Join me and Brit Tzedek to re-engage the Bush Administration in robust diplomacy involving the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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You may email Brit Tzedek with a link to your blog or web page and they will send you the code for the following animated advertisement for their recently launched “Let’s Talk!” campaign:
Let’s appeal to the angels of the Bush Administration’s better nature to engage in an energetic effort to compel Israelis and Palestinians to enter final status talks. Let’s make a push to resolve the endless war and bloodshed. Let’s make a positive contribution to peace.
Talk is good. Talk is necessary. But without a proper framework, without a common and accepted format in which to carry the words, nothing is likely to come of it. The drive necessary to translate talk into effective action must have a vehicle of some description to provide both direction and destination.
Without this, these ‘talks’, like those in the past, will be going nowhere.
The phrase ‘ spitting into the wind’ somehow comes to mind.
JY
John: I know you have a good heart and the best of intentions. But I think you’re being rather uncharitable. The Let’s Talk campaign is deliberately worded as it is in order to draw the most amount of interest on the part of those who read about it. But I assure you that Brit Tzedek has a very clear political agenda that is far from ‘spitting in the wind.’
Richard,
I certainly hope I wasn’t being uncharitable. If I gave that impression, I’m sorry. It’s probably because I was choosing my words in too much of a hurry. I was trying to make a general point insofar as all such talk, in isolation, tends to get drowned out by events. Have you ever noticed how, whenever a peace process or discussion starts getting close to its objective, violence of one sort or another just happens along and lets all the air out? Again and again. Violence won’t just go away through mere talking. Ideally, you have to suborn the violence, enlist its energies, redirect it, take the fact of its existence into account. You need a proper framework, a fixed format with which to proceed. Once this is done, ‘talk’ can easily become the only game in town.
If all or much of the violence could be somehow magically subtracted from both sides of the equation, then ‘Talking’ would certainly command a much bigger and a more attentive audience.
Yes, talking is vital for peace negotiations and for any lasting settlement between antagonists of whatever description. But when those doing the talking find their words in direct competition with the sound of gunfire, explosions and the cries of the injured and dying, it’s very often hard to hear those words. Even harder to act on them.
This equation has to be balanced out first. Only that will allow ‘talking’ to really come into its own. That balancing act is always the tricky bit. But then you already know my views on that subject.
……………….. Israel-U.S.-Palestinian Talks a ‘Disappointment’………………………….
JY
PS. Brit Tzedek may indeed have a very clear political agenda. Unfortunately, he’s not the only one.
I
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