Jersusalem, Peace Capital of the World

HumanDHS is primarily grounded in academic work. We are independent of any religious or political agenda. However, we wish to bring academic work into "real life." Our research focuses on topics such as dignity (with humiliation as its violation), or, more precisely, on respect for equal dignity for all human beings in the world. This is not only our research topic, but also our core value, in line with Article 1 of the Human Rights Declaration that states that every human being is born with equal dignity (that ought not be humiliated). We agree with Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, who advocates the building of bridges from academia as follows, "I have always believed that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential for public policy. It is possible to affect public policy without being an advocate; to be passionate about peace without losing analytical rigor; to be moved by what is just while conceding that no one has a monopoly on justice." We would like to add that we believe that good scholarship can be relevant and consequential not only for public policy, but for raising awareness in general.

As to the status of Jerusalem, according to the UN General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947, Jerusalem is to have a "Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem."
See the full text of the Resolution of the General Assembly, December 9, 1949 (UN Doc. A11245, December 10, 1949) on an International Regime for the Jerusalem Area and Protection of the Holy Places.

In the HumanDHS network, this idea has resonated widely:
•  Varda Mühlbauer, her husband Arik, and Evelin were wandering through Jerusalem in March 2004 and Varda said that we should have one of our future annual meetings for our HumanDHS group/network at some point in Jerusalem, the Peace Capital of the World.
Is not this a wonderful image, Jerusalem, the Peace Capital of the World! We all know that reality currently is flying in the face of this dream, however, hope needs dreams, and without dreams we have no direction for action. So, why not promote the idea of Jerusalem, the Peace Capital of the World against all odds!

•  Dov Greenstone kindly explained:
"Regarding Jerusalem, city of peace, the original name for Jerusalem was Shalem, meaning peace. See Genesis 14-18. Yru in early Hebrew/Chaldean means "city". Thus Yru-Shalem or Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), city of peace. There are also other sources in the Prophets."

•  Later, when Herbert Lurie launched the idea of having parts of Jerusalem developed as ex-territorial area, similar to the Vatican, Varda wrote (personal message, 20th December 2004): "I also thought that certain parts [of Jerusalem] should be ex-territorial. My idea is that international institutes - such as U.N and others who pursue world peace and other issues - should move to Jerusalem. This is to say, not merely a Vatican - which is exclusively the territory of  one religion - rather the place for the 3 religions combined with international institutes pursuing world peace and overall care for people."

•  At our 2007 Workshop on Humiliation and Violent Conflict in New York, Arie Nadler and Yoav Peck aired the idea to organize a HumanDHS Conference on Humiliation in Jerusalem.

•  Please see here a painting by Katrina Vrebalovich entitled "New Jerusalem - the golden city of tolerance dedication to the betterment of humanity through all forms of study and communication - a free place for every one - a heart of transformation" that Katrina generously contributes to this page. She writes on 28th April 2009: "Yes, you may use New Jerusalem. Anywhere it can do its magic and activate love and golden wisdom of inclusion, encouragement, and a vision that we all live on this little planet - the old ideas of boarders, walls etc., all that create separation, creates fear and the unknown..."
Thank you, dear Katrina!

jerusalem
"New Jerusalem - the golden city of tolerance dedication to the betterment of humanity through all forms of study and communication - a free place for every one - a heart of transformation," painting by Katrina Vrebalovich entitled that she generously contributes to this page. Uploaded on 29th April 2009.
Please click on the picture to see it larger.





Links

Please note that the entire HumanDHS website is maintained by volunteers, since its inception in 2003, and this is mainly done by Evelin Lindner. Until 2012, she usually pasted interesting news into this Links section. From July 2012 until 2017, she tagged interesting information on delicious.com. From 2017 onward, you see Evelin's personal list of interesting web links on Twitter:

Search for a Common Jerusalem by Hady Amr and Joel H. Samuels
Hady Amr, fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, and Joel H. Samuels, assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, consider the controversial issue of Jerusalem, in light of President Bush’s recent call for a multinational peace conference on Israel and Palestine, and the reason why so many Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are ready to share the Old City. (Source: The Washington Post, 21 July 2007)
Read the full article at http://www.humiliationstudies.org/news/2007/08/common-ground-news-service-bulletin-01-07-august-2007/.

A Study on Jerusalem by Prince El Hassan bin Talal
(London, New-York, Longman, 1979)