Lecture on “Democracy and Tolerance“

Within the project “Promoting Tolerance and Entrepreneurship”, PalThink for Strategic Studies in cooperation with ATLAS Network have organized a lecture entitled “Tolerance and Democracy”, with active participation of 20 students and graduates from both genders with different specializations. This project aims at increasing the youth’s awareness of entrepreneurship and tolerance and help them to be more influential in Palestinian society.

The Author and Researcher in legal and political affairs Mr. Talal Abu Rokba initiated the lecture, and discussed with participants the concept of Democracy, which is the people rule of themselves. He also pointed out to the wrong common belief of people that democracy is limited only to elections, where he made it clear that elections is a mean to democracy. He also talked about the concept of citizenship and citizen, where citizenship is the status of being a legal member of a particular country, and citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership.

Mr. Talal also discussed tolerance, its concept, stages and its impact on the lives of individuals and society. In addition to the difference between respect and acceptance, where acceptance is the psychological readiness to accept the person as he/she is, not how he/she should be regardless of their differences, where respect is to accept the others different points of views considering acceptance as the first stage of tolerance and respect follows.

At last Mr. Talal spoke about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which came as a result of successive cultures, civilizations and different religions. This declaration is an ethical system states that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights, regardless of race, religion, sex and color, and they must treat each other in a spirit of brotherhood and tolerance.