My letter to the Guardian RE Mira Awad's enlightening and courageous column "Palestinian Israelis are often dismissed. Yet our voice is key to peace"

‘When I represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009 together with the Jewish-Israeli singer Noa, the pressure from my Palestinian compatriots to withdraw was overwhelming.’ Mira Awad, right, and Noa Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

RE Palestinian Israelis are often dismissed. Yet our voice is key to peace
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/10/palestinian-israelis-dismissed-but-key-to-peace

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine (& America ...etc...)]

Dear Sir,

I was delighted to read Mira Awad's enlightening and courageous column "Palestinian Israelis are often dismissed. Yet our voice is key to peace"... and it was wonderful to be able to hear her exquisite award winning voice singing Bahlawan.  It is indeed time to recognize  and appreciate "the acrobats"... and the many magnificently talented hard working people and good role models who practice and perfect peace as they make the most of their gifts and opportunities.

Shibley Telhami, a brilliant forward thinking scholar born into an Arab family in Israel (who currently teaches at the University of Maryland ) in a recent Washington Post column "How Israel’s Jewishness is overtaking its democracy"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/03/08/how-israels-jewishness-is-overtaking-its-democracy/?postshare=7211457441647491&tid=ss_tw
explains the importance of Arab-Jewish relations within Israel- and the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict.  He points out that the "loss of hope for a two-state solution, and the rise of social media that has displayed extremist attitudes that used to be limited to private space. In the era of Facebook and Twitter, Arab and Jewish citizens post attitudes that deeply offend the other: An Arab expresses joy at death of Israeli soldiers killed by Palestinians, while a Jew posts a sign reading “death to Arabs.” Hardly the stuff of co-existence. Leave it to opportunist politicians, extremists and incitement to do the rest."

Echo chamber thinking empowered by the internet and the entertainment driven nature of many news reports and forwards pushes many misguided people away from seeing the big picture, and away from understanding the importance of basics such true respect for universal human rights and Golden Rule thinking. 

Music might be, but ethics and the rule of fair and just laws are not based on popularity polls: Ethics (and fair and just laws ) are a consensus of what generations of humankind's best and brightest have concluded is most likely right and what is most likely wrong.  The test of time is the only way to know what works and what doesn't work.  We know from the Nazi Holocaust that discrimination and bigotry can quickly grow monstrously evil and cruel. 

We also know from Monty Python's Flying Circus that "No One Expects The Spanish Inquisition!" It is easy to look back at witch hunts and condemn the participants, but at the time things weren't quite so clear. 

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

A year after representing a united Israel at the Eurovision song contest with her Jewish partner, Palestinian singer and actress Mira Awad is still being asked to pick sidesMira Awad at her home in Tel Aviv. Photograph: GALI TIBBON

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/09/mira-awad-israel-palestinian-star

Mira Awad: Israel's Palestinian singing star caught between worlds

For a high-profile singer and actress with a three-album deal and a leading role in a forthcoming Israeli film, Mira Awad is unusually preoccupied with questions of identity.

Tonight she will receive a human rights award from the New Israel Fund at the Bloomsbury Ballroom in London, along with the Israeli-Jewish singing star, Noa. But not everybody will be celebrating back home.

As a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Awad is a member of a minority within the Jewish state that, while nominally equal, faces discrimination and challenges from both sides about loyalty and identity. The very reason for the award – her decision to represent Israel with Noa in the 2009 Eurovision Song contest – provoked a storm of controversy.

"Each side wants me to align myself with them," she says in her small Tel Aviv flat. "Israelis would like me to show alliance with the Israeli state, to prove my loyalty. On the other side, I have to prove my loyalty to the Palestinians who ask if I have forgotten my father was kicked out of his village in 1948.

"I'm tired of being cornered all the time, of having to explain myself. Most of the time I'm making both sides unhappy because I don't do what they want. But I don't live in a black-and-white world. This place is very complicated." ...READ MORE