Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Question I Wanted to Ask Sharon Stone

I intended to attend this:

Special Blogger's Sessions – During the conference, there will be three special sessions for bloggers.  The sessions are scheduled as follows:

Thursday, June 20:

·        16:30 PM – Media Event with President Shimon Peres & Sharon Stone (for journalists and bloggers).  The event will be held in the hall where the “State of Mind” exhibition will be displayed, near the main entrance of the Convention Center.

However, since a few hours before they altered the rules and limited the amount of attendees, I realized I would have little chance of getting there on time and getting to the head of the line before the cut-off number (I could attend the entire day's sessions), and when I set off, the traffic became clogged (where they all trying to get there and grab a front-row seat?), I headed off to some other important task.


One reason the Peres Presidential Israel Conference invited Sharon Stone to participate is her involvement in YALLAH.

That is:


It is an online forum for QFI's education exchange program alumni to join together for student-driven and expert-facilitated discussions on pertinent global topics and for organizing community service projects to benefit others.


Another is this:

Peace promotion

In March 2006, Stone traveled to Israel to promote peace in the Middle East through a press conference with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres. In 2013, she referred to Peres as her "mentor."

Let's put the two together:

...Youngsters from Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, Morocco along with Israelis and Palestinians, have all joined. It’s called Yalla Young Leaders...Over 300 thousand people are taking part, a third from Egypt, and 20 thousand Palestinians. In this meeting, participants from Morocco, Tunisia, the Palestinian Authority and Israel join in this Jaffa apartment to speak via video conference with actress Sharon Stone, who is the President of the Organization These days, all you need is a computer and Internet connection to break down borders. [Peres confidant Uri] Savir says the group will have a million participants within a year, and when a million people knock on the doors of Bibi, Abu Mazen and Obama, they won’t be able to ignore them.

And this is the question I wanted to ask:

Ms. Stone,

The man sitting next to you, Shimon Peres, is the father of the Oslo Process, the basic idea of which was that to obtain peace, one country at war allows a terrorist group from the other side to rearm.

But that is incidental.  Oslo kicked in during 1993.  An Arab child born in Hebron in 1990, and who is now 23 years old, grew up and went through the Palestinian Authority educational system, from nursery school to kindergarten through to high school and even university.

Besides the fact that much criticism has been voiced about what that education implanted in his mind, I wish to point out that there is no "Peace Now" group there, nor any other true sense of coming to terms with Israel and Jewish nationalism.

I could go on, Ms. Stone, but time is short.  So, I'll ask -

would it not be better to first undo all this negativity and animosity against Israel that has been developed in the younger generation before true and genuine peace can flourish?  should we not try, as much as possible, to wipe the slate clean?

^

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