Non-Governmental Organization working for a lasting Cease Fire and Peace Process in the Middle East through the Non-Violent Approach
We’re opening a Shelter here. With Toolboxes for your well-being and use, whenever the skies above our heads get too heavy and stormy.
A banquet of a kind, for the human mind.
Diotima of Mantinea, Plutarch, Ibn Arabi, Confucius, Tolstoy, Immanuel Kant, Montaigne, Seneca, Spinoza, Einstein, George Orwell…
…Michael Moore, Malala, Maud Fontenoy, Beatie Deutsch, Al Ghazali, Himoud Brahimi, Fauja Singh, Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Wales… are our permanent guests. They’re with us, to comfort us, spread their lights, make us stronger.
We have to admit : we just can’t make it on our own. We need help. An open mind-house.
Often, when things around go wrong – and they sure do, time and again, due to climate change, floods, droughts, fires, political upheavals and corruption, wars… you wish there’d be some place you could go, to find solace and sense.
This is what we are striving to create here.
Who are these three persons, and why are they here, as gate openers ?
The first one is Dominique Bernard, an outstanding French teacher who was assassinated on October 13, 2023, in his school, by a young radical Muslim who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Samuel Paty, another outstanding high-school teacher of history, was assassinated by a young Chechen on October 16, 2020, and then beheaded outside his school.
Jacques Hamel, was a priest, aged 85, was slaughtered in his church, his throat cut by two self-proclaimed jihadis, on July 26, 2016.
In Martin Luther King’s words : “I’ve decided that I’m going to do the battle for my philosophy. You ought to believe something in life, believe that thing so fervently that you will stand up with it till the end of your days. I can’t make myself believe that God wants me to hate. I’m tired of violence. And I’m not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use.”
In Ibn Arabi’s words : “We will not let persecution turn us into persecutors” “Pens can solve what weapons cannot”
In Spinoza’s words : “Peace is not an absence of war. It is a virtue, state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”