Watch this and I dare you not to smile.

You can learn more about Matt here.

I noticed he visited Tel Aviv and East Jerusalem for modest takes in each place, but I’d love to bring him back for a BIG dance across Israel and Palestine.  We at OneVoice are always so worried about ensuring the OV brand is mainstream and not seen as flighty or disconnected from the reality on the ground, but frankly, you see this video and you realize, in the end, all that matters is what Matt is doing - transcending differences.  And to those that don’t understand that, I dare them not smile (and discover others’ humanity) watching Matt’s work.

Tags: Music, Art, Funnies, OneVoice Movement by daniel
1 Comment »

Thanks to Stacy Perman for a profile about PeaceWorks, KIND, and OneVoice in BusinessWeek yesterday.

[Read more →]

Tags: Economics, Israel, Palestine, Entrepreneurship and Management, Mideast Negotiations, Media and Alternative Media, PeaceWorks Business, KIND Snacks, United States, PeaceWorks Foundation, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

From the OneVoice newsletter:

The results are in!

Ø 50 Palestinian winners and 50 Israeli winners have been selected

Ø Read some of the winning essays

Ø Israel & Palestine to Co-Host World Cup in 2018? Check out one vision for the future

· OneVoice Youth Leadership & outreach update

Ø OneVoice Israeli & Palestinian Youth to Tony Blair: “A Mideast Quintet”

Ø From our Gaza office: Town Hall Meeting in Beit Hanoun

Ø OneVoice is Referenced in House of Lords Debate 5 Times

Ø OneVoice Student Leader at Stanford Organizes Islam-West Unity Event

The Imagine 2018 campaign has only just begun – now that 100 winning essayists have been selected, 10 foremost directors will begin selecting 10 essays to turn into short films. 

These films – the visions of Israeli and Palestinian youth brought to life – will be used to inspire people worldwide to envision some of the tangible benefits peace – to empower people to take action, and to ensure that the leadership acts with urgency and commitment to reach a two state agreement which ends the occupation and all forms of violence, and establishes a viable, independent Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with the state of Israel.

How you can get involved:

Donate – Sign up to the Movement – Forward our videos – Visit our blog & tell us what you think

The OneVoice Teams in Ramallah, Gaza, Tel Aviv, London, and New York

__
For more information and to tell us what you think, please visit our blog:
http://blog.onevoicemovement.org

___
You are subscribed to PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement Update List.  For removal requests click here or e-mail MailListAdmin@onevoicemovement.org and specify Unsubscribe in the subject line.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, Innovation, Art, Middle East, Media and Alternative Media, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

Khaled Diab wrote a nice article about OneVoice’s Imagine 2018 project, asking Palestinian and Israeli kids to visualize what their lives will look like in 10 years IF a peace agreement is achieved between Israel and Palestine.

[Read more →]

Tags: Israel, Palestine, United Kingdom, Gaza, Mideast Negotiations, Media and Alternative Media, Art, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

Some will criticize this as Shimon Peres’s much-discounted "New Middle East" vision, but I love it, and I am confident that if Israelis and Palestinians get their act together and accept the historical compromises necessary to a comprehensive permanent agreement, this will only be the beginning. Check out this vision for the future of the Arava, intersecting Israel, Jordan and Palestine.  It fits nicely within OneVoice’s Imagine 2018 Project.

Tags: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Science and Technology, Innovation, Middle East, Media and Alternative Media, Environment, OneVoice Movement by daniel
2 Comments »

Jerusalem Post Editor David Horovitz’s interview with Barack Obama is one of the most to-the-point expositions of Senator Barack Obama’s stances on Mideast issues.  Horovitz asked strong and straightforward questions, and Obama replied with earnest answers.  Anyone who truly cares about understanding the "real" Obama on these issues should read this interview.

One example:

Horovitz: You’ve said on this trip that you want to work for an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation from the minute you’re sworn in, so let me ask you about the thesis that there is no prospect of Palestinian moderation prevailing and enabling a peace process to really move forward until Iran’s nuclear drive has been thwarted - that so long as the Teheran-backed extremists of Hamas and so on feel that they are in the ascendant, the moderates can’t prevail and that the whole region is now in this kind of holding mode.

Obama: I think there is no doubt that there is a connection between Iran’s strengthening over the last couple of years, partly because some strategic errors have been made on the part of the West. And [the same goes for] the increasing boldness of Hizbullah and Hamas. But I don’t think that’s the only factor and criterion in the lack of progress.

Hamas’s victory in the [Palestinian Authority] election can partly be traced to a sense of frustration among the Palestinian people over how Fatah, over a relatively lengthy period of time, had failed to deliver basic services. I get a strong impression that [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas and [Prime Minister Salaam] Fayad are doing everything they can to address some of those systemic failures by the Palestinian Authority. The failures of Hamas in Gaza to deliver an improved quality of life for their people give pause to the Palestinians to think that pursuing that approach automatically assures greater benefits.

You know, look, I arrive at this with no illusions as to the difficulty in terms of what is required. But I think it’s important for us to keep working at it, frankly, because Israel’s security and peace in the region depend on it.

[Read more →]

Tags: Iran, Israel, Syria, Mideast Negotiations, Religion, Middle East, United States, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

James Montague from The Guardian newspaper just posted an article about Eytan Heller’s vision for Israel and Palestine to co-host the World Soccer Cup in 2018, an idea which so far has already spawned OneVoice’s Imagine 2018 Campaign.

[Read more →]

Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Interesting Random Stuff, Media and Alternative Media, Funnies, Middle East, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

Two articles recently posted on PeaceWorks and OneVoice and our efforts…

JEWCY.COM: Peace Through Pesto: Daniel Lubetzky Schools Us on Building Bridges and Empowering Moderates,  by Helen Jupiter, July 11, 2008

and

JERUSALEM POST, Don Quixote comes to Israel, Jul 24, 2008, by Heather Robinson

[Read more →]

Tags: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Entrepreneurship and Management, Mideast Negotiations, Media and Alternative Media, PeaceWorks Business, KIND Snacks, PeaceWorks Foundation, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

- SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, speaking in Berlin.

In OneVoice form, he also said:

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it.  This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it.

If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks [of terror]

If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

Tags: Democracy and Freedom (or lack of), Europe, Favorite Quotes, Global, United States, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »

To the chorus of people who complain that religious leaders are not doing enough to raise their voices against extremism and to improve interfaith relations and foster respect, here is an under-reported but remarkable story about a high profile conference to bring foremost Muslims, Christians and Jews together.  See also this story.

Among the participants was Chief Rabbi David Rosen, who besides being the President of the IJCRC (the highest Jewish body charged with interfaith relations) and the AJC’s representative, is an Honorary Board member of the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement - and, perhaps granting him the most moral authority - was the Rabbi who got my wife to say yes at our wedding. :-) 

[Read more →]

Tags: Religion, PeaceWorks Foundation, Middle East, OneVoice Movement by daniel
No Comments »