UNESCO awards peace hero defenders – Dr. Anarkali Kaur Honaryar and Khaled Abu Awwad

United Nations: An Afghan women’s rights campaigner and a Palestinian peace activist are the winners of a United Nations award recognizing their outstanding contributions to the promotion of tolerance and non-violence, the UN announced.

Anarkali Honaryar, defender of the rights of women and minority groups in Afghanistan , and Palestinian activist Khaled Abu Awwad will receive the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence, and will be honoured in a special ceremony on 9 December at the agency’s headquarters in Paris .

Ms. Honaryar will be honoured for her work helping women who suffer from domestic abuse, forced marriages and gender discrimination and for her commitment to promote the ideals of human dignity, human rights, mutual respect and tolerance in her country. Last year she became the first non-Muslim woman to become a member of the Afghan Parliament’s lower house.

Mr. Awwad will receive recognition for his work as a peace activist and leader in the reconciliation process between Palestinians and Israelis. He heads the Palestinian Branch of the Parents Circle Families Forum, an organization of Palestinians and Israelis who have lost immediate family members in the conflict, and is one of the founders of AI-Tariq (The Way), a Palestinian institution for development and democracy.

According to a news release issued by UNESCO, the two laureates, who were selected by an international jury, will receive a $100,000 award, to be split equally between them.

The UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize is awarded every two years and was created in 1995 on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, with the support of the Indian writer and diplomat Madanjeet Singh.

Source:
http://womennewsnetwork.net/2011/11/17/unesco-awards-peace-hero-defenders/

362.The Man in Blue – Two Claims, One Country

The recent conflict in the Gaza made me think about approaches that might  lead to a better understanding of the position of the ‘others’. I decided to have a look at the arguments of the hard-liners on both sides.

The hard-line Israeli argument runs like this : This land is ours, it was given to Abraham (Ibrahim) and this was reaffirmed in the time when the Jews under Moses (Musa) returned to Israel after their stay in Egypt. Not only did God reaffirm that Israel was the land of the Jews, but also encouraged the Jews to chase out and even kill the non-Jews living there.

The same applies to the present situation, the Jews have returned to their land and the Palestinians (hard-line Israelis do not recognise a Palestinian identity) either can live in the Jewish state of Israel, which in the hard-line view includes the West Bank and Gaza, or if they are not willing to accept this they should move to one of the thirty odd Arab states.

The Palestinians simply say that this was their land before the United Nations gave it away to the Zionists/Jews/Israelis and they want it back. Just having the Gaza and the West Bank is not good enough because all of Palestine belongs to the Palestinians.

Hard-line Israelis want to chuck out all Palestinians from all of Israel, Hard-line Palestinians want to chuck out all Israelis from all of Palestine.

Most Palestinians insist on the right of all Palestinians living in exile to return to Palestine, many Palestinians think that all Palestinians should have the right to return to those parts of Palestine/Israel where they originally came from. Most Israelis insist on the right of return of all Jews to Israel, for hard-line Israelis that includes Judah and Samaria, historical regions of Israel that roughly coincide with the present West Bank.

For the hard-line Israelis the present Israel is not big enough to allow all Jews outside Israel to return, which is the practical reason why they claim Judah, Samaria and Gaza. For the Palestinians, hard-line or otherwise, the West Bank and Gaza, even without Jewish settlements and with the parts of Jerusalem that are part of the West Bank given back to them, will not accommodate the return of Palestinians living in exile.  

The arguments on both sides are mostly secular, and make sense within the frame of mind of each party in the conflict. If each party could bring itself to recognise the validity of the argument of the other side, we might end up with peace in the Middle East. This kind of conflicting claims on the same area of land is not unique. Northern Ireland is another example and if we do not strictly follow Guru’s teachings of seeing God in all, we might end up with a similar conflict in a future Khalistan.