Daniel Lubetzky

Antonio Soave, a producer and director who heads Capistrano Productions, helped us put together a filming session to record PSAs from Danny DeVito, Jason Alexander, Annie Cusack, and Elliot Gould.

Doug Deluca from the Kimmel show helped us do this at Kimmel Studios in Hollywood, and Barry Meier was the DP.  If you want to see some pics of the filming, click here.

Arianna Huffington and Craig Newmark spoke powerfully at an event that Leah Jones from Edelman helped organize on behalf of the OneVoice Movement, hosted by the guys at Think Tank 3.

Craig always cracks me up with his signature wit.  He is funny, self-efacing, down to earth and extremely bright.  He provided an interesting analogy to how Craigslist thrives because the overwhelming amount of people are decent human beings, and there are far and few bad apples, which the system monitors to do away with.

Craig also quoted his favorite newscaster, Jon Stewart from the Daily Show on Comedy Central, that the reason we hear so much from violent extremists who are so active is "because moderates have shit to do in real life."

Arianna’s Huffington Post is an example of how new media can play a positive role by highlighting the voices of moderation.  She explained how OneVoice has to stay on course no matter what challenges or setbacks or skepticism because it has to eventually achieve the critical mass to get to the tipping point that will get moderates to seize back the agenda. We just have no other option.

Bloggers from Arabisto.com to Jewtopia were present, all in all about 30+ people…

The Huffington Post published an article I wrote about the imperative of mobilizing to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, before it’s too late and before Ahmadinejad turns it into a truly intractable conflict.

Back in August I met with a group of Israeli bloggers at a Cafe in Tel Aviv to talk re the OneVoice Summit.  One blogger, Dorothy from SavtaDotty, started with some tough questions but eventually not only posted a very positive blog but became a die-hard partner and even ended up spending an afternoon with us recording the We Are Standing Up PSA which we will soon unveil.  Liran from East Med Sea Peace posted this.  He also dropped me a personal email that really energized me.  Yohay from Things wrote this and we also had an entry at Israelated.

Jake Hayman and Yishay Mor hosted a blogger meet up in London on September 10th at the London Knowledge Lab.

We have another blogger meet-up coming up on September 24th in New York City. 

Craig Newmark will be hosting the NYC meet-up at 7pm in downtown Manhattan.

Arianna Huffington will be joining us.

If you want to join us, please send an email to Leah Jones (who posted this entry) – Leah.Jones AT Edelman.com.

Many locals in Gaza are starting to demonstrate. The Hamas forces
have threatened the international and local media not to cover the
uprising. Tomorrow prayers were called by citizens fed up with Hamas
oppression. Media has finally started to ignore censure, emboldening
more. Tomorrow can be an important day in the grassroots struggle
against militant absolutism.

Sent from my iPhone – pardon typos
.

Today we filmed our first scenes of the “We Are Standing Up” viral video we are planning to release as a teaser for the October 18th OneVoice Summit: One Million Voices To End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

It was great seeing the energy of all involved, the real commitment, and the real awakening that happens in peoples’ actual lives, when they get involved with our message even if through film…

 The sound guy, who never had known about OV till today, started debating with a group of 4 Israelis who initially would have rathered been left alone – and told him so.  In the end, he signed them up and they got involved.

Gil Shamy, the OVI Executive Director, recruited a couple dozen people to join us for the recording.  And Ayelet Daniel quickly followed up to get them to wear OneVoice pins and get them to sign the OneVoice Mandate.

This is the power of OneVoice, that people start recognizing their power and potential for change, and we just need to keep going till we achieve critical mass and tip the point.

Today’s filming was in Tel Aviv, on Rothschild Street – which is actually a beautiful avenue.  We had a grandmother (played by Savta Dotty who blogged about us) stand up from her knitting, a pregnant Mom stand up for the future of her kid, and a few others who you will have to wait to see.

 Yesterday in Ramallah I planned the filming with the Palestinian team and hopefully we’ll complete the filming on both sides within a week to two at most – and edit right away, to release by second week of September.  If it ends up looking the way I have envisioned it in my mind, I think it will be an energizing blockboster that will really awaken people.

It starts from apocalyptic depression and inaction,

moves on to an internal awakening,

which results in each individual STANDING UP To End The Conflict

and culminates with ALL PEOPLE joining together as OneVoice to Stand Up….

Then it cuts to invite the viewer: Join Us on October 18th.  You, too, Stand Up…

In self-organizing systems, extremists rise up.

In the offline world, wackos can’t thrive like they do in the blog world……. colorful scary birds get a disproportionate amount of media and end-user
attention.