From the NYT Friday morning



To the Editor:

No words are strong enough to capture what is happening in Lebanon, Gaza and Israel. Yet the world cannot stay silent when hour after hour masses of men, women and children are dying or are fleeing destruction and death.

The agonizing themes of Jew against Muslim, Muslim against Jew must not be exploited as excuses for inhumanity.

Before the eyes of the world, humanity on all sides is being reduced to what Shakespeare called poor, bare, forked animals preying on each other like monsters of the deep.

Moderation in this struggle is dismissed as weakness. But if people cannot reassert it, the attractive slogans of violence will take over.

Is it too late for us to recognize that a moderate attitude is not a weak and spineless compromise? That it makes undeniably strong demands on honest feeling and pitilessly clear thought.

Diplomacy and declarations that only play for time are indefensible. The only way out of this devastation is if people in every country stand up, with passion and with strength, to reaffirm our common humanity by refusing all military solutions.

Leaders are there to find the ways. Our role across the world, regardless of race, religion or culture, is to cry, �Stop!�

Richard Axel, Nobel laureate, U.S.
Meena Alexander, poet, writer, India
Juliano Mer-Khamis, director, Freedom Theater of Jenin, from Israel
Daniel Barenboim, pianist, conductor, co-founder (with Edward W. Said) of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Israel
George Bartenieff, actor, co-founder, Theater for the New City, U.S.
Martha Bragin, actor
Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. envoy to Iraq (2004), Algeria
Peter Brook, director of the International Center for Theater Research, France
H�l�ne Cixous, writer, France
Lev Dodin, artistic director of Maly Drama Theater, St. Petersburg, Russia
Declan Donnellan, theater director, Britain
Costa-Gavras, filmmaker, Greece
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel laureate, writer, South Africa
Paul Greengard, Nobel laureate, U.S.
John Heilpern, theater critic, U.S.
Nicholas Hytner, director, National Theater of Great Britain
Eric Kandel, Nobel laureate, U.S.
Tony Kushner, playwright, U.S.
Michael Kustow, writer, producer, Britain
Karen Malpede, playwright, director, U.S.
D.H. Mehlem, writer, U.S.
Ariane Mnouchkine, theater director, France
Khalifa Natour, actor, Palestine
Amir Nizar Zuabi, theater director, Palestine
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, professor of education, joint winner of European Sakharov prize, Israel
Harold Pinter, Nobel laureate, playwright, Britain
Najla Said, actor, writer, founding member of Nibras, Arab-American theater collective, U.S.
Mariam Said, widow of Prof. Edward W. Said and vice president of the Barenboim-Said Foundation U.S.A., U.S.
Janet Suzman, actor, South Africa
Peter Shaffer, playwright, Britain
Pieter-Dirk Uys, satirist, playwright, South Africa
Torsten Wiesel, Nobel laureate, Sweden.
London, Aug. 3, 2006

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