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Dear Editor,
We seriously cripple Palestine and Palestinians when we use the word "pro-Palestine" interchangeably with "anti-Israel". Look at the big picture: Pro-Israel is more than sixty sovereign years of Israeli diplomacy and hasbara and state building efforts aimed at providing jobs and security to Israeli citizens.
Many of the most articulate anti-Israel activists are Jewish individuals fixated on and enraged by Israel. Anti-Israel activists tend to promote a one state agenda alongside Boycott Israel efforts, convincing their friends and associates to scorn negotiations and Palestinian state building efforts. They should be free to do that, but in doing that they most certainly should not be called pro-Palestine.
Pro-Palestine is about Palestine, not Israel. Effective and helpful and fully honest pro-Palestine advocacy empowers Palestinians as fully accountable state building citizens, engaged in a modern global world and a crucially important conversation concerning negotiations to end the Israel-Palestine conflict with a just and lasting peace based on international law and full respect for universal human rights.
The words we choose to use to understand and define the conflict have the power to either exasperate or end the conflict. For instance, Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine wisely points out in a recent op-ed Non-violent resistance is Palestine’s most powerful weapon that "Palestinians must redefine martyrdom". Ibish mentions the fact that "The [Israeli] occupation is a system of discipline and control over a subjugated people by a powerful foreign army. Worse, one of the main tasks of those occupying troops is to facilitate and protect the settlement project, which basically means taking land from its [Palestinian] owners and illegally giving it to [Israeli] colonists." Ibish knows the facts, understands the very real plight of the Palestinians, but Ibish does not get distracted and he does not go galloping off into an anti-Israel rant. He keeps calm and he keeps our focus on empowering Palestinians with realistic options and good advice.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
NOTES
When the boring tasks of governance are not performed, infrastructures don't get built. Then, when epidemics strike, people die." David Brooks 2014
Palestinians Must Redefine Martyrdom for Nonviolent Resistance
Confronting ISIL: The Day and Decade After
Abbas' Conundrum is Also an American Problem
Jobless Palestinians brave death to migrate
President Barack Obama's address to the United Nations General Assembly (transcript)
The Day After #PeaceDay 2014 ... Change the World ... #PeaceDay ... PEACE DAY is GLOBAL #PeaceDay ... We all have a right to peace
Trust... A poem for peace in Growing Gardens for Palestine by Anne Selden Annab
Arab states can't afford to be tepid in response to ISIL
Jordan stands firm against radicalism, terrorism: "The unequivocal support for the coalition of regional and international countries willing to fight IS did not obliterate, however, an issue that is often said to be the reason for many Middle Eastern problems: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
To honor a tragic history, we must work for peace : "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." Ziad Asali
Because We Know How to Make Dreams Come True! This Week in Palestine
For My Identity, I Sing! Al Mada
"The chaplets of coins are thought by some to have inspired the halo in sacred art."... Color photos of Palestine from the December 1926 issue of National Geographic magazine (Vol L, VI), "In the Birthplace of Christianity,"
For all its empty boasting, Hamas’s strategy of armed struggle has once again been exposed as not merely a dead-end for securing Palestinian rights, but a disaster.
US urges Israel to reverse appropriation of land for West Bank settlement: Israel has claimed almost 1,000 acres near Bethlehem, in a move Palestinians say will only increase tension
The Real Middle East Crisis Is Economic "While Western observers focus on political issues in the Middle East, people in the region are themselves preoccupied with economic matters"
RECRUIT ... a poem
Vatican Urges Muslim Leaders To Condemn The Islamic State Formerly Known As ISIS
NYTimes: Resisting Nazis, He Saw Need for Israel. Now He Is Its Critic.
Dean Obeidallah in The Daily Beast: Searching for a Palestinian Dr. King
There Are Clues
Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?
Zogby: What we found was that there has been a continued erosion in the favorable ratings Americans have of both Arabs and Muslims, posing a threat to the civil rights and political inclusion of both Arab Americans and American Muslims.
"This is a time of national crisis, I will be honest with you, that does require commitment to non-violence of the kind that would give everyone the time needed to rebuild, to unify, but at the same time to agree with Israel and the world on a date certain for ending the occupation." Palestine's Salam Fayyad
ATFP Calls for De-Escalation between Israel and the
Palestinians - See more at: http://www.americantaskforce.org/in_media/pr/2014/07/08/1404792000#sthash.591SYEYV.dpuf
ATFP Calls for De-Escalation between Israel and the
Palestinians - See more at: http://www.americantaskforce.org/in_media/pr/2014/07/08/1404792000#sthash.591SYEYV.dpuf
ATFP Calls for De-Escalation between Israel and the
Palestinians - See more at: http://www.americantaskforce.org/in_media/pr/2014/07/08/1404792000#sthash.591SYEYV.dpuf
ATFP Calls for De-Escalation between Israel and the
Palestinians - See more at: http://www.americantaskforce.org/in_media/pr/2014/07/08/1404792000#sthash.591SYEYV.dpuf
ATFP Calls for
De-Escalation between Israel and the PalestiniansUPDATE: American Task Force on Palestine Advocacy Efforts During the Ongoing Tragic Hostilities : As tragic and appalling hostilities erupted again between Israelis and Palestinians, the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) engaged in intensive advocacy efforts to call for an immediate cease-fire to save lives and spare the innocent. On July 8th, ATFP issued a formal press release calling for de-escalation between Israel and the Palestinians...READ MORE
Normalizing Intelligent Conversations, Diplomatic Support, and Hope for Palestine: American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) Panel on Israeli-Palestinian War in a New Regional Landscape... & a firm call for an immediate ceasefire
Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a
military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or
provide security for the parties, the council:
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.
Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine... "An eye-opening—and inspiring—new approach to thinking about one of the world’s most deeply entrenched conflicts"
"I have yet to meet a refugee who wanted to be a refugee and even less so, who wished to remain a refugee. Palestine refugees are no different. Their call for a just and lasting solution to their plight must be heard." UNWRA's Pierre Krähenbühl on World Refugee Day
America/Israel/Palestine 1776
America/Israel/Palestine 1948: 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.
The Golden
Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
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