In this first email of 2025 I address you as a colleague, friend or friend-in-the-making; I honor each one of you despite the necessity of using mass email (after all there are over 60,000 of you). Emails we received this morning range from "Happy New Year" style to "first Israeli massacre of the new year: a family of seven starving Palestinians". On social media, the messaging is even more wideranging: "Palestinian authority does not allow art piece in Bethlehem to commemorate children of Gaza", to "2024, a year I lost my faith in humanity", to "May the new year bring peace-- to "First child in 2025 to freeze to death" to images of fireworks of two different kinds (bombing Gaza and celebratory) etc. etc. Others also remember departed friends and family members (like parents, uncles, martyred colleagues).
While sharing these different messaging, to be concise and spare you ramblings: I merely say I wish you and all of us peace, love, and giving. This is a letter I wrote to the people of Gaza in October 2023 of course the statistics I shared yesterday on my blog are grim. But my feelings for them still stand. My feelings to the rest of fellow human beings sharing this planet was expressed in dozens of letters over the past year - no need to reiterate here.
People traditionally make pledges for the new year (mine last year here achieved those and much more). I will not share our pledges for 2025 (because we will finalize after our annual retreat).
What to gift/give you (and myself) for this day 1/1/2025? Three things:
1) a song in Arabic from Fayruz (the most famous Arab singer of our times) about giving love on the "Eid" holiday
2) a reading from Kahlil Gibran on giving that I hang on my wall and read regularly
3) May we all commit in 2025 and beyond to spreading love, peace, and giving through concrete action towards our vision of sustainable human and natural communities.
Stay Humane and keep hope alive
Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability Bethlehem University Occupied Palestine
facebook pages Personal Institute
French
