Please DARE SPEAK OUT to advocate a just and lasting peace for all people, not just your chosen favorites.

An indigenous Palestinian woman in traditional dress overlooking Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Photo circa 1929

 Dear President Biden (...etc)

American racism is shaping inhuman policies when it comes to our foreign policies- specifically our politicians' & religious leaders' callous negligence regarding the very real plight & suffering of the native non-Jewish people of the Holy Land.

Yes I know AIPAC generously rewards American politicians who empower the political entity called Israel, while sabotaging and undermining those who don't... and elections are coming up.

Yes I know our mainstream media elects to feature Zionist perspectives & propaganda at every opportunity, and that there are harassment campaigns aimed at silencing American support for the men, women, & children of historic Palestine. But please stand up & speak out for truth and justice any way, and in every way you can.

I believe in beauty & goodness, fair & just laws, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I also believe in righting historic wrongs.  This morning I was delighted to see an absolutely gorgeous Gustav Klimt portrait of Fraulein Lieser that once belonged to a wealthy Jewish family in Austria. That painting was believed to have been lost in the Nazi Holocaust. Thankfully the portrait was recently discovered, and its sale will benefit the current owners as well as the Lieser heirs "because of Washington Principles, an international agreement to return Nazi-looted art to the descendants of the people they were taken from". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68102376

Did you know that Israel has stolen and/or destroyed countless Palestinian books, art, homes, and even entire communities since 1948.

Israeli violence and impunity is escalating, thanks in a large part to American money and support. 

Please DARE SPEAK OUT to advocate a just and lasting peace for all people, not just your chosen favorites.  Until Israel is willing to allow a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state our government should consider the Israel/Palestine conflict a civil rights movement within one Apartheid state called Israel.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

Religion should be a personal choice, not a state funded project.

The Basarat Home in Palestine USURPED by Zionists... but never ever forgotten by its rightful owners and heirs. 

Revealed: review of internal state department documents shows special mechanisms have been used to shield Israel from US human rights laws

THE NATION: A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.”

South Africa 🇿🇦 said “never again” and lived up to it.

Remembering Tom Hurndall 1981-2004 Killed by an Israeli Snipper as he carried Palestinian Children to safety

Nesrine Malik in The Guardian: It’s not only Israel on trial. South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

Kitaba by Tala Abunuwar: We are not free till all of us are free! Thank you South Africa 🙏

With love from Palestine to South Africa

Mosab Abu Toha: "She is reading from a book..."

'Stunned, angry, and infuriated': Journalists address US silence on colleagues killed in Gaza

Ben & Jerry’s has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, making it one of the first multinational companies to do so since Israel began bombing civilians in Gaza over 100 days ago.

I have hope

Responses to genocide are often determined by where the crime is committed, and what the victims look like...  How can so many in the West so easily ignore genocide?

Susan Muaddi Darraj: There are 12 different ways to say "friend" in Arabic, and I believe South Africa embodies all of them. 

Violence is the feel good answer in movies & on TV- not in real life.

Revealed: Congress backers of Gaza war received most from pro-Israel donors

The human cost and the environmental cost of war in the Middle East is horrifying, and yet America's mainstream newspapers, TV news, and politicians itch to have more & more war, investing in Israeli violence at every turn. 

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?