Index: Peace Education
Peace Efficacy
This page is new and will be developed around the new concept of "peace efficacy;" that is, one's perceptions of one's own personal capabilities to successfully 1) choose to engage in the task of peacemaking, 2) persist in the face of adversity, 3) expend greater effort to the task, and 4) remain focused on a picture of peace and what it takes to get there. There also exists the concept of "collective efficacy," in which the collective efficacy of a group of individuals is assessed. In this case, it is feasible to construct a notion of "collective peace efficacy" based on a given population. Individual efficacy would be more appropriate for leaders and negotiators. Collective efficacy is related to any segment of the populace.
Readers who are already familiar with the research on self-efficacy or social cognitive theory will understand where this is going. It's going to take a long time to muster the resources to keep this page going, but we are interested in publishing your essays and information on the topic of peace efficacy. In the meantime, we will add abstracts to this page as resources permit. Please offer your comments. Thanks for dropping by.
Page Contents
America the Fearful
Published on Tuesday, May 21, 2002 in the Boston Globe
America the Fearful
by James Carroll
THE MORE powerful the United States becomes, the more frightened we are. Why is that?
An undercurrent of hysteria has coursed through the talk out of Washington over the last week as, first, critics demanded to know whether government officials had ignored warnings of the terrorist attacks of last September and, second, the same government officials - in response? - issued a new warning of coming attacks that might be even worse.
[snip]
Here is the irony: The surest way to make the world an even more dangerous place is to posit danger as the most important thing about it.
This week's treaty is the clearest case in point. America's determination to preserve thousands of excess nuclear warheads means that now Russia, despite its firm preference for elimination, will certainly preserve them as well.
And what will happen over time to those warheads? When the urgency of keeping such material out of the hands of rogue elements is clear, the American move away from full elimination of nukes, especially in Russia, makes no sense. But that very irrationality is the revelation.
We are like a nation that has had a psychological break and is descending into rank paranoia. The destruction of the twin towers shows that there are things to be afraid of, but our government's mad responses are making us more vulnerable to such things, not less.
The ''war on terrorism'' has strengthened the hand of those who hate America. The US example of ''overwhelming force'' has pushed the Middle East into the abyss and has dragged India-Pakistan to its edge. The only real protections against cross-border terrorism are international structures of criminal justice like the recently established International Criminal Court, yet an ''unsigning'' United States slaps the court down with contempt.
[snip]
But it may be worse than that. The shape of their dread is useful to them in these ways, but, also, like the mentally disturbed, they seem convinced that any danger they imagine is real. Our nation is being led by men and women who are at the mercy of their fears. That they work hard to keep the American people afraid might seem to suggest that they want merely to deflect any second-guessing about the course they have set, but in fact our fear reinforces theirs.
Fear has become Washington's absolute and is shaping its every response to the future. America is being led by cowards.
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Fear Can Turn Us All Into 'Good Germans'
Published on Monday, April 29, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Fear Can Turn Us All Into 'Good Germans.'
We Must Resist It
by Harley Sorensen
One of life's mysteries, for me, is how masses of people can do the incredibly cruel things they do. Individual brutality makes a certain amount of sense in that it's limited to one person. But mass brutality?
I think this subject first came to mind after I read Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany.
There was nothing in either book that told me how such a highly civilized and culturally advanced nation as Germany could sink to the level of the Nazis.
"How could that happen?" I wondered.
"What is there about the Germans that allowed them to become the monsters they became? How are they different than the rest of us?"
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Israel will react to this atrocity but peace will only come through politics
Israel will react to this atrocity, but peace will only come through politics
09 May 2002
There was a sad inevitability about Tuesday night's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, just as there is about the next one, and the one after that.
There was also a certain predictability about the responses. The Israeli government was quick to establish and to emphasise that the bomber came from Gaza and not from the West Bank.
Thus Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has a persuasive reply to those who predicted that his "iron fist" policy in the West Bank would only recruit more martyrs to the ranks of extremist Palestinian organisations.
For the hardliners in Israel, which, it must be acknowledged, means at least three-quarters of the population, this does not mean that the operation to root out terrorism was misguided, only that it did not go far enough – and the next step must be to invade the Gaza Strip to kill or capture any armed Palestinians found there.
[snip]
Unfortunately, it ought to be clear to any thinking observer that this action, and the way the Israeli Defence Force has gone about it, will only make the underlying situation worse. Tuesday's suicide bomber may have come from Gaza, but the next one, or the one after that, will be someone whose relatives saw what happened in Jenin. Too bad, say most Israelis, and their frustration is understandable. They are willing to concede a Palestinian state, but only if that will stop the terrorist violence.
No such guarantee can credibly be given, so they feel they have no choice but to try to secure themselves in the short term as best they can.
There are, however, things the Israeli government could do to make an eventual peace more rather than less likely, and sooner rather than later. Two above all. One is to "internationalise" the conflict. This it has already begun to do in granting a role to British and American wardens in the deal which released Mr Arafat from house arrest. At his meeting with President Bush this week, Mr Sharon left the door slightly ajar to the idea of an international conference this summer which would, among other things, help to tie in the Arab League nations as guarantors of any eventual settlement.
The other is to do something about the settlements. Of all the injustices suffered by the Palestinians, the seizure of land and the building of new Israeli towns in occupied territory is the most grievous. Much of the occupied land will have to be returned to the Palestinians if there is to be any hope of healing the national trauma of which suicide bombing is the most extreme manifestation.
In this act of the tragedy, the protagonists are still moving further apart, and the pieces of the puzzle that must come together do not yet fit. All that compassionate observers can do is to repeat continually that the actors in this tragedy – some more than others – can make choices which might ultimately lead to different outcomes, and that neither Mr Arafat nor Mr Sharon are yet making the most hopeful choices.
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Jews for Justice in the Middle East
"The Origin of the Palestine-Israeli Conflict" by Jews for Justice in the Middle East. This document is an important review of the history of the conflict but, more importantly, it puts forth the most, and possibly only, positive solution to the Palestine-Israeli conflict. Click here.
   
Large Tel Aviv rally calls for pullout from territories
Jerusalem Post Staff and news agencies
May. 12, 2002
Tens of thousands rallied in Tel Aviv¹s Kikar Rabin last night to call for a withdrawal from the territories. Police estimated the crowd at about 60,000, while organizers Peace Now put the figure at above 150,000, calling it the biggest peace rally since the current wave of violence broke out in October 2000.
Opposition politicians and artists addressed a throng waving a sea of banners saying ³Leave the territories for the sake of Israel² and ³Two states for two peoples.² Some carried signs saying: ³Get out of the territories – and save the economy,² and ³Conscientious objectors for the country.²
Some 1,500 security guards and police officers secured the event. Opposition leader MK Yossi Sarid (Meretz), former justice minister Yossi Beilin, entertainer Dudu Topaz, and author Amos Oz addressed the crowd.
³The economic crisis is threatening the entire country. Only the settlements and the government are big and fat... Withdraw from the settlements and return to ourselves. The settlements are a burden; there is no concession and no prize,² Sarid said in his speech.
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Peace gets buried
by IGNACIO RAMONET
Land for peace. All the land for total peace. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia's proposal made in February, and unanimously endorsed by the Arab summit in Beirut at the end of March, had the merit of simplicity. Israel would withdraw to its June 1967 borders, Syria would recover the Golan Heights, and there would be a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In exchange the 22 states of the Arab League would establish full diplomatic relations and normal trading links with Israel and guarantee the security of its borders (1).
Total withdrawal for total peace. The simple equation aroused keen interest around the world.
The idea was not new. United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) rested on the principle of land for peace. It was the principle underlying the 1991 Madrid conference and the now defunct Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestinians. The Camp David talks in July 2000, just before the second intifada, and the last ditch talks in Taba in January last year (2) were also based on land for peace.
The Saudi initiative contained nothing really new. But it raised hope because it came at the right time - when three main elements in the overall dynamic had run out of steam.
The first element was Ariel Sharon's strategy of violence to subdue the Palestinians. In the name of a Greater Israel, he wanted to force them to accept permanent settlement (3) of part of the territory recognised as belonging to Palestine. The use of excessive force - warships, F16 fighter aircraft, armoured helicopters and tanks - against a largely unarmed civilian population had not had the effect Sharon wanted. The reverse was true: the Israelis have never known such loss of life or insecurity within their own country (4).
And the crimes committed by the army when it occupied the towns of the West Bank have tarnished Israel's image abroad and sickened many ordinary Israelis (5). On 12 March, for example, the humanitarian organisation B'Tselem reported: "In every city and refugee camp that they have entered, IDF soldiers have repeated the same pattern: indiscriminate firing and the killing of innocent civilians, intentional harm to water, electricity and telephone infrastructure, taking over civilian houses, extensive damage to civilian property, shooting at ambulances and prevention of medical care to the injured." Within the army, a growing number of officers were courageously saying no (6).
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Profiles of courage: US lawmakers stand up for moral justice in Middle East
By Barbara Ferguson, Arab News Correspondent
WASHINGTON — It is easy, in a broad sweep, to believe that all of America¹s elected Congressmen and Senators are pro-Israeli extremists. And, reading the mainstream media here, it would be difficult to assume otherwise.
Just this week, pro-Israel lawmakers pushed though a resolution that supported Israel¹s incursions into Palestinian territories, and apparently endorsed as justifiable the brutality and bloodshed the Israeli Army inflicted on the unarmed civilians there.
It is important to note that there are lawmakers in Congress who are men and women of conscience, who oppose Israel¹s aggression, believe in the importance of the US maintaining a genuine "honest broker" status, believe that Palestinians must have their own homeland, and are working for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
The following is a compilation by Arab News of those men and women in Congress who bravely spoke out for justice in the Middle East last week.
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