In Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani stands before a mausoleum where her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani was buried nearly 450 years ago.

By Omar Kasrawi

Standing outside a mausoleum in Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani bows her head and cups her hands upward in prayer for her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani. He was buried in Mamilla, the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, nearly half a millennium ago.

About 200 meters away, a fenced-off construction zone marks the future site of the Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance, a project overseen by the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In Israel, starting a new project inevitably means bumping into history. In this case, the construction that started in 2004 has stirred Muslim anger as it displaces hundreds of Muslim graves dating as far back as the 7th century, including the remains of soldiers and officials of the Muslim ruler Saladin.

IN PICTURES: Israeli settlements

Wiesenthal officials say they have followed every recommendation of the Israel Antiquities Authority, which is in charge of “salvage excavations,” and point out that Muslim authorities in the 1920s had approved building on the plot.

The Mamilla controversy is not unique in Israel, where it’s common for different religions’ sacred spaces to overlap. Two of the holiest sites in Islam – Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock – sit atop the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the Torah proclaims the Holy Temple will be rebuilt.

But these controversies are more than debates over landownership; they are debates over the ownership of memories, a place in human history.

In Israel especially, place is connected to identity, making it a priority to protect the places that offer a sense of belonging. Any effort to remove evidence of historical ties is seen as an attack on identity. Just last week, Israeli authorities destroyed at least 15 tombstones in the Mamilla cemetery which it said were illegally built.

“There is a tendency in both communities to deny the spirituality or the sanctity or the history of the other on a certain spot,” says Marc Gopin, a rabbi and the director of George Mason University’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution.

Why place plays such a key role in identity

Such tactics are common. This past March, a right-wing Israeli group sponsored ads on 200 buses that displayed fictitious posters of the Temple Mount, in which a Third Temple replaced the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In 2000 Israeli leader Ariel Sharon set off the second intifada by visiting the Temple Mount and asserting permanent Israeli sovereignty over the compound. The violence lasted four years and claimed the lives of more than 5,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

But even lesser-known holy sites become part of the conflict if a community feels its presence being threatened.

Recently, the Israeli government named as heritage sites Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which both Judaism and Islam claim as Abraham’s birthplace. By claiming sites in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, Israel further blurred the lines of the ownership of land – and history.

How Muslims are protesting Mamilla project

In the case of the Wiesenthal project, protesters claim the museum’s construction is an effort to conquer what Muslims consider religious territory. It has provoked petitions from Palestinian descendants of the buried, including Ms. Dajani.

“I feel like I have lots of energy to do something” about the construction, says Dajani, whose family’s name is prominent among Palestinians. “But at the end I understand that this is very difficult. The Israelis will not let us do anything easily.”

With construction set to continue, activists are focused on a still untouched part of the cemetery. According to Diyala Husseini Dajani, a protester with family ties to Mamilla – but no relation to Rawan – nearly $18,000 was raised to support a memorial wall that will display the names of everyone buried in the cemetery.

Mr. Gopin says such gestures are effective peacekeeping tactics.

“The only thing that is left to be done at this point is to make gestures of apology, offer to build up what’s left of the cemetery with security and with the refurbishing of all the stones,” says Gopin. “But you can’t just make nice gestures. It has to come with a real proof that you believe in a peaceful coexistence.”

Israel archaeologist: It’s totally politics

Gideon Sulimani, chief archaeologist appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority to excavate the museum site, doubts there is a genuine desire for coexistence in this case. Mr. Sulimani discovered more than 200 bodies during the dig in 2005.

Despite his recommendation that the site not be released for construction, the antiquities authorities informed the Supreme Court to clear the area for construction.

“It’s part of the conflict about who owns the land,” Sulimani said. “It’s not archaeology. It’s not science. They want to move away the Muslim memory of the area to make it Jewish. So it’s totally politics.”

Some Palestinians involved are hopeful that even if the new museum rises, their protest efforts will bring some acknowledgment to the Muslim burial ground that once stood on the site.

“It’s not that I’m concerned about the graves as much as I’m concerned about the fact that we don’t exist to the Israelis,” Ms. Husseini Dajani said.

From the Christian-Science Monitor, original post http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0811/Why-Israeli-Palestinian-conflicts-over-land-turn-epic

This is the day in the Jewish calendar that is the eve of destruction, commemorating all the catastrophes of the last 2500 years, the forced exiles, the crusades, the massacres, the pogroms, an authentically religious national day of mourning for millions of jewish innocents over the ages. Only what is different from profane forms of Jewish mourning, is that religious mourning looks inward, introspectively, not outward for scapegoats. And this is the difference between heaven and hell, the hell created by profane nationalism, and the heaven created by spiritual identity.

I heard a homily in a synagogue yesterday that turned my stomach so badly that I had to leave. It was a celebration of conquest, precisely at this time, an embrace of the conquerors of the Book of Joshua, as role models for a new husband and wife team celebrating their upcoming marriage.

But Judaism is not the Bible, something the Christian and Muslim worlds have yet to understand. Judaism is a religion of the rabbis, who carefully selected their spirituality through commentary and interpretation. The day of Catastrophe, which they instituted, our Nakba, is always commemorated with fasting on the 9th of the Jewish month of Av, always in the heat of the summer because that is when all the wars and conquests took place in which Jewish civilians suffered so badly.  And always the Biblical portion that is recited on the week before, from Deuteronomy, has a list of the peoples that the Jews massacred, according to Deuteronomy, as they conquered the ancient land of Israel, men, women an children.

So it is only natural that a secular Jewish nationalist, wearing of course the nationalist symbols of Kippah and Tzitsit, would mistake the choice of this Biblical portion as approval of conquest and ethnic cleansing. Why wouldn’t he, so much of the establishment of his generation has succumbed to this bastardization of Judaism. But the rabbis had a different idea, as can be seen from their choice of the Prophetic commentary from the great prophet Isaiah.

What they happened to have missed is that the rabbis did two things, they chose a Haftorah, a portion from the prophets, that had this to say to the people about Jerusalem leadership at this terrible time:

Isaiah 1: Your princes are going astray, and are friends of thieves. Every one of them loves bribes, and pursues illegal payments. They do not champion the orphans, and the fight for the widows never even reaches them.

Sound familiar? These are the years in which the level of corruption that late twentieth century Jewish life in Israel and America reached its zenith, the highest officials of Israel investigated for corruption, and the Jewish community bankrupted by Madoff.

But in the end it is the proverbial widow and orphan of the Bible, in other words, those who need the most help, those who are defenseless, who are the bellwether of Divine judgment in Jewish tradition. Ecclesiastes, through rabbinic eyes, says it quite clearly: “God desires only the persecuted”. It is a very harsh standard, because it suggests that no matter how justified you think you are, Divine favor, as interpreted by the rabbis, only sides with whoever is persecuted for whatever reason.

That is why when the rabbis instituted the service that commemorates the lost Temple in Jerusalem, the one that the profane nationalists want to violently build on the ruins of the Dome of the Rock, the ancient rabbis begin that service with four  simple, elegant, redemptive, liberating, anti-violent Hebrew words: U-mipne ha’taw’enu galinu me’artsenu. “And it was because of OUR sins that we were exiled from our land.” Lest anyone reading those prayers be tempted to scapegoat and avoid introspection, they begin the service with those immortal words, words that defined my rather naive youth.

Traditional Jews also read on Saturday some of the concluding words of Isaiah 2500 years ago, a prediction about Zion, the ancient Biblical name for Jerusalem. The prediction is about how the Zionists, literally the lovers of Zion, could extract themselves from such misery, corruption and bad human relations. Among other things it says: Through justice will Zion be redeemed, and those who return to her, through righteousness.

It does not mention border guards, or a military industrial complex, or nuclear weapons, or internal and external secret police, or lobbyists, just justice and righteousness. In much of the Zionist world these are dirty words, words associated with ‘frier’ Jews, weak Jews, suckers, people who walk into crematoria. They have brainwashed themselves and confuse what is weak–tempers, aggression, threats–with what is strong, and what is strong–patience, nobility of character, fairness, honesty, generosity–with weakness.

Someday they will see Isaiah as a national poet, not a Holocaust Jew, and on that day they will discover a significant group of neighbors with whom they can make common cause, ready to welcome them back to Zion.

An easy fast of Tish’a B’av, for those of you fasting.

Professional Development Seminar in Citizen Diplomacy

with Rabbi Dr. Marc Gopin and Palestinian peacebuilder Aziz Abu Sarah

Based in Jerusalem with day trips to neighboring cities and Holy sites

• Contact: Scott Cooper or Becca Grimm at ‘crdc@gmu.edu‘ or 1-703-993-4473 (USA)

This seminar will be a combination of theory exploration, training, and concrete practice in the field. Based on Dr. Gopin’s most recent theories in To Make the Earth Whole: The Art of Citizen Diplomacy, the course will create space for participants to understand and measure in a new way the dynamics of their own potential impact on war and peace. It explores:

1. The theory and practice of positive incremental change and citizen diplomacy
2. A central case study from the Middle East
3. The philosophical and spiritual ethics, East and West, of decision making in conflict interventions.

Along with the study of theory, role plays and simulations, the course will involve direct engagement with Israeli and Palestinian nonprofit and for profit change makers, both secular and religious. There will be on the ground engagement in both Israel and Palestine, while inside the classroom and on tour.

Dr. Gopin will be joined by the CRDC’s Director of Middle East Projects Aziz Abu Sarah.  Mr. Abu Sarah will co-lead many of the trainings and manage the tour component of the course.  Mr. Abu Sarah brings over 10 years of experience in Palestinian-Israeli peacebuilding and Middle East tourism.  Most notably, he was the Palestinian Chairman of the Parent’s Circle – Families Forum, a joint organization of 500 Israeli and Palestinian bereaved families who work for reconciliation within and between their societies.  He also worked with organizations such as All For Peace Radio and Al-Tariq: The Palestinian Institute for Democracy and Development (which he co-founded).

The seminar will be based most days in Jerusalem, with CLASS TIME, TRAINING, AND EXCURSIONS planned on alternate days.

Considering the sensitive nature of the practice component of this work, students will be asked to submit a CV as well as a statement of their qualifications and goals in order to apply for this seminar.

Includes:

• Approximately 25 hours of class time
• Meetings with several Palestinian and Israeli peacebuilding organizations, officials, relgious leaders and business people
  • Organization include: Parents Circle – Bereaved Families Forum
• Hotel
• 2 meals per day
• Transportation
• Tour guide
• Visits to Bethlehem, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Hebron
• Can be taken for credit through George Mason University in Arlington, VA**

Price:

• $2780.00 (airfare not included)
  • Subsidies available for local Palestinians and Israelis to participate – please contact CRDC for more details

Dates:

• May 27 – June 4th 2010

Location:

• Jerusalem

Course Description:

• http://crdcgmu.wordpress.com/education/

Syllabus:

• http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddjpxvx7_20djtkntcr

**3 credits graduate or undregraduate – price $3180.00 instead of $2780.00

Here’s an excerpt from Michael Felsen’s article for the Jerusalem Post:

One of the stops on her Going Rogue book promotional tour last week was ABC’s Good Morning America. Noting that the Obama administration doesn’t want Israel to build any more settlements on what it considers Palestinian territory, interviewer Barbara Walters asked the former Alaska governor/vice presidential candidate for her view.

Palin’s response: “I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon because the population of Israel is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

More and more Jewish people flocking to Israel? What’s Palin’s source of information? Since 2002 – the year in which the major wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union came to an end – there has been a consistent downward trend in immigration to Israel. By 2006, immigration was down to 1980s levels, during which time 9,000 to 24,000 people immigrated annually. And in 2008, the number was 13,681, representing the lowest ratio of immigrants to veteran Israelis since the establishment of the state – 1.9 immigrants per 1,000 residents.

I think it is pretty obvious that what Palin is referring to is  her fundamentalist belief that the second coming is going to happen any time now, and then the wars and the rapture, and so forth. But she is referring to it obliquely. If this is where the Republican Party is going with its foreign policy, ie facilitating the Rapture, then the rest of us deserve an explicit notification of that. It is amazing what a coalescence is happening among militants in the three Abrahamic communities over the importance of apocalypse. If it becomes foreign policy then we are all in for an interesting ride.

Once again, I hold intellectuals, liberals and progressives for focusing more on their own children than on public education and the public sphere in general. We cannot afford public’s that are more extreme than when America was founded. This a prescription for precipitous decline and self-destruction. The alternative, a serious engagement of liberal America with conservative but sane America on common commitments, common educational priorities. We have avoided this for too long.

By Aziz Abu Sarah

Israel’s approval of hundreds of new housing units in East Jerusalem is currently generating uproar in the international community, as it should. However, as the media has clamored to cover the government decision, many missed yesterday’s demolition of two Arab houses in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Issawiyah and Silwan.

I was visiting my parents’ home in Issawiyah yesterday when the trouble started. I walked outside, only to encounter hundreds of Israeli police and soldiers on every corner and roof in the neighborhood. It didn’t take me long to realize that a house was about to be demolished.

The soldiers had closed the entrances to the neighborhood to prevent media and protesters from accessing the demolition. But I was most struck by the soldier’s facial expressions. No one would have guessed from their expressions that they were about to leave two families homeless. Some of the soldiers were joking, laughing and having the time of their lives. I was taken aback. How can a human-being enjoy such a thing? Regardless of your political views, ethnic background and religious beliefs, leaving two families homeless should never be a source of joy. At the least, one might expect some amount of sobriety in response to the gravity of the situation.

Most families in the neighborhood had turned out to watch the demolition. Children seemed especially interested in the presence of the soldiers. I can only imagine what these kids thought of the event. Perhaps, like me in my childhood, their minds were racing with anger, hatred, and a growing desire to pay back these soldiers. I can’t help but think these kids are the best candidates for future extremists. No one should be surprised if any of those children turn out to be the next “terrorist.”

The best terror prevention is not walls, guns, and oppression. No one will experience true peace, freedom or security by inflicting suffering on others. The soldiers at the demolition yesterday are part of a larger ethos in Israeli and Palestinian society that rejoices in the suffering of others. We must learn to rejoice together and cry together rather than rejoice when they suffer and cry when they rejoice. Why? Because when we rejoice in the suffering of the other, we lose the core of our humanity and further inhibit a solution founded on dignity, freedom, and human life.

* * *

This article was originally published at http://azizabusarah.wordpress.com.

Dear friends,

I am proud to announce the formation of my new business, MEJDI LLC along with my wonderful partners, veteran Palestinian peacebuilder Aziz Abu Sarah and experienced banker Mr. Scott Cooper.

MEJDI LLC is a socially responsible corporation that supports economic justice and equality through wealth creation as an effective response to violence and war.

Our mission at MEJDI is to innovate conflict-sensitive approaches to wealth creation in the Middle East, in order that opportunities for peace and economic justice may flourish.

MEJDI’s Products and Services include:

1. MEJDI’s unique mix of business and conflict resolution experts creates professional tours to Palestine, Israel, and other regional destinations, in full collaboration with our clients. MEJDI then conducts only the tour that fits the specific needs and interests of each client and group. Clients can include interfaith groups, churches, synagogues, mosques, corporations, NGO’s, or universities.

• Our unique approach concentrates on undoing the damage of the past by empowering only honest business people and socially responsible change makers on both sides of the Green Line, featuring them in seminars, promoting their work, and paying them properly.
• Uniquely, we have a network in place of honest vendors for every aspect of our business in Israel and Palestine. Our business then pours back a percentage of our profits into cutting-edge Middle East peacebuilding ventures through the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution (CRDC) at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

2. MEJDI imports, promotes and sells products made by Palestinians at Fair Wages, or products made in equal collaboration between Palestinians and Israelis or Jews.

3. MEJDI provides consultancy services to connect investors together with socially responsible businesses in Israel and Palestine.

How can you get involved?

• Work with us to initiate a tour to the Middle East from your area or for your network.
• Sponsor a MEJDI fair wage trade show in your community. Ask us how to use this as a fundraising tool for your favorite non-profit or charity.
• Do good by doing well! Become a MEJDI Account Executive. Market MEJDI tours and products.
• Schedule an investment consultation. Modest investment inquiries are welcome!

Contact us at mejdi.net@gmail.com

‘Jews who sell to Arabs are enemies’
By Matthew Wagner

A meeting of The New Sanhedrin

A Jew who sells land to an Arab in Israel should not be allowed to lead prayers in synagogue, should not be given the right to make a blessing during the Torah reading, should not be counted among the quorum needed for public prayers and is considered an abettor to the enemies of Israel, according to a halachic decision issued on Monday night by a group of rabbis calling themselves “The New Sanhedrin.”

What astonishes are the last lines of this piece:

Eliyahu said that in his own city of Safed, a Jew who sold to an Arab was boycotted by the community. “He owned a grocery store and people boycotted it.”

Halacha forbids the sale of land in Israel owned by Jews to non-Jews. However, there is nothing in Jewish law that prevents someone who does so from participating in prayers.

Read the rest of this Jerusalem Post article here.

This group of Jews represent the extreme right of Israeli religious politics, not because they are ultra-Orthodox but because of their racism against non-Jews and Arabs especially.  In fact there are a significant number of ultra-Orthodox Jews who wear the black clothing who are non-Zionist, anti-Zionist, or just intuitively non-violent with great discomfort at what has been done by the Israeli army over the years. They do not serve in the IDF. As a group they do vote right wing for other reasons, mostly to elicit benefits for their own community.

The group representing this new Sanhedrin appear in every way to be modern and highly educated, but their agenda is a Jewish state emptied of Arabs, and they utilize Torah or Jewish law to accomplish this.

The amazing thing is that the Jerusalem Post writer of the story assumed the truth of the centrally assumed position of ancient Jewish Law, namely that it is forbidden to sell land to all non-Jews in the ancient Holy Land, the Land of Israel.

It raises a crucial issue and tragedy of Israel, Zionism, in its bizarre interaction with traditional Judaism. In every militant movement in the world, from movements in Arab Islam to American  Southern Christianity, ancient religion is used highly selectively, carving out what encourages self-worship, hatred and violence, and silencing what encourages passivity, tolerance, acceptance, self-criticism and self-examination. Effectively a different religion is created. The same has happened to Judaism.

In the nineteenth century of even Orthodox Judaism in America and Western Europe, and the Judaism of much of the Muslim world, it would have been inconceivable to confuse the ancient law on this matter. Judaism has many harsh, I believe intolerant laws, when it comes to ‘idolaters’, ‘worshipers of stars and constellations’. They assume a definition of an idolater, however, who has no monotheistic faith and no  moral standards, and no code of conduct with regard to justice, theft and murder.

I would not today subscribe to those laws even if I were to encounter such ‘idolatrous’ people, because these harsh laws contradict other, far more constructive Jewish laws and traditions regarding love, respect, compassion, and patience, that work far better when you engage people who have no moral standards regarding theft and murder. But, in fact, I have never encountered Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, who as a group religion would fit this definition of war criminals with no faith in God.

I have encountered many war criminals, also monotheists, who come close to this Jewish legal definition of ‘idolater’ because their so-called monotheism includes brutality to most of humanity, which the rabbis in the Talmud consider evidence of being, let us say, not monotheists at all. Their actions betray disbelief in the divine nature of every human being. For many of the rabbis, actions speak louder than words, than professions and hypocritical witnesses. And if you act like you do not believe that God exists in every human being because you are torturing them, humiliating them, or killing them indiscriminately, or because they show up as a dot on your military screen, then this is evidence of a lack of faith in God’s presence in everyone.

But let us return to the Jerusalem Post article and this lovely ‘High Court’ of Zionist Judaism. They make an assumption, that I hear everywhere in the Orthodox world, that all the prejudicial laws against ‘idolaters’, ‘akum‘, refer to all non-Jews collectively. Of course, this is racism masking as religion, and, as I said, this is typical of militant religion today the world over. It is also a pretext to avoid every single positive ethical law of Judaism, it is an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for brutality, theft, and murder, because if ‘they’, the enemy, are all just ‘idolaters’ you can do whatever the hell you want to them, as long as you can get away with it and no one will find out or blame Judaism–which would be a hillul hashem, a desecration of God’s name!

This whole line of thinking and behavior that has crept into Jewish life in the last 60 years is due mostly to a complete failure to reconcile with the residents of Palestine and Israel. The amusing thing is that once you get to know the world really well it is  this that is the true hilul hashem, desecration of the name of the God of Israel. But you can’t know that if all your friends are Jewish, if you don’t have at least as many Arab and Palestinian conversations as you have had Jewish conversations.

I spent my first twenty years of  life in deep conversations with Jews, Israelis, probing, listening, empathizing with all my heart and soul, crying for every single Jewish suffering in history. I spent the next twenty years in deep conversations with Arabs, with Palestinians, with Muslims, probing, listening, listening. And I realize now that the reason that this is a tormented life is that I am trying to convey a twenty year conversation to most of my Jewish friends and family who have had almost no contact. But there is no science, there is no enlightenment, there is no empathy, there is no discernment, when there is no listening, and I cannot convey twenty years of listening, really not to either side, neither to the Arab side when I enter into the Saudi Embassy, nor when I enter the Zionist Jewish synagogue.

I admire the incredible resilience of the deaf, their schools today, their determination to succeed, because they know they are deaf and know they must rise to the challenge. But most people don’t know that they are deaf. That it takes years of hard work to overcome the disability.

Listening deeply to those who do not listen to each other is one side of a many-sided prism of human torment.

But the good news for the world, for Jews, for Israel, is that this is a passing phase that will disappear in the wind, just as other mutant forms of spirituality die of their own hypocrisy. Children and grand-children find it hard to sustain hypocrisy, and as painful as it is now, the majority of people in the ‘Holy Basin’, are going to eventually find a common spiritual and secular strategy of coexistence, just as surely as they did in the pre-modern period. Despite the lies of the propagandists, the fact is that there were so many examples of Jewish/Muslim/Christian intimate relations and coexistence in the Middle East that they are too great to number–for those of us who have been listening. I feel privileged to be among the very few rabbis, imams, and spiritual leaders, as well as incredibly amazing spiritual youth, hippies with an open heart, all who have met and listened and know this to be true from their own family histories.

The truth will eventually emerge. This will re-emerge again in a safe and secure Israel/Palestine that will either be one state or two, but will be a place of equality and safety for Jews and Palestinians. Jews of the Diaspora will have their safe haven to run to, but they will no longer run there to land on top of other human beings. They will eventually see that as self-defeating and dangerous, just as surely as we have seen in Washington how dangerous it is for one metro train to land on top of another, creating only a sea of the blood of the innocent. Someday the hard work of listening is going to create a new reality.

Written by Aziz Abu Sarah

“Netanyahu and Lieberman are asking the world to recognize Israel as a Jewish state – I say uphold Jewish values! After all, it was Habakkuk the Jewish prophet who said ‘Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime!’”, notes Aziz Abu Sarah. (Read the complete article on Middle East Online.)

The Palestinians who have lost their homes, on the other hand, have not been able to rally enough people to draw constant, vehement support. Fatah, Hamas, and the PLO are too busy with their own conflicts to be of any real help to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, and the international community is fond of offering their condolences and condemnations from the safety of the “moral high ground,” so as not to soil their shoes. Of the hundreds of thousands of “pro-peace” Arabs, Israelis, Europeans, and Americans, I haven’t heard of a benefactor has stepped forward to use his connections or finances to help these two families.

Yet my biggest disappointment is with the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement, of which I have been an active part for the last ten years. We hold thousands of workshops on dialogue groups and interfaith discussions, and preach peace and reconciliation. We have people sign declarations and accords. However, we are too divided within our own ranks and organizations to stand together when these incidents occur. Instead, we spend our time measuring our success by the number of workshops we create, the conferences we attend, and the size of our budget. It is time for a change. We must measure success by the people we mobilize and the difference we can make in hard times. A sharply worded press release is not success – success is a movement of Arabs and Jews showing up in thousands ready for action, demonstrating, writing, and sleeping in the tent with the new homeless families.

Read more by clicking here.

Paths to Positive Change in the Holy Land -
Early Registration Aug-19th

We are s proud to announce an upcoming Citizen Diplomacy tour
to Israel-Palestine, to be led by Rabbi Marc Gopin and Aziz Abu Sarah!
The tour will take place between October 27th and November 5th.
This trip will be unique in that participants will have the opportunity not
only to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to participate
in local peace initiatives. 

The tour is being hosted by George Mason University’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and
Conflict Resolution, Sulha Peace Project, and Al-Tariq (the Palestinian Institute for Devolpment and Democracy).

For More information “Click Here”