Speaker Events - Monday, April 25, 2011
Gaza Doctor: "I Shall Not Hate"
Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish was a rarity in the Middle East, a resident of Gaza with a permit to enter Israel because of his work. The son of refugees in the Gazan city of Jabaliya, he saw himself as a bridge between the two distrustful cultures, and his life was often put forward as an example of the kind of reconciliation that might one day rescue the region from its cycles of violence.
He was well known as a campaigner for women's rights and for his joint projects with Israeli physicians, bringing injured and ill Gazans for treatment in Israel and researching the effects of conflict-related stress on Palestinian children in Gaza and Israeli children in Sderot, the Israeli border town that has frequently been the target of Gazan rocket fire.
Then in January 2009, during the three-week war in Gaza, tragedy struck, challenging in the most poignant way imaginable his faith in his life’s work. Israeli tank shells slammed into his Gaza Strip apartment, killing three of his daughters and costing another her sight in one eye.
His anguished response brought him global acclaim. Rather than seek revenge, he appealed for a new dedication to peaceful dialogue and an end to violence.
He set up a foundation called Daughters for Life to memorialize his children and provide scholarships for young women in the Middle East. And he wrote a powerful memoir reaffirming his belief that the decades-long conflict will be transformed only when individual Palestinians and Israelis recognize their shared precarious humanity.
It is called I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, and on April 25th, Dr. Abuelaish gave a very moving account to a hushed audience at IPI of the experience and his abiding belief in the possibilities of peace.
The talk was moderated by Warren Hoge, IPI's Vice President for External Relations.
Read Transcript
To listen to the podcast, click the "play" button:
The Global Observatory
Interview with John Prendergast, Co-Founder, Enough Project
Mr. Prendergast discusses the international justice system and the new ground forged by Invisible Children's Kony2012 campaign.
Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
May 10, 2012
Arbour: What the Rule of Law Means
“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.