My letter to The Guardian RE Remembering the Nakba: Israeli group puts 1948 Palestine back on the map... Zochrot aims to educate Israeli Jews – through tours and a new phone app – about a history obscured by enmity and denial

Zochrot tour in 2010 at al-Ghubayyat

RE: Remembering the Nakba: Israeli group puts 1948 Palestine back on the map... Zochrot aims to educate Israeli Jews – through tours and a new phone app – about a history obscured by enmity and denial
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/02/nakba-israel-palestine-zochrot-history

Dear Editor,

I very much appreciated your article "Remembering the Nakba: Israeli group puts 1948 Palestine back on the map... Zochrot aims to educate Israeli Jews – through tours and a new phone app – about a history obscured by enmity and denial"

I applaud the Israelis and Palestinians, the compassionate Jews and Arabs of Zochrot who have been working together to reach out to help Israeli Jews better understand the real history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.... and the very real plight of the Palestinians.

However I think your article failed to fully explain the Palestinian refugees' right to return, which is an inalienable universal basic human right that has been affirmed and reaffirmed multiple times: UN Resolution 194 from 1948 "Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date..." 

Zionism is what people will make of it- both insiders and outsiders. If Israeli Zionists want to make Zionism into a campaign to ethnically cleanse the Holy Land of the native non-Jewish population, the Israel-Palestine conflict is not so much a conflict between two narratives or two nations, but a conflict between Israel and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

A fully secular two state solution to once and for all end the Israel-Palestine conflict for everyone's sake is the best way forward: Religion should be a personal private choice, not a tax payer funded mandate that gives citizenship, housing subsidies, job opportunities, guns and "security" to a favored religious faction.

Sincerely
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
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