Support Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire’s 40-Day Fast for Palestinian Children and World Peace
NOBEL LAUREATES, 5 May 2025
UPLIFT - TRANSCEND Media Service
- Statement from the Hunger for Justice Campaign (English & Arabic)
- Culture of Peace News Network article by Dianne Kirby (English)
Mairead’s choosing to fast and pray for 40 days is a form of creative nonviolent resistance infused with love, a cry from the heart that children should never more suffer war.
Her sacrificial act of prophetic moral witness shows solidarity with the sorrow and pain of the most vulnerable. She used her body to make a penetrating public yet profoundly personal statement with echoes of spiritual protest, civil disobedience and a deep concern for human dignity.
We the undersigned commend Mairead’s courage, compassion and commitment. She is an inspiration. We join our voices and actions to hers to demand a world that rejects endless war and promotes equality, justice, peace, prosperity and love for all its children.
إن اختيار ميريد للصوم والصلاة لمدة 40 يومًا هو شكل من أشكال المقاومة السلمية الإبداعية المشبعة بالحب، وصرخة من القلب بأن لا يجب أن يعاني الأطفال من ويلات الحرب مرة أخرى.
إن عملها التضحيي كشهادة أخلاقية نبوية يُظهر تضامنًا مع الحزن والألم الذي يعانيه الأضعف بيننا. لقد استخدمت جسدها لتوجه بيانًا عامًا عميقًا وشخصيًا في آنٍ واحد، يحمل أصداء الاحتجاج الروحي، والعصيان المدني، والقلق العميق بشأن كرامة الإنسان.
نحن الموقعون أدناه نُشيد بشجاعة ميريد وتعاطفها والتزامها. إنها مصدر إلهام لنا. ونحن نضم أصواتنا وأفعالنا إلى صوتها للمطالبة بعالم يرفض الحروب التي لا تنتهي ويعزز المساواة والعدالة والسلام والازدهار والمحبة لجميع أطفاله.
Why is this important?
May 1st 2025 is a significant day for the world’s workers and peace activists, many of whom are joining together to commend and support what is also the final day of Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire’s 40 days of fasting and prayer against the global scourge of war, injustice and genocide.
Mairead’s protest followed Israel unilaterally ending the ceasefire without warning, resuming a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing that has inflicted brutal levels of death and destruction on Gaza’s unarmed and defenceless civilian population, many of whom are children.
Fearlessly calling out the impunity accorded Israel by many governments, including the United States, Britain and the European Union, who also provide money, arms and silent complicity, Mairead ceaselessly seeks to stop the madness of poverty, cruelty, militarism and war.
يُعد الأول من مايو 2025 يومًا ذا أهمية كبيرة لعمال العالم ونشطاء السلام، حيث يجتمع العديد منهم لتكريم ودعم ما يُصادف أيضًا اليوم الأخير من صيام وصلاة الحائزة على جائزة نوبل للسلام، ميريد كوريغان ماغواير، التي استمرت 40 يومًا احتجاجًا على آفة الحرب والظلم والإبادة الجماعية في العالم.
جاء احتجاج ميريد بعد أن أنهت إسرائيل من جانب واحد وقف إطلاق النار دون سابق إنذار، واستأنفت سياسة الإبادة الجماعية والتطهير العرقي، ما أسفر عن مستويات وحشية من الموت والدمار بحق سكان غزة المدنيين العزّل، وكثيرٌ منهم من الأطفال.
ومن خلال شجاعتها في فضح الإفلات من العقاب الذي تتمتع به إسرائيل من قِبَل العديد من الحكومات، بما في ذلك الولايات المتحدة وبريطانيا والاتحاد الأوروبي، والذين يساهمون بالأموال والأسلحة ويتواطؤون بصمت، تسعى ميريد بلا كلل إلى وقف جنون الفقر والقسوة والعسكرة والحرب.
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Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book, The Vision of Peace, (edited by John Dear with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.
Tags: Activism, Anti Zionism, Anti-war, Children, Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize, Nonviolence, Nonviolent Action, Palestine, Peace
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 5 May 2025.
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One Response to “Support Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire’s 40-Day Fast for Palestinian Children and World Peace”
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With all my admiration and respect for Mairead Maguire, crying from the heart that children should never more suffer war and sacrificing her health as an act of prophetic moral witness, may show solidarity with the sorrow and pain of the most vulnerable, but it does very little or nothing for children suffering wars because a small group of politicians in Palestine, Israel, several other United Nations countries negotiated a deadly Game of War.
This tragedy has to unfold in front of us the world believes that the war industry offers protection and security. In the war industry, marketing slogans are ‘our bombs are of proven lethality’ or ‘our bombs are more lethal than those of our competitors’.
And people call this the ‘Defense Industry’. Do lethal bombs really protect us? whilst the world believes such absurdity, there is no hope of a better world.
I blame the Gazan tragedy on all those who do not campaign for the Universal Abolition of Militarism, that is of the War industry. This will automatically make all Armed Forces obsolete.