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Obama, Israeli scientist accept Nobel Prizes

The instruments of war have a part in preserving peace, President Obama said as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.
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December 10, 2009

Click here to read an excerpt from Obama’s speech regarding Mid East

The instruments of war have a part in preserving peace, President Obama said as he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

“We can understand there will still be war and strive for peace,” Obama said Thursday afternoon in his acceptance speech before an audience of dignitaries that included the Norwegian royal family. 

Obama conceded that “We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetime,” but added later, “War is sometimes necessary, and war is sometimes an expression of human folly.”

Obama quoted Nobel laureate and human rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and said he stood before the assembled to see him receive his peace prize as a product of King’s work. The U.S. leader also called on the nations of the world to take action in the form of sanctions against Iran and other countries that break international law.

Before the award ceremony, Obama told reporters, “I have no doubt that there are others that may be more deserving. My task here is to continue on the path that I believe is not only important for America but important for lasting peace in the world.”

Meanwhile, Weizmann Institute scientist Ada Yonath was in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry along with Americans Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz for their work in mapping ribosomes, the mechanisms that manufacture proteins within cells. Yonath, the fourth woman to receive the chemistry prize, is among five women who will receive 11 Nobel Prizes in Stockholm on Thursday, which is the birthday of the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel.

Yonath will speak on behalf of the three chemistry laureates. She has been chosen to sit next to Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at a dinner after Thursday evening’s ceremony and also will be escorted to the ceremony by the king, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Nine Israelis have won Nobel Prizes; Yonath is the first woman.

On Wednesday, she visited the home of Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, to attend a reception in her honor.

Obama talks about faith, religion and the Middle East in Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (EXCERPT)

And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities – their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.

Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan.  These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war.  For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint – no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one’s own faith.  Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith – for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Adhering to this law of love has always been the core struggle of human nature.  We are fallible. We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.

But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.  We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place.  The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached – their faith in human progress – must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.

For if we lose that faith – if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace – then we lose what is best about humanity.  We lose our sense of possibility.  We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future.  As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history.  I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.”

So let us reach for the world that ought to be – that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls.  Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he’s outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace.  Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on.  Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example.  We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice.  We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity.  We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace.  We can do that – for that is the story of human progress; that is the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.

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