Our amazing friend Jason Alexander, whose George Costanza character in Seinfeld is the furthest thing different from the real Jason, spoke to OneVoice youth earlier today about the Imagine 2018 essay and film project and caught a ton of media attention.

It cracks me up how amazing stuff happens every day by ordinary Israelis and Palestinians but never gets media coverage.  It takes a celebrity to get attention for moderates.

Below is a good article from Ha’aretz and a video from Jerusalem Online that covers the meeting.

Ha’aretz/ Associated Press story below

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Mideast Negotiations, Movies, Funnies, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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The New York Times reports about (OneVoice/PeaceWorks Foundation Board member) Dennis Ross’s move from the State Department to the White House.  It offers a lot of theories for the move, many of them probably on target. But it fails to mention one of the most important likely factors: the interplay between all these Mideast conflicts, and the need for an integrated broad approach and appreciation when tackling them. 

It does not mean that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will fix the Middle East! (Ross would plainly disagree with that, as the article points out).  But it does mean that Iran’s arming of Hezbollah and Hamas deeply handicaps efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace, and that lack of Israeli-Palestinian progress hampers US national interests - as well as Israeli and Palestinian and Arab progress itself.

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Mideast Negotiations, Middle East, United States, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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Here is an interview about OneVoice, PeaceWorks, and "my life" (the title and theme of the show, Hayati) that aired on the Arabic TV Network Al Hurra.

It is painfully funny to watch how chubby I was…

Tags: Latin America, Family, Israel, Palestine, Philanthropy, Entrepreneurship and Management, Mideast Negotiations, Interesting Random Stuff, Funnies, PeaceWorks Business, Middle East, United States, PeaceWorks Foundation, Mexico, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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When President Obama was elected, many Israelis fretted that he would side with Palestinians, while the majority of Palestinians were elated.

When Obama selected Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff, Palestinians were devastated and paralyzed in fear, while Israelis celebrated Rahm’s service in the Israeli Defense Forces.

And so on, with every appointment or every announcement by the Obama Administration, Middle Easterners have interpreted the signals as a game of ping-pong - a score for this side or the other.

If Obama is to score a historic agreement among Israel and Palestine, and between Israel and the Arab and Muslim World, his task first and foremost is to do to the Middle East what he did to the American landscape - i.e., to Obamize the Middle East.

Obama was elected because he rejected false paradigms of division and helped people celebrate their human commonalities.

And so in the Middle East, Obama’s philosophy has been to show that if we work together, it will not be for the benefit of one side at the expense of the other, but humanity’s benefit and that of both sides.

Obama’s transformation is moving at a faster pace than anyone anticipated.

This week, moderates in Lebanon rejected the charismatic but divisive policies of Hezbollah’s Sheikh Nasrallah, instead reaffirming a parliamentary majority for the pro-Western government. 

Obama may be in for yet another influential game-changer, after his poignant speech in Cairo, if next week Iranians elected a reformer to dethrone Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as President.  Yes, the Iranian President may not be the Supreme Leader of Iran.  But he certainly wielded enormous (negative) global influence and a rebuke of his vision will be refreshing and encouraging to the world order.

Now hopefully Israelis and Palestinians will also press their governments to stop dillydallying and once and for all deliver a realistic agreement for a two state solution.

Tags: Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Leadership, United States, Mideast Negotiations, Middle East by daniel
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Dan Bar-On was an extraordinary man who, together with Sami Adwan, conceived a powerful shared narrative project, where Israelis and Palestinians read about their and their counterparts’ historical narrative - helping them understand they don’t need to give up their patriotism to better understand the other side.  Bar-On, who gave his life to peace efforts and who was an inspiration to OneVoice, lost his battle to cancer last fall.  He once wrote:

"[Hope for achieving co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians may in the end depend on] giving up the romantic, monolithic desires of the idealized past in favor of a less perfect but more complex understanding of the world and ourselves, an understanding that can create new possibilities for dialogue within our selves, among ourselves within a collective, and with the Other."

From "Tell Your Life Story" by Dan Bar-On, as related by Dr. Saliba Sarsar

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Favorite Quotes, Leadership, Mideast Negotiations, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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Barack Obama’s election, and his speech today to the Muslim world, may be looked back upon in future years as a turning point for human progress and global understanding.  Far more revolutionary than the historical first of the heritage he represents is the ideological depth of his commitment to shared humanity.

I LOVE THIS MAN!

The philosophy is very much aligned with OneVoice, and some of the language and definitions properly redefine terms like violent extremism that were misused and abused in the last Administration and that did not even exist or make sense when OV was forged.

Tags: Iran, Israel, Palestine, Leadership, Mideast Negotiations, Middle East, United States, Religion, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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OneVoice Glasgow is a purely-volunteer-driven chapter that has risen above the rest of the international support efforts to such degree that it is worthy of attention.  They receive zero funding from OneVoice, yet deliver so much in their community and beyond. If we can decode what has made them so extraordinary, international support for Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution will really take off.  Witness what a few committed volunteers have done:

Tags: Europe, Palestine, United Kingdom, Israel, Gaza, Mideast Negotiations, Leadership, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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Over the last few weeks I have been receiving emails from all sorts of organizations trying to inspire fear about the Obama Administration’s policies towards Israel.  From Obama’s efforts to drive towards a two-state solution, to Jordanian King Abdullah’s effort to expand the Arab Peace Initiative to encompass all 57 Muslim nations, it is disturbing to see those threatened by these overtures try to manipulate them to look bad for Israel. How can peace with its neighbors and acceptance and normalization of relations with the Arab and Muslim world be against Israel’s interests? Nobody is trying to sell out Israel’s interests.  And the best way to confirm this is to read Obama’s words, rather than the interpretations and manipulations by others.  So here below is the transcript of the press conference with President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Transcript of press conference with President Obama and PM Netanyahu

May. 18, 2009
SPEAKERS: PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

PRIME MINISTER BINYAMIN NETANYAHU

[*] OBAMA: All right, everybody. Just tell me when everybody’s set up.
Great. Well, listen, I — I, first of all, want to thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for making this visit. I think we had a (sic) extraordinarily productive series of conversations, not only between the two of us, but also at the staff and agency levels.

Obviously, this reflects the extraordinary relationship, the special relationship between the United States and Israel. It is a stalwart ally of the United States. We have historical ties, emotional ties. As the only true democracy in the Middle East, it is a source of admiration and inspiration for the American people.

I have said from the outset that when it comes to my policies towards Israel and the Middle East, that Israel’s security is paramount, and I repeated that to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

It is in US national security interests to assure that Israel’s security as a (sic) independent Jewish state is maintained.

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Iran, Gaza, United States, Mideast Negotiations, Middle East by daniel
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Great news for getting OneVoice’s recent polls – which highlight the grassroots mandate for a two-state solution – into the conversations happening at the top levels of DC policy-making: yesterday in his opening remarks for the US Senate Hearing on the Middle East with Tony Blair, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana (R) – who is the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republican leader – cited the recent OneVoice poll as evidence of grassroots acceptance for a negotiated two state solution:

This statement demonstrates that America’s leaders are hungry for public support for the two-state solution, and hopefully our poll will provide them with momentum to aggressively pursue peace negotiations.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Leadership, Mideast Negotiations, Middle East, United States, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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A testament of how excellent the leadership from King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan has been, and of how deficient the leadership has been from Israeli and Palestinian leaders in contrast, is contained in the views of young people here in Jordan.

At the World Economic Forum/Young Global Leaders conference, I’ve had a few interesting conversations with young Jordanians - not the high-level participants, but ordinary day-to-day people.  Here is what is interesting:

• most of them are proud of their Palestinian heritage;
• When I ask them if they see their identity more as Palestinian or Jordanian, most of them say it’s the same thing - 70% of Jordan is Palestinian;
• But when I ask them (and press them) on their future fate - would they want Israel, Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) and Jordan to be part of a confederacy; would they want Jordan to absorb any of the Palestinian land; other options - they all uniformly confess that they rather leave things alone and let Jordan be Jordan, and let the Israelis and Palestinians continue to kill each other if they so desire.

It is striking how uniform these perspectives are.  "Israelis don’t really want peace.  And frankly Palestinians don’t want peace either," they tend to say. 

So let us stay out of it, they think, and let Jordan grow and thrive, and not be stuck by recriminations of the past.

So the Jordanian Royal couple didn’t just do something very bright by marrying - the inheritor of the Hashemite Kingdom with an attractive Palestinian woman - but also by the vision and policies they have created.

Now, if young people across the border of Israel and Palestine, with family and heritage there, want nothing to do with all the conflict, imagine how does the rest of the world relate?  More and more people I talk to feel the same way: if the Israelis and Palestinians are not prepared to compromise, let them keep fighting.  The more cruel comments, broadly felt but not broadly acknowledged, tend to end with "let them kill each other."

Can this be a wake up call to Israelis and Palestinians to realize they need to recognize that freedom and security for them will not come if the other side doesn’t get the same?

Tags: Palestine, Jordan, Israel, Mideast Negotiations, Middle East, OneVoice Movement by daniel
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