Brit Tzedek Annual Conference Promotes Israeli-Palestinian Peace

One of the more effective American Jewish organizations working to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace is Brit Tzedek V’Shalom.

Based in Chicago, it has forty chapters throughout the country which focus on grassroots organizing within local communities to promote dialogue and peace. Brit Tzedek also engages in national campaigns to lobby Congress and the White House to engage seriously in the search for peace.

Brit Tzedek will host its annual conference in New York City this month. I was looking at the roster of speakers and for someone who’s been engaged in Mideast peace work for decades, the list is impressive and I regret I won’t be there. It will be highlighted by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo architects of the Geneva Accord, which provides a model for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Knesset member Colette Avital, who has been active in promoting the Geneva Accord and was Israel former consul general in New York will also speak along with Stephen P. Cohen, founder and Director of the Institute for Middle East Peace and J.J. Goldberg, Editor of The Forward. Other prominent Mideast analysts and activists appearing will be:

Aaron Miller, Seeds for Peace president
Susannah Heschel, Tikkun Community co-chair
Bernard Avishai, author
Eric Alterman, MSNBC
Marcia Freedman, Brit Tzedek president
Ron Young, U.S. National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Mideast Peace
Rabbi Balfour Brickner

The conference will take place February19-21, 2005 at Temple Israel, 112 E. 75th Street (Between Park and Lexington)

I’d like to encourage bloggers to ‘blog the conference’ so that those of us who cannot attend can get a sense of what’s happening there as it happens. If you blog and can attend, please consider informing the world about this important event.