Whether on a long road or a church stage, Aloka remains a steadfast support to the venerable monks, proving that peace is a journey shared by all beings...

Peace Dog Photo Credit: Palm Jariya

Aloka the Peace Dog 

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This morning, our faithful companion Aloka took his place right on the stage during the Peace Gathering at Legacy Church in Wytheville, VA.

 

While the venerable monks stood to share their message, Aloka sat on the ground right beside them. He looked truly dedicated to the mission. Whether on a long road or a church stage, Aloka remains a steadfast support to the venerable monks, proving that peace is a journey shared by all beings.

Photo Credit: Palm Jariya

 

May you and all beings be well, happy and at peace.

 https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122117404935164116&set=a.122097429435164116

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Aloka the Peace Dog 🐕—the loyal companion with the peace heart on his forehead. Walking the 2,300-mile Walk for Peace journey with the Venerable Monks across America. Spreading peace and loving-kindness, one paw-step at a time. 🐾  

Aloka the Peace Dog 

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The Story of Aloka - Many people often ask about Aloka’s breed! While we aren't exactly sure, we estimate he is about 4 years old and likely an Indian Pariah dog.

 

His journey is truly special—he was once a stray wandering in India who began following the Venerable Monks. He walked with them for over 100 days across India, very much like the #WalkForPeace we are on today! 

 

Though his exact birthday remains a mystery, his loyalty and peaceful spirit are clear to everyone he meets.

 

May you and all beings be happy and at peace.  

 

 

The venerable monks and Aloka have returned home. May their mission for peace stay with all of us. #AlokaThePeaceDog

 

Aloka the Peace Dog 

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On Day 112, our home temple, Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center, was filled with overwhelming joy! During the Homecoming ceremony, Aloka took a moment for quiet contemplation, settling into a beautiful peace pose right in the middle of the event.

 

He seemed so happy to finally be home, surrounded by the thousands of people who gathered to welcome the venerable monks and him back. It was a powerful sight to see so many hearts joined together, ready to continue the path of peace as one community.

 

May you and all beings be well, happy and at peace.

#WalkForPeace #PeaceWalk #BuddhistMonks

  

In #Palestine #Olive Trees witnessed foreign invaders for thousands of years...

Mike Hanini Odetalla facebook/twitter post 2014: In #Palestine #Olive Trees witnessed foreign invaders for thousands of years...

My letter to CSM RE Facebook makes the wait easier at Qalandia checkpoint

A man walks past a section of the separation barrier with a graffiti depicting late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Nov. 8, 2013. Nasser Nasser/AP

RE: Facebook makes the wait easier at Qalandia checkpoint... Some 13,000 members of the 'Qalandia conditions' page share stories of exasperation and pass on tips for negotiating a checkpoint where the wait can last three hours.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/Olive-Press/2013/1123/Facebook-makes-the-wait-easier-at-Qalandia-checkpoint

Dear Editor,

Bravo for another telling story published by CSM regarding Israel/Palestine. The good humor and the charming cleverness shown by Palestinians in your story "Facebook makes the wait easier at Qalandia checkpoint" is a much more accurate description of Palestinians I know than negative stereotypes usually proliferated by media coverage concerning Israel/Palestine and the conflict that has made life miserable for countless people.

I do hope that Israel ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and its punitive checkpoints and anti-Palestine policies sooner rather than later... This week British human rights organization Amnesty International came out with a statement condemning the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, demanding that Israel "immediately lift its blockade" on the besieged coastal enclave "by allowing the delivery of fuel and other essential supplies into the territory without restrictions." http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=653623

Official formal negotiations to end the Israel-Palestine conflict should not stop the rest of us from noticing and firmly objecting to Israel's ongoing violations of international law and the Palestinians basic human rights. I think we should also object to the way Islamists are trying to use the dire suffering and sewage crisis in Gaza as a way to discredit diplomacy and support for Palestinian statehood. 

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
Last week, the United Nations warned that a blockade on the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel and Egypt was making Gaza ‘uninhabitable’.

AREA C: Israeli forces on Monday demolished four houses and eight agricultural structures in the southern Jordan Valley, leaving at least 50 Palestinians homeless

Hussein Ibish: Freedom and equality are at the core of the Palestinians’ struggle

Christmas message from Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun of Palestine..." Today, our little town has become even smaller due to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, but the message of Jesus Christ remains in our hearts, overcoming with hope the despair of decades of living under a foreign occupation and being deprived of our rights."

In protest of the Prawer-Begin Plan, which if implemented, will result in the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Bedouin in the Negev desert, Bedouin and other activists organized a ‘day of rage.’

Israel's plan to forcibly resettle Negev Bedouins prompts global protests

Our Compass: Nelson Mandela by Salam Fayyad of Palestine

UNRWA digitizes Palestinian refugee experience, documenting the mass displacement of Palestinians from 1948 to the present day.

New York Times: Photographs Tell a History of Palestinians Unmoored

THE ECONOMIST: "Nobody knows whether the gamble with Iran will pay off. But it is already clear that the risks are low, the prize is potentially vast—and the alternative is dire."

International Emmys Award for Best Documentary to "5 Broken Cameras" in which a Palestinian farmer examines upheaval in a West Bank village.

Arab Idol Assaf in appeal for UN Palestinian agency

A Palestinian human rights group urges tougher EU measures on Israeli settler violence

ATFP Hopes Iran Deal Will Enhance Middle East Stability and Security ATFP provides an independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters and advances human rights and peace. It categorically and unequivocally condemns all violence against civilians, no matter the cause and who the victims or perpetrators may be.

Voicing solidarity with Palestinian cause, UN officials stress importance of resumed peace talks

The Office of International Religious Freedom ( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/)   Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:

Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

Why Muslims should love secularism: Though secularism is widely misunderstood as anti-religious and iconoclastic, all it means is the neutrality of the state on religious affairs ...  "Muslims must recognize secularism as the only real path to religious freedom, rather than confusing it with an attack against religion." Hussein Ibish

Bible scholars: Zionists have 'weaponized' scripture: "One bad (theological) interpreter is worse than 100 terrorists..."

Israeli soldiers destroy 60 olive trees near Bethlehem... IT ADDS UP: Since 1967, 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been uprooted by Israelis in the occupied West Bank

NGO: Israel okays 829 new settler homes in West Bank

Destruction and Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage .... Palestine & UNESCO Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty : The first installment of a two-part policy brief from Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon: JFK left indelible imprint on me

Israelis and Palestinians must refrain from undermining renewed talks... Settlement plans threaten renewed hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace, UN envoy warns

It is widely accepted that under international law, the Jewish settlements in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 are illegal. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons... "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies." BBC News

Poll: Oslo brought 'political normalization' but no benefits "83.3 percent of the respondents believe that settlement construction increased “unprecedentedly” in the Palestinian territory as a result of the Oslo Accord."

Israel's policy of erasure : A path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires not simply dealing with settlements but with the whole complex of displacement, suffocation and erasure.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt

UNITED NATIONS 2013: The nations of the world call on Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice concerning the apartheid wall and all UN resolutions.

2013: Palestine refugees’ properties and their revenues ...Recalling its resolutions 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 and 36/146 C of 16 December 1981 and all its subsequent resolutions on the question

"The direct threat to Israeli and Palestinian existence — and, in fact, to the existence of all peoples in the region — is the absence of peace in Palestine." Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh in The Jordan Times

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

Christians are being driven out of regions around the world where they are a minority

Palestinian villages subject to Israeli mock raids not told they are exercises: Israeli military rejects complaints by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din over 'training' arrests of Arabs and raids on homes

Washington Post 2013: Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

Israeli Settler Violence Map

'It is where religious freedom is most dishonored or repressed that the forces of violent religious extremism are likely to thrive.' Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom: JFK's call for religious freedom can transform...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Live by the Golden Rule

Dear President Obama... Let Freedom Ring

194

Globalizing Martin Luther King, Jr.


This Week in Palestine: In Palestine we have no physical control over our borders, and therefore have no say in how anyone could be treated at any given moment in time. But what we do have control of is the Palestine we write about, describe, and photograph in the folds of this issue’s pages.

At ATFP Gala, White House Reaffirms Commitment to Palestinian State, Opposition to Settlements and Settler Violence

"The only way to honor our tragic histories is to create a future for our children free of man-made tragedy. This means making peace fully, completely and without reservation, between Israel and Palestine." ATFP's Ziad Asali: To honor a tragic history, we must work for peace

Pomegranates in season along the path!

The Arab Peace Initiative

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

Jordan's King Abdullah II explains that extremism has "grown fat" off of the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Charter for Compassion is a call to restore the Golden Rule to the center of religious, moral and civic life. The path to a just economy and a peaceful world requires listening, understanding and treating all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Freedom for Palestine - OneWorld

Israeli police seized computers and detained 25 Palestinians because of Facebook posts in East Jerusalem on Thursday

File photo of a Palestinian protester by Damascus Gate in East
Jerusalem.(MaanImages/file)

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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=645448
Israel detains 25 Palestinian activists over Facebook posts
 09/11/2013

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli police detained 25 Palestinian social media activists in East Jerusalem on Thursday, a prisoners rights group said.

Nasser Qous, head of the Jerusalem branch of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, told official news agency Wafa that Israeli forces raided the homes of 25 Palestinian activists and detained them on charges of "incitement" due to their posts on Facebook.

Israeli police also seized their computers.

Fifteen of the activists were later released and 10 will be brought before an Israeli court, Qous said.

In October, Haifa resident Razi al-Nabulsi, 23, was arrested and kept under house arrest for a week as a result of Facebook posts Israeli authorities argued constituted "incitement."

Lawyer Aram Mahameed explained that the charges stemmed from "a number of comments on al-Nabulsi's Facebook page concerning issues like normalization (with the State of Israel), as well as the Prawer Plan," a proposed Israeli plan that if carried out with displace 40,000 Bedouins from the southern Negev.

Reporters Without Borders ranked Israel 112th in the world for press freedom in its 2013 report, arguing that while Israeli journalists enjoy freedom of expression, there are major structural barriers related to military control and security issues that prevent a free press more generally.

This Week in Palestine Artist of the Month: Yazan Khalili

Venice Biennale /2011 /Special Features / Future of a Promise

Yazan Khalili shown in Paris at Imane Farès gallery

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 http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4124&ed=223&edid=223

    Artist of the Month

Yazan Khalili
 

Do you know who Yazan Khalili is? No? You really should meet this intelligent, talented photographer, writer, producer, and intellectual; a visual artist who uses the image as a medium for his work. He is another resounding, driven Palestinian voice who is leaving a clear mark on the artistic scene, both nationally and internationally. Young artists like Yazan are Palestine’s unplanned treasure. They are the perfect form of Palestinian resistance.  Yazan’s work is creative and every bit contemporary. Yazan received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Birzeit University in 2003; he finished his master’s degree in 2010 at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

His photography explores the relationship between the social and spatial elements of built environment and the landscape. He tackles questions of urbanism from a visual point of view. But Yazan is also interested in the production of the image, not necessarily the final image itself; what are the political elements and processes - both global and local - that lead one particular photograph to look, feel, and read in a particular way? In his body of work Area C-The Landscape in Exile, Yazan worked with images he took while traveling through the West Bank for several years. “I was doing a reading of the images as a forensic work by trying to expose the processes that influence the production of aesthetics.” His work comprises text and photography, performing together by way of narrating the personal experience that went into taking a particular image and then discussing and analysing it.

 
In his latest exhibition at Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, he showed his body of work Landscape of Darkness, 2010, in which he examines how darkness can reshape a highly politicised fragmented landscape. “Looking into the dark spaces, the otherwise fragmented landscape of the occupied area re-emerges with the potential of a continuous whole, thus reshaping the operational notions of space and time, light and darkness.” 

 He is a freelancer who moves between mediums in order to explore and learn more. He is one of the founding members of Zan Design Studio (2005) and works as production coordinator for films and exhibits. He has exhibited in various venues and places, including the Venice Biennial 2011 and the Sharjah Biennial 2013. He has taught a politics of production course at the International Art Academy - Palestine, and co-curated, along with Reem Shilleh, the Young Artist of the Year Award (YAYA, 2012). He also curated The City | The Image symposium with Goethe Institute, Ramallah, 2012.

See PDF www.thisweekinpalestine.com/i186/pdfs/article/aotm.pdf

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Deep into that darkness peering | محدقا في عمق تلك العتمة | Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/events/.../permalink/443080395770204/‎

Curated by Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center and co produced with the French ... the politics of light and darkness through two different yet akin bodies of work.

LIKE ATFP - The American Task Force on Palestine

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Mission

The American Task Force on Palestine's mission is to advocate for a negotiated end-of-conflict agreement that is in the American national interest and allows for two states, Israel and Palestine, to live side-by-side in peace and security.

ATFP is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC.

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ATFP seeks to build strong working relationships with government agencies, think tanks, NGOs, and the media. It has developed lines of communication with the US, Palestinian, Israeli and Jordanian governments to pursue its policy advocacy goals. ATFP has also engaged in humanitarian fundraising to support health and education in the Palestinian territories.

ATFP is strictly opposed to all acts of violence against civilians. The Task Force advocates the development of a Palestinian state that is democratic, pluralistic, non-militarized and neutral in armed conflicts.

Please help sustain ATFP's work and independent decision-making by donating here.

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USAID

Why Institution Building in the West Bank is Critical for a Palestinian State

The United States is the leading provider of bilateral assistance to the Palestinians. We are working closely with the Palestinians to help them build the governance structures and the economy of a future state. We do this by working with all levels of government, with the private sector and with civil society. And we do so in a way that benefits not just Palestinians, but Israelis as well. From developing water infrastructure to connecting Palestinian ICT firms with Israeli companies to working with the justice sector on critical rule of law matters, we are bringing together Palestinians and Israelis to address important issues of mutual concern.

Our work with the PA helps it deliver basic services to the Palestinian people. Since 1994 the United States has helped the Palestinian health system offer improved emergency services, enhanced diagnosis and treatment, and improved administration including an integrated health information system; and ensured that more than a million Palestinians had access to clean drinking water. When people see that their public institutions work—when a village gets piped water for the first time or a businessman interacts with a well-trained broker who makes the customs process easier—this helps build confidence in the institutions of government.

This work is helping to build a more democratic, stable and secure region, which benefits Palestinians, Israelis and Americans. The interest shown by the people who came up to me following the presentation who wanted to engage further was inspiring.  It  demonstrated  the value in USAID continuing to share  the story of our support for Palestinian institution building, as one part of the two-track approach, that coupled with resumed political negotiations, can help lead to the establishment  a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel.