{introduction to the ad---not the ad}

We at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives ask you to join our effort to place ads in national and international newspapers seeking to use this moment not only to create a temporary ceasefire, but to resolve all outstanding issues between the various parties in the Middle East.

We are calling upon the international community to foster a new approach to resolving conflicts. We approach these issues from our commitment to a “Progressive Middle Path,” recognizing that in the context of the past 120 years, both sides have legitimate grievances and both sides have acted with insensitivity and cruelty toward the other. We do not accept that one side is the “righteous victim” and the other side the “evil aggressor.” But we do recognize that at this moment Israel has far greater military power, and so we ask for Israel to take the first steps toward ending the cycle of hatred and violence, even as we condemn Hezbollah for initiating the current escalation of violence.

We have placed a version of this ad in the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and plan to reprint in newspapers in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon. The U.S. has a large role to play in bringing about a resolution to the conflict, and we are hopeful that ads in U.S. newspapers will help us raise money to buy space in other media).

If you agree with the contents and the intention of our ad, please CLICK HERE to sign on so that we can collect more signatures to present to the U.S. Congress. Since we began this campaign, over 3,000 people have signed. We have compiled a list of all the signatories and placed it on our website, but space constrains us to include in the print ads a representative group of the religious leaders, cultural figures and citizen activists who have shown their support.

If you endorse this ad, please donate generously! Whatever you can afford will be very helpful. Please CLICK HERE to donate.

This campaign is producing results. Before we began to raise funds for the Peace Ad, our perspective was almost entirely blocked out by the mainstream media. Over the course of the past week, the media has finally begun to pay attention. I was invited to speak on CNN and Larry King Live. We believe that this campaign could make a huge contribution toward strengthening the peace and reconciliation forces around the world to communicate that there are many of us in the U.S., Canada, Israel, and Palestine as well as many Jews, Muslims and Christians and people of other faith communities who reject the dominant assumptions of the contemporary discourse about the Middle East and how best to fight terrorism.

So, we are now asking you to join us in stretching your wallet and digging very deep to help us get this ad published. If you know people with money, or are on foundation boards that might act quickly to support the ad, please approach them immediately. And please send this request for support to everyone you know.

Many blessings for a world of peace, kindness, generosity and love.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Editor, Tikkun Magazine and Chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org). Author: The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right

If you read the ad and think, how on earth will this fit onto one page, view the PDF version at www.tikkun.org/PeaceAd.

{All that above was the introduction to you of the ad and the thinking behind it, not part of the ad itself. What follows is the actual texf of the ad which we will print if we can raise enough money to make it possible. Otherwise, we will either make it a half page ad, or go to less expensive newspapers, or use other media to get this message out--with your financial help. You can sign the ad at www.tikkkun.org/PeaceAd--though the text you'll find there has not yet been updated, or you can donate there, or hopefully both. What you will be signing or helping to support is the ad below.}

It's Time to End the Violence in the Middle East--Once and For All

Convene an International Middle East Peace Conference to Impose a Final Settlement on All Parties

It’s Time to End the Wars Between Israel, Palestine and Neighboring States once and for all!
Convene an International Middle East Peace Conference to Impose a Final Settlement on All Parties

For the short while that the world’s attention is focused on the Middle East, lets use it to insist on an end to this struggle in all its dimensions.
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A call for Lasting Peace

We call for an International Peace Conference to impose a fair and lasting solution to all aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the conflict between Israel and other states in the region. Why do we say “impose”? There are too many forces in each country in the region who are committed to continuing this struggle forever. Their provocations will continue until the international community stops the violence once and for all and imposes conditions of security that will allow the peace and reconciliation forces in each country to flourish.

Such a solution would be based on the following conditions:

a. The creation of an economically and politically viable Palestinian state (roughly on the pre-1967 borders with minor border modifications mutually agreed upon between Israel and Palestine); and simultaneously the full and unequivocal recognition by Palestinians and the State of Palestine and all surrounding Arab states of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state (e.g. celebrating Jewish holidays and the Sabbath in the same way that Christmas gets official sanction as a state holiday in the U.S.) while offering full and equal rights to all of its non-Jewish citizens (preferential treatment for Jews only with regard to immigration, and that to be phased out when anti-Semitism in the world has disappeared; and the same preferential treatment for Palestinians in the Palestinian state as long as they face discrimination or reduced rights or threats to their safety in other parts of the world);

b. An international consortium to provide generous reparations for Palestinians who have lost homes or property from 1947 to the present, and generous reparations for Jewish refugees from Arab states from 1947–1967;

c. A long-term international peacekeeping force to separate Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon and to protect Israel and Palestine from each other, to police the borders and the corridor that will need to be established linking Gaza with the West Bank,  and to protect both Israel and Palestine from other forces in the region who might seek to control or destroy either state; and

d. The quick imposition of robust sanctions against any party that refuses to sign or violates these agreements.

Though there may be endless wars for the next thirty or forty years until the parties are forced into this kind of an agreement by the amount of suffering that is imposed on everyone (after all, as Hezbollah has just begun to demonstrate, the Arab world will eventually catch up to Israel’s level of military hardware and capacity to fight devastating wars), we think it would be in the interests of Israel, the Arab states, the Jewish people, the U.S. and the world if this solution could be imposed on the parties now. It breaks our heart to see the suffering of the Lebanese people, the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people when we know how unnecessary it is and how the basic issues could be resolved. No matter how maximalist the fantasies are on each side about eliminating their enemies, the truth is that the majority of the people on all sides of this struggle would settle for peace if they thought it could be accomplished in ways that provided for genuine security for Israel and Palestine, elimination of all terror,   justice for Palestinians and universal acknowledgment of the wrongs that had been done to them, self-esteem about not having “lost,” and pride in having been partners to creating a lasting solution.

A New Spirit of Open-Heartedness and Reconciliation

We know that no political solution can work without a change of consciousness that minimally includes an open-heartedness and willingness to recognize the humanity of the Other, and repentance and atonement for the long history of insensitivity and cruelty to the other side.

All sides must take immediate steps to stop the discourse of violence and demeaning of the other in their media, their religious institutions, and their school text books and educational systems. They should implement this by creating a joint authority with each other and with moral leaders in the international community who can supervise, and if necessary, replace those in positions of power in Jewish, Islamic and Arab societies who continue to use the public institutions of the society to spread hatred or nurture anger at the other.

Once the other parts of a lasting peace have been set in place, we call upon the parties to this struggle to launch a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, following the model used in South Africa.

Use This Moment to Challenge the Paranoid and Cynical “Political Realism” That Generates Endless Wars

The self-described “realistic” version of global politics asserts that we live in a world in which our safety can only be achieved through domination, or others will seek to dominate us first. Of course, when we act on this assumption, it becomes self-fulfilling.

We propose, instead, a strategy of generosity—to act on the assumption that people have an enormous capacity for goodness and generosity (without negating the truth that certain conditions promote fear, anger and hatred which sometimes are expressed in horribly destructive ways). For the U.S. and other G8 countries, we call for a Global Marshall Plan: for each of the next twenty years, the U.S. and other G8 countries should dedicate 5% of their Gross Domestic Product to eliminating global (and domestic) hunger, homelessness, poverty, inadequate health care and inadequate education for the peoples of the world. This would have to be carefully monitored and apportioned in ways that ensure the care reaches the people for whom it was intended. But what is critical is the spirit in which it is done—not as an attempt to manipulate, but as a genuine expression of human caring about each other.


The only protection that we in the advanced industrial countries of the world can ever really have for our lives is to spread a spirit of love so powerful and genuine that it becomes capable of reducing the anger that has understandably developed against the powerful and the wealthy of the world.

The “cynical realists” claim that others are entrenched in their hatefulness, and that war and domination is the only way to battle them. This kind of thinking has led to five thousand years of people fighting wars in order to “end all wars”—and it has not worked. It’s time now to try a new strategy of generosity, both economic generosity and generosity of spirit. As stated above, there will first have to be a transitional period in which real military protections are available to people on all sides of the struggle. But by beginning now to simultaneously commit our economic resources and change the way that we talk about those whom we previously designated as “enemies,” we can begin the long process of thawing out angers that have existed for many generations.

Nothing can redeem the deaths and suffering that all sides have faced in this struggle for the past 120 years. But this very moment could also be the time in which the human race realizes the futility of violence and comes together not only to impose a lasting solution for the Middle East, but to begin a new era and to recognize that our own well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet. The International Middle East Peace Conference should be structured to achieve this end—which means it should have an explicit psychological and spiritual dimension and a visionary agenda.


We Affirm the Sacredness of All Human Beings.

This may well be the last chance we in the advanced industrial societies have to avoid international catastrophe (either environmental or nuclear) by modeling something else besides brute power, military might and indifference to the well-being of others. If not now, when?

It is time to overcome national chauvinism and arrogance—but also our own personal sense of powerlessness. We need to build ethical and spiritual solidarity among the people of the world—the necessary foundation for effective political and economic cooperation. Our well being depends on the well being of everyone else on the planet. We need to strengthen international institutions that can foster this sense of solidarity, but we also need to support political and spiritual movements that encourage a transformation of the heart away from the excessive focus on our own individual egos, paths to success and “making it” in terms of fame, glory, sexual attractiveness, accumulation of “things” and money, so that we and all the peoples of the world can put our joint attention to building global peace, social and economic justice, ecological sanity, and a new spirit of mutual caring, genuine and lasting love and generosity. It’s too self-indulgent to let depression about the state of the world render you powerless—your participation is indispensable for changing the world.

Unrealistic? Nope. What has proved unrealistic time and again—whether we are talking about U.S. policy in Vietnam and Iraq or Israeli and Arab policies in the Middle East—is the fantasy that one more war will put an end to wars. The path to peace must be a path of peace.

We are joining with The National Council of Churches of Christ and many other religious groups in the call for days of prayer and fasting toward the aim of peace, reconciliation and affirming the message in this ad. Use this ad as a way to start discussions with people in your life. And please sign the ad and donate (www.tikkun.org/PeaceAd) so we can reprint it elsewhere. You can sign and not donate, you can donate and not sign, though we’d prefer if you did bot.  When you do so, include your email address, and we will alert you to other actions that we can take together.
This ad sponsored by:

Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society and
The Network of Spiritual Progressives (www.spiritualprogressives.org)
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