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Monday, January 2, 2012

The Vast Danger of Narrow Minds By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

"If we are smart, we will take this opportunity to learn from others. It is not about any religion and how much you choose to practice the rites and rituals of your faith – that should always be left up to the individual. It is a matter of imposing this faith or at least one group’s narrow interpretation of it that is so dangerous. Hopefully, we will not have a Beit Shemesh in our future state. Because we would have worked far too hard to sabotage it with our own hands. " Joharah Baker

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER PALESTINE AND PEACE]
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=24280&CategoryId=3
The Vast Danger of Narrow Minds
Date posted: January 02, 2012
By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

It is absolutely true that fundamentalism begets violent behavior and discrimination; we have all seen this in action. Muslims are forever being burned at the proverbial stake for their extremist views and their violent ways. However, it has come to pass that extremism has reared its ugly head in Israel, this time for the whole world to see.

The fact is, no one in their right mind could take pleasure at the sight of a traumatized seven-year old girl scared to walk to school for fear that she might get spit on. That was the image that shook Israel last week. Naama, who immigrated from the United States and moved with her family to the Jerusalem-area town of Beit Shemesh is constantly spit on and cursed on her way to school for what the ultra-orthodox deem as her “immoderate” clothing.

The incident sparked riots and a sharp divide in Israeli society between secular and ultra-religious. “There is only one law, the law of the Torah,” one Beit Shemesh resident defiantly told an Israeli television cameraman, thus justifying the terrorizing of women for their so-called immodest dress, even a seven-year old.

This kind of manic fundamentalism is not foreign to any of us, no matter with what religion we associate. If secular Palestinians are worried about anything in this upcoming election, it is not about the political ramifications of a Hamas win but about the social changes that might take place if the Islamic movement is in control. We have already been given a hint of things to come in the Gaza Strip, with Hamas officials banning women from smoking water pipes in public, demanding marriage license from couples walking together in the street and imposing Islamic dress codes on girls in elementary and middle school. Recently, Hamas police cracked down on shop owners, ordering them not to display naked mannequins, lingerie or so-called indecent advertising.

If Hamas were to win the elections, Palestinians, who are largely secular and also have a Christian community, just might be up against some fierce social battles, ones that can be very hard to win.

The social clashes currently taking place in Israel also point to another critical juncture in any society – that is, whether a self-proclaimed democracy tolerates the clash of ideologies as freedom of expression or oppresses it to better fit the democratic makeup of that society. For Israel, this is an obvious conundrum because the only reason the situation even came to blows is because of the violent nature of the clashes, in Beit Shemesh particularly. But Israel is keen on not compromising the democracy it boasts of being, at least for Israeli Jews.

That is something we Palestinians must consider in the next phase. Hamas is an integral part of our society and we have fought long and hard to defend the notion of national unity and democracy. But there is a fine line between respecting differences of opinion and ideology, and allowing those ideologies to run the democratic foundations that brought them into power straight into the ground.

For the Palestinians, it is all about baby steps. We need to complete the reconciliation agreement first and then plan elections and form a unity government afterwards. Perhaps, though, what is happening in Israel is a reminder of how extremism can drive wedges between members of the same society and threaten the democratic fabric which holds it together.

If we are smart, we will take this opportunity to learn from others. It is not about any religion and how much you choose to practice the rites and rituals of your faith – that should always be left up to the individual. It is a matter of imposing this faith or at least one group’s narrow interpretation of it that is so dangerous. Hopefully, we will not have a Beit Shemesh in our future state. Because we would have worked far too hard to sabotage it with our own hands.

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

My letter to my local newspaper The Patriot News RE Harold R. Piety's EXCELLENT letter "Palestinian refugees didn't [voluntarily] leave their land"


RE: Palestinian refugees didn't leave their land letter by Harold R. Piety
http://www.pennlive.com/letters/index.ssf/2012/01/palestinian_refugees_didnt_lea.html

Dear Editor,

Such a delight and a pleasure to see the compassionate and well informed letter by Harold R. Piety regarding the fact that the Palestinian refugees didn't voluntarily leave their land.

Piety is wise to point out too that "the ancestors of many of the Palestinians might well have been Jews who converted to Islam, which recognizes the same patriarchs."

All three Abrahamic faiths are tightly tied to Jerusalem. While religion can and does bring great comfort to many, it can also do huge harm as religious tyranny, intolerance and corruption are a very real danger no matter who you are.

As Monty Python accurately quipped a while ago "No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

Tax payers (here and there) should not be forced to fund religious scholars and religious schemes. Hopefully a fully secular two state solution to once and for all end the Israel/Palestine conflict will help shape a better future for all kith and kin, however they might want to define themselves as the rule of fair and just laws helps bring peace, progress and potential prosperity to every family and every community and every refugee: Israel and Palestine side by side in peace and for peace- for every one's sake.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

My lettter to the Washington Post RE today's letters headlined "Missing pages from the Palestinian history book"

RE: Letters headlined "Missing pages from the Palestinian history book "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/missing-pages-from-the-palestinian-history-book/2011/12/28/gIQA85O0SP_story.html
(responding to Maen Rashid Areikat's We the Palestinians)

Dear Editor,

Ending the Israel/Palestine conflict requires that both Israelis and Palestinians (and all their many various supporters) look forward- look forward to find ways to live alongside and with each other not as enemies, adversaries and scapegoats, but as independent citizens of a modern world with each person and every family responsible for building one nation or the other.

Your anti-Palestine letter writers most likely totally believe the story lines that inspire them to dismiss Palestine, just as anti-Israel activists totally believe the story lines that inspire them to dismiss peace: Obviously neither notice that injustice, bigotry, and religious extremism all thrive with the continuation of the Israel/Palestine conflict, forcing matters to go from bad to worse.

A fully secular two state solution with a sovereign and independent Palestine living in peace alongside a sovereign and independent Israel will provide policy makers, story tellers, citizens, investors, researchers, religious leaders,
bureaucrats, merchants, school teachers (..etc..) with a firm incentive to be more compassionate, more inclusive as well as more intelligent and honest about what they decide to notice and remember- and more careful and conscientious about where they invest their time, talents, and taxes.

A Golden Rule peace firmly based on full respect for The Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be a win-win situation, a beacon of hope, and a good example for the entire region as Israelis and Palestinians, each in their own way, step up to become obvious proof that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."


Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab


Help Build A Golden Rule Peace for the Holy Land

Growing Gardens for Palestine

American Task Force on Palestine President Ziad J. Asali: "The pursuit of peace, independence and reform is not a project for cowards..."

Hussein Ibish: How national identities are really formed: "There's nothing transhistorical or metaphysical about Palestinian nationalism, any more than there is about Zionism, or any other nationalism. This is so blindingly obvious even small children should have no difficulty grasping that whatever aspects of history, traditions, myths or legends a contemporary political movement wishes to privilege, foreground, highlight or deploy in order to legitimate it's agenda, what it is responding to is not anything ancient, transhistorical, metaphysical or inevitable, but rather the contemporary, immediate needs of constituencies that are themselves modern, and indeed "imagined," and the products of recent developments, not ancient history."


This Week In Palestine Artist of the Month: Nidal Khatib