\u201cThose who love peace must organize as effectively as those who love war.\u201d Martin Luther King.\n<\/p>\n
Sounds easy, right?\n<\/p>\n
Well, I felt like I was going out of my mind last Thursday, at the conference for peace, held in the Tel Aviv Expo.\n<\/p>\n
I was honored to be asked by The Israeli-Palestinian Voice of Peace to interview as many important Palestinian and Israeli people at the conference as I could, from heads of charities, organisations, alliances, to film directors, writers, politicians and singers. They gave me a list of desired people, and we also simply mixed with the crowds, asking people if they had time to answer a few questions in front of the camera.\n<\/p>\n
Our first question was how people imagined Israel and Palestine could be in ten years\u2019 time, and of course, the answer always involved the word \u201cpeace.\u201d The second question was how they defined \u201cpeace.\u201d Up to this point, things remained fairly simple. And then came the crunch. The questions that followed were focused on the \u201chow,\u201d how to get peace, and how to keep it. And political questions too.\n<\/p>\n
The answers were as different as the people we interviewed. Everyone had their own ideas: a two-state solution, a one-state solution, Abu Mazen coming to talk to the Knesset, Abu Mazen absolutely NOT coming to talk to the Knesset, no need for an army in a few years\u2019 time, a constant and vigilant army forever\u2026\n<\/p>\n
Although I loved every second of being the interviewer of all these inspirational people, my head ached even more than it had walking around the \u201cpeace\u201d stands in the morning. How many had there been? Over 50? There is no official number of how many peace organisations there are in Israel, but it\u2019s anywhere between 100 to 200 plus\u2026 all of them with their independent names, their independent views, and their different groups of supporters. How many WhatsApp groups, how much money, how many different T-shirts and posters and fliers?\n<\/p>\n
These last few years have been the first in my life that I have seen the response to war as T-shirts with different slogans.\n<\/p>\n
Another war starts? Get a T-shirt!\n<\/p>\n
I alone must have over 20 peace group T-shirts.\n<\/p>\n
Is this being organized? What a joke!\n<\/p>\n
If I want to start a war, I get my troops together and I invade someone else\u2019s territory. Pretty simple, especially if my name is Netanyahu, and the IDF has to answer to me.\n<\/p>\n
But if I want peace, what do I do? Who do I go to? And where?\n<\/p>\n
Yet there is one overriding positive note in all this disharmony. The peace conference in Tel Aviv was organised by \u201cIt\u2019s Time,\u201d\u00a0an organisation specifically created to bring all the peace groups together. Under the same roof. And to deliver, essentially, the same message.\n<\/p>\n
We need peace. Now.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Time.\n<\/p>\n
So my message to every peace organisation out there, and every supporter of every peace organisation, is this: don\u2019t bother yourself with exactly what peace you are searching for, don\u2019t even bother yourself with how we are going to be able to sustain the peace, and please! Don\u2019t buy another T-shirt!\n<\/p>\n
Just think about this: peace is the opposite of war.\n<\/p>\n
Netanyahu has brought this country more wars, slaughter and bloodshed than any other leader before him.\n<\/p>\n
And so the answer is simple. If you want peace, make sure you vote him out. All of you \u2013 every single person who has the right to vote here.\n<\/p>\n
Peace needs every single one of you.\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Time.\n\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\tShoshana Lavan is a published author, high school teacher of English Literature and Language, teacher of English as a foreign language and most importantly, a very proud mother of her gorgeous little boy. She is a peace activist and a committed vegan. A keen runner, she adores the mountains and glorious sunshine in this wonderful country.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThose who love peace must organize as effectively as those who love war.\u201d Martin Luther King. Sounds easy,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[41,10679,423,37,48,30030,17077,2253],"class_list":{"0":"post-98605","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-democracy-in-israel","10":"tag-idf","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","13":"tag-nonprofit-organizations","14":"tag-palestinian-authority","15":"tag-palestinians"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116521579452465296","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}