Daniel Lubetzky

I’ve been so inspired by the resilience of our staff and activists.

In Ramallah earlier today, Ibrahim, our Director of Leadership Outreach, mentioned a lot of the activists (we have a network of 1,800 youth leaders across Palestine) were complaining why we were not being more assertive with the campaign by fringe groups trying to slander OneVoice Palestine, and why we allowed threats from the fringes to derail the will of the majority.

I was inspired.

OneVoice Palestine is planning a very important response on Thursday.  Stay tuned.

OneVoice Israel similarly wants to re-group asap and indeed is also planning a strong response for this very Friday.  Again, please stay tuned.

OneVoice Canada is also proceeding with a solidarity event on Thursday, not music, but a strong show of forces of political supporters across all party lines, including the Prime Minister.

On Thursday, at 7pm Jerusalem time (1pm EST, 10am PST) we will broadcast a special message in partnership with Yahoo! – a videocast at http://video.yahoo.com/onevoice.

We are also renewing our signature drive campaign across Israel and Palestine to reach one million members urging Immediate Negotiations, Uninterrupted Till the Conclusion of A Two-State-Agreement.  600k here.  400k to go (actually less b/c we haven’t tallied all the new signatories over the last 3-4 weeks, which from a rough count are over 40k).

A lot of activists seem upset that we are not being more aggressive against those extremists who attack us, and my initial instincts have always been never to let anyone punch and to punch twice as hard.  I have always been quite aggressive against those who seek to undermine us, and I particularly get very angry if people mischaracterize who we are in order to try to win an argument.

My sense after these last couple weeks is that I’ve realized we definitely need to be firm, strong and assertive, but instead of punching with anger, we will respond with reason – we will further increase the nobility of the movement.

For years we’ve been growing under an "angry" contempt against extremists.  Moderates, after all, are fed up that this group of radicals have kept the people and the region hostage for too long.

Our challenge now that we have such a growing movement is to continue growing and continue affirming the imperative of moderation, with the same attributes that have always defined us – grassroots, non-partisan, mainstream, separate nationalist efforts on each side in parallel, sincerity of purpose, conflict resolution as opposed to conflict management, action-driven – but to now add a new component – to do so with nobility.

As I wrote in my prior post, this last week I grew so much from this challenge, realizing that I could not continue on this journey if I become filled with hate, even if my hate is towards radicals that are denying someone else’s right to existence. 

I will have to fight my internal evils and so will all people that work with OneVoice.  We will be strong, but kind.  We will be steadfast, but noble.  We will be assertive and firm, but empathetic towards those who unfortunately have not gotten there.

We will fight absolutism and extremism, rather than absolutists and extremists.