Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire

Mairead Maguire was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her extraordinary actions to end the sectarian violence in her native Northern Ireland. She shares the award with Betty Williams.Mairead was the aunt of the three children who died as a result of being hit by an Irish Republican Army getaway car after its driver was shot by a British soldier. Mairead responded to the violence facing her family and community by organizing, with Betty Williams, massive peace demonstrations appealing for an end to the bloodshed.The two organized a peace march attended by 10,000 Protestant and Catholic women, to the graves of the Maguire children.  The march was disrupted by members of the IRA, who accused them of being influenced by the British. The following week, 35,000 people marched with Betty and Mairead, demanding an end to the violence in their country. The pair, along with journalist Ciaran McKeown, also founded Peace People, a movement committed to building a just and peaceful society through nonviolent social action. Mairead currently serves as Honorary President.In the thirty years since receiving the award, Mairead has dedicated her life to promoting peace, both in Northern Ireland and around the world.  Her message is simple —nonviolence is the only way to achieve a peaceful and just society. Working with community groups throughout Northern Ireland, as well as with political and church leaders, she has sought to promote dialogue between the deeply divided communities of Catholics and Protestants

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams

Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines through the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which shared the Peace Prize with her that year. At that time, she became the 10th woman – and third American woman—in its almost 100-year history to receive the Prize.

Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi, J.D., was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote human rights, in particular, the rights of women, children, and political prisoners in Iran. She is the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and only the fifth Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in any field.Dr. Ebadi was one of the first female judges in Iran. She served as president of the city court of Tehran from 1975 to 1979 and was the first Iranian woman to achieve Chief Justice status. She, along with other women judges, was dismissed from that position after the Islamic Revolution in February 1979.

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Alex Safian The Gaza Peace Flotilla

Someone much wiser and with far more insight than I once told me "don't poke the bear, she's protecting her young". Prophetic words. Go ahead. Try it. Poke the bear and see if anyone takes your side. They'd probably take the side of the bear and chastise you, rightfully so, for being stupid.

October 1962, the US invokes a "quarantine" on the open seas to stop the completion of Cuba bound Soviet Nuclear Missiles. Ted Sorensen writes the letter to get Khrushchev to back down and the world breathes a sigh of relief. Despite being "that" close to a global nuclear holocaust, there was no way in hell the US was letting those missiles through. The crew from the USS Joseph P. Kennedy boards a Russian freighter after she attempted to run the gauntlet. No violence. (see Ted Sorensen's interview below)

Fast forward May 2010 the Gaza Peace Flotilla. Israeli troops repeatedly attempt to ask the Peace Flotilla to head to an appropriate port to offload for inspection, to verify there is no Iranian rockets or weapons for the terrorist group Hamas. The world fully knows, as with the Nazis before them, Hamas's "constitution" calls for the complete annihilation of not only Israel but Jews in the middle east.

And so we begin our show today. Who was really on board Mavi Marmara ship that day? Why was there no humanitarian aid on board? Why were armed Turkish thugs on board a "peace" flotilla? Why was there an immediate global demonization of Israel for protecting her young once again? Why the continued double standard? What is different about Israel than all other countries? Jews. Still think this isn't about Anti-Semitism? Think again.

If you poke the bear while she's protecting her young, she is going to respond. Guaranteed. Wouldn't you? Thanks to Tyler for the insightful quote. (my nephew who knows the difference between right and wrong).

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Right Honourable Irwin Cotler- Nobel Peace Prize Nominee 2010 & Canadian Attorney General

McGill Professor Cotler teaches constitutional law, international human rights law, law and poverty, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, discrimination and the law, civil liberties, and comparative and international protection of minorities' rights. His main research areas are freedom of expression and assaultive speech, equality law, peace and human rights, and comparative constitutional law. Professor Cotler is Chair of InterAmicus, the International Human Rights Advocacy Centre based at McGill Law School; and Co-Chair of the Canadian Helsinki Watch Group. He has defended political prisoners in Peru, Tunisia, China, Nigeria, Indonesia and Russia and he has addressed major academic gatherings in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem. He has argued before the Supreme Courts of both Canada and Israel and he has testified before parliamentary committees in Canada, the US, Norway, Russia and various Latin American states.In 1999 Professor Cotler was elected Member of Parliament for the federal constituency of Mount Royal. He was re-elected in November 2000. On December 12, 2003, the Prime Minister appointed Mr. Cotler Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He was re-appointed on July 20th following the General Election of June 28.

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Alan Dershowitz Human Rights Lawyer

Israel Apartheid Week on University Campuses Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is Brooklyn native who has been called “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and one of its “most distinguished defenders of individual rights,” “the best-known criminal lawyer in the world,” “the top lawyer of last resort,” “America’s most public Jewish defender” and “Israel’s single most visible defender – the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion.” He is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Dershowitz, a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale Law School, joined the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 after clerking for Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg.

He has also published more than 100 articles in magazines and journals such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Nation, Commentary, Saturday Review, The Harvard Law Review and the Yale Law Journal, and more than 300 of his articles have appeared in syndication in 50 national daily newspapers. Professor Dershowitz is the author of 27 fiction and non-fiction works with a worldwide audience. His most recent titles include Rights From Wrong, The Case For Israel, The Case For Peace, Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence, Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways, Finding Jefferson – A Lost Letter, A Remarkable Discovery, and The First Amendment In An Age of Terrorism, and The Case For Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza.

In addition to his numerous law review articles and books about criminal and constitutional law, he has written, taught and lectured about history, philosophy, psychology, literature, mathematics, theology, music, sports – and even delicatessens.

In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith presented him with the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award for his "compassionate eloquent leadership and persistent advocacy in the struggle for civil and human rights." In presenting the award, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel said: "If there had been a few people like Alan Dershowitz during the 1930s and 1940s, the history of European Jewry might have been different." Professor Dershowitz has been awarded the honorary doctor of laws degree by Yeshiva University, the Hebrew Union College, Brooklyn College, Syracuse University and Haifa University. The New York Criminal Bar Association honored him for his "outstanding contribution as a scholar and dedicated defender of human rights."

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