Common Ground News Service - 08 August 2006
Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
08 August 2006
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CGNews PiH Current Edition
1) by Michel Aoun
Michel Aoun draws upon his experience as former prime minister of Lebanon and commander of its armed forces to advocate the disarming of Hezbollah through political pressure and internal dialogue rather than confrontational militaristic might. He argues that the political negotiations to end the current conflict “will be, in essence, the same solution as the one available today, and which, tragically, was available before a single shot was fired.”
(Source: www.tayyar.org, 31 July 2006)
2) by Eko Maryadi
Eko Maryadi, a freelance journalist in Jakarta, encourages both Western and Muslim media sources to strive toward unbiased and constructive reporting instead of the promotion of suspicion, distrust, anger and hatred between civilizations. He also points out that the most popular newspaper in Indonesia is in fact one that has committed itself to professional, non-inflammatory journalism while remaining strictly on the sidelines in whatever conflict it is covering.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 08 August 2006)
3) by Patrick McGreevy
The American University of Beirut (AUB) has been a safe-haven for free thought and religious and ethnic diversity for well over a century, “and the word ‘of’ in its name became more and more representative of reality” according to John Munro, who has written a history of this institution. Patrick McGreevy, Director of Prince Al Waleed bin Talal’s Center for American Studies and Research at AUB, uses the AUB model, with its symbolic open gates, to argue that Israel should not look to seclude itself but to move from being “in” the region to being “of” it.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 08 August 2006)
4) by Andrew Barr
Andrew Barr, a senior at Claremont McKenna College, commends the University of Michigan's Global American Institute for recognizing the lack of books on American political thought in the Arab world and for stepping up to the challenge of making these works accessible "After all, it might be well and good to argue for principles such as separation of powers in government and inalienable human rights, but if the concepts are unfamiliar and the reasoning behind them is unknown, they are likely to have little influence." Valued works of American political thought to be translated into Arabic include those by Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Susan B. Anthony.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 08 August 2006)
5) by Tzvi Elush
In Haifa, Israeli patients receive medical care for Hezbollah rocket injuries from a most unexpected source – Doctor Nasrallah. A light-hearted look into the humorous and sometimes ironic moments of human existence.
(Source: Ynet News, 26 July 2006)
1) History will judge us all on our actions
Michel Aoun
Rabieh - While aircraft, sea-craft, and artillery pound our beloved Lebanon, we Lebanese are left, as usual, to watch helplessly and pay a heavy price for a war foisted upon us due to circumstances beyond our control.
Considering that this crisis could have been avoided, and considering that there is -- and has been -- a solution almost begging to be made, one cannot but conclude that all of this death, destruction and human agony will, in retrospect, be adjudged as having been in vain.
No matter how much longer this fight goes on, the truth of the matter is that political negotiations will be the endgame. The solution that will present itself a week, a month or a year from now will be, in essence, the same solution as the one available today, and which, tragically, was available before a single shot was fired or a single child killed. Given this reality, a more concerted effort is required sooner rather than later to stop the death and destruction on both sides of the border.
From the outset, this dispute has been viewed through the differing prisms of differing worldviews. As one who led my people during a time when they defended themselves against aggression, I recognize, personally, that other countries have the right to defend themselves, just as Lebanon does; this is an inalienable right possessed by all countries and peoples.
For some, analysis as to this conflict's sources and resolutions begins and ends with the right to self-defence; for others, Israel's claimed self-defensive actions are perceived as barbaric and offensive acts aimed at destroying a country and liquidating a people. Likewise, some view Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers as fair military game to pressure Israel to return Lebanese prisoners; yet others perceive it as a terrorist act aimed at undermining Israel's sovereignty and security.
These divergences, and the world's failure to adopt different paradigms by which Middle East problems can be fairly analyzed and solved, have produced, and will continue to produce, a vicious cycle of continuing conflict. If the approach remains the same in the current conflict, I anticipate that the result will be the same. This, therefore, is a mandate to change the basis upon which problems are judged and measured from the present dead-end cycle to one which is based on universal, unarguable principles and which has at least a fighting chance to produce a lasting positive result.
My own personal belief is that all human life is equal and priceless -- I look upon Israeli life as the same as Lebanese life. This belief stems not from my Catholic religion, but rather, from basic human values which have their historic home in Lebanon. It is no coincidence that a leading figure in the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was Charles Malek, a Lebanese citizen.
I ask, will other Arab countries and leaders have the courage to acknowledge that Israeli life is equal to Arab life? Will Israel have the courage as well to acknowledge that Lebanese life is equal to Israeli life, and that all life is priceless? I believe that most Israeli and Arab citizens would answer in the affirmative. Can we get their governments and their leaders to do the same?
Acknowledgement of equality between the value of the Lebanese and the Israeli people can be a starting point and a catalyst. The universal, unarguable concept of the equality of peoples and of human life should be the basis upon which we measure and judge events, and should provide the common human prism through which the current conflict, and old seemingly everlasting conflicts, are viewed and resolved. This is the only way to peace, prosperity and security, which is, after all, what all human beings desire, regardless of their origin.
The ideological, political and religious differences between the party that I lead, the Free Patriotic Movement, and Hezbollah, could have been addressed either through confrontation, or through internal dialogue. Recognizing the value of human life, the obvious choice was the second option. We sat down with Hezbollah to discuss our differences.
After many months of extensive negotiations, we came up with an understanding that included 10 key items which laid down a roadmap to resolve 10 of the most contentious points of disagreement. For example, Hezbollah agreed for the first time that Lebanese who collaborated with Israel during Israel's occupation of south Lebanon should return peacefully to Lebanon without fear of retribution. We also agreed to work together to achieve a civil society to replace the present confessional system which distributes power on the basis of religious affiliation. Additionally, Hezbollah, which is accused of being staunchly pro-Syrian, agreed for the first time that the border between Lebanon and Syria should be finally delineated, and that diplomatic relations between the two countries should be established.
We also agreed that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon should be disarmed, that security and political decision-making should be centralized with the Lebanese government, and that all Lebanese political groups should disengage themselves from regional conflicts and influences.
Last but not least, our extensive negotiations with Hezbollah resulted in an articulation of the three main roadblocks regarding resolution of the Hezbollah arms issue. First, the return of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli prisons. Second, the return of the Shebaa farms, a tiny piece of Lebanese territory still occupied by Israel. And third, the formulation of a comprehensive strategy to provide for Lebanon's defence, centred upon a strong national army and central state decision-making authority in which all political groups are assured a fair opportunity to participate.
This structure, if joined together with international guarantees which forbid the nationalization of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and which protect Lebanon from Israeli incursions, and if tied on the internal level to a new, fair and uniform electoral law, is the best hope for peacefully resolving the Hezbollah weapons issue.
This is the essence of the comprehensive solution we seek. Because it embodies a shift from a policy based on military force to one founded upon human values and reconciling the rights of parties, it would stand the test of time. If rights are respected, and if parties are treated with the deference that they implicitly deserve as human beings, then the long-term result will be not only physical disarmament, but also a disarmament of minds on both sides.
Our party presented this solution internally to all Lebanese political groups, the Lebanese government, and the international community -- including the U.S. administration -- repeatedly, for an entire year before this crisis began.
Rather than help us to resolve the weapons issue peacefully and avoid the current agony our country is now enduring, the international community and Lebanese government flatly ignored the proposed solution. Many of Lebanon's main political players cast us aside as "pro-Syrian" "allies" of Hezbollah. No matter. These are the same individuals who -- only a year before -- branded me a "Zionist agent" and brought treason charges against me when I dared to testify before a Congressional subcommittee that Syria should end its occupation of my country.
You see, after Lebanon was liberated from Syrian occupation, the international community (apparently enamoured by the quixotic images of the Cedar Revolution) demanded that the Lebanese elections take place immediately and "on time"; it brushed off our grave concerns about the electoral law in force, which had been carefully crafted by Syria and imposed upon Lebanon in the year 2000 to ensure re-election of Syria's favourite legislators.
This flawed electoral law -- initially imposed upon us by Syria and then reimposed upon us by the international community -- has had disastrous results. It brought to power a Lebanese government with absolute two-thirds majority powers, but which was elected by only one-third of the populace. With a legislative and executive majority on one side, and a popular majority on the other side, the result was absolute gridlock. Currently in Lebanon, there is no confluence of popular will with government will, and therefore the government cannot deal effectively with this or any other problem.
History will judge us all on our actions, and especially on the unnecessary death and destruction that we leave behind. The destruction currently being wrought upon Lebanon is in no way measured or proportional -- ambulances, milk factories, power stations, television crews and stations, U.N. observers and civilian infrastructure have been destroyed.
Let us proceed from the standpoint that all human life is equal, and that if there is a chance to save lives and to achieve the same ultimate result as may be achieved without the senseless killings, then let us by all means take that chance.
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Mr. Aoun, a former prime minister of Lebanon and commander of its armed forces, is currently a deputy in the Lebanese parliament. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Free Patriotic Movement or www.tayyar.org, 31 July 2006
Visit the website at www.tayyar.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
2) The role of media in Muslim-Western dialogue
Eko Maryadi
Jakarta - The fluctuating relations between the Muslim and Western worlds are now seemingly more difficult, especially since the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City on September 11, 2001, popularly known as 9/11. Right after the tragedy which resulted in thousands dead and thousands more injured, condemnation emerged from around the world. Soon after that, Western media began what has been called the “opinion war” which tended to blame Muslims unreservedly for the attacks.
Through quoting the U.S. President George W. Bush extensively, Western media became a funnel for anger toward Islam which, unassailably, was the religion of the bombing suspects. In response, the media in many Muslim countries embarked upon counter-attacks by mobilizing negative reactions toward any issue pertaining to the Western world. Suspicion, distrust, anger and hatred were suddenly spreading between these two different civilizations.
Besides repeatedly presenting news coverage on the one big topic of “Islam and Violence” while employing words such as “Islamic terrorist”, “fundamentalist”, “extremist”, “radical Islam” or “militant Muslim”, Western media also became a pivotal means of campaigning for the “Global War on Terror”. Meanwhile, massive military “counter” attacks on Muslim countries were launched, such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Western media also got involved in this scene by sending several journalists to report live on how Western military operations were destroying terrorist networks. Since then, it seems that the former “Holy War” of Muslim against Christian has given way to the war of “Western media against Muslim terrorists.”
As part of the global community, Indonesian media also absorbed Western media news coverage, which increasingly tended to be anti-Islam. The prejudice and hatred exchanged between Muslims and Westerners in Indonesia became stronger, especially after the first Bali bombing, of October 2002. Even though most Indonesian media tried to present balanced and prudent news, some tried to pump up the anger of Indonesian Muslims toward the West. These kinds of media sources also presented analytical articles which sided with Muslims and criticized Western leaders, interviewed Indonesian Muslim figures who were for the attack and who even supported similar “jihadist” attacks in the future.
These days are the hardest for the media in Indonesia, finding themselves in a conflict of interest as relating to Islam and the West. It is difficult for the media to present balanced and impartial news and opinions as the majority of the audience in Indonesia is Muslim. Many media sources want to appeal to their Muslim readers and as a result, some Indonesian media deliberately choose to become partisans of Muslim voices.
When ethnic and religious conflicts broke out in Ambon (1999), Poso (2000), Sampit (2001) and Aceh (1989-2005), some Indonesian media became a strategic means of public communication for Muslim groups. Rather than act as mediators and conflict transformation agents, some media – both printed and electronic – actually got involved in the dissemination of provocative ideas and language. The saying of a Bosnian journalist that “the journalist who hides behind pens and microphones to propose wars is actually more wicked than the people who kill each other” rings true and certainly applied to Indonesia at that time.
By keeping their position independent and at a distance from religious prejudice, media can actually play an important role in encouraging dialogue between the Muslim and Western worlds. By creating balanced public dialogue opportunities, sharing togetherness and broadening the room for tolerance through their news coverage, media can bridge the gap and encourage the common need to live side by side peacefully.
Just as the public needs an atmosphere of sound dialogue, media needs professional and mature journalists as well. Media and its journalists should obey journalism’s code of ethics, maintain information sources accurately, look for competent persons as resources and write their reports using professional news coverage techniques.
It is interesting to note that recently, an Indonesian newspaper was named by a research institution as the most popular media outlet because of its prudent and anti-violence way of reporting. This newspaper, which is surely reporting on the same Muslim-Western conflict issues in Indonesia, does not present any form of pro-Western or even pro-Muslim coverage. When asked why his paper has chosen this impartial style of reporting, a senior journalist said, “We just try to write with integrity and keep our messages away from prejudice. We run the risk of being labelled cowards, of being accused of not being involved or sometimes even of being anti-Islam by the majority of our readers because we do not show favouritism toward them. We just carry out our belief that media should not be involved in any conflict.”
Perhaps that should be the role of media in the “clash of civilization” era, as a channel of balanced, constructive and solution-oriented messages between the Muslim and Western worlds. Furthermore, as the relations between the two are volatile, the media should create an honest, equal and transparent dialogue venue for the public. Media should focus not on the conflict itself, but on the creation of peaceful dialogue and the usage of non-violent means to resolve conflict and ease tensions. By doing this, we hope that media will play an important role in encouraging dialogue between Muslims and the West.
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Eko Maryadi is a freelance journalist for international media outlets and Coordinator of Advocacy in the Indonesian Journalists Alliance (AJI). This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 08 August 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission is granted for republication.
3) Islands in Arabia
Patrick McGreevy
Beirut - Sitting on my balcony staring down at the Sea Gate of the American University of Beirut, and to the Mediterranean beyond, I am in no danger. The bombs are in the distance. The fighting is in the south. In Tel Aviv, Israeli citizens are staring at the same sea, in perfect safety. The missiles are landing in Haifa and farther north. And those following this war from living rooms around the world are in utter cocoons of safety. Most of us are separated from the violence that undergirds our world and its order. But are we safe from fear? And does our fear make us wish for an order more and more strongly undergirded?
AUB, like the State of Israel, is an implantation on the Levant from the West. Israel's unilateral attempt to disengage and retreat behind its enormous wall, as if it were an island in a sea of Arabs, reminds me of New Orleans dreaming of safety behind its levees. But New Orleans is an artificial island that is actually below sea level. Is Israel below sea level as well? AUB has evolved in a very different direction with regard to its surroundings. Might the Israelis learn something from its experience?
The American missionaries who first arrived in the eastern Mediterranean in 1820 were inspired by the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. As historian Ussama Makdisi puts it, they sought "to evangelise the world in order to facilitate the Second Coming of Christ." They also saw themselves as representatives of the most enlightened, most advanced, most modern of civilisations—the truth of their religion being the centrepiece of this superiority. They founded schools because Christians needed to read the Bible. They introduced Western medical practices and what later became the standard Arabic script.
When they founded the Syrian Protestant College in 1866 (later AUB), these missionaries hoped to attract students by teaching them about medicine, agriculture and the arts. The entire enterprise was a failure in terms of its goal of gaining converts: there were hardly any. But their inadvertent philanthropy had a profound impact. Many Arabs embraced the modern notions they learned at the college. In 1882, a huge controversy erupted when the Presbyterian Board of Trustees in the US forbad the teaching of the theory of evolution, and eventually dismissed two promising Arab scientists who had dared embrace modernity more thoroughly than the university's trustees. As the years passed, the university's mission became increasingly secular and its faculty and administration increasingly Arab.
In 1920, the college changed its name to the American University of Beirut. John Munro, who has written a history of the university, suggests that the word "of" in its name became more and more representative of reality. The university played an important role in the revival of Arabic literature and Arab nationalism. Partly because of AUB, most Arabs held favourable views of the US, at least until the 1967 war. Even during the horrors of Lebanon's long civil war, all sides spared the AUB campus and hospital. The University has walls and gates, but its guards do not carry guns. Its walls serve to designate it as a particular place where students from all of the region’s religions and ethnic groups can openly debate and pursue knowledge. As AUB student Randy Nahle put it in his prize-winning Founders’ Day essay in 2004, the university provided “an open forum where Occidental and Oriental streams of thought could meet and debate and reshape each other.”
When AUB’s Center for American Studies and Research that I direct decided to offer a course called “The Holocaust in American Literature and Culture” last semester, we were aware that, though our decision was not without controversy, AUB was a free and open space where even this topic could be approached in a scholarly way. Instead of remaining an isolated island, AUB has continued to evolve. If it is an American institution, it is not because it slavishly serves the agenda of any presidential administration, but because it openly embraces ideals that have motivated the most admired of US achievements.
Can Israel evolve and become a country “of” its region rather than an island “in” it? A country where people of all religions have absolute equality? A country with “liberty and justice for all”? If so, both Israel and its neighbours have a great deal to gain.
In the Levant, endless empires have come and gone. Living here naturally turns one’s mind to the long view. In August of 2006, the American University of Beirut may seem vulnerable and Israel invincible, but the future is determined by the choices we make today. Perhaps now is a time to think about these most basic issues: what kind of island is likely to persist and prosper, one with open gates, or one with high walls? One that is a meeting place of cultures, or one that strives to seclude itself from those around it who are different from itself? The answer surely lies in widening the horizons of our minds.
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* Patrick McGreevy is Director of the Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Center for American Studies & Research (CASAR) at the American University of Beirut, or AUB. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 08 August 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission is granted for republication.
4) ~Youth Views~ Translating American political thought into Arabic
Andrew Barr
Phoenix, AZ -- The neo-conservative vision of remaking the Arab world by simply introducing American-style democracy has largely failed because of the inability of all sides to understand the basic tenets that mould our collective consciousnesses. Few American policy makers understand Arab thoughts on governing, just as few Arab leaders understand the ideas that inspired America’s founding, the same ideas the US is trying to instil in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is partly due to the fact that the literature that formed the American political mind -- the Federalist Papers, the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and more recently Martin Luther King Jr. -- are not available in Arabic.
After all, it might be well and good to argue for principles such as separation of powers in government and inalienable human rights, but if the concepts are unfamiliar and the reasoning behind them is unknown, they are likely to have little influence.
The White House did not anticipate this problem, and has done little to fix it, but a group of University of Michigan professors took it on when they created the Global Americana Institute and the Americana Translation Project with the goal of translating famous books of American political thought into Arabic and widely distributing affordable copies in Arab bookstores.
While living in the Arab world, Juan Cole, Professor of History at Michigan and President of the Global Americana Institute who oversees the project, was “struck by the lack of American political books in Arab book stores.” Cole noticed some American literature available in small distribution, including the works of Mark Twain and William Faulkner, but that books on American political thought were not.
The shelves of Arab bookstores are not completely barren of Western political thought. “Arabs tend to know about Rousseau and Voltaire and French [political] history,” Cole said in an interview. “It’s not that Arabs don’t know about Enlightenment thought, they just don’t know the American end of it.” One key difference Cole feels is important for the Muslim world to understand is that the American democratic tradition, while secular, has always been more accommodating to religion than the French tradition, which was explicitly anti-clerical during the French revolution and has remained so to this day, with expressions of faith frowned upon in French political society. If this is the only picture of democracy the Muslim world has had access to, no wonder democracy has made little headway in the religious Arab societies.
After September 11, Cole thought that the Arab world not having access to the American side of Enlightenment philosophy was “very dangerous”. By searching through various databases, Cole confirmed that almost none of the most influential works of American political thought had even been translated, let alone published or distributed.
Cole did find that the U.S. Information Agency was operating a small translation project out of Jordan and Egypt. The USIA programme had translated a few works, including the Federalist Papers, but they were, according to Cole, “not distributed at all, as far as I can tell.”
The situation prompted Cole, along with seven other University of Michigan professors who are on the Institute’s Board of Directors, to undertake the translation project.
After “working hard on getting through all the federal and state hurdles”, the project recently received 501(c)(3) status as a charitable non-profit organization, making all donations tax deductible. Even though the project has “really just begun”, it has raised $20,000 since April. According to Cole, people are “very enthusiastic about this project.”
With some funds secured, and more fundraising efforts to come, Cole is hopeful that the first translations will be available in two years. Each book will take roughly a year to translate and edit. The works of the Founding Fathers are particularly troublesome because “18th century English is hard to translate into Arabic.”
The first book planned to be available will be a collection of essays by Thomas Jefferson focused on freedom of religion, separation of powers and inalienable rights. Following the Jefferson essays will be Ben Franklin’s autobiography. The major speeches and writings of Martin Luther King Jr and Susan B. Anthony will also be among the first translations.
Unfortunately, the Institute faces the hurdle of distributing the translations in Arab bookstores. “Distribution of American books is often limited,” Cole told me. Many Arab governments are “suspicious” of American books. In some Arab countries, governments influence what books end up on the shelves of bookstores.
After finding its niche in the Arab book market, the Institute hopes to commission several other translation projects, including an expanded collection of works by the American Founding Fathers. The Institute also hopes to produce a book about the American Jewish community, and other American minority groups, for the Arab market. The Institute even hopes to translate histories of the Arab world, especially Iraq, written by Western authors into Arabic.
Cole hopes to provide the Arab world with “a window into what the American political tradition thinks, especially on individual and social rights.” This is a great and sorely needed step forward – after all, how can we expect the Arab world to respect and understand us if virtually none of the philosophy behind our system of government is understood? Luckily, the Institute’s project is opening that window. Hopefully it is not too late.
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Andrew Barr is a senior at Claremont McKenna College where he studies Government. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 08 August 2006
Visit the website at www.commongroundnews.org
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission is granted for republication.
5) Doctor Nasrallah treats rocket injuries
Tzvi Elush
Haifa - At the Rambam Medical Center, Haitam Nasrallah, 28, is talked of with respect. A young, good-looking man, Nasrallah spent seven years studying medicine in Italy, and is currently doing an internship in Haifa.
Doctors at the medical centre are certain that his future in Haifa is bright, despite his unique name.
Soldiers and patients who encounter the name tag on the young doctor for the first time glance at it for a moment with a little curiosity and even suspicion.
They were just rushed to hospital because of Hassan Nasrallah's rockets, and now another Nasrallah awaits them in the emergency room?
But the suspicious look is very quickly replaced with a smile and even a laugh.
Doctor Haitam Nasrallah is a Christian resident of Shfaram who is planning to marry his fiancé, also a resident of Shfaram.
'I'm proud of my name'
He does not plan to change his name. "First of all because this is my name. And secondly, that one from Beirut should change his name," Haitam says. "Why me? Me and my family have been proudly going with this name for a number of generations. The name means “victory of God”, and I have no problem with it, except for these (rocket-induced) shakings."
When Nasrallah watches television with his colleagues, doctors and specialists, the Hizbullah leader appears on the screen. "Yalla (come on), talk to your cousin and tell him to stop with these missiles…" says a colleague in jest.
After one of his patients was released from hospital, he approached the doctor and said: "You can be sure, I will never forget your name…"
"Of course I hope they know me due to my work and not only because of this name," Haitam explains.
"I treat whoever arrives at the Rambam hospital, without consideration of origin, religion, or nationality. I am Israeli and I am a resident of Israel – and I'm proud of that and the wonderful relations that exist in the Rambam hospital between all of the staff and patients, without regard for race or nationality," he says.
Dozens of Israeli Arab doctors work alongside Nasrallah at the Rambam hospital: Muslims, Christians, and Druze. One of his colleagues, Doctor Hani Bahous, 42, hopes that peace in the Middle East will happen soon, and that good relations are established between all peoples, as exist in the Rambam hospital, and in Haifa generally.
And while we are conversing with Doctor Nasrallah, the air raid sirens again go off in Haifa. After receiving a number of insistent looks, Doctor Nasrallah smiles: "Okay, okay, I will call him and ask him to stop."
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This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org.
Source: Ynet News, 26 July 2006
Visit the website at www.ynetnews.com
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service – Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH).
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
About CGNews-PiH
The Common Ground News Service - Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH) provides news, op-eds, features and analysis by local and international experts on a broad range of issues affecting Muslim-Western relations. CGNews-PiH syndicates articles that are balanced and solution-oriented to news outlets worldwide. With support from the Norwegian government and the United States Institute of Peace, this news service is a non-profit initiative of Search for Common Ground, an international NGO working in the field of conflict transformation.
This news service is one outcome of a set of working meetings held in partnership with His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan in June 2003.
Youth Views
CGNews-PiH also regularly publishes the work of student leaders and journalists whose articles strengthen intercultural understanding and promote constructive perspectives and dialogue in their own communities. Student journalists and writers under the age of 27 are encouraged to write to cbinkley@sfcg.org for more information on contributing.
The views expressed in these articles are those of the authors, not of CGNews-PiH or its affiliates.Common Ground News Service
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