My letter to Foreign Policy RE Is Israel Doomed?

Inez, wearing white cape, seated on white horse at the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade, March 3, 1913, Washington, D.C.

RE: Is Israel Doomed? Why even dangerous demographics and the receding horizon of peace won't dim the lights in Jerusalem. by AARON DAVID MILLER

Dear Editor,

One hundred years is a very very very long time. One hundred years ago, in March of 1913, The Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913 took place in Washington D.C. led by Inez Milholland on horseback...  Horses are no longer a common sight on our city streets, and most Americans today take it for granted that women should be free and equal citizens.

It is quite true that "Time is the ultimate arbiter of what endures"... but is also true that life is change. 

Since WWII the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have endured, changing people's expectations and guiding many people worldwide towards working together to help shape a more just and compassionate and peace oriented world.

Israel appears quite adept at western diplomacy for now, but Israel really is the odd man out because of its deluded obsession with being demographically Jewish... However that is not to say Israel is doomed to disappear.

Ending slavery certainly did not end America, not did granting women the right to vote. 

Since WWII and the emergence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the United States of America has grappled with and dismantled pernicious Jim Crow laws as well as policies and social attitudes that subjugate women, whereas Israel has spent that time shaping policies that cruelly persecute and displace Palestinians. 

Unresolved the Israel-Palestine conflict won't destroy Israel, but it will continue to torment and harm many individual Israeli and Palestinian men, women and children. 

Unresolved bigotry and religious extremism will only be exasperated with negative ramifications escalating everywhere.

Ending the Israel-Palestine conflict with a fully secular two state solution shaped by international law and full respect for universal basic human rights is the best way forward.

Israel, with many loyal and intelligent, empowered and enlightened citizens, will adapt and figure out ways to survive in a modern world where the rule of fair and just laws matter more than religious identity. 

Religion should be a personal private choice, not a state funded mandate.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

The 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.

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UNWRA ... a crucial lifeline for Palestinian refugees

Washington Post 2013: Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

Israeli Settler Violence Map

Israeli police seized computers and detained 25 Palestinians because of Facebook posts in East Jerusalem on Thursday

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"The only way to honor our tragic histories is to create a future for our children free of man-made tragedy. This means making peace fully, completely and without reservation, between Israel and Palestine." ATFP's Ziad Asali: To honor a tragic history, we must work for peace

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

This Week in Palestine: In Palestine we have no physical control over our borders, and therefore have no say in how anyone could be treated at any given moment in time. But what we do have control of is the Palestine we write about, describe, and photograph in the folds of this issue’s pages.

Dr Zogby: Focus on Palestinians’ Rights

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Ancient stone villages in the occupied West Bank have become trapped in rural poverty, while investors and donors shy away from a zone of seemingly endless conflict... Israel's restrictions affect much of Palestinian economic life. It controls every access point, which enables it to oversee all imports and exports, creating bureaucratic hurdles that Palestinians say stifle or kill entrepreneurship.

The Israelis also impose strict limits on water supply, which affects industry and agriculture. Israel has not allowed Palestinians access to 3G mobile technology, citing security concerns, rendering many smartphone apps largely useless....READ MORE

"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

"Legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Paine: "Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."

"In every country and in every age, the priest [rabbi/imam/...etc...] has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own"
Thomas Jefferson

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

Why Muslims should love secularism: Though secularism is widely misunderstood as anti-religious and iconoclastic, all it means is the neutrality of the state on religious affairs ...  "Muslims must recognize secularism as the only real path to religious freedom, rather than confusing it with an attack against religion." Hussein Ibish

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

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194

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The Arab Peace Initiative

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

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

We Need to Talk... Ziad Asali has proven that Palestinian-Americans can work within the system as first-class American citizens and Washington has paid attention: The status quo is clear: occupation. Asali's mission is to change that status quo.

Freedom for Palestine - OneWorld