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5.0 out of 5 stars
A TREASURE FOR WOMEN, November 18, 2001
This review is from: WOMEN: Creating A World Beyond War and Violence (Paperback)
Ada Aharoni's new book is a treasure for women everywhere in the world. Women are indeed the best allies of peace. "Women: Creating A World Beyond War and Violence", depicts several authentic aspects in articles, poems, stories, and letters, concerning this truth. There is no greater challenge in the world today than that of living in peace, respect and harmony with one's neighbors, and women instinctively know and share this basic grassroots fact. At a time when the world is still caught up in the clutches of wars and violence, it is imperative for humanity to "listen to women for a change."
There are more women and children killed in wars than soldiers. In the past decade some four million women and children have been killed, and eight to ten million disabled by wars. We get continuous reports concerning this tragic fact from various parts of the world, where more than fifty senseless wars are still being waged. In 2001, at the end of our "mushroom" century, we seem not to have learnt the lessons from the past, and more and more rivers of innocent blood are helplessly and continuously being poured everyday, in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Kosovo, Rwanda, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Basque country, Ireland, and so on, and endlessly so on... The thwarted, shortsighted satanic belief that wars can solve conflicts, has to be rapidly thrown into the anachronistic dustbin of history where its belongs, at the opening of this new millennium. If the women of the world unite - we can do it. We are the majority, together with the men who yearn for a world beyond war, and we have the democratic right to have global peace.
The book contains a description of a quarter of a century of peace activity by The Bridge: Jewish and Arab Women for Peace in the Middle-East, including an important correspondence with Mrs. Jehan El-Sadat, wife of the (late) President of Egypt, Anwar El-Sadat. Among many other subjects, it also includes a section on the Four Mothers' successful campaign to "Leave Lebanon In Peace".
The BAN-WAR campaign and petition appearing in Section 4, built on the model of the UN "Declaration of the Right of Peoples to Peace" (Resolution 39/11), gives us the opportunity to express our democratic global will for peace, to abolish the very concept and practice of war, and to banish it forever from our lives and from our world.
The global village to which we belong is one of great multiplicity, which calls for the necessity of cultural bridges and exchange of humanistic values. Literature and Poetry are some of the best vehicles for this, and for expressing our common innermost thoughts and feelings, and several moving pieces and poems appearing in the pages below, bring this truth home.
In one of the poems: "Eve's Defense", in her monologue, Eve satirically touches on one of the basic aspects of the discrimination of women, the myth that she was responsible for offering the forbidden apple to Adam. Eve exclaims that first, he did not have to eat it, and secondly, she reminds him, that although she was created from a much finer substance than he was - his own human rib-bone, instead of mere earth like him - men and women are in truth equal.
Women are great communicators and consumers of culture, they are open to new ideas and creations, new methods of organizing, and new ways of living. They are, therefore, a special source of renovation, vitality, strength and hope. They are not in society's "museum anymore". Women are organizing through NGO's, such as: Iflac - Pave Peace: The International Forum for the Culture of Peace; The Bridge; Lena; the Beijing NGO, WILPF; and numerous organizations and associations around the world, to safeguard their lives and that of their children and families against war and violence. Women's demands for abolishing war and violence against them, for equal rights, and the basic human right to live in peace, are at the foundations of a truly democratic society.
However, the media, worldwide, does not as yet give women's struggle for peace, the backing, coverage, and credit they deserve. The "Code of Ethics of the Media", and correspondence with Sergio Tripi (Italy), and Ursula Oswald Spring (Mexico), the former President of IPRA, clearly shows that this should be changed. This book shows that half the world's citizens, the women, together with the men who have democracy at heart - have the creativity and power to change the world.
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