My letter to the Washington Post RE CIA declassifies documents on Egypt, Israel and Camp David Accords brokered by Jimmy Carter

CAMP DAVID ACCORDS: The UN General Assembly rejected the Framework for Peace in the Middle East, because the agreement was concluded without participation of UN and PLO and did not comply with the Palestinian right of return, of self-determination and to national independence and sovereignty. December 1978, she declared in Resolution 33/28 A, that agreements were only valid if they are within the framework of the United Nations and its Charter and its resolutions, include the Palestinian right of return and the right to national independence and sovereignty in Palestine, and concluded with the participation of the PLO.

RE  CIA declassifies documents on Egypt, Israel and Camp David Accords brokered by Jimmy Carter
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/cia-declassifies-documents-on-egypt-israel-and-camp-david-accords-brokered-by-jimmy-carter/2013/11/13/66940598-4cc2-11e3-bf60-c1ca136ae14a_story.html

Online: Camp David papers: www.foia.cia.gov/collection/carter-camp-david-accords

Dear Editor,

How differently things would have played out had President Carter- and all of America (including our newspapers and our Congress and our CIA), taken a firm and pubic and principled stand for our own ideals concerning secular freedom and democracy... and justice.. and equality.

By 1977 decades had passed since the Nazi Holocaust and the subsequent United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights ( adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948) which was created to remind all the world 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..."

By 1977 America had heard and acted on Martin Luther King Jr.'s diplomatic pleas for freedom and an end to the pernicious institutionalized bigotry and injustice that plagued our nation and harmed many innocent men, women and children.

Stop and Think: Would Iran have taken 52 American hostages months after the Egypt-Israel treaty if the Camp David Accords had achieved not only a treaty between Egypt and Israel but also an actual end to the Israel-Palestine conflict and an end to the largest, longest running refugee crisis in the world today.

How many more Palestinian homes and workplaces will Israel destroy, how many more Palestinian individuals will Israel imprison, how many more Palestinian families will Israel fragment, how many more Palestinian men, women and children will Israel push into forced exile ... and how much more Palestinian land and resources will Israel usurp?

Israel as a Jews-preferred ego trip and business investment for those lucky enough to be Jewish has been quite a lucrative success for some people, but not for most, and it has certainly set a very bad example for its neighbors. Religion should be a personal private choice and religion should most certainly not be armed with lethal weaponry- or with tax payer funds.

A fully secular two state end to the Israel-Palestine conflict, for everyone's sake, is the best way forward. 

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

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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.

'It is where religious freedom is most dishonored or repressed that the forces of violent religious extremism are likely to thrive.' Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom: JFK's call for religious freedom can transform places like Pakistan.

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

"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

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Live by the Golden Rule

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194

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"So let us put the narrative of injustice away and find the joy, if it’s the last thing we ever do. " Tala Abu Rahmeh, Palestinian poet and writer

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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.

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"Compassion is not religious business, it is human business. It is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival."~Dalai Lama

"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate."~ Albert Schweitzer,1952 Nobel Peace Prize

"I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."~ Stephan Grellet, a prominent French-born American Quaker missionary

The Charter for Compassion is a call to restore the Golden Rule to the center of religious, moral and civic life. The path to a just economy and a peaceful world requires listening, understanding and treating all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Freedom for Palestine - OneWorld