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Achinoam ‘Proud to add my voice to OneVoice’

Following OneVoice Israel’s activities in Tel Aviv at Vice President Joe Biden’s public address singer AchiNoam says that she is proud to add her voice to OneVoice.

http://noa-the-singer.blogspot.com/2010/03/hello-all.html

Biden Responds to OneVoice Israel

With the country watching, OneVoice Israel gives voice to the moderate majority

 

New York, March 11, 2010—OneVoice Israel staff and youth leaders urged hundreds of people attending United States Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at Tel Aviv University on Thursday not to let the extremists on either side seize the peace process.

 

Eight youth leaders joined OneVoice Israel Interim Director Tal Harris and Coordinator Guy Lupo in distributing nearly 1,000 flyers to attendees in support of the renewal of talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

 

“The agenda in Israel is being hijacked by extremists who work to undermine our government's strategy for peace,” said Harris. “Today, we witnessed 700 students at Tel Aviv University eager for change, who disagree with the appeasement of extreme settlers.”

 

OneVoice Israel’s staff and youth leaders wearing the movement’s t-shirts stood out from the audience during Biden’s talk. Noticing their presence, the vice president gave the first question to our youth leader Danny Shaket.

 

Shaket asked Biden for his opinion on what the U.S. administration, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian Authority would need from the moderate majority in order to reach an agreement.

 

“The United States cannot want peace more than the Palestinians want it or more than the Israelis want it,” Biden said. “You have got to get to the point where the leaders are actually able to sit and hopefully what we can do in these proximity talks, being available to both parties, we can be a bridging mechanism.”

 

Throughout his speech, Biden voiced his commitment to end the conflict through a two-state solution.

 

“For Israel, then, this is about both preserving your identity and achieving the security you deserve, lasting security,” Biden said. “For Palestinians, statehood will not just fulfill a legitimate and long-sought aspiration common to all peoples; it will restore the fundamental dignity and self-respect that their current predicament denies them.”

 

Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 Jewish homes in the Ramat Shlomo settlement in Arab East Jerusalem marred Biden’s visit and was condemned by the United States.

 

“[T]hat decision, in my view, undermined the trust required for productive negotiations,” Biden said on Thursday. “I -- and at the request of President Obama condemned it immediately and unequivocally.”

 

The vice president’s comments were met with applause from the mainly Israeli audience, many of whom were students at Tel Aviv University.

 

“It's unfortunate and dangerous that the Israeli government’s actions are not in sync with their two-state strategy,” said Tal Harris of OneVoice Israel.

 

Click here to listen to Danny Shaket’s question and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s response, starting at 37 minutes and 35 seconds.

 

Click here to listen to BBC World Service interview with OneVoice Israel Interim Director Tal Harris and youth leader Daniella Shlomo.

 

Interim Director Tal Harris engages crowd before U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's talk at Tel Aviv University.

 

Mika Vies handing out OneVoice Israel flyers outside Tel Aviv University.

 

OVE unites Israeli and Palestinian delegations in historic EU meeting

London, March 5, 2010—OneVoice presented to a historic joint meeting of the delegation for relations with Israel and the delegation for relations with Palestine at a special session of the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday.

 

About 150 people attended the meeting, held in the iconic European Parliament building and chaired jointly by Proinsias De Rossa, head of the Palestinian delegation, and Sari Essayah, member of the Israeli delegation. It was simultaneously translated into four languages, allowing observers from across the continent to hear OneVoice’s message of pragmatic engagement.

 

 

OneVoice Europe Executive Director John Lyndon was joined by Joel Braunold, media and political outreach coordinator, Palestinian youth leader Rinal Sader, and Israeli youth leader Dekel Canetti. Lyndon opened up the meeting, explaining the movement’s ethos and core philosophy, and running through some of OneVoice’s programmes and landmark achievements.

 

“Listening to these young people, I am really encouraged,” said Kyriacos Triantaphyllides, vice chair of the Palestinian delegation. “They are using tools that are really important, like their town hall meetings, which bring people together.”

 

Sader spoke passionately about the struggles she and her family experienced under Israeli occupation and the reasons behind her commitment to OneVoice. Canetti talked about some of the events in his life that led him to join the movement and explained the complexities within Israeli society, which OneVoice uniquely addresses.

 

“It’s really heart-warming to see three young people working daily trying to overcome the taboos that surround this conflict,” said De Rossa. “Their methodology is quite extraordinary and it has been proven to have worked elsewhere.”

 

Both delegations had been at loggerheads for some time, unable to jointly participate in parliamentary sessions discussing the conflict. OneVoice’s presence provided a mechanism by which representatives from both delegations could sit side-by-side, hearing about the genuine efforts of OneVoice activists from both sides of the Green Line to permanently end this toxic conflict.

 

Building consensus between parties in opposition to one another is OneVoice’s modus operandi, and the day’s meeting proved no different.

 

Members of both delegations asked the OneVoice staff and youth leaders present questions about the nature of the conflict and the current lack of trust between both parties.

 

“Youth from both sides are showing us a way that politicians often can’t see,” said Ioannis Kasoulides, vice president of the European People’s Party (EPP) and former foreign minister of Cyprus. “Let me congratulate OneVoice from the bottom of my heart.”

 

The meeting was preceded by a special session of the Middle East Working Group, where MEPs quizzed Danny Taub, the chief legal officer of the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

 

Taub urged members to stay for the OneVoice meeting. “I encourage the European Union to support the excellent organization OneVoice,” he said. “It is vital that members stay to hear how they are working with moderates on both sides to end the conflict.”

 

Chair of the Middle East Working Group and former European Union President Hans Pottering also lent his support to the movement. “I encourage everyone interested in the Middle East to stay and hear the excellent presentation by OneVoice Europe,” he said.

 

The meeting marked a milestone in the progress OneVoice has been making in Europe, continuing in the rich tradition the movement has had in connecting the wishes and feelings of the grassroots to leaders in the corridors of power across the globe.

 

From meetings at the British Houses of Parliament, to the US Senate, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, OneVoice has consistently engaged and challenged those international leaders who can hasten the pace of progress in the region, bringing grassroots representatives from the region to be heard at the highest levels.

Darya Shaikh to Receive McGill University's Alumni Award

This May, Darya Shaikh will receive the James G. Wright award from McGill University's Alumni Association in Montreal, Canada. As COO and Executive Director of OneVoice, Shaikh is being recognized for her exemplary commitment to voluntary service and making a substantial difference in the communities she works in. She is also being recognized for her involvement with Hashomer Hatzair, War & Peace Foundation, and Through Each Other's Eyes Project.

Shaikh will be the third recipient of this prestigious award, created in 2008, and will sit among other McGill alumni, such as William Shatner, at the McGill Alumni Association Honors and Awards Banquet.

 

OneVoice Israel Teams up with Student Designers

OneVoice Israel Teams up with Student Designers

OneVoice Israel teamed up with the ACC (Academy of Commercial Communications) - Tirtza Grannot to produce a series of posters and videos highlighting the need for a two state solution. 

With the political process still in deadlock it is vital to keep the hopes and minds of Israelis fixed on the need to get to a Two State Solution and not accept the status quo.

The Academy set their final year students the task of creating the posters and clips as their final year project and OneVoice Israel are using the images on a rolling tour hoping to use the different messages to create a sense of urgency within Israel. 

Below is a sneak preview of some of the exhibit with the Artists names. The translations were done by OneVoice Israel. 

Deisgned by 

Yehuda Ari Borvechov "Created and produced by copyrighting course graduates, ACC (Academy of Commercial Communications) - Tirtza Grannot"

Designed by Or Shemionv "Created and produced by copyrighting course graduates, ACC (Academy of Commercial Communications) - Tirtza Grannot"  

Designed by Nir Shlomi "Created and produced by copyrighting course graduates, ACC (Academy of Commercial Communications) - Tirtza Grannot"

  

Designed by Natalie Derhen "Created and produced by copyrighting course graduates, ACC (Academy of Commercial Communications) - Tirtza Grannot"

OneVoice Israel speaks to the extremes of Israeli society

By Tal Harris

On January 22, OneVoice Israel brought 15 of its members from Tel Aviv to meet with 30 settlers in the illegal settlement of Negohot, situated in the hills south of Hebron. Organizations in Israel seeking an end to the conflict tend to operate in the Tel Aviv area alone, but the OneVoice Movement prides itself on going to the hardest to reach communities and discussing with them the toughest issues.

The idea was conceived on November 7, 2009, at the Memorial Day Rally in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, held to commemorate the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. I was handing out OneVoice Israel leaflets when I was approached by a young girl named Hodaya, who asked me to stop. She told me that I and other nongovernmental organizations and political parties carrying out similar activities were politicizing the event, alienating large segments of Israeli society.

Hodaya came from Susya settlement in the southern part of Mount Hebron, an area holding some of the most remote and isolated settlements.

I asked Hodaya where she thought it would be legitimate to discuss politics if not during Rabin's Memorial Day event. She told me anywhere else would be better than here, to which I replied that my job was to conduct political discussions addressing all core issues of the conflict, and that I didn't consider any Israeli – settler or not – to be exempt from the responsibility of finding a solution to the conflict. She surprised me by agreeing with me, and offered to connect me to people in her settlement.

It is one thing, I thought, to conduct a town hall meeting in Ariel in the midst of the moratorium on settlement construction and expansion. Ariel and similar settlement blocks may well remain intact in exchange for similar lands in any future agreement with the Palestinians (at least, that’s what most Israelis assume). It’s a completely different challenge, and a far more difficult one, to address settlers who’ve built a life in a disputed area and tell them that being a Zionist and a patriot gives them no choice but to leave this place.

I ended up finalizing details with Rabbi Nehemiah from the neighboring Negohot settlement. The rabbi believed that the truth must come out through pluralism and open debate, and welcomed OneVoice Israel. I was surprised by his openness, and accepted his offer after making sure he understood what he was getting his settlement into.

Fifteen OneVoice Israel student activists with a wide range of political views joined us from Tel Aviv.

The rabbi gave us a historical tour of the settlement before we settled into a nearly three-hour long political discussion.

Negohot is a beautiful place with an amazing view that, on a good day, encompasses the industrial chimneys of Hadera to the north and the outskirts of Be’er Sheba to the south. The closest town to Negohot is the Arab village of Beit Awa. In peaceful times, the settlers paid the Arabs to harvest their fields for them.

The Oslo Accords stipulated that Negohot should be evacuated, but the rabbi takes pride in the fact that the settlers prevented this measure from being implemented and thus forced the Israeli Defense Forces to continue monitoring the entire area. Negohot is situated on an old Roman road and life in the settlement used to be vibrant because of its location on the road to Jerusalem. There are about 20 soldiers guarding 42 families who make their living mostly from agriculture and even high-tech industries.

“[Negohot residents are] extremely rooted to the ground and have a profound connection to it,” explained Rabbi Nehemiah.

The settlers there distinguish their settlement from the “illegal outposts” because they say they’ve gone through a (partial) political process of authorization. Since the Sason Report, Negohot has not received direct government funding. A 120 square meter house in Negohot costs 700,000 NIS ($187,000), but due to the current moratorium on settlement construction and expansion, any purchase made today would be frozen.

The main focus of our visit to Negohot was to find out what can be done about the four million Palestinians living in what some refer to as Greater Israel. This demographic fact is threatening to destroy the Jewish character of Israel unless there is a division of the land and the creation of two sovereign states.

Our conversation with 30 of Negohot’s settlers set history aside and focused on the politics of the situation. Any future agreement with the Palestinians would certainly demand the dismantlement of their homes. It should be noted that all Negohot settlers identify themselves as Zionists.

The first person to speak started by challenging how Israel could remain a democratic and Jewish state if it controlled all the territories occupied in 1967. In order to do both, Israel would have to grant millions of Palestinians voting rights, which would end the Jewish majority in the state of Israel. Another took the opposite stance, arguing that the transfer of the Arab population should be the only option.

Maor, a settler from Negohot, agreed and stated that since he was banished from the Gaza Strip (Gush Katif settlement), he believed anyone can be banished and now it was just a matter of who had a right to this land and who didn't.

The settlers presented a wide variety of opinions and possible solutions. Zurit asserted that she had no problem living side by side with Palestinians. She'd even done so in the Gaza Strip, which implied that co-existence was possible. Her fellow settler, Efram, claimed that any extreme solution like banishing people on a large scale should be excluded from the discourse.

Nehemiah objected to the OneVoice theme of a moderate majority that wishes to live in peace and quiet. “That means we can all just move to Europe or some other quiet place,” he said. “Having a Jewish state means being in Israel.”

He suggested solutions other than a transfer, such as encouraging more Jews to make Aliyah (immigration of Jews into Israel) and promoting more births in Israel.

I explained to the participants that politics was all about compromising. A Jewish state cannot be something total and extreme; otherwise, it won't be democratic anymore. It had to be somewhat Jewish, and it must ensure that we, as Jews, were safe, independent and can carry our tradition on a national level, even if the land was smaller.

Ethan from Tel Aviv added his opinion that, “the pragmatic consideration of OneVoice means that the value of life in a fairly democratic and Jewish state is favored instead of any venture that tries to create the impossible, and keep it democratic, Jewish and without clearly defined borders.”

After three hours of discussion, it was time to wrap up the debate.

I’d been surprised by the diverse range of opinions of a group of settlers who live in one of the most remote and controversial outposts in the West Bank. It showed me that even amongst the settler movement there were those who were open to debate and pragmatic arguments.

Our event in Negohot proved an important forum for people to be engaged in the real challenges of what a two state solution means and the compromises that it may involve.

Tal Harris started as a youth leader with the OneVoice Movement and became the coordinator of its town hall meetings in Israel.

  

A Walk through Reality - Askar Refugee Camp

By Dalia Labadi

Walking down the street of a refugee camp is a trip that can rupture your heart. Each house holds a story within, a story that is carried through generations, a story that tells of an old life that our ancestors lived and a new life that the younger generation is fighting to achieve.

I was sitting in the car with my colleagues when we reached an area with ugly buildings, dirty streets due to sewage and broken water pipes, and narrow passages only the width of one car. Welcome to Askar refugee camp!

The camp, established in 1950, lies outside the West Bank city of Nablus and houses 15,887 refugees in a tightly packed area, according to UNRWA. More than 44 percent live in poverty.

I’d been to refugee camps before to visit family friends, but never in my role as town hall meeting coordinator for OneVoice Palestine. It was a vastly different experience entering as an outsider giving a talk about the hard issues of the conflict, many of which are considered taboo in Palestinian society and especially among refugees.

People were waiting for us at the front door of the hall where we were holding out event to help us carry equipment. Everyone was welcoming. Despite this positive energy from the crowd, I couldn’t help but feel disturbed and filled with burning emotions, as I witnessed the miserable conditions residents of Askar were living under.

Sitting aside and watching one of OneVoice Palestine’s youth leaders conduct a session on border issues, I carefully observed the audience. At that moment, I felt that I was able to see through their eyes their stories, misery, questions, and skepticism.

The residents of Askar refugee camp know that the only way to end the occupation and achieve a permanent peace with Israel is by adopting the two-state solution. But, they find it hard to accept because they’d have to abandon their ideals and retire the image of the map of Palestine they knew their whole lives.

The session was very difficult to conduct, but its rewards greater than our other events. The audience was honest and expressed themselves clearly. Our team felt comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts about the future of Palestine.

In such an open forum for dialogue, we were able to sense the confusion the refugees live in. They don’t know how to get out of their quagmire while preserving the needs and wants. They are full of hope and expectation, but it’s a constant struggle in the face of their daily lives.

Discussing taboo topics with them yields complicated response and conflicting ideas. You can sense the internal battle each is going through in trying to balance the need for pragmatism with holding on to cherished ideals. Despite this, I can say with confidence that I walked away that day convinced of their will to end the conflict through non-violent actions.

At the end of a long two-hour discussion, I stood by the entrance, wondering how can a nation that has been under occupation for more than four decades, facing incursions, assassinations, arrests, and curfews have such a big heart and willingness to change the current situation.

It challenging, intellectually and emotionally, to persevere in the work we do. It’s easy sometimes to feel like I’m running on empty, but meeting people like the Askar refugees gives me all the fuel I need to deal head-on with the different kinds of obstacles we face daily.

Every meeting and activity we organize in such places as Askar refugee camp renews my commitment to end the occupation and the conflict in order to establish a sustainable Palestinian state for the people of Palestine.

Dalia Labadi is the Program Coordinator of OneVoice Palestine's Town Hall Meetings.

  

OneVoice Palestine starts the New Year engaging refugees

As the New Year begins, OneVoice Palestine has picked up where it left off- saying what needs to be said in places where ordinary people’s voices are often unheard.

OVP visited Asskar Al jdeed refugee camp in Nablus to speak to people about the most difficult taboo issues surrounding the final status topic of borders. OVP partnered with Al-Safeer and attracted young adults to come and speak about an issue that lies at the heart of Palestinian dreams and aspirations.

The event was led by Mohammed Asseda, one of OneVoice Palestine’s Nablus-based Youth Leaders, who was initially confronted with a disillusioned and suspicious audience. Most participants walked into the room feeling that there was no partner for peace on the other side, and questioned whether a two state solution really was a viable option.

Mohammed took his time and walked through the practical realties of the situation, answering each of the member’s questions in turn, and giving them a full chance to air their worries and fears. Over the course of two hours the mood in the room moved from pessimistic apathy to realistic urgency, and an understanding developed of the need to move towards a two state solution immediately- as every day the conflict persists, the Palestinians suffer further under the hardships of occupation.

Every person in attendance signed up for more information about OneVoice, and they were eager to have more town hall meeting opportunities, so they could hear more about the other taboo issues, have their say, and build consensus around a common approach.

This is just one of the town hall meetings that OVP have been running up and down Palestine, engaging the grassroots who are living under occupation and continuing to build momentum for the establishment of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, living in peace alongside Israel.

OneVoice Palestinian Takes On The Competition

Over the past few months OVP has faced many tough crowds and challenges while saying what needs to be said and building up the grassroots. But Ayyoub Suwwan youth council member of OneVoice Palestine decided to step up the challenge and enter OVP into the national Volleyball competition held in Qalqilia in December.

While OVP trains its Youth Leaders to talk the talk, they also excelled at set, smash and serve finishing in the top five teams out of forty with teams from around Palestine.

Emblazoned with OneVoice Palestine Logo’s the team competed with hundreds of youth watching the tournament. Congratulations to the OVP volleyball team!

 

Keith Ferrazzi talks to Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders

The Jerusalem Post covered Keith Ferrazzi’s recent visit with Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders of the OneVoice Movement.

Link to video