Showing posts with label Peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peace. Show all posts

Saturday, March 24, 2007

MIT sponsoring contest to solve Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology hopes to mobilize the world's brainpower to solve one of its most troubling problems: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. MIT officials are inviting individuals or teams from any country to participate in its "Just Jerusalem" competition. The contest aims to find a way to make Jerusalem just, peaceful and sustainable by 2050 so that Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in a city both consider their capital.

via haaretz and Google "IPCRI News & Views" group

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Never Forget! - Never Forgive!

On the night of Saturday November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin traveled to the Kings’ Square in Tel Aviv where tens of thousands of Israeli peace supporters massed to assure him of their enthusiastic support. They rallied with wild enthusiasm under banners that proclaimed “Yes to Peace – No to Violence.”In his speech Rabin said: “…I have always believed that the majority of the people want peace, are prepared to take risks for peace. And you here, by showing up at this rally, prove it, along with the many who did not make it here, that the people truly want peace and oppose violence”.

A few minutes before he was murdered, Yitzhak Rabin said: "Violence is undermining the very foundations of Israeli democracy. It must be condemned, denounced, and isolated. This is not the way of the State of Israel. Controversies may arise in a democracy, but the decision must be reached through democratic elections."

Still smiling, he descended the steps to his car. The young Jewish student wheeled out of the darkness and shot him in the back. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the hero of war and the soldier of peace, was critically wounded. A short time later he died of his wounds in Ichilov Hospital.

Tonight, we attended with 100,000 people the 11th Rabin memorial ceremony at the the Kings of Israel Square in Tel-Aviv, that after the assassination has changed in to Rabin Square, to Remember Yizhak, To find consolation that there are many of us that will never forget and never Forgive, to cry for the lost of innocence, to be near those such as us that come to realize there is two kind of Israeli Jews, the one that even think the murderer is allowed to build a family and have kids! and the ones that are deeply shocked and refuse to believe that this horror is happening, with nothing we can do to stop this animal criminal and his supporters.

Seeing all the corruption all around here, starting from our prime minister, the president, and so many others, seeing the hope for peace fading out, seeing the opportunism, the cynical political behavior, leaves me with the sentiment, there is not much hope for the country of Israel. and the cruel assassination of Yitzhak Rabin 11 years ago, was the grand opening of the shun all the way down of our country. there is no consolation! there are so many truly, deeply beautiful' courageous, workers of the land, poets, writers, youngsters, who loves, who want to build their families here, simple people, amazing people, honest people, but their voices and power is not enough, in order to clean the dirt and mud of criminal people that rule or have their way with powerful centers of this country. i fear we're doomed.

By the end of evening, while the crowed was spreading, the speakers were playing 'Imagine' by John Lennon, minutes after moving away from the mass, the most powerful rain start falling. As if the skies and heavens and God him self were crying for Rabin, crying for all of us orphans, that stayed with no King to rule us, all the tears we aught to be crying were dropping down for the sky.

No wonder, i keep on my Escapist journeys...what else is there?

Author David Grossman, the evening's keynote speaker, said in his address "there is a feeling that there is no king in Israel these days. The [country's] political and military leadership is hollow."

"There was a war, Israel flexed an immense military muscle, but hiding behind it were [Israel's] shortcomings and vulnerability," said Grossman, whose son was killed this summer during the war in Lebanon.

"The crisis Israel is facing is much deeper than we feared, in almost every respect." "The deaths of young people are a terrible, screaming waste, but no less terrible is the feeling that, for many years, the State of Israel is wasting not only the lives of her sons, but also the miracle [of the creation of the state], the opportunity to create an enlightened and democratic nation here."