I raise my voice wherever I can for people to learn, know and, own human rights as a way of life, for women and men to use this holistic overarching knowledge to cross the bridges of change; assuring and sustaining a better future for humanity.

Being a Jewish, though not a religious one, born in Jerusalem to Polish parent who spoke Arabic fluently and had many Arab Muslim friends, I believe in a just, two-state solution. I have learned from my parents that all that really matters is social responsibility, the acceptance of the other as an equal human being. Knowing that the wrong, we often do, must be undone for the sake of learning to live together and not repeating the atrocities of the past.

Painful historic memory gives us no permission to undermine the future of the other. Doing so will boomerang into our lives, unfortunately as a self-fulfilled prophecy.

As a Middle Eastern woman in this voyage, I discovered the holistic, fully comprehensive framework for human rights that expresses and articulates in force the narrative of humanity’s hopes and expectations beyond religious affiliation and national aspirations.

I found the simple wish that people have to be treated as human beings in equality and without discrimination. The extraordinary promise of human rights, for which, there is no other option, twirls, twists and turns, where patriarchy is often encouraged by religion, all religions. Men use power, privilege and politics to subjugate others, refusing to accept women as full human beings. Women exchange their equality for survival, giving way and false validity to all kinds of ongoing discrimination imbedded in fear that kills the human spirit.

As pessimism and optimism mix with laughter and tears in Tunis, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and Libya, we know that a positive process has started that looks to transcend tribal and religious historic ‘differences’ – similar to those taking place in Europe for many generations with much sadness and death. We then believe that there is hope for sustained change. But it will take its time with many a tear to be shed and many a live to be lost.

The strife, however, may this time be shorter than it took place in Europe. Fast means of mass communication assist women and men to analyze and focus on ‘safety’ of the bridges they will choose to cross over into a democracy that is a delivery system of human rights. However, I believe that this ongoing process will assure freedom only if it moves forward by, with and for the people.

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