Tuesday, July 30, 2013

My letter to the NYTimes RE Aaron David Miller- The New Mideast Talks: Much Risk, Little Hope, but Still We Must Try

RE:  Aaron David Miller- The New Mideast Talks: Much Risk, Little Hope, but Still We Must Try
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/opinion/the-new-mideast-talks-much-risk-little-hope-but-still-we-must-try.html?ref=global&_r=0

Dear Editor,

Aaron David Miller does a very good job excusing Israeli intransigence, but not a very good job of making a case for peace and Palestine. 

Stuck on the sectarian notion that Israel has to be officially Jewish Miller wants America to convince the world that forcing tax payers (here & there) to endorse and fund one specific official state religion is a good idea.  I think empowering the rule of fair and just laws is a much better idea... and so is a fully secular two state solution to once and for all end the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
"The way forward is to be found not in looking back at what might have been, but in an honest assessment of what can be done to address current realities." Dr. James Zogby

ATFP Welcomes New Direct Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations

"And when we speak of our faith, it can’t be just about our personal relationship with God, it has to also be about our personal relationship one to the other, each to everybody else." John Kerry, Secretary of State, Remarks at the Ramadan Iftar Dinner 2013


Live by the Golden Rule
Words to Honor: The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 1.
    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.

"In 1949, the international community accepted Israel's UN membership upon two conditions: That they respect resolutions 181 (two states) and 194 (refugee rights). Neither has been honored. In fact, 65 years later, Israel has not even acknowledged what it did in 1948." Saeb Erekat

Jordan's King Abdullah II explains that extremism has "grown fat" off of the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

"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

".... it being clearly understood that nothing
          shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
          rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine....
The Office of International Religious Freedom ( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/)   Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:
Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

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

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