Michael's Blog

ONE.  Everyone is talking about the US President’s Board of Peace to accompany his “Gaza peace plan,” announced in Davos this week, and since we’re in the peace business here, I wanted to say a few things about it. And while European allies have declined his offer, authoritarian regimes, monarchies, and others who want to curry his favor have climbed on board – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Hungary, and yes, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. The President suggests it’s his alternative

    On Saturday, January 3, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette published a Letter to the Editor from Pam Etheridge, ICMEP Board Chair, on behalf of the entire board, responding to a previous op-ed by Steven Greenberg, who describes himself as “a Fort Wayne native and a Tel Aviv-based novelist and writer.”        Greenberg criticized a picture he saw on Facebook of ICMEP members creating a sign that said, “Globalize the Intifada.”  In his op-ed, Greenberg stated, “… when you call out

A Sermon preached at Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship, Berne, IN, December 28, 2025 The Lion King … Scar. Little Red Riding Hood … the Big, Bad Wolf. Sleeping Beauty … Maleficent. Harry Potter … Voldemort. Dorothy … the Wicked Witch of the West, but in Wicked, it’s the Wizard. Mary and Joseph … Herod. Every parent struggles with balancing the innocence of their children with things that are unfair, dark, and scary in their lives. I used to read, “There’s

     This week the Indiana Center for Middle East Peace hosted four Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Tashi Kyil Monastery, exiled to Dehra Dun, India, from Tibet. This is the fourth time ICMEP has hosted the monks in the last 17 years in partnership with the Tibetan Mongolian Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, IN.  They created a World Peace Sand Mandala at the Allen County Public Library downtown, gave talks at the Insight Meditation Group in Fort Wayne

764 days – that’s 25 months and 2 days. And this is what we’re up against: + This week it was reported that YouTube has rolled over for the President, quietly erasing more than 700 videos from three Palestinian justice organizations documenting Israeli human rights violations; + The latest issue of The Nation describes how the Israel Lobby targeted our guest, Cori Bush, and her colleague, Jamaal Bowman from New York in the last election – over $8million spent against Bush,

ICMEP is a non-sectarian organization. This is a sermon Michael preached about the trip he recently led to South Africa (Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship, Berne, IN, October 19, 2025). It is intended for a Christian congregation, but hopefully, all people of good will find some inspiration in it. Reading: 2 Timothy 4.1-5      In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom,