Peace

RE STU Bykofsky's "A world without Israel": The roots of this feud go back centuries. Today's incarnation is no different. Muslims, by dividing their own people, create the imbalances that are the breeding grounds for discontent, poverty and despair amongst them. Hezbollah would be out of a job with "real" peace and a Palestinian state. Thomas G. Lutek Philadelphia

WHY GOD hasn't turned the lights off on this planet is beyond me. God rest your soul, Danieal, your suffering is over. You'll never have to worry about the people who gave you life being ashamed of you. And the people whose job is was to protect you not thinking you were worth the time. George Parker, Philadelphia

THERE IS a consensus in our community, and among thinking people throughout this land, that the invasion of Iraq was a grave error. Many of us also believe that our country has squandered any good will we had in the region, and that it is folly to imagine that the U.S. military can play a positive role in stabilizing Iraq's future. With a history of firing on innocent civilians and torturing political prisoners, our occupation of Saddam's Imperial Palace can only be incendiary.

War has a way of pushing passions beyond the battlefield's physical boundaries. That's important to remember, because hatred can grow in the absence of efforts to promote understanding. This week's series of events sponsored by the Philadelphia area's Jewish Americans and Arab Americans is just such a worthwhile effort. The events started Sunday at a Sufi mosque on Overbrook Avenue, where about 100 people - Muslims, Jews and Christians - came to read poetry and talk about peace against the backdrop of Middle East fighting.

Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua (above, center) talks with residents of Grays Ferry after prayer service (below) at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church in which about 500 people of different races came to promote peace.

When the city is at peace, the sky will be clearer. If the city was mine, no guns. When the city is at peace no killing and destroying, my man wouldn't have got killed. No crime no deadline. it will regain its name as the City of Brotherly Love. You would always see waving hands! Boys and girls would change hands when the city is at peace. Stop the war. There will be no pain, the beast will sleep, shoes will have feet, As time past, sun sets, mornings are born again everything is calm.

WHY ARE Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus and others gathering in Northwest Philadelphia on June 3 to call for peace in our world and on our streets? Sadly, the answers are not hard to find: At home, Philadelphians are mourning the deaths of record-setting numbers of our youth and other citizens to street violence. With Virginia and the nation, we grieve over the murder of dozens of college students who died from senseless violence. Abroad, we witness with horror the protracted wars in the Middle East, Darfur, Afghanistan and other places.

SOME candidates in the 2006 elections are promoting an exact timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq. In the absence of a strategy to balance power among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, campaign rhetoric underestimates the effort needed to reach a long-term solution to a shattered nation's communal conflict. If there is one common pathway to peace in Iraq, it's unity among its three subnationalities. Peace in Iraq can be achieved. Americans yearn to bring the troops home. But purposeful steps are needed to accomplish these two related ends.

BANGKOK - Buddhist monks led prayers as tens of thousands gathered Saturday in Bangkok to mark the second anniversary of deadly clashes between soldiers and "Red Shirt" protesters. The scene Saturday was a sharp contrast with two years earlier, when Thailand was at war with itself and troops moved in to crush a nine-week antigovernment protest that left more than 90 people dead and 2,000 injured. It was the country's worst political violence in decades. Many speakers addressed the crowd Saturday to demand justice.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A gunman in a car assassinated a former high-ranking Taliban official working to end the decade-long war in Afghanistan, dealing a powerful blow Sunday to the fragile, U.S.-backed effort to bring peace to the country. Arsala Rahmani, a top member of the Afghan peace council and a senator in Parliament, was killed a week before a key NATO summit and just hours before President Hamid Karzai announced the third stage of a five-part transition that is supposed to put Afghan security forces in control of their country by the end of 2014.

The End of War By John Horgan McSweeney's. 224 pp. $22   Reviewed by Michael C. Horowitz   John Horgan is a science writer and peace advocate who has brought both of his passions together in his latest work, The End of War. Horgan, now director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, seeks to begin a conversation with those he calls "war pessimists," who think war is an inevitable...

Rodney King makes a dashing first impression when we meet in the lobby of an Old City hotel to discuss his new memoir, The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption. Tall, strapping, and disarmingly good-looking, King initially projects a confident tranquillity, as though he's at ease with himself and the people around him. I'm thinking, this guy has got it going on. But he doesn't. Not really. It's been 20 years since the not-guilty verdict for the four Los Angeles police officers who beat King to within an inch of his life, touching off the most devastating riot in U.S. history.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Syrian forces stormed student dormitories during an antigovernment protest at Aleppo University on Thursday, firing tear gas and bullets in an hours-long siege that killed at least four students and forced the closure of the state-run school, activists said. U.N. truce observers toured other restive parts of the country, and residents told them of being too terrified to walk on the streets after dark as the 14-month-old uprising rages on. The United Nations estimates 9,000 people have been killed since the revolt began, and a peace plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan nearly a month ago has done little to stem the bloodshed.

H ERE'S WHAT will be making news in Philly this week: NEIGHBORHOODS Anti-violence walk Local City Year volunteers will unite with residents of three neighborhoods on Saturday for the third annual Walk for PEACE. (Promoting Education and Community Empowerment). The aim is to promote awareness about city violence and provide the community with tools to foster peace in their neighborhoods. The walk will begin at three sites throughout the city: the recently renovated West Philadelphia High School; Tustin Recreation Center in Overbrook, and Piccoli Park in Juniata Park.

Lakers forward Metta World Peace was suspended seven games by the NBA on Tuesday for throwing a vicious elbow at Oklahoma City's James Harden, meaning the Los Angeles starter likely will miss six playoff games. World Peace was ejected from Sunday's game against the Thunder for striking Harden in the head, giving him a concussion. World Peace claimed the contact was an accidental, overzealous celebration of a dunk. World Peace will miss the Lakers' season finale on Thursday at Sacramento and the next six games for which he is eligible.

When the Allies hit the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, Michele Anguenot scoffed at the rumors she heard at her school in eastern France. That day happened to be her 16th birthday and, she told her family, she thought the invasion reports were a birthday hoax dreamed up by her school friends. "It took her until that night," her son, Christian, said in a phone interview, that her family "convinced her that it was real. " It was not her only memorable birthday. When she turned 70, she was a Peace Corps worker in a West African village.

My husband was in the Peace Corps in India 45 years ago, but we were surprised when our second son announced he was applying. Spinal meningitis at 17 months had left our son severely hearing impaired. Despite his normal speech and college graduation, we privately wondered if he would be accepted and could successfully learn another language, as well as adapt to another culture. During our trip to visit Justin at his Peace Corps site in the Dominican Republic at Christmas 2011, we learned how wrong we were and gained a new appreciation of today's Peace Corps.

Less than four months ago, Montgomery County's three commissioners were at one another's throats. Republican Commissioners' Chairman James R. Matthews was calling his party mate, Bruce L. Castor Jr., a man with an ego so big it could "float the Titanic. " Castor referred to his rival as "an abhorrence. " And Democrat Joseph M. Hoeffel III often looked ready to toss up his hands in frustration with both. The trio's disdain for one another erupted so frequently into name-calling and caterwauling that an observer once described their twice-monthly meetings as "the best free entertainment in the region.