Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida is going to lead the Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation, where our Honorary Board of Advisors member Ms. Toni Verstandig is a senior policy advisor (and one of three staff members). Very exciting.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1281623.html
Great suggestion by FastCompany!
Also been meaning to upload this picture of the YGL delegation that came with us on a visit of Jerusalem this last spring…
A few people are funnier and sweeter in real life than in their hilarious comedic personas. Danny DeVito is such a person. Here is a new quirky project from Danny, our friend and Board member in the Foundation, courtesy of Rhea Perlman, the only person on earth who is even funnier than Danny. Watch till the end…
PS: To anyone at OneVoice who saw how meticulous Danny’s team is when dealing with multimedia, even when a bunch of crazy Israelis and Palestinians are presenting their plans to the entertainment community, the above will carry extra humor.
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.
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.
A year ago we conceived a project to help young Palestinians and Israelis visualize what their lives would be like ten years from now if peace were to come. To dare them to believe, hoping this will then prompt them to invest into turning this vision into a reality. The project, Imagine 2018, received thousands of essay submissions from students, and captivated the imagination of millions.
Now its next phase – turning children’s winning essays into short films by award-winning directors – is also becoming a reality, as described in this email from Gil from OneVoice Israel. The next step is to make peace a reality.
Soldier and Boy Tel Aviv Damascus
Dear all,
We would like to update you that OVI had filmed the 2 short movies of the "imagine 2018" project.
There were two days of shooting : 24-25 of may.
Overall the outcomes were beyond our expectations, since the producers and directors were very professional and organized, and they were able to recruit some of the best actors in the local market, that made this project very prestigious .we had: Yona Elian – A very famous and respectable theater and movie actor. an Israeli icon, Aki Avni, a very talented and well known actor. worked in LA in the past few years, Clara khoury, who played the "Syrian bride", Oshri Cohen, played a leading role in "beau for" Ali Nassaer (an Arab Israeli actor and director) and the amazing kid , Abdallah Akkal.
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
For those who can understand Hebrew – and for those who will get a kick out of just seeing the b-roll – here is a link to a story that appeared on Channel 2 in Israel, in their top news program, about OneVoice’s project Imagine 2018 – and the first two short films that were created by leading directors from essays from young kids visualizing what their world will look like in the year 2018.
אורן אהרוני | המהדורה המרכזית, חדשות 2
