Upcoming event: The Taste of Peace public lecture
| November 24, 2008 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 9:00 pm |
On Monday, 24 November, Robert Massoud of the fair trade organisation Zatoun will deliver a lecture entitled “The Taste of Peace”. Zatoun (the Arabic word for “olive”, which is the symbol of peace, light, life, hope, and the divine) is a nonprofit organisation that aims to build bridges through the sale of cultural and symbolic products from Palestine to North America. Its main product is fair trade olive oil, but it also sells soap, za’atar herb mix, embroidered handicrafts, note cards, and other gift items.
Massoud, who was born in Jerusalem to a Christian Palestinian family, and who now lives outside of Toronto, pioneered the project in 2003, calling it:
“a people-sized initiative for those who want to make a difference” but who “throw up their hands and walk away” in despair from seemingly hopeless cycles of retaliation in the Middle East….”I turned to the sale of olive oil because it’s a life-giving substance that binds us together in the human experience of eating and sharing, and a symbol of life, hope and peace,” he tells me. “The world today is in dire need of bridge-building. This is an invitation to walk the bridge.” (NOW Magazine)
Zatoun’s proceeds are used to support Project Hope, which brings international volunteers (many from Canada) to the refugee camps of Nablus to teach therapeutic painting, drawing, drama, and music to the schoolchildren living there. Zatoun also donates money to replant the ancient olive groves destroyed by the construction of the Israeli wall in the West Bank (it is estimated that a million trees have been destroyed since 1967). The wall has cut off many Palestinian families from their ancestral farmland, often preventing them from harvesting their olives and putting them at extreme risk from armed settlers:
At the top of the village, on a windswept hillside, Fawzan Nasassiri, 67, waves at some 20 acres of trees that he can’t harvest. Nasassiri, whose brother was shot and killed while harvesting his olives near here a few years ago, says he probably won’t take the risk this year; he’ll let his crop go to waste.
“I cry when I think of my land,” the farmer says. “It only brings grief to my heart that I cannot get near it. My children and I worked very, very hard to replant the land that they burnt.” (NPR)
When: Monday 24 November, 7pm
Where: Grace Westminster Church, 505 10th St E, Saskatoon (Google map)
Cost: FREE
For more information: Facebook event page, inquiry@turning.ca, Zatoun web site
Sponsored by SCIC, Saskatoon Peace Coalition, Project Hope, and Turning the Tide bookstore
