Daniel Lubetzky

We are so humbled and honored that, following his meeting with our young Israeli and Palestinian leaders in OneVoice, and following his further learning on our movement over the last few months, including the leadership of our colleagues in OneVoice Europe, Paul McCartney agreed to join the OneVoice Movement’s International Honorary Board.

Sample story follows….

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Here is a link to the Opening Plenary at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship where I participated:

http://www.socialedge.org/features/skoll-world-forum

Click on Opening Plenary video

Panel discussion starts around minute 36-ends around min 79. Entire plenary agenda below:

Musical Performance – Taiko Meantime, An enthralling show combining traditional Japanese rythms and techniques with eclectic, original compositions

Opening Remarks – Stephan Chambers, Chairman, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship

Delegate Address – Jeff Skoll, Founder and Chairman, Skoll Foundation

Framing Power – Roger L. Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Panel Discussion: Power to the people:Citizen Engagement and Social Transformation

• Ray Suarez (Moderator), Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, PBS
• Kailash Satyarthi, President, Global Campaign for Education, Chairman, Global March Against Child Labour
• The Honorable Mary Robinson, President, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative
• Daniel Lubetzky, Founder and President, PeaceWorks Group

Personal Power: A Call to Responsibility – Kenneth S. Brecher, Executive Director, Sundance Institute

Roger Martin, Dean at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, gave an interesting presentation at the Opening Plenary at the Skoll World Forum today:

Whether or not Barack Obama is your President or, as is the case for me, another country’s leader, most of you, I suspect, watched the President’s inauguration speech and did so with rapt attention. It was certainly a lovely, inspiring and motivating speech. I cried a few times, even though guys aren’t supposed to do that. I suspect each listener took away something special and unique to you from the speech. For me, one sentence grabbed my attention; that riveted me:

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

I study and write about leadership, which of course makes it a privilege for me to be among all the great leaders in this room. And in my study of highly successful leaders across a wide variety of organizations, I found the most common theme – the most universal characteristic – to be a form of thinking exemplified by President Obama’s quote.

That common theme was when highly successful leaders are faced with an apparent choice between two opposing and unsatisfying options, they show the inclination to refuse to choose and the capacity to instead engineer a course of action that is superior to each of the apparent options.

…

...In my work, I found that great leaders harness the inherent power in the tension between opposing ideas, options or models to forge a new better model. That is the Power of Paradox.

Several friends called or emailed to let me know Danny DeVito was hilarious at the Israel Film Festival, where he also encouraged the audience to get involved with OneVoice.  This article will give you an idea…

“Look around. A lot of you are bald,” said the actor, who was introduced by Michael Douglas — DeVito’s oldest show business friend and former roommate in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment — with a crack about absent hair. DeVito went on to make an earnest plea for support of the grass-roots organization in which he and his wife, actress Rhea Perlman, are involved: the OneVoice Movement, which pushes for peace in the Middle East.

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It’s ironic that these guys are more insightful than Paulson et al about exposing the idiocy of the market abuses and follies.

And these comedians highlighted this half a year before the Wall Street pundits…

See also this excellent one:

In a watershed development, Syria recently condemned radical Islamists as responsible for a terrorist act in Damascus.  And Pakistanis are increasingly rejecting Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (as opposed to a regrettable situation where a significant portion of that population was empathetic in the past).  Across the Arab world and Muslim society, more and more citizens are recognizing the imperative of standing up against all forms of violent extremism…

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When Sir Paul McCartney performed a historic concert in Israel earlier this week, he wore the OneVoice symbol on his lapel – as did every member of his band.

How did this come about?

When we learned that McCartney was headed to the Holy Land, our team in OneVoice Europe, led by Sayyeda Salam, took the initiative and reached out to him.  They relied on a few of our Board members and supporters to connect, but it was primarily gumption and determination that got them to him.

Apparently Sir Paul was the most down-to-earth and kindest person, and he loved learning about OneVoice’s mission of empowering ordinary Palestinian and Israeli citizens who reject extremism and absolutism and demand a two-state solution.  OVE arranged for Paul to meet with OneVoice activists in the region.

Anti-Israel groups campaigned aggressively to dissuade McCartney from visiting the Holy Land, and threatened to boycott him if he didn’t boycott Israel. Never mind that McCartney was bringing a message of peace and humanity and that he visited Palestine and respectfully shared a non-political humanitarian message for both Israelis and Palestinians.  “Anti” groups and “cultural boycott” organizations often harm their own people because they make no distinction of the substance of the message or the group involved – rejecting and attacking even those who would work for a two-state-solution.

When McCartney met with our OneVoice Israel activists, he empathized with the challenges they faced exactly a year ago, when extremist groups attacked the OneVoice Summit, a parallel effort of mainstream Palestinian nationalists and separately mainstream Israeli nationalists to mobilize tens of thousands to propel their political representatives to end the occupation and all forms of violence through a comprehensive two state agreement.

McCartney told our activists:

“My father told me that regular people don’t like wars and don’t want conflict. I’m not a politician – I just want to bring a message of peace. In every place I perform I see that people want the same thing.”

Gil Shamy, our Israeli Executive Director, gave him the OneVoice pin.

McCartney was so touched with the vision of our youth leaders that he decided to wear the pin during the concert – and give a pin to everyone in the band who did the same.

At at a press conference later on, McCartney still carried with him the message he and OneVoice had agreed on:

“My little bit is to try to bring people together through music … It seems to me that most of the people are quite moderate and would like a solution. They would like peace like most people in the world … They want the governments to decide quite quickly on two states, on two nations rather than this conflict. They want it to work so they can both be separate and peaceful.” (full story)

Here is a story by UPI.  One on E Entertainment’s website.  One in the UK’s Independent.  And one in the Wall Street Journal.  Pictures show Paul McCartney wearing the OV symbol, including on Ynet.

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When the movie Life is Beautiful came out back in 1997, I felt a gnawing guilt at enjoying the movie so much, when the protagonist, as a concentration camp prisoner, found a way to laugh and make others laugh, amidst dehumanizing circumstances.  Could a sense of humor have a place in such a dark episode in humanity?

After overcoming the tears from the final scene, I called my Dad and asked him whether people actually laughed in a concentration camp. I was surprised to learn that indeed, the jokes his Dad told may have been the only thing that kept him and other inmates at their bunker in Dachau going – finding some crumbs of humanity to feed their frail hearts, to keep them going.  In fact, in a weird way, my Dad felt Life Is Beautiful was among the movies that best captured his experience as a kid protected by his father (my grandfather), who refused to give up his ability to smile even in – or particularly amidst – such adverse moments.

This weekend we saw Counterfeiters, and I wish I had my Dad around to ask him what he thought of the movie.

I wish I could ask him how he related to the poignant dilemmas presented in the movie: to sabotage the Nazis and risk your life AND the life of your inmates or loved ones, or to pursue your survival while adding fuel to an evil enterprise?  The movie does an excellent job at providing a nuanced story that avoids black and white heroism and forces us to grapple with questions about the human spirit, about the struggle of accepting the privileges of a rotten apple when others don’t have even that to eat.

If you rent this fast-paced, excellently acted and directed movie, make sure you listen to the interview with the writer, Adolf Burger, whose book "The Devil’s Workshop" this movie is based on.

Quiet for decades about his ordeal, Burger finally forced himself to look back and tell his story when the "Holocaust Denial" movement rose among neo-Nazi youth.  He even describes some of the techniques he used for forging British notes, which the British government never caught.