My letter to the Economist RE A lament for America’s Jews

RE: A lament for America’s Jews- Inside the corridors of power, there we sat down and wept http://www.economist.com/node/21551055

Dear Editor,

My how very very different America would be today if we'd opted to fund religion with tax payers money long ago... Surely it is obvious that a government subsidizing any one religion, thereby fueling religious fantasies, religious extremism and religious bigotry at every turn is not a healthy direction to go in for any modern nation state!!

What example does Jews-preferred Israel's flourishing set for Islamists world wide?

A fully secular, carefully negotiated two state solution to once and for all end the Israel-Palestine conflict and the continued displacement and impoverishment of the native non-Jewish population of the Holy Land really is the best way forward: Religion should be a personal, private matter, not a license to violate other people's basic human rights, including but not limited to every refugees very real right to return to original homes and lands..

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."Eleanor Roosevelt

The Arab Peace Initiative requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well

"This [Israeli] occupation humiliates us, destroys our economy, causes demographic changes and deprives millions of the freedom of movement and their right to decent lives, in addition to the confiscation of land... These are the main ways Christians are persecuted in Palestine." Faysal Hijazeen

• Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Growing Gardens for Palestine
a personal blog

To Return

A Spider Silk Cape... a series of three poems by Anne Selden Annab in Growing Gardens for Palestine