Peace Is a Woman and a Mother

By Ada Aharoni                                                                                                             

How do you know                                              

peace is a woman?                                                   

I know, for

I met her yesterday                                                                       

on my winding way

to the world's fare.

She had such a sorrowful face

just like a golden flower faded

before her prime.

I asked her why

she was so sad?

She told me her baby

was killed in Auschwitz,

her daughter in Hiroshima

and her sons in Vietnam,

Israel, Palestine, Lebanon,

Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur and Chechnya.

All the rest of her children, she said,

are on the nuclear

black-list of the dead,

all the rest, unless

the whole world understands -

that peace is a woman.

A thousand candles then lit

in her starry eyes, and I saw -

Peace is indeed a pregnant woman,

Peace is a mother.

 

IFLAC-Int. Forum For Literature And Culture of Peace

IFLAC International Forum For Literature And Culture Of Peace

 

IFLAC STATUTES (2008)

 

(Voluntary Association No. 58-035-275-5)

 

IFLAC Pave Peace is a voluntary Association, founded by Dr. Ada Aharoni, that strives for peace by building bridges of understanding and peace through culture, literature and communication. Its major goals are:

* To strive toward the promotion of peace and mutual
respect between people and nations.

* To promote social, cultural and religious tolerance
between people.

* To eliminate violence in all its forms.

 

* To organize peace culture researchers, writers,
and intellectuals.

* To encourage creativity that promotes culture and peace.

 

We believe that culture and literature can promote peace, freedom, and the enrichment of the quality of life. In the first decade of the twenty first century, we shall endeavor to pave the way towards the fulfillment of our main ideal: “One world and one humanity, all living in peace”. Our goal is to help build a Middle East and a world beyond war in the first decade of the 21^st century, by means of literature, culture, art and the global IFLAC PCTV gigantic project. This endeavor is in harmony with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.

 

At IFLAC, we strive for freedom of speech and expression, and for freedom from hostile and oppressive violence, whether it is war, terror, gender, physical, mental or moral oppression. We believe in the right of people everywhere to live in peace, and in their rights to pursue their various cultures, as well as their human endeavors, and their right to obtain equal civil justice.

 

 The IFLAC CHARTER 2008, that follows, is an inherent part of the IFLAC STATUES 2008.   www.iflac.com     www.iflac.com/ada


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http://picasaweb.google.com/ofrabs/TheBigHugToJerusalem_June2008

Dear friends,
I'm sending you the link to picture album of Ofra Ben Shitrit from the second Hug to the Old City of Jerusalem on 24th of June. Enjoy, with love, Dvora



 

 

 

Read about Big Hug 2007
Short movies from last year's Hug:	Israeli TV News Channal 2
	Amihay's clip
	German TV News

Big Hug around the Old City of Jerusalem, June 24, 2008  …Join thousands of people holding hands with open hearts… Love for Jerusalem as the spiritual-religious center of the world unites people of all walks of life.  After thousands of years, the time has come to recognize our unity and respect for each other.  Though each of us has his/her personal ways and ideas, we can create new modes of communication to enjoy our diversity, to find gateways to Life in harmony. We, Lovers of Jerusalem, call you from all corners of the world to gather together with us around Jerusalem - the heart-center of the world, to express with this gesture our Human Unity and Love of Peace in one big circle that symbolically and actually connects us all.

We are presently looking for fund-raisers to help us to collect money to cover the expenses of this unique event. Any one of you, who has experience and/or feels able to do this, please contact us. This work would be with a fee (an agreed upon percentage from the raised money).

Three religions by David Monge On Tuesday, June 24, 2008, we shall meet. People from all Nations - Jews, Muslims, Christians and other religions from Israel, Palestine and from around the world, We shall meet at 4 different locations around the Old City at 3:00 pm.  At 5:00 PM we shall follow our drummers to encircle the walls of the Old City. Hand-in-hand we will create one huge human circle, a “Big Hug” for Jerusalem. With this we shall give expression to our pure intent by offering our personal blessings of love to the Holy City, the Heart of the World, with the awareness of our Human Unity.  We welcome your participation and help.

For more details please contact us to: loversofjerusalem@gmail.com ,

Or:

Phone: Mira: 054 5606213 , Gila: 054 5606209

For those of us who remain in their home countries, and wish to be with us in spirit and meditate at the time of the hug,  The big hug will take place between 10am-11am new york time.

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Designed by Shlomo Haluts Hosted by SPUN inc

 About the Peace Tent Project

WOMEN: Creating A World Beyond War and Violence (Paperback)
by Ada Aharoni (Author) "I'm sure that someday children in school will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity..." (more)

 

By	Tali Winkler (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews

Ada Aharoni's new book is a treasure for women everywhere in the world. Women are indeed the best allies of peace. "Women: Creating A World Beyond War and Violence", depicts several authentic aspects in articles, poems, stories, and letters, concerning this truth. There is no greater challenge in the world today than that of living in peace, respect and harmony with one's neighbors, and women instinctively know and share this basic grassroots fact. At a time when the world is still caught up in the clutches of wars and violence, it is imperative for humanity to "listen to women for a change."
There are more women and children killed in wars than soldiers. In the past decade some four million women and children have been killed, and eight to ten million disabled by wars. We get continuous reports concerning this tragic fact from various parts of the world, where more than fifty senseless wars are still being waged. In 2001, at the end of our "mushroom" century, we seem not to have learnt the lessons from the past, and more and more rivers of innocent blood are helplessly and continuously being poured everyday, in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Kosovo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Basque country, Ireland, and so on, and endlessly so on... The thwarted, shortsighted satanic belief that wars can solve conflicts, has to be rapidly thrown into the anachronistic dustbin of history where its belongs, at the opening of this new millennium. If the women of the world unite - we can do it. We are the majority, together with the men who yearn for a world beyond war, and we have the democratic right to have global peace.
The book contains a description of a quarter of a century of peace activity by The Bridge: Jewish and Arab Women for Peace in the Middle-East, including an important correspondence with Mrs. Jehan El-Sadat, wife of the (late) President of Egypt, Anwar El-Sadat. Among many other subjects, it also includes a section on the Four Mothers' successful campaign to "Leave Lebanon In Peace".
The BAN-WAR campaign and petition appearing in Section 4, built on the model of the UN "Declaration of the Right of Peoples to Peace" (Resolution 39/11), gives us the opportunity to express our democratic global will for peace, to abolish the very concept and practice of war, and to banish it forever from our lives and from our world.
The global village to which we belong is one of great multiplicity, which calls for the necessity of cultural bridges and exchange of humanistic values. Literature and Poetry are some of the best vehicles for this, and for expressing our common innermost thoughts and feelings, and several moving pieces and poems appearing in the pages below, bring this truth home.
In one of the poems: "Eve's Defense", in her monologue, Eve satirically touches on one of the basic aspects of the discrimination of women, the myth that she was responsible for offering the forbidden apple to Adam. Eve exclaims that first, he did not have to eat it, and secondly, she reminds him, that although she was created from a much finer substance than he was - his own human rib-bone, instead of mere earth like him - men and women are in truth equal.
Women are great communicators and consumers of culture, they are open to new ideas and creations, new methods of organizing, and new ways of living. They are, therefore, a special source of renovation, vitality, strength and hope. They are not in society's "museum anymore". Women are organizing through NGO's, such as: Iflac - Pave Peace: The International Forum for the Culture of Peace; The Bridge; Lena; the Beijing NGO, WILPF; and numerous organizations and associations around the world, to safeguard their lives and that of