PRO: Peace, Reconciliation and Opportunity is the term coined by Dr. Khaled Diab, who founded the interfaith, non-profit Olive Trees Foundation for Peace organization http://www.olivetreesfoundation.org/

Dr. Diab and I collaborated on "KEEP HOPE ALIVE" based on his NAKBA memories which is also a 100% fund raiser vehicle for OTFFP.

The OTFFP dream is that we will provide the funds for a million trees to blanket the Holy Land, which will heal, mend and transform the landscape and many hearts and minds.

So far, over one million trees have been destroyed by The Wall.

Twenty-five olive trees can sustain the typical sized Palestinian family of five, nothing from the trees is ever wasted and the trees will live for centuries if not plowed down.

Thanks to generous America donors, 31,000 olive and other more needed species have now been deeply rooted in Israel Palestine by neighbors who became partners and are now friends on both sides of The Wall.

The 60th anniversary year of Israel, Nakba and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is also a year to go PRO and KEEP HOPE ALIVE

"KEEP HOPE ALIVE" is a fictionalized retelling of the well remembered memoirs of a 1948 refugee from the Upper Galilee who made his way to the USA and realized the American dream. After a lucrative career in the Defense Industry during the Cold War and THAT DAY we call 9/11, Khaled Diab brought together American Jews, Christians and Muslims to respond to evil with good by founding the 501 3-c Olive Trees Foundation for Peace.

"Keep Hope Alive" tells his story and is an historical chronology with connections to antiquity, and hope for the future.

"Keep Hope Alive" is also my spiritual journey told with humor and insight through six fictional characters who represent six ways to intuit God.

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Book Reviewer from http://www.midwestbookreview.com:

"At first I thought this had something to do with the famous line of Jessie Jackson. I'm delighted to say it is much, much more. The author shows that there are many people from all over the world who are moving in the right direction to establish peace in the Middle East. The organization Olive Trees Foundation for Peace/OTFFP is Arabs, Jews, and Christians who have formed a non profit non political group who have one goal; to have Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace.

"These are people from all walks of life who are committed to changing the area into a peaceful region. Social movements like this grow until finally government jumps on-board. This is so counter to the policies of the Bush administration. As dialogue continues to grow on this subject government will be forced to rethink its approach to the region. This is a book that should be read by anyone does not believe there can be peace in the Middle East. It should also be included in schools and on the college level to help focus on how the area can move toward peace." – Gary Roen

We are few, but we are dedicated and committed to literally extend the olive branch of peace, reconciliation and opportunity to all our sisters, brothers and cousins in the family of Father Abraham who inhabit the Holy Land.

"KEEP HOPE ALIVE" can be ordered through your local bookstore, or online sources; but only through my site can you receive a personally signed copy and ALL proceeds over the cost of book and mailing go directly to OTFFP, until our dream is reality.

"Blessed are the Peacemakers; They shall be called the children of God."

The comment above, perhaps by a genuinely anguished Jewish person from Helenski, Finland:

“not ONLY the expelsion of Jews from various Moslim countries in the last 60 years that Israel has been an independent state,”

is perhaps best addressed by another Jewish person from that very region who can bring perspective to bear on the grave matter:

“The Jews of Iraq by Naeim Giladi” http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/ameu_iraqjews.html

which begins with the following preface by AMEU:

begin quote

The Link interviewed Naeim Giladi, a Jew from Iraq, for three hours on March 16, 1998, two days prior to his 69th birthday. For nearly two other delightful hours, we were treated to a multi-course Arabic meal prepared by his wife Rachael, who is also Iraqi. "It's our Arab culture," he said proudly.

In our previous Link, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe looked at the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Palestinians whose lives were uprooted to make room for foreigners who would come to populate confiscated land. Most were Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. But over half a million other Jews came from Islamic lands. Zionist propagandists claim that Israel "rescued" these Jews from their anti-Jewish, Muslim neighbors. One of those "rescued" Jews-Naeim Giladi-knows otherwise.

In his book, Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, Giladi discusses the crimes committed by Zionists in their frenzy to import raw Jewish labor. Newly-vacated farmlands had to be plowed to provide food for the immigrants and the military ranks had to be filled with conscripts to defend the stolen lands. Mr. Giladi couldn't get his book published in Israel, and even in the U.S. he discovered he could do so only if he used his own money.

The Giladis, now U.S. citizens, live in New York City. By choice, they no longer hold Israeli citizenship. "I am Iraqi," he told us, "born in Iraq, my culture still Iraqi Arabic, my religion Jewish, my citizenship American."

End quote

Please read the interview in its details which entirely addresses every single point raised by the commenter from Finland, and do followup on the cited book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964237903

One's mileage of course will vary depending on the degree of indoctrination and mis-information that one has been deliberately fed as part of the Zionist thought control of the world-wide Jewry to garner their support for Der-Judenstadt in the midst of latter day Palestine.

As Noam Chomsky says, it takes a sentence to construct a lie, and considerably more space (and time and energy) to refute it – thus wasting enormous amounts of conscionable peoples resources which could be spent doing something more productive – and that is the Zionist game-plan to further the process of conquest of Eretz Yisrael. To keep cultivating an infinite supply of red herrings in order to systematically seed newer faits accomplis which are subsequently impossible to reverse due to the new reality on the ground that gets constructed. In another hundred years, or perhaps even fifty, there will be no need for these red herrings and lies. The facts of how the land of Canaan was settled by the Zionist Jews will be openly proclaimed by all and sundry, as is done for the settling of another new world on another continent at the expense of 10 million of its natives. Who does not know that story today?

To really rationally understand this emotional subject matter, rather than either becoming an inadvertent part of a spin-machine, or purposely spewing deception, please see “The endless trail of red herrings”. Searching for that string on the web will locate it, but one can find it on another Jewish person's website as well: http://www.ilanpappe.org/news.html

And there is certainly no doubt that indigenous Jews belong as much in Israel-Palestine, and in the Middle East, as all its other indigenous peoples. No one, especially no alien, has the right to dispossess another native – unless the time-honored hands of the victors' system of Justice have to prevail as in the case of rectifying even any ordinary crime of robbers taking over another's home in armed invasion robbery, let alone when a supreme monumental crime against humanity is continually being committed over the past 100 years! As per Nuremberg laws, much of the Israeli Zionist leadership, past and present, both within Israel and those supportive of Israel from outside its borders, would hang multiple times! But of course, those laws have only been used to settle scores by the victors for the defeated peoples crimes! Just that fact unto itself may become a precedent setter for the future – a condition that ought to worry the entire world-wide far-sighted conscionable Jewry.

Thank you.

Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
http://humanbeingsfirst.org

I am not sure how to put this very elegantly, so I hope I can be forgiven for putting it rather straightforwardly. The following is a wonderful recipe if I was the Hectoring Hegemon and my pending meal was sold these philosophies:

begin quote

For now, the choice that remains relevant is the one posed by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.”

And choosing to do what is right must also adhere to that universal wisdom: “Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept those I can’t, and the WISDOM TO KNOW the difference.”

end quote

I hope one can see why! This does however require more than a few seconds of reflection. In fact, it perhaps requires very carefully studying how the Zionists acquired Palestine as if one is doing a Ph.D. (in a hard discipline), in order to appreciate its import.

The best way for the Palestinian people to analyze their predicament, IMHO, is to study Theodore Herzl, and the systems of power and its many manifestations that were set up by the Zionists in the early twentieth century to realize his plan. Can one observe any of the wonderful prose that is quoted above, in any of the Zionist writings, or in any of the processes that were set up which eventually led to the Balfour Declaration? Did the Jewish scholars, Rabbis, think-tankers and financiers advise their flock to pray to their G-d to “Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept those I can’t, and the WISDOM TO KNOW the difference”? The only prayers they offered were in deception to sell the otherwise impossible task of relocating them to Zion! The only appeal to G-d (i.e., any sort of spirituality, the “right” thing to do stuff, etc.) was to actually achieve the impossible!

And the Zionists did indeed accomplish the impossible!!!!

If one were playing with wooden chess pieces on the 'Grand Chessboard' instead of in real human flesh and souls, one would have applauded them on their gamesmanship!

As strategists, tacticians, institution and organization builders, and of course, also mantra spinners, they have been peerless masterminds. One would be foolish to not learn from the masters themselves!

If a Palestinian can get out of his or her skin for a moment, is able detach oneself from the insufferable pain of one's shattered tabula rasa, and move on to the far distance of the planet Mars to rationally analyze the devilishly sophisticated processes that when into the construction of Israel, one might be able to do a bit more efficacious thinking, and leading.

If one can intellectually recast the problem, of the Palestinians commencing the planning to reacquire their lost Palestine in 2008, after losing it for only 60 years, to be the equivalent of the Zionists planning to acquire Palestine in 1898, after having lost it for 3000 years, what does one get? One can immediately observe that the Zionists started off on an almost intractable problem and overcame it all. Not only that, they were so sure that they will acquire their dream that Herzl had even boasted at the very inception of their plan to seed confidence in the plan: “This day in Basle, I have found the Jewish State. In 5 years, certainly in 50, everyone will know it”. Circumstances of course, also helped. But in the writings and methods of the Palestinians' arch nemeses, and in their modus operandi in the 50 years that preceded the onset of the Nakba, possibly lie the efficacious seeds of orchestrating the desired Palestinian solution-space. All Palestinians already know their solution-space is in 2008, just as all the Zionist also already knew what their solution-space was in 1898.

It is how to get there that requires a careful study of power and its incantations. None of which include the lame recipe quoted above. To catch a mere glimpse of the sophisticated intellectual capital that went into the construction of Israel – just look at this statement of David Ben Gurion – “What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times”!

When the Palestinians can come up with such intellectual capital – that is the day when their fortunes will perhaps begin to change!

Thank you.

Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
http://humanbeingsfirst.org