May 18, 2007

Thank you for your coverage in the May 18 Advocate of "Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Forget It or Not Just Yet?" held at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, sponsored by Brit Tzedek v'Shalom and the JCRC. I came away with a message of hope. My hopefulness was engendered by witnessing a Palestinian and an Israeli sharing the stage and expressing similar aspirations for a negotiated two-state solution.

In this week's Jewish Daily Forward, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel directly criticized Ehud Olmert at the third annual Petra Conference in Jordan for Israel's slow pace in peacemaking with her neighbors. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, echoed these sentiments in a panel discussion at Bar-Ilan University. In the end, Olmert expressed readiness to discuss the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative with Arab leaders.

These programs in Brookline, Jordan and Israel represent a groundswell echoing the welcoming remarks of Rabbi Moshe Waldoks of Temple Beth Zion that it is preferable to proceed from hope, rather than from fear.

Stan Fleischman
Newton Highlands