Peace Activist Takes on Armed Conflict, World Cup Soccer

July 5, 2006
Middle East Times

AMMAN --  Hak Ja Han Moon, the wife of Rev Sun Myung Moon, was confronted by armed conflict and World Cup soccer while sweeping recently through four Middle East countries as part of a 120-nation global speaking tour.

Mrs. Moon told a packed ballroom at the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman, target of a suicide attack that killed 60 people at a wedding celebration last November, that the blueprint for peace lay within a devout family of three generations.

The mother of 13 children and grandmother of 21 read from a prepared speech that she had first delivered in the United States. This message has taken Mrs. Moon to Southern and East Asia and to the former Soviet republics.

Her four-month tour sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) is scheduled to end in late August.

Hak Ja Han's fourth son, Kook Jin Moon, also spoke at the June 30 event to the openly receptive audience of some 900 people, which included a number of leading political and religious figures from the region.

Jordan was Mrs. Moon's last Middle East stop. She had already spoken in Turkey, Lebanon, and Israel.

But she encountered problems in Israel. While high level officials waited to welcome Hak Ja Han at an airport in Amman, her private jet was held up for an hour at Israel's Tel Aviv airport. Israeli warplanes needed the airspace to pound targets in Gaza as they had done for several consecutive nights after the abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians sparked a fresh Middle East crisis.

Mrs. Moon's challenges were not yet over. Her program took place at the same time as the World Cup quarter finals. But although UPF organizers had expected that the match between Argentina and Germany would dampen attendance, this did not happen and the attraction of her message of peace apparently proved stronger than the pull of the game.

Shortly after the program ended the World Cup came back to attention. When Germany defeated Argentina 4-2 in a penalty shootout just as event participants were eating their desserts, the news spread.

"We've won," a German-speaking woman cheerfully told another German fan of the team's success.

In Malta, Hak Ja Han and parts of her entourage were reported to have caught the quarterfinal game between Brazil and France on TV in their hotel, in a respite from the grueling schedule of daily speeches as the tour moved into Europe.

Both Mrs. Moon and her husband are avid soccer fans. Sun Myung Moon founded Il Hwa soccer team, which as fivefold Korean champion is the country's most successful soccer club.

Posted courtesy of the Middle East Times. Original Story at Middle East Times