To Give or Not

I have been quite aggressive in my latest attempt to raise money for several different causes that I am supporting through my bike riding. Ever since I came back from India, I have upped my own donations, I constantly bring up the subject in conversations with just about anyone, and find myself being willing to hit up anyone with the request for a donation in any way or form.

The idea of helping others resonates strongly in me. One of the reasons I love Judaism so much (despite frequent headaches it gives me) is the importance it places on the good deeds, charity, and general idea of helping and giving. My family donates generously on regular basis, and we try to volunteer as much as we can. A side point, within my own family we don’t always have consensus on our causes, where to volunteer and which organizations to volunteer for, but we are united in the belief of helping via monetary and non-monetary means.

I don’t think the desire to help is inherent to mankind. If it was intrinsic to us, no major religion would mandate obligatory donations. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity command its followers to donate. I think the fact that these religions not only mandate obligatory donations, but also specify how much people ought to donate, is a further proof that unless forced somehow, a person isn’t necessarily going to help others.

A Letter To A Palestinian Friend

One of the advantages of being away in India was an opportunity to forget about all the politics except those concerning India. Or forget about politics all together. Now that I am back here in USA, hiding from the Middle East political upheavals isn’t an option anymore.

I fear the current events have placed a lot of strain on already complex human relationships. My only hope is that we all can remain connected to one another as we go through these horrible times, and have our loyalties and connections tested.

I am sorry for all the senseless loss on all sides

Peace Message or Propaganda?

There was a peace event sponsored by the Indian community in Seattle today. I ended up attending it purely by chance; happened to spend my morning at the beach where the event was held. Parts of the event were dancing shows put by various groups. One of them was Palestinian students who used dances as messages of peace for Palestine. At least that was what the host said in his initial introduction.

What it turned out to be was Palestinian students using dancing symbolism to carry messages of them being the only victims of the Israel/Palestinian conflict, along with re-writing the history and facts. During the show the students talked about never giving up their struggle, changed few historic facts, and I quote “Prophets Moses, Jesus and Mohamed being born in Palestine.” Are you kidding me? Everyone agrees (Jewish and Muslim historians) that the word Palestine didn’t come into existence until after the birth of Prophets, who were born in Israel.

I was really disappointed by the whole thing. On one hand, there were posters carrying Gandhi’s about peace and tolerance, on the other hand, there are Palestinian students who are yet to say anything about peace and tolerance towards their Israeli neighbors.

I feel defeated in advance when I come across Palestinian students making subtle attempt to blame Israel during peace events. How is that being productive? Is that even fair to hide behind the message of peace to bring an unproductive point across? This was a peace event, yet I haven’t heard one word of peace from Palestinian side. When I participate in such events, I speak for both sides, and the need for peace. If today’s event was seen as a peace event by Palestinians, do I truly have an honest counterpart on Palestinian side?

On “From Gaza, with Love” blog

I came across a post by Mona El-Farra tittled “my oped in the Austin statement paper -USA “Palestinians Must Have Hope to Move Forward”” posted on Friday, June 22, 2007 http://www.fromgaza.blogspot.com/. I placed a comment, but decided to make a copy of it on my own blog for two reasons. First reason, another bloggers indicated in comments that Mona removed previous comments that she didn’t agree with, and second reason was that Mona reserved the right to approve comments before allowing them to be published. Simply said, I didn’t think I had a high chance of my comment published; what I had to say was important enough to me to make sure it doesn’t disappear in big black hole of the world wide web!

Peacebuilding

This post is part of my paper for a citizen’s diplomacy class that I took this summer. The question was “What are some key resources and challenges for peace building involving Arab Muslim societies?”

The main challenge is to educate the general public that Arab Muslim societies do engage in non-violent peace building efforts, with a great deal of them steaming from the teachings of Quran, which have been successful and useful. I personally believe that a lot of injustice to the Arab world has been done by the Western media. The Arab world is often being portrayed negatively by the media that chooses to concentrate on the Arab militants who also use Quran to justify the violence. There is no denying that violence exists in Arab world, however, it isn’t fair for the media to exploit the negative images only, and allow the general public to believe that violence is the only mean used by the Arab world to resolve conflicts. At the same time, Arab Muslim societies should do more to promote non-violence ideas, and take active steps towards peace building, and try to come together as a community to support non violent ways of building peace.