The Salaam Network
Give for the Good Louisville
Since its creation, The Salaam Network (TSN) has been an outstanding proponent of community education and understanding not only in Kentucky, nationwide, and indeed to a worldwide international membership. This past year has not been an exception. Both the general membership and its Board of Trustees have made outstanding contributions to fostering a complete and honest reflection on the meaning of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict that has hampered the possibility of world peace for over a century.
As in past years, a Board member produced a special session to the National Convention of the Unitarian Universalist Convention in which he offered peaceful alternatives to resolving international conflicts. His presentation was well received by fifty participants who were interested in discovering such alternatives. This Board member also serves as the Kentucky representative for establishing a Peace Memorial in Washington D. C. .
Throughout the year the TSN founder Dr. Riffat Hassan continued to supply the membership with daily references to articles and other materials referring to insights on the nature of the Palestinian conflict. She has also forwarded to the membership, and those who are interested, though her letters of correspondence with worldwide researchers and authors who have written their opinions for the need of a peaceful resolution.
Over the course of the year, TSN membership has engaged on a monthly basis in the analysis of the best seller, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, by the noted Palestinian researcher and historian Rashid Khalidi. As part of these hour and half long sessions, TSN members provided outlines of different chapters, while engaging the membership in ongoing dialogue.
TSN also has its research component which has dedicated more than three hundred hours of intensive investigation of a broad expanse of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. This research included some ten publications, thirty reviews of relevant videos, countless review of information found in professional journals, including newspapers published in Israel and throughout Europe. This ample source of information was the basis for forty five articles of differing aspects of the conflict.
Articles covered such areas as theology, sociology,philosophy, history, and politics. Both sides of the issue were explored
to provide participants with a broad and meaningful understanding of why this conflict has been such a long term issue of controversy.
The same research department also released an hour and half long blog to the community of Kentucky. The presentation covered the issue from Biblical times to the current discourse in the Israeli Knesset. It spoke in detail about international policies and treaties that have governed the politics of Palestine-Israel to this day. The complexity of possible solutions, be they the Two State formulation, or other alternatives, were presented to allow the listener with a more complete understanding as to the complexity of the solution. This is the role that TSN has played in a world community struggling to find accurate information, where such information has been suppressed, or at the best very limited. TSN continues to be as vehicle of peace and community interaction based on well informed research. I do highly recommend it to anyone with an open mind that is willing to examine all sides of controversial social issues that affect the peace and coordination of the community.
Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. Joseph Brennan, Ph. D., M. Div., M.S.W.
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