In this season of Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan, Jews repenting at the start of their new year, and US President Barack Obama indicating he’ll bang heads to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table, perhaps only an America abroad named Muhammad Cohen can put the whole picture in focus. My Rosh-Ramadan roadmap for peace column in The Guardian tries to pull the pieces together.
The Guardian, where I’ve been a contributor for just over a year, also ran my piece on the United Nation’s effort to combat global warming, Climate change’s cold reality, ahead of the UN climate summit.
Along with global economic recovery, Middle East peace and climate change give our world leaders a pretty full agenda for the UN General Assembly. Maybe this will be the year the UN and its members get something useful done. Well, this is the season for hopes and prayers…
Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air
Tags: Barack Obama, climate change, global warming, Hong Kong, Hong Kong On Air, Id-ul Fitri, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish High Holy Days, Jewish holidays, Middle East peace negotiations, Muslim holidays, Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, The Guardian, UN Climate Summit 2009, UN General Assembly, United Nations
Muhammad Cohen 
September 25, 2009 at 8:22 pm |
I loved the article and applaud the sentiment. You’re certainly a poster person for something more substantial than the mere cohabitation of Muslim and Jew.
That being said, I can’t let the practitioners of religion on Earth off as easily as you. The wars of the Reformation were the translation of a religious struggle into “diplomacy by other means”. Israelis of most any party would confirm that much of the current struggle is about the attempt to maintain a Jewish state of Israel in the face of unfavorable demographics in the region. As always, I go to the Israeli Arabs for wisdom, and what their example tells me is that there is something beyond the 2-state “solution” that we must look towards; a transitional peace between Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Muslims of any kind would be welcome but is no endpoint.
Finally, though, I appreciate the educational value from your study of the similarities and differences between the end of Ramadan and the Jewish New Year holidays, and want to wish you the best of both.