Peacecamp 2007

SPEECH BY
MR. AMOS OZ


Prince of Asturias Award for Letters


Oviedo, 26th October 2007

The Woman in the Window

If you buy a ticket and travel to another country, you are likely to see the monuments, the palaces and the squares, the museums and the landscapes and the historical sites. If you are lucky, you may have a chance to conduct some conversations with the local people. Then you will travel back home, carrying a bunch of photographs or postcards.

But if you read a novel, you actually obtain a ticket into the most intimate recesses of another country and of another people. Reading a foreign novel is an invitation to visit other people´s homes and other country´s private quarters.

If you are a mere tourist, you might stand on a street and look up at an old house, in the old part of town, and see a woman staring out of her window. Then you will walk on.

But if you are a reader, you can see that woman staring out of her window, but you are there with her, inside her room, inside her head.

As you read a foreign novel, you are actually invited into other people´s living rooms, into their nurseries and studies, into their bedrooms. You are invited into their secret sorrows, into their family joys, into their dreams.

Which is why I believe in literature as a bridge between peoples. I believe curiosity can be a moral quality. I believe imagining the other can be an antidote to fanaticism. Imagining the other will make you not only a better businessperson or a better love, but even a better person.

Part of the tragedy between Jew and Arab is the inability of so many of us, Jews and Arabs, to imagine each other. Really imagine each other: the loves, the terrible fears, the anger, the passion. There is too much hostility between us, too little curiosity.

Jews and Arabs have something essential in common: they have both been handled, coarsely and brutally, by Europe´s violent hand in the past. The Arabs - through imperialism, colonialism, exploitation and humiliations. The Jews - through discrimination, persecution, expulsion, and ultimately mass murder on an unprecedented scale.

One would have thought that two victims, and especially two victims of the same oppressor, develop between them a sense of solidarity. Alas, this is not the way it works, neither in novels, nor in life. Some of the worst conflicts are indeed between two victims of the same oppressor; two children of the same violent parent don´t necessarily like each other. Often they see in each other the image of the abusive parent.

Which is exactly the case between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. While the Arabs regards Israelis as latter-day crusaders, an extension of the white, colonizing Europe, many Israelis, for their part, regards the Arabs as the new incarnation of our past oppressors, pogrom makers and Nazis.

This situation charges Europe with a particular responsibility for the solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict: instead of wagging their fingers at either side, Europeans should extend empathy, understanding and help to both sides. You no longer have to choose between being pro-Israel and being pro-Palestine. You have to be pro-Peace.

The woman in the window might be a Palestinian woman in Nablus. She might be a Jewish Israeli woman in Tel-Aviv. If you want to help make peace between these two women in the two windows, you had better read more about them. Read novels, dear friends. They will tell you much.

It is even time for each of these women to read about each other. To learn, at last, what makes the other woman in the window frightened, angry, or hopeful.

I have not suggested to you tonight that reading novels can change the world. I did suggest, and I do believe, that reading novels is one of the best possible ways to understand that all the women, in all the windows, are at the end of the day, in urgent need of peace.

I wish to thank the jury of the prize of the Prince of Asturias for granting me this magnificent award. Thank you, and Shalom to you all.

watch both of them!!!!!!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=I5tDDkvXSI8

here is another one, watch this one too.... it has a lot of differences with the first one:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WV6K08RFRQs

hope you'll enjoy them
miss you all
kisses!!!!!
Segev

27.Aug 07
Finnland/Nahost/Israel/Palästina/Kinder/Jugend/Frieden/Hintergrund Jugendliche aus Israel und Palästina arbeiten Friedensplan aus
Utl.: "Kinderparlament des friedlichen Jerusalem" tagt im finnischen Porvoo - Im vierten Anlauf gelang die Konstitution Helsinki (APA) - Nach mehreren gescheiterten Anläufen ist am Montag das "Kinderparlament des friedlichen Jerusalem" (Children's Parliament of Peaceful Jerusalem) im finnischen Porvoo eröffnet worden. Je sechs Jugendliche aus Israel und Palästina, allesamt um die 16 Jahre alt und zur Hälfte junge Männer und Frauen, sollen bis Mitte der Woche ihre Ideen für einen alternativen Friedensplan im Nahen Osten formulieren.
Der Aktionsplan für den Frieden, wie ihn die Veranstalter unter der Leitung des Finnen Jyrki Arolinna nennen, soll dem israelischen Präsidenten Shimon Peres, dem palästinensischen Präsidenten Mahmoud Abbas und UNO-Generalsekretär Ban Ki Moon übermittelt werden. Das bereits seit längerem geplante "Kinderparlament des friedlichen Jerusalem" musste zuvor insgesamt drei Mal abgesagt werden. Gründe für den Aufschub waren nach Angaben der Organisatoren jeweils die aktuelle Lage in Nahost sowie verschiedene schulbehördliche Hindernisse beiderseits. "Jetzt scheint die Situation günstiger, weil die Behörden sowohl in Israel als auch in Palästina die Bedeutung unseres Anliegens erkannt haben", so Arolinna.
Das Projekt wird von der israelischen Botschaft in Helsinki, dem finnischen Außenministerium und einigen privaten Firmen und Einzelpersonen sowohl finanziell als auch ideell unterstützt. Der Geschäftsmann Arolinna gründete schon in den 1990er Jahren das Weltkinderparlament - Children's United Parliament of the World (CUPW), das sich 1999 zum ersten Mal konstituierte. (S E R V I C E : http://www.childrensstate.net/ ) (Schluss) sta/er APA0169 2007-08-27/11:00
271100 Aug 07
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Press Release 25.7.2007

Children's Parliament of Peaceful Jerusalem Will Finally Be Established in Finland
On August, 2007 a big step towards peace will take place in Finland when the Children's Parliament of Peaceful Jerusalem will be established in Porvoo. The gole of this children's parliament is to provide a more responsible role for young people in creating a peaceful coexistence in the Middle East. Both Israel and Palestine authorities will appoint six children aged 13...16 to participate in the meeting.

Children's Parliament of Peaceful Jerusalem is organised by Children's United Parliament of the World that was establised more than ten years ago in Finland. Now in the Children's United Parliament of the World, CUPW is members from more than 50 countries. Every National Children's Parliament is allowed to name 4 children as a candidate in CUPW. All parliament meetigs and declarations are done solely by the children.

Children's Parliament of the World is the voice of the children and young people. CUPW has gained international publicity and children's message has been heard in many important forums for example in the United Nation's World Summit on the Information Society that was held in Tunisia year 2005.

The first Children's Parliament of Peaceful Jerusal will happen on 26.-30.8.2007 and it will be lead by finnish children.

More information from

Jyrki Arolinna

Tel. +358-46-8100 230

Email: president [a] childrensstate.net

www.childrensstate.net

Real Madrid schlägt das Peres-Friedensteam

Zwei Tage nach dem Gewinn der spanischen Meisterschaft ist die Fußballmannschaft Real Madrid in Israel eingetroffen, um gegen einen Gegner der besonderen Art zu spielen: ein „Friedensteam“, das das „Peres Center for Peace“ aus israelischen und palästinensischen Profifußballern zusammengesetzt hat.

Das „Friedensmatch“, das live im israelischen Fernsehen übertragen wurde, erwies sich freilich rasch als ein einseitiges. Die israelischen und palästinensischen Spieler waren für den spanischen Meister kein ebenbürtiger Gegner und unterlagen in der Folge mit 0:8 Toren; dies, obwohl Topspieler David Beckham sein Team nicht nach Israel begleitet hatte.

Im symbolischen Bereich hat die Mannschaft des von dem frisch gewählten israelischen Präsidenten gegründeten Friedenszentrums jedoch keineswegs verloren. Das Spiel zog immerhin 30 000 Fans ins Stadion, und auch zahlreiche Prominente gaben sich die Ehre. Die Einkünfte kommen israelisch-palästinensischen Jugendprojekten zugute.

(Yedioth Ahronot, 19.06.07)

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Real Madrid beats the Peres peaceteam

Two days after its victory in the Spanish League the Real Madrid team came to Israel to play against a very special team there: a Israeli-Palestinian peaceteam which had been put together by the "Peres Center for Peace".

The game which could be watched on Israeli Television turned out quite one-sided - with a 8:0 victory of the Spanish team over the much weaker Israeli-Palestinian team, even though top-player David Beckham had not joined his team for this game in Israel.


But on a symbolic level, the mixed Israeli-Palestinian was not a losing team: over 30,000 fans, including some prominent people came to watch this game. The money earned by this event will go to Israeli-Palestinian youth projects.
(Yedioth Ahronot, 19.06.07)
(Translation: Evelyn)