President Shimon Peres took the occasion of Israel’s 60th anniversary to introduce a new annual conference with world political leaders, economists, professors, scientists, CEOs and other elite policy makers and thinkers from around the world, particularly from the Jewish community.
It looked like a miniature G8 summit of emerging democracies from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Africa, boosted by the participation of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel. The gathering, Facing Tomorrow, featured the word “globalization” in every seminar. In fact, the conference participants took the eventuality of globalization for granted and talked about not if but how to facilitate global economics and security.
“Globalization is breaking down barriers,” said the West’s Middle East envoy Tony Blair. “A global community is becoming a reality.”
Other VIPs included President Bush and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and the presidents and prime ministers of Latvia, the Ukraine, Poland, Croatia, Albania, Slovenia, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Palau and Mongolia. They spoke of tomorrow’s world while congratulating today’s Israel on its 60th birthday.
Gorbachev said that leaders should be looking to replace the G8 and find new ways of governing the world: “We must unite our efforts and if we are able to do that globally...the issues and challenges will be met more successfully.”
Going Global
The International Convention Center was turned into a swank lounge to host about 4,000 invitation-only participants from 30 countries. The conference had a pro-Israel, Zionistic slant, celebrating Jewish and Israeli achievements.
Globalizing wealth, improving heath care, leveling the playing field of trade and commerce, and whether to replace such organizations as the G8 and United Nations with another globally-minded institution were some of the topics discussed. Speakers offered general, sweeping ideas in the public sessions, but behind-the-scenes working groups set goals and strategies.
“It has never happened before in the history of the world that every part of the world was connected with the other,”
Kissinger said, adding that statehood is in the process of being redefined.
Some $21 million was invested by private donors in this event—evidenced by the class atmosphere organizers attempted to create. Billed as the first of many annual conferences of its kind, “Tomorrow” attracted high-caliber speakers including Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel and Harvard law Professor Alan Dershowitz.
Conference Mastermind
Peres, a life-long politician who is still going strong at 84, was lauded by world leaders for bringing them together. It is worth noting that Peres is the architect of this “globalization” conference, as he was of the Oslo Accords, the failed land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians that was supposed to usher in a “New Middle East.”
Some 39 panels spanned topics such as cloning, economics, Jewish identity, scientific and medical breakthroughs and foreign policy. Peres’ goal was to highlight the Jewish state’s accomplishments but to also look at “the Israel tomorrow, the global tomorrow and the Jewish tomorrow.”
Buddhist monks, Sikhs and some Moslems joined the Jewish-led conference. And the significance of staging a global conference in Jerusalem was not lost on the participants.
“Very wise people from different walks of life resume the prophetic function that has been associated with Jerusalem, Israel for millennia,” said Charley Levine, the international media consultant for the gathering. “Truly the word will be coming out of Jerusalem…in a significant manner for the Jewish people and all humanity.”
“Despite the classy veneer, the theme of hashing out the foundations for a world government looks like more than a vague possibility.
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