "I came, I saw, I conquered."

But the reality is rather different: He came, he saw, he destroyed.

Uri Avneri, is a German-born Israeli journalist, peace activist, and former three-term Knesset member, who was originally a member of the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement. He is a founding member, Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and a founding member, "Gush Shalom" (Peace Bloc), Independent Peace Mevement.

This column can be found online at: http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/

Posted by Profile of Mike Ghouse at 9:48 AM 0 comments
Labels: injustice, Israel, Jerusalem, Neocons, Palestine, zionists