The  MidEast Web is the best site I have found relating to Middle East dialog and peace education.  One of the articles featured there is "The View from Ground Zero" by Harold Evans in which the author challenges us to "expose deceptive websites."  Hatred and terrorist attacks are inspired and motivated by what the attackers believe to be true. Alas, so many supposed "facts" are not facts at all but deliberate fabrications or simply erroneous information intended to pour gasoline on the glowing embers of dormant violence. The Internet has become a breeding ground for such potentially deadly rumors -- but it can also provide the resources for setting the record straight. 

If you know of websites and chain letters that propagate false information that might inspire hatred, please, send the URL of the site to me.  If possible, add the URLs of other sites that can help provide accurate information. Of course, in addition,  don't allow such misinformation to go unchallenged. Respond, politely, with corrections. Let me offer an example:  Last October I received a forwarded mass mailing in which "Israeli Jews" were accused of running several websites meant to malign the Qur'an and Islam in general. I checked the supposedly Jewish sites and discovered that that they were part of a Campus Crusade for Christ Internet project, -- a project that targets Jews as much as Muslims.  I informed the sender and all the other recipients of the original message. 

In addition to the section dedicated to exposing inaccurate information, I hope to develop two more areas in this site -- a section dealing with true stories of friendship connecting individual members of hostile groups and dedicated to reflections by peaceloving people anywhere. I also plan to include a limited number of links to relevant documents and sites. Please, contact me with original contributions and link suggestions.

Finally, personally, I see one powerful avenue towards peace not only in the Middle East but in all the other "hot spots" on earth, and that is the courage to forgive and admit guilt, the strength to refuse to hate or retaliate in kind, no matter how great the provocation.  Revenge may be momentarily satisfactory but it simply perpetuates the endless cycle of violence begetting violence. 

Ingrid Shafer
22 June 2002
 

Building a future for all the people on earth

President Eisenhower's 1953 speech "The Chance for Peace." 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

 
Link to Dennis Kucinich's proposal for establishing a Department of Peace   https://www.kucinich.us/issues/departmentpeace.php:

"As we stand on the threshold of a new millennium, it is time to free ourselves, to jettison our illusions and fears and transform age-old challenges with new thinking. We canconceive of peace as not simply the absence of violence butthe active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity. Of peace,wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions that impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward creating understanding,compassion, and love. We can bring forth new understandings where peace, not war, becomes inevitable. Can we move from wars to end all wars to peace to end all war?"  (May 2003)

Tikkun Community & Magazine
This Jewish Renewal site is dedicated to mending, healing and transforming the world through the power of love, faith, and reason with the kind of clear vision that dares to be critical of intolerance and fanaticism BOTH to the right and the left. IN the spirit of Rabbi Michael Lerner, "Jewish Renewal seeks a revolutionary transformation of the world: away from the ethos of selfishness and materialism and toward an ethos of love and caring."

"Urgent Appeal to Stop Suicide Bombing" by Palestinian Intellectuals and Public Figures

An Oncologist Speaks Out
"Suicide bombings, murder and vilification serve only to delegitimize the cause and distance the prospect of an independent Palestinian State. A community and a people that tolerates and condones such behavior is fundamentally unworthy."

MidEast Web Gateway
The "MidEast Web was started by people active in Middle East dialog and peace education efforts.  Our goal is to weave a world-wide web of Arabs, Jews and others who want to build a new  Middle East based on coexistence and neighborly relations. Our members and staff include distinguished educators, engineers, Web designers and other professionals experienced in dialog, peace education projects and in promoting dialog and coexistence using the Internet."

Interfaith Encounter Association
"The Interfaith Encounter Association is dedicated to promoting peace in the Middle East through interfaith dialogue and cross-cultural study. We believe that, rather than being a cause of the problem, religion can and should be a source of the solution for conflicts that exist in the region and beyond."

Statement by HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan (12 September 2001)

Statement by HRH Prince Hassan of Jordan (19 September 2001)