Notable Peace & Justice Activists Posters “Be...-”
with curriculum enrichment resources for social studies classrooms, teachers, home schoolers, offices.

Simone de Beauvoir
Lydia Becker
Menachem Begin

Alphra Behn
Peter Benenson

Simone de Beauvoir
b. 1-9-1908; Paris
d. 4-14-1986

Simone de Beauvoir was a feminist, existentialist philosopher, and social theorist. Her metaphysical novels include She Came to Stay and The Mandarins though she is best remembered for her treatise The Second Sex, an analysis of women's oppression.

Simone de Beauvoir quotes
• “Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
• “Art is an attempt to integrate evil.”
• “All oppression creates a state of war.”
• “No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.”
• “If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.”
• “It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”

Lydia Becker
b. 2-24-1827; Manchester, England
d. 7-18-1890

Lydia Becker, an aspiring amateur biologist and astonomer, was a leader in the early British suffrage movement arguing that there was no natural difference between the intellect of men and women. In 1870 she established the Women's Suffrage Journal, the first national paper covering the women's suffrage campaign, proposing a non-gendered educational system in Britain.

Menachem Begin & Anwar Sadat

Poster Text: Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to solve one of the oldest and most difficult problems in the world: the conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Tensions between these groups grew worse when at separate state for the Jewish people, the nation of Israel, was created in 1948 from the Arab state of Palestine. The Arabs immediately attacked the new nation of Israel. And Israel and the Arab nations, including Egypt, became bitter enemies. In the years that followed, Israelis and Arabs fought several brief but violent wars. The Arab countries were determined to destroy Israel, and the Israelis fought back aggressively.

Anwar Sadat was on Egyptian military office who took part in efforts to overthrow hsi nations government in the 1940s. Later he became Egypt's Vice President under Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. When Mr. Nasser died in 1970, Mr. Sadat took over. He called for Israel to return land it had taken from Egypt in a 1967 war. But in 1977, President Sadat began discussions with Israeli leader Menachem Begin about ways to end the conflict between their two nations.

Mr. Begin was one of many people who fought during the 1930s and 1940s for the creation of Israel. After Israel was formed, Mr. Begin served in the Israeli Parliament which is called the Knesset. He became the Prime Minister of Israel in 1977.

Together with U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin met for peace talks. The talks resulted in an agreement that called for Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. It als called for a formal peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. And it said Israel must take steps to give Palestinian Arabs in the West region their own government. The agreement, which became known as the Camp David Accords, won Mr. Sadat and Mr. Begin the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sadly President Sadat was killed in 1981 by Arabs opposed to peace with Israel. And after Mr. Begin resigned as Prime Minister in 1983, he took little part in Israeli politics. He died in 1992.

Even though some parts of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty have not been fulfilled, the agreement was an important first step toward peace in the Middle East.

• Anwar Sadat & Menachem Begin at Amazon.com

Aphra Behn (née Johnson)
b. 7-10-1640; England
d. 4-16-1689

Alphra Behn is considered to be one the first woman to earn a living by writing in England. Aphra Behn's protagonists reflect her own passion for life, a spirit which led her to write in a letter to a male colleague: “All I ask is the privilege... to tread in those successful paths my predecessors have so long thrived in ... If I must not because of my sex, have this freedom, but that you will usurp all to yourselves; I lay down my quill and you shall have no more of me.”

• Oroonoko, The Rover, and Other Works

Peter Benenson
b. 7-31-1921; London
d. 2-25-2005; Oxford

Lawyer Peter Benenson was the founder of human rights group Amnesty International (AI). In May 1961 Benenson brought the imprisonment of two Portuguese students by the autocratic regime ruling Portugal to the attention of the public: their crime?, they had raised a toast to “Freedom”.

Daniel and Philip Berrigan
b. Minnesota

Brothers and Catholic priests Daniel (1921- ) and Philip (1923-2002) Berrigan were on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war.

Annie Besant (née Wood)
b. 10-1-1847; England
d. 9-20-1933; India

Annie Besant was a political and women's rights activist, writer, and Theosophist, or one who holds that each religion holds a portion of truth to help humanity evolve to greater perfection.

Annie Besant quotes ~
• “Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.”
• “Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”
• “Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class.”

• Annie Besant: An Autobiography