Daniel Lubetzky

OneVoice Israel just commenced an exhibit titled "Till White Smoke Emanates" urging the Israeli and Palestinian heads of state to continue negotiations non-stop till they strike an agreement (the only missing ingredient in the leaders’ commitment to "ongoing" but not "uninterrupted" negotiations, as the OneVoice Mandate urges). 

The "white smoke" concept is borrowed from when Archbishops close themselves off and don’t come out of a big hall till the Pope has been selected.  The Exhibit revolves around 24 wood chairs that Israeli artists were asked to transform into statements about this issue.

Their Exhibit is now on display at Itzhak Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.  Another article about it in Hebrew is here.

When I wrote Re-Imagining Ourselves in Our Fallen Heroes, I was inspired after starting to read the first couple paragraphs from Taylor Branch’s op-ed in the Sunday New York Times’ Week in Review and his comment that "more than once, the dominant culture has turned history upside Down to make itself feel more comfortable."  After reading the whole article, I was also struck by his comment that the "civil rights movement rose from the the fringe of maids and sharecroppers."  This should resonate among modern activists…

[Read more →]

A couple years back, a comment that was making the rounds among Israeli policy-makers was that "Palestinians need to have their own Altalena."

[Read more →]

Here is a teaser of two separate parallel campaigns about to be launched to mobilize  Palestinian and Israeli citizens to push for a two state agreement in 2008.

The guy in the picture, by the way, is Sefi Kedmi, a OneVoice Youth Leader who used to belong to the right-wing Moledet party and then changed his political outlook and has been one of our most committed youth leaders on the Israeli side.  He took the initiative to create an Israeli college campus network of activists and several other grassroots campaigns.

Benjamin Franklin was the first recorded person to call himself "an extreme moderate."

He was thus a true predecessor to the OneVoice Movement, in highlighting the imperative of action and determination from mainstream citizenry.

Our leaders in Gaza have expanded on their recent campaign and are reaching out to more and more places.  Below are a couple of pictures from their most recent town hall meeting in Jabaliyah Refugee Camp, building on the message of empowering citizens to propel a two-state-agreement.

We are very proud and grateful of SKOLL’s generous and energizing support of our social entrepreneurship, as detailed here.

It may surprise many, but OneVoice continues its work and its message for a two-state solution through empowerment of the ordinary citizens on both sides who are fed up and want this conflict to end once and for all.

Below are a few pictures from recent town hall meetings conducted by our executive leadership in Gaza.

The title of the workshop was "Examining the Palestinians’ National Aspirations and the Two States for Two People Alternative."

A prior workshop in Deir El Balah in Central Gaza took place earlier in the month and an outline of what was discussed can be read by expanding this posting (clicking "more")…

[Read more →]

Many signs point to Hezbollah’s increasing presence in the Palestinian territories, a sharp departure to Arafat’s model of Palestinian nationalism being the realm of Palestinian groups only.  This is among the most serious (and least addressed) developments over the last few years.

[Read more →]