My letter 1-9-2014 RE Not Just About Us ....

Jordan Times ‘Where there are children playing there is always hope’.
This photo was posted by Andrew Harper, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) representative in Jordan, on his twitter account. It shows children sitting next to a Saudi-donated prefab at the Zaatari refugee camp in north Jordan.

RE: Not Just About Us by Thomas L. Friedman
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/opinion/friedman-not-just-about-us.html?ref=international&_r=0

Dear Editor,

Kudos to Thomas L. Friedman for carefully reading Marwan Muasher's extremely relevant new book — “The Second Arab Awakening and the Battle for Pluralism” and for adeptly summarizing key points in your opinion page.

AND kudos to Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and currently a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, for willing to be part of the '"will from within" in this struggle for diversity, pluralism, and peace. I totally agree with Muasher that “Pluralism is the operating system we need to solve all our problems, and as long as that operating system is not in place, we will not get there. This is an internal battle. Let’s stop hoping for delivery from the outside.”

Let's also not ignore the elephant in the living room:  I very much hope that all sincere efforts to actually end to the Israel-Palestine conflict with a diversifying fully secular two state solution shaping a fully sovereign free Palestine, and a just and lasting peace for both Israel and for Palestine, will help steer the entire region towards more Golden Rule thinking, and much less hostility towards "others."

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab