To All:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_quote"> A voice less often heard from Israel is the peace movement working on governmental changeabout the larger questions (different from RHR work) and that is what I am forwarding, below.<br>
There is a link to the longer article appearing now in the Nation on-line and written by an an old journalism colleague of mine. HillelSchenker has been a peace activist in israel for close to 40 years and he is editor of the <a href="http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=1203" target="_blank">Palestine-Israel Journal </a>the only joint Israeli-Palestinian Journal coming out of Israel working on the peace issue.<br>
<br>So, here is an excerpt from <a href="http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090112/schenker?rel=hp_picks" target="_blank">The View from Tel Aviv</a> in the current <i>Nation</i> online by Hillel Schenker, their Tel Aviv correspondent, that I think would shed a lot of light on a voice we are not hearing from Israel. <br>
<div><div></div><div>
<div class="gmail_quote"><p>"Not all Israelis supported military action. On Saturday night, the day
the aerial bombardments began, a demonstration was organized in Tel
Aviv, just by e-mail and word of mouth, protesting the military action
and calling for an immediate cease-fire and a return to negotiations. It
drew more than l,000 participants.
</p>
<p>
On Tuesday evening, the Israeli PeaceNGO Forum (many joint Israeli-Palestinian groups), a coalition of over
seventy groups that work for peace and coexistence, met in Tel Aviv to
formulate its position--most appropriately, in the Society for a
Beautiful Israel building next to the Yarkon River.
It resolved to issue a three-point declaration:
</p>
<p>
</p><blockquote>1) to call for an immediate Israeli unilateral ceasefire,
without regard
to how Hamas reacts, in the spirit of an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/opinion/31grossman.html" target="_blank">op-ed</a> that was published in
both <i>Ha'aretz</i> and the <i>New York Times</i> by leading Israeli
author David
Grossman (whose voice carries special moral authority because his
youngest son was killed on the last, unnecessary day of the 2006 Lebanon
War);</blockquote>
<p>
</p><blockquote>2) to declare that the killing of innocent civilians, on
both sides, is
a moral crime, and to identify with the suffering of the populations in
Gaza and in the Israeli south;</blockquote>
<p>
</p><blockquote>3) to simultaneously call for a renewal of the peace
process, based upon
the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/opinion/31grossman.html" target="_blank">Arab
Peace Initiative</a>, as the only alternative.</blockquote>
<p>
An ad announcing the initiative will be published in <i>Ha'aretz</i> on
Friday,
the daily read by Israeli decision-makers, and members of the forum will
take buses to the south hoping to reach a hill that overlooks both Gaza
and Sderot, where they will issue the declaration in the presence of
local and international media representatives to give it the broadest
possible exposure--that is, if the army doesn't stop them first
because it is a closed military zone.
</p>
<p>
It was also decided that representatives of the forum will meet with the
ambassadors of the United States, Russia, the European Union, Egypt,
Jordan and Turkey to call upon them to act as facilitators to end the
violence and resume negotiations. Their counterparts in the Palestinian
PeaceNGO forum, a coalition of about forty organizations, met Wednesday
in Ramallah and will also issue a statement. Another quarter page ad on
the front page of <i>Ha'aretz</i> by the veteran Peace Now movement will
declare in bold letters "Now is the time to stop!", accompanied by a
warning to Barak, Livni and Olmert "not to repeat the mistakes of the
second Lebanon War..."
</p>
<p>
At a Thursday evening meeting of the Israeli Council for Peace
Initiatives, a forum of leading Israeli academics, security figures,
industrialists, media people and activists, it was noted that there are
times when a crisis situation shatters the inertia that affects many of
the players in a particular context, and it can even lead to major
constructive transformations and initiatives.
</p>
<p>
Thursday's targeted killing of a Hamas leader, and the increased firing
of rockets from Gaza at the southern Israeli cities of Beersheva,
Ashkelon and Ashdod, are a dangerous escalation of the hostilities.
</p>
<p>
Amid the growing cacophony of violence, a powerful counterpoint was
heard in Jerusalem Thursday evening opposite the prime minister's
residence, when a group called Another Voice from Sderot called for an
immediate cease-fire, for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Among the placards they carried were two which read "Free Israel" and
"Free Palestine."
</p>
<p>
It is to be hoped that sanity will prevail, on all sides." <br></p><p><br></p>
<ul><li><a href="https://ssl.thenation.com/sumo/DIGARTICLEARC" target="_blank"><br></a></li></ul>
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