The panel speaking today at the seminar "Youth activism, digital journalism and social media in the Middle East" reveals quite a bit about what the UN considers to be "peace."
Youth activism continues to be a driving force behind movements for peace, justice and democracy in Israel and Palestine, and across the Middle East. This panel will discuss how the acceleration in digital technologies and social media is affecting youth activism, and how the use of social media by youth activists has helped and/or hindered their causes.
Moderator: Mr. Ahmed Shihab Eldin, Producer and host, Huffington Post Live
Mr. Ahmad Alhendawi, United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth
Ms. Rana Nazzal Hamadeh, Youth activist, Palestine
Ms. Sahar Vardi, Peace activist, Israel
Mr. Gökhan Yücel, Digital diplomacy expert and Lecturer at the Leadership, Politics and Diplomacy School of Bahçeşehir University
The Israeli representative, Sahar Vardi, is a far-left activist who refused to serve in the IDF and who participates in weekly anti-Israel protests. It seems clear that she really wants peace between Jews and Arabs, however misguided her viewpoint.
Contrast this with the Palestinian Arab representative, Rana Nazzal Hamadeh. She has this quote on her Twitter profile:
From you steel & fire, from us flesh, from you another tank, from us stones. So leave our country, our land, our sea, our wheat, our salt, our wounds- M Darwish
Does a demand that all Jews be ethnically cleansed from the area sound peaceful to you?
Can you imagine a Jew who says anything close to that ("leave our country, our land...") being invited to speak at any UN-sponsored conference, ever?
The fact is that any Jew who would speak like this would be considered an intolerant far-right bigot and would not be accepted in polite society. A Palestinian Arab who says this is honored as a leader on peace and justice.
There is a serious problem here.
The people who should properly protest this are the liberals. Hamadeh's attitude is the exact opposite of liberalism. But the acceptance and tacit encouragement of Arab violence is so ingrained in the "enlightened" Western world that nobody bats an eyelash.
(I tweeted Vardi asking if she agreed with Hamadeh's quote, but didn't receive a response yet.)
(h/t PMB)