Honored at the gathering of international dignitaries were Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, all of whom paid the ultimate price for peace — their lives.
“I cherish every opportunity to speak about peace,” said Jehan Sadat, widow of the slain Egyptian leader and co-chair of the State of the World Forum.
“I was cruelly robbed of his life, but no power on earth can rob me of his thoughts, his hopes, his noble ideas. My mission is to carry on my husband’s work for peace — peace with dignity, honor and justice. “
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a Nobel Peace Prize winner widely credited with ending the Cold War, founded the State of the World Forum as a venue for discussing major global issues. It is sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation, based at the Presidio National Park in San Francisco.
Like last year’s event, this year’s forum attracted a range of leaders and thinkers, including Gorbachev; Milan Panic, former prime minister of Yugoslavia; Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund; and Arthur Hertzberg, vice president emeritus of the World Jewish Congress.
On hand Wednesday of last week at the forum’s opening night program — titled “The Price of Peace” — were Shulamit Aloni, Israel’s former minister of communications, and Yael Dayan, a Labor Party member of Israel’s Knesset. Lamenting the most recent spate of violence in Israel, they lauded Rabin as a man of courage and vision, a warrior who ultimately sought peace because he had seen the true horrors of war.
“Maybe it takes the heroism of war to know, not what the price of peace is, but what the real price of war is,” Dayan told an audience of hundreds in the Fairmont Hotel’s Grand Ballroom. “It’s the price of war that is so horrifying.”
Anwar Sadat’s widow also recalled the late Israeli leader, offering condolences and empathy to Leah Rabin, along with reassurances that Yitzhak Rabin’s dedication to peace will fortify his widow throughout her life.
“I know that when the terrible and shocking pain has died, Mrs. Rabin will cling to the memories of her husband, another courageous leader robbed of his life because he dared to wage peace,” she said.
Earlier in the evening, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown welcomed guests to the city, and to the forum, which this year tackled such issues as nuclear proliferation, organic pollutants, free enterprise and women in leadership.
Then Gorbachev took the stage, offering a general overview of the world on the cusp of the 21st century.
Speaking through a translator, his image projected on giant video screens, the affable and good-humored leader asserted that “politics today are shamefully behind the challenges of our times,” and urged leaders to resist the temptation to tether themselves to old paradigms that no longer work.
He recalled the beginnings of perestroika in the 1980s, the period of Soviet reforms when he faced opposition from both the right and the left. Seeking an existing, tried-and-true model, both sides initially resisted what turned out to be a historic movement.
“They wanted a kind of menu for mass consumption, a kind of schedule of trains,” Gorbachev said. “But evolution requires adaptation, the ability to adjust to real life.”