I’m a journalist – Get me out of here! /The benign ecology of Public Broadcasting/EU lists web users' rights in bid to drive e-commerce

Media News - Thursday, May 07, 2009
Euro-MPs against Internet piracy clampdown

EU lawmakers voted on Wednesday against cutting off Internet access to people who illegally download music, films and videos without a court order. The vote at the European Parliament in Strasbourg deals a fresh blow to a planned French clampdown on Internet piracy, which French deputies already voted against once in April. Lawmakers at the EU parliament approved an amendment to a wide-ranging telecoms reform package that says that the basic rights of Internet users cannot be restricted without a court order. Under French government plans, a new state agency would send illegal downloaders an e-mail warning, then a letter, and suspend their Internet account for up to a year if they are caught more than twice. Lawmakers rejected the bill at the French parliament in April, dealing a first surprise setback for President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, which plans to present the bill again next week. (AFP via EU Business)


EU lists web users' rights in bid to drive e-commerce
Commission hopes to remove barriers by building greater trust
Rosalie Marshall
vnunet.com, 06 May 2009
The European Commission has laid out the digital rights of web users under EU law in an attempt to further remove the barriers to e-commerce.
The information is accessible through a new eYouGuide online portal, and is in response to a call from the European Parliament in 2007, and the findings of a recent EU survey suggesting that 65 per cent of internet users in the EU are in need of more cross-border shopping information.
Advertisement


The survey found that, while a third of consumers would buy goods from another country online, only seven per cent actually do so.
Other findings include the worrying statistics that only 12 per cent of web users feel safe making transactions on the internet, and 39 per cent have major doubts about the privacy of their online data. And nearly half do not dare to carry out financial transactions online.
"If we want consumers to shop around and exploit the potential of digital communications, we need to give them confidence that their rights are guaranteed," said EU consumer commissioner Meglena Kuneva.
"This means putting in place and enforcing clear consumer rights that meet the high standards already existing in the main street."
An EU report published today said that giving web users clear information about their rights will increase trust and help unlock the full economic potential of Europe's single online market, which is currently worth €106bn (£94bn) in annual revenues.
Information contained in the document includes web users' rights if they accidentally pay twice when purchasing online, and the extent to which internet service providers can monitor the web traffic of their users.

Magazine
The benign ecology of Public Broadcasting
By Eric Karstens
Published on May 6, 2009
Imagine that one day you wake up and public broadcasting is gone – would you miss anything? It is probably not an easy question, depending on the country you live in, the quality, diversity, governance and cost of its respective public broadcasting system, your personal media habits, or whether you prefer radio or television. But it is quite an essential question. It came up at a conference on the sidelines of this year’s Rose d’Or festival in, Lucerne, Switzerland, on 5 May 2009.
Rose d’Or is an annual event devoted exclusively to TV entertainment programming. Compared with the busy TV trade fairs at Cannes, it has always been a relatively quiet event. Rose d’Or is a meeting place where commissioning editors, producers and journalists watch, discuss and examine the latest international formats away from hectic schedules. Until a few years ago, when it still was located at Montreux on Lake Geneva, it had a rather glamorous show-biz air. Now in Lucerne, the event was tucked away in the back rooms of a Grand Casino building – so barely noticeable to any outsiders.
As a result, the turnout for an afternoon gathering co-hosted by the EJC, titled “Stand and deliver: Creating public value in a new media economy”, left a bit to be desired, despite featuring top-tier speakers and panel participants from the TV sector.
German TV producer and media consultant, Lutz Hachmeister, began by analysing the concept of Public Value. It is, he said, a purely economic term applied to sectors like waste management, defence policy, or, in this case, broadcasting. He was right about that – the theory of Public Value was developed chiefly by economists and is dyed in the wool by their point of view. However, there may be more to it.
First, there was Public Administration – the 19th-century-idea that government knows what is best for the people and that it should enforce this knowledge regardless of any objections, resistance, or cost. In the worst case, this resulted in state broadcasting. Even in better cases, it inspired a lot of patronising, top-down programming with little choice for the audience.
In the second half of the 20th century, that was replaced by the notion of New Public Management. This meant that the public sector should act as if it were a commercial company and a regular player on the market. Cost-efficiency, privatisation and competitiveness are the hallmarks of this thinking. Consequently, many countries introduced or strengthened private broadcasting, and many pubcasters came up with increasingly commercial programmes of their own. Rather than pleasing the government, they now focused on pleasing the audience.
The latest development in this history (and one particularly welcome in times of economic crisis) is the concept of Public Value. It demands that the public be served in the best possible way, irrespective of whether that entails economic efficiency or social benefits, or both at the same time. But the really important innovation of the Public Value theory is that it is based on a consultative approach. All stakeholders, economic or otherwise, have a right to weigh in on any decisions made.
Yet this notion has not yet reached public broadcasting, despite efforts to establish a Public Value Test. As the BBC’s Creative Director, Alan Yentob, stated in Lucerne: Future Public Value in broadcasting must come out of a “reciprocal relationship” with the audience, with citizens commenting on programme content as well as actually contributing to it.
The old rules of television, such as audience flow, inheritance effects, competitive scheduling, etc., which essentially amounted to tricking the viewers into watching something they did not intend to watch in the first place, are now being replaced by new and more democratic rules, which however prove no less effective: Recommendations, peer-to-peer-distribution, and social networking.
This is where Yentob, Hachmeister and EJC Director Wilfried Rütten were in accord. Hachmeister called for public broadcasting to use its independence to create a new grammar and vocabulary for the multimedia age, to come up with new kinds of formats and new aesthetics. In the same vein, Rütten observed that many pubcasters, of all organisations, tend to attract a particularly risk-averse and thus counter-innovative staff. This is ironic, since they are not for profit anyway and much less subject to the ups and downs of the economy than most other players.
Rütten suggested that the yardstick to measure the success of public broadcasting programmes be changed. Looking at how many people watch a certain programme in total can be deceiving, because that depends on marketing efforts and many external circumstances (e.g., whether there is a big football match or a blockbuster movie on another channel). Instead, he argued, pubcasters should closely look at what those people do who have actually started watching a show. Are they fleeing in large numbers, or does the programme manage to retain their attention?
Alan Yentob spun this into an appeal to safeguard what he called “the benign ecology of public broadcasting”.
He convincingly demonstrated that the BBC has successfully been acting on that maxim. Despite criticism in detail, it is generally recognised as the world’s foremost public broadcaster. Yentob said that the BBC puts a lot of effort into understanding the future and develops new programmes, new distribution technologies, and new services accordingly. While commercial stations are faltering all around the globe, the BBC and a few other resilient pubcasters are growing stronger, improving their public reputation, and better serving their audiences.
Public broadcasters anywhere would be well advised to convert this current tailwind into genuine and verifiable long-term Public Value strategies. Surprisingly, the best may be still to come.

Magazine
I’m a journalist – Get me out of here! (Why media freedom is no joke)

Would a hard-nosed journalist scream “Get me out of here” while covering a war zone? Would she run from secret police while researching a story? Many probably have to - unfortunately.
Reporters in dozens of countries face mortal dangers stemming from repressive governments and the threat of being caught in local crossfire. Some 225 media workers have been killed in the ongoing war in Iraq—more than during World War II, Vietnam, or the Algerian War.
Last year around the world at least 60 reporters were murdered, well over 600 arrested and more than 900 either physically attacked or threatened with violence, says Reporters Without Borders. In 2008, the first blogger was killed on the job. More than 350 media outlets were censored.
Many of these murders and arbitrary arrests take place in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), in the arc of countries from Morocco to Syria that form much of the European Neighbourhood Policy territory. So ahead of World Press Freedom Day, 3 May, EJC caught up with Joe Stork, Deputy Director for MENA at Human Rights Watch, for a look at press freedom in Europe’s backyard.
EJC: Which countries are your priorities for freedom of the press in 2009?
Stork: It’s hard to think of a country in this region that doesn’t have serious problems, where we wouldn’t want to see considerable change. The Israelis have a pretty vigorous press, so do the Lebanese… Some countries have done better than others on human rights reforms, like Morocco and Bahrain, but still have problems when it comes to freedom of expression. Journalists, editors, and so forth still end up being hauled into court and given jail terms and so forth. And then there are countries like Syria and Libya where there simply isn’t any free press.
EJC: US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi was recently sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran. Amnesty International calls her a prisoner of conscience; but her case is just the tip of the iceberg. Iranians elect a new president on 12 June this year—is there any sign of hope for media freedom in the country?
Stork: The candidate I’ve heard most about is Mir Hossein Mousavi. He’s made noises during the campaign that he would change things, but he has to win first and then of course we have to see what he does when he’s in office. But in Iran the post of president is not the only power; he’s certainly not the most powerful political actor in Iran, though he would play an influential role.
EJC: What are the prospects for media freedom in Israel, after the war in Gaza in January and election of Binyamin Netanyahu in March?

Stork: Previous to December and the fighting and major operations in Gaza, you didn’t have these kinds of very restrictive policies [in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories]. There are some restrictive policies in Israel which are long-standing, such as military censorship and so forth. But the barring of journalists and continued barring of HRW from getting into Gaza, that’s new and I see no signs that the new government of Netanyahu would be any different on that score; if anything it would probably go more in the direction of greater restrictions.
EJC: This year we’ll see a new European Parliament and Commission. Over the past five years, has the EU made tangible progress in influencing its neighbours in terms of media freedom?

Stork: In many countries in the region, if you put the question more broadly: ‘Is the EU part of the problem or part of the solution?’ I would say that it’s part of the solution. Their presence is a positive one. The things they fund are on the whole very useful and so forth…. But I have to confess that I don’t follow EU-MENA relations that closely to answer your question.

EJC: Could that be due to the lack of visibility of what the EU does in MENA?
Stork: Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If it gets things done, it doesn’t necessarily have to be visible. Indeed, in this line of work, in trying to push for improvements in human rights practices sometimes flying under the radar can be more effective – sometimes…


For more on press freedom in Europe, check out Josh LaPorte’s recent article from Prague.
---
Infographics courtesy of the World Association of Newspapers

Pakistan’s American problem
Anatol Lieven


A suspicion of the United States in Pakistan outweighs opposition to the Taliban. Understand this and much else becomes clear, says Anatol Lieven.
6 - 05 - 2009


The war that has resumed between the Pakistani army and the Taliban in the northern mountains of Pakistan is not between two clearly defined sides, with clearly defined victory and defeat. It is, instead, a very complicated mixture of war and politics, in which episodes of extreme violence alternate with periods of negotiation. Anatol Lieven is a professor in the department of war studies at King's College, London. Among his books are The Baltic Revolution (Yale University Press, 1993), Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (Yale University Press, 1998), and America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2004). His latest book (co-written with John Hulsman) is Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World (Pantheon, 2006). He is currently writing a book about Pakistan

This article was published in the (London) Times
Also by Anatol Lieven in openDemocracy:

"Missionaries and marines: Bush, Blair and democratisation" (18 September 2002)

"America right or wrong?" (8 September 2004)

"Israel and the American antithesis" (19 October 2004)

"Israel, the United States, and truth" (20 October 2004)

"Bush's choice: messianism or pragmatism?" (22 February 2005)

"Democratic failure: festering lilies smell worse than weeds" (27 October 2005)

"Israel and the Arabs: peace, not diktats" (24 July 2006)

"The Iran we have" (5 December 2006)

"At the Red Mosque in Islamadad" (4 June 2007)
One of those violent periods is resuming now. Barely two months after a peace deal with the Taliban was reached in mid-February 2009 to create a sharia system in the Swat district, the army is back on the offensive. The Taliban overstepped an unwritten mark when it tried to extend its control into the district of Buner, barely eighty kilometres northwest of Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. The army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, stated clearly that a challenge to the existence of the Pakistani state would not be tolerated.
What will be tolerated is Taliban strength in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. As I discovered during a visit to the region in September 2008, the level of support for them there is such that crushing them completely would require a huge campaign of repression (see "For America, the problem is Pakistan", Financial Times, 7 April 2009).
As long as this conflict remains restricted to the mountains, in many ways the most important prize is not control of territory as such, but the support of the local population (see Ayesha Khanna & Parag Khanna, "How Pakistan Can Fix Itself, Foreign Policy, May 2009).
There are many reasons why this is so, and why even many Pakistanis who deeply oppose Taliban rule are also opposed to a tough military campaign against them. Three are worth noting. The first is (at least to judge by my interviews on the streets and in the bazaars) that the jihad of the Afghan Taliban against the United States "occupation" of Afghanistan enjoys overwhelming public approval in northern Pakistan; and the Pakistani Taliban gain a great measure of prestige from their alliance with this jihad (see Patrick Cockburn, "Where the Taliban roam", Independent, 6 May 2009)
The second is that, with the exception of some of the higher courts, the Pakistani judicial system is such a corrupt, slow, impenetrable shambles that the Taliban's programme of sharia enjoys a great deal of public support, at least in the Pashtun areas that I have visited. The third is that the security establishment is determined to prevent Afghanistan becoming an ally of India, and continues to shelter parts of the Afghan Taliban as a long-term "strategic asset" against this threat.
The real danger
In a way, however, you really have to know only one fact to understand what is happening: and that, to judge by my meetings with hundreds of Pakistanis from all walks of life over the past nine months, is that the vast majority of people believe that the 9/11 attacks were not an act of terrorism by al-Qaida, but a plot by the George W Bush administration or Israel to provide an excuse to invade Afghanistan and dominate the Muslim world.
It goes without saying that this belief is a piece of malignant cretinism, based on a farrago of invented "evidence" and hopelessly warped reasoning. But that is not the point. The point is that most of the Pakistani population genuinely believe it, even in Sindh where I have been travelling for the past week; and the people who believe it include the communities from which the army's soldiers, NCOs and junior officers are drawn (see Paul Rogers, "Pakistan: sources of turmoil", 28 April 2009). Understand this, and much else falls into place.
After all, if British soldiers strongly believed that the war in Afghanistan was the product of a monstrous American lie, involving the deliberate slaughter of thousands of America's own citizens, would they be willing for one moment to risk their lives fighting the Taliban?
All the same, it is important not to exaggerate the extent of Taliban power. Whatever Hillary Clinton, the United States secretary of state, may say about Pakistan being a "mortal threat", there is no possibility at present of the Taliban seizing Islamabad and bringing down the state. In Punjab, the province with a majority of the country's population, there has been a number of serious terrorist attacks and a growth of Taliban influence, but as yet, nothing like the insurgency occurring among the Pashtun tribes. In the interior of Sindh, support for the Taliban is virtually non-existent.
In Karachi, Pakistan's greatest city by far, the situation is more complicated. The vast majority of Karachi's Pashtuns support the Awami National Party (ANP), the moderate secular nationalist party now ruling in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). However, a small degree of Taliban infiltration has helped to reignite simmering tensions between the Pashtuns and the Mohajir majority, made up of people whose families migrated from India at the time of independence, who are represented by the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM).
In clashes between the MQM and Pashtuns in Karachi on 29 April 2009, thirty-two people were killed - the great majority of them Pashtuns. The city fears that a return of inter-ethnic rivalry could cause great economic disruption and tie down yet more Pakistani soldiers who are desperately needed to fight the Taliban in the north.
The danger to Pakistan is not of a Taliban revolution, but rather of creeping destabilisation and terrorism. Even as Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari meets Barack Obama in the White House on 6 May, this reality makes any Pakistani help to Washington against the Afghan Taliban even less likely than it is at present.
Among openDemocracy's many articles on Pakistan:
Shaun Gregory, "Pakistan on edge" (25 September 2006)
Ehsan Masood, "Pakistan: the army as the state" (12 April 2007)
Ayesha Siddiqa, "Pakistan's permanent crisis" (15 May 2007)
Maruf Khwaja, "The war for Pakistan" (24 July 2007)
Shaun Gregory, "Pakistan: farewell to democracy" (29 October 2007)
Ayesha Siddiqa, "Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto" (28 December 2007)
Fred Halliday, "The assassin's age: Pakistan in the world" (28 December 2007)
Maruf Khwaja, "Pakistan: dynasty vs democracy" (9 January 2008)
Irfan Husain, "Pakistan's judgment day" (22 February 2008)
Irfan Husain. "Pervez Musharraf: the commando who couldn't" (19 August 2008)
Shaun Gregory, "Pakistan's political turmoil: Musharraf and beyond" (26 August 2008)
Paul Rogers, "Pakistan: the new frontline" (18 September 2008)
Shaun Gregory, "The Pakistani army and the Afghanistan war" (25 November 2008)
Paul Rogers, "The AfPak war: three options" (25 February 2009)
Paul Rogers, "A three-front war: Iraq, AfPak...Washington" (20 March 2009)
Nadeem Ul Haque, "How to solve Pakistan's problem" (24 April 2009)
Paul Rogers, "Pakistan: sources of turmoil" (30 April 2009)
Also - regular reports and comment on the region in openIndia




Will Israelis ever accept the Arab Peace Initiative?
Gershon Baskin


Public opinion research into what would motivate Israelis to accept making significant concessions, such as those called for in the Arab Peace Initiative, take us back to a notion of a ‘true partnership'.
6 - 05 - 2009


After 16 years of Israeli-Palestinian bilateral negotiations for peace there is a growing realisation that there is very little likelihood of a bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiated agreement. This realisation seems equally evident in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Brussels, Moscow and now in Washington. Everyone appears to be searching for a new formula for peace and in that search the Arab Peace Initiative has once again reappeared as a possible saviour. The positive statements regarding the Arab Peace Initiative (API) by President Obama and members of his team have again placed it centre stage.
Six years after it was first presented, the Arab peace initiative may finally be coming of age. Previous Israeli leaders have basically trashed the API in its present form for many reasons. One of the main reasons is that it mentions UN Resolution 194 which is the foundation of the Arab claims for the right of return of refugees from the 1948 war to their homes inside of Israel. Gershon Baskin is the Israeli Co-Director and founder of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) - a joint Israeli-Palestinian public policy think he founded in 1988 following ten years of work in the field of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel, in Interns for Peace, the Ministry of Education and as Executive Director of the Institute for Education for Jewish-Arab Coexistence (established by the Israeli Ministry of Education and the Prime Minister's Office). Dr. Baskin has published several books in the Hebrew, English and Arabic press on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Beginning with the Histadrut Prize for Peace in 1996, he has received many international awards for his work.
Additional Israeli objections include the direct reference in the Initiative to the June 4, 1967 borders. Israel rightly claims that in negotiations regarding these with the Palestinians, the principle of territorial exchange has already been accepted, so why as far as Israel is concerned go back to 1967 borders which ignore any of the new realities on the ground and consequently can have only a very tenuous nature? The new Israeli right-wing Government of Binyamin Netanyahu completely rejects the idea of return to the 1967 borders. The most objectionable and perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the API for Israelis is the sense that this is a ‘take it or leave document' and if this is the case, the majority of Israelis say ‘leave it'.

The Arab Peace Initiative is not a peace plan. It has no operative aspects to it. There is no mechanism for implementation and even no clear plan for how it should begin. The only operative part of the Initiative states: ‘Requests the chairman of the summit to form a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the secretary general of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, the Muslim states and the European Union.' Who is conspicuously left off this list? Israel of course! There is nothing in the Initiative which addresses itself directly to the Israeli government or the Israeli people.
The Arab League needs to address Israeli concerns, not ignore them as has been the case since it was first presented in 2002. The Arab League should find its way to stating that the Arab Peace Initiative is a ‘framework, a basis, or a platform' for renewing the peace process rather than having it appear as a document that must be accepted in full or rejected in full. It has been reported that King Abdallah II of Jordan has now proposed a form of an ‘Arab peace deposit' (an analogy with the so-called ‘Rabin deposit' on the Golan Heights) that would in fact provide some clarifications or additional incentives to Israel to accept the API.

Since the initiative has been widely overlooked by Israeli politicians it is certainly worthwhile pointing out its primary advantages and reasons why Israel should accept it quickly before it is no longer relevant. The Arab Peace Initiative was accepted unanimously by all of the member states of the Arab League in March 2002. On the day that it was presented thirty people were killed and 140 injured - 20 seriously - in a suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of a Passover holiday seder with 250 guests. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. This attack was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back that led to the ‘Defensive Shield' Israeli offensive leading in turn to the full re-occupation of the West Bank and the placing of Palestinian President Arafat under siege in the muqata' in Ramallah. The Israeli mindset, at that time when suicide bombing were a daily event and under the leadership of Prime Minister Sharon was hardly in any mood to consider an Arab peace initiative.
But the initiative was once again unanimously ratified at the meeting of the League of Arab States in Khartoum in May 2006 and again in 2007 in Riyadh.
The Arab world has tried to impress upon Israelis what is new and revolutionary in the Initiative, but Israelis have failed to understand this. The Arab world has pointed out the following: The initiative calls for ‘achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.' This is the first time that an Arab document uses the word "agreed" in this context. That would mean that this issue could be negotiated between the parties. In its operative paragraph on refugees, UN Resolution 194 states: ‘That the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible.'
The resolution does not state that all refugees must be allowed to return and opens the door for those who do not wish to return to receive financial compensation instead. An agreement between Israel and the PLO that would award Palestinian refugees compensation instead of return would certainly fulfill the requirements of the Arab peace initiative and should not hinder Israeli agreement to the Initiative.
In order to receive the benefits of the proposal Israel must allow for the creation of an independent sovereign Palestinian state in borders that will be mutually acceptable to Israel and the PLO with east Jerusalem as its capital. This step has been (until now) clearly understood to be within Israeli national security interests. Israel would still need to resolve the issue of the Shaba Farms area with Lebanon and Syria, and must withdraw from the Golan Heights. Removing the northern front from the domain of possible war is also clearly an Israeli national security aim.
Solving these issues provides the means for achieving peace. With the Arab peace initiative, the results of such moves would not only bring peace with the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria, but with the entire Arab world. The area of peace for Israel would extend from Marrakech all the way to Bangladesh. Only Iran would be outside the region of peace.
The most significant element of the Initiative is its call for the recognition of the State of Israel, and full peace and normalised relations between all of the member states of the Arab League and Israel. There is huge significance to the reference to normalised relations. Israelis fail to understand that since the notion of normalisation of relations with Israel has been a steadfast taboo in Arab political culture since 1948, the Arab League call for normalised relations constitutes no less than a political revolution.
This is almost too good to be true and had it been presented 20 years ago, it might have been received much more positively in Israel. But today, there is no peace camp in Israel anymore. Israeli society has lost its faith in peace. Israelis no longer dream of getting into their car and having humus for lunch in Damascus. Israelis do not want to visit Cairo or Amman and do not particularly care if Jordanians or Egyptians come to visit Israel. If President Mubarak and King Abdallah II don't want to come to Jerusalem, so be it. Israelis no longer believe that giving up territory will bring peace. The general Israeli interpretation of the ‘territory for peace' scheme is that we withdrew from areas in the West Bank and created the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat which then attacked us with weapons that we provided for them. In Gaza, which Israel left entirely - withdrawing both settlements and military, we got qassam rockets in exchange. Whether this reflects what really happened and why is not relevant. This is the way that the overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that reality. So, in this context, the Arab Peace Initiative is not particularly attractive.
What do Israelis want? They want quiet. They want security. They want to be able to be part of the neighborhood without the threat of terrorism, but they no longer believe that the way to gain security is by giving back territory. During the days when Oslo was popular and there was hope that peace could actually emerge, it was possible to talk about ‘peace and security'. Today, the philosophy of the Netanyahu government and the political culture and mood that brought it to power is that first there must be security and only then can there be peace. This is not merely a game of semantics. This is a worldview and it is essential to understand it in order to be able to understand the Israel of 2009.
The Israeli public and government will not be enticed by promises of normalisation, acceptance and free movement in the region. This is the ‘heart' of the Arab Peace Initiative and it has not produced the desired results in all the past years. The Israeli public and government insist on seeing real evidence of a willingness to make peace with Israel that goes above and beyond words.
In public opinion research of the Israeli public that we carried out in IPCRI in order to understand what would motivate Israelis to accept making significant concessions, such as those called for in the Arab Peace Initiative, we discovered that the notion of ‘partnership' was the crucial factor. When asked ‘what would convince you that the Palestinians (or Arabs) were in fact true partners?', the main responses, overwhelmingly, were ‘when they teach peace in the classroom' - meaning when their educational curricula and text books reflect that Israel exists and has a right to exist, and when Islamic religious leaders and preachers say the same thing in Mosques.
With this in mind, it appears that we are in a kind of ‘Catch 22' situation. Arabs, as reflected in the Arab Peace Initiative state that Israel will get the recognition and security it desires when it fulfills the requirements of the Initiative - in other words, gaining recognition, peace and security is the outcome of the process. Israelis, on the other hand, are saying that recognition and security is a pre-requisite of the process that aims to create peace.
There may be ways to bridge the gaps between these two positions or state of mind, but they have not yet been proposed or developed. If there remains a peace camp in Israel, Palestine and in the Arab world, the next challenge they must face is how to bridge this gap in consciousness. Without that bridge, the Arab Peace Initiative will fade away into the piles of other past Middle East peace initiatives.


OSI Forum: Bring Your "A" Game
Location: OSI-New York
Date and Time: May 18, 2009, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Contact: Georgia Kirtland, cbma@sorosny.org


The Open Society Institute's Campaign for Black Male Achievement will host a screening of Bring Your "A" Game, a 22-minute documentary from the Twenty-First Century Foundation and actor-director Mario Van Peebles that seeks to reverse the trend of poor educational outcomes for black men and boys. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about efforts to address the challenges facing black males and urban youth in particular.
The film underscores how educational achievement and high school graduation are essential to survival and success in today's world. Drawing on popular culture to highlight strategies that have improved the lives of black men and boys, the film includes commentary from Chris Rock, Geoffrey Canada, Spike Lee, Cornel West, Ice Cube, Richard "Dick" Parsons, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Russell Simmons, Kevin Liles, Lou Gossett Jr., Lupe Fiasco, Hill Harper, Damon Dash, Kevin Powell, Melvin Van Peebles, and former NBA star Alan Houston, among others.
Panelists
• Moderator: Felicia R. Lee, staff writer for the New York Times
• David C. Banks, president, the Eagle Academy Foundation
• Kevin Powell, activist, writer, and author/editor of nine books, including The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life, and appears in "A" Game
• Kevin Liles, vice president for Warner Music Group and appears in "A" Game (invited)
• Cassandra Mack, author and mother, books include The Single Mom's Little Book of Wisdom: 42 Tidbits of Wisdom To Help You Survive, Succeed and Stay Strong and The Black Man's Little Book of Encouragement
• Anthony Keller, youth member of Brotherhood/SisterSol
• Jordan Lewis, senior at Eagle Academy for Young Men
The audience will also include students, educators, community activists, and philanthropic partners.
The Twenty-First Century Foundation is a grantee of the Open Society Institute Campaign for Black Male Achievement.
Admission to this screening is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP.
Light refreshments will be served.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX