My letter to the NYTimes RE Gaza Need Not Be a Sewer

In designating 2013 as the UN International Year of Water Cooperation, the UNGA United Nations General Assembly recognizes that cooperation is essential to strike a balance between the different needs and priorities and share this precious resource equitably, using water as an instrument of peace. Promoting water cooperation implies an interdisciplinary approach bringing in cultural, educational and scientific factors, as well as religious, ethical, social, political, legal, institutional and economic dimensions.

RE: Gaza Need Not Be a Sewer by ALON TAL and YOUSEF ABU-MAYLA (Alon Tal of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is a visiting professor at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. Yousef Abu-Mayla is a water expert at Al Azhar University in Gaza.) 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/opinion/gaza-need-not-be-a-sewer.html?ref=international


Dear Editor,

Gaza need not be a sewer... Gaza also should not be a prison camp for Palestinians forcibly displaced by Israel.

The water conflict is indeed "part of other, more intractable issues," and as such decoupling is at best only a temporary measure- one that is very vulnerable to Israel's tendency to collectively punish Palestinians who refuse to idolize and endorse Israel as "The Jewish State".

Admirable efforts to solve Gaza's water crisis are worth supporting, but moving forward should factor in the vital importance of ending the Israel-Palestine conflict with a just and lasting peace based on full respect for international law and universal basic human rights.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
AREA C: Israeli forces on Monday demolished four houses and eight agricultural structures in the southern Jordan Valley, leaving at least 50 Palestinians homeless

Hussein Ibish: Freedom and equality are at the core of the Palestinians’ struggle

Christmas message from Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun of Palestine..." Today, our little town has become even smaller due to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, but the message of Jesus Christ remains in our hearts, overcoming with hope the despair of decades of living under a foreign occupation and being deprived of our rights."

In protest of the Prawer-Begin Plan, which if implemented, will result in the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Bedouin in the Negev desert, Bedouin and other activists organized a ‘day of rage.’

Israel's plan to forcibly resettle Negev Bedouins prompts global protests

Our Compass: Nelson Mandela by Salam Fayyad of Palestine

UNRWA digitizes Palestinian refugee experience, documenting the mass displacement of Palestinians from 1948 to the present day.

New York Times: Photographs Tell a History of Palestinians Unmoored

THE ECONOMIST: "Nobody knows whether the gamble with Iran will pay off. But it is already clear that the risks are low, the prize is potentially vast—and the alternative is dire."

International Emmys Award for Best Documentary to "5 Broken Cameras" in which a Palestinian farmer examines upheaval in a West Bank village.

Arab Idol Assaf in appeal for UN Palestinian agency

A Palestinian human rights group urges tougher EU measures on Israeli settler violence

ATFP Hopes Iran Deal Will Enhance Middle East Stability and Security ATFP provides an independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters and advances human rights and peace. It categorically and unequivocally condemns all violence against civilians, no matter the cause and who the victims or perpetrators may be.

Voicing solidarity with Palestinian cause, UN officials stress importance of resumed peace talks

The Office of International Religious Freedom ( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/)   Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:

Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

Why Muslims should love secularism: Though secularism is widely misunderstood as anti-religious and iconoclastic, all it means is the neutrality of the state on religious affairs ...  "Muslims must recognize secularism as the only real path to religious freedom, rather than confusing it with an attack against religion." Hussein Ibish

Bible scholars: Zionists have 'weaponized' scripture: "One bad (theological) interpreter is worse than 100 terrorists..."

Israeli soldiers destroy 60 olive trees near Bethlehem... IT ADDS UP: Since 1967, 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been uprooted by Israelis in the occupied West Bank

NGO: Israel okays 829 new settler homes in West Bank

Destruction and Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage .... Palestine & UNESCO Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty : The first installment of a two-part policy brief from Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon: JFK left indelible imprint on me

Israelis and Palestinians must refrain from undermining renewed talks... Settlement plans threaten renewed hopes for Israeli-Palestinian peace, UN envoy warns

It is widely accepted that under international law, the Jewish settlements in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 are illegal. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons... "The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies." BBC News

Poll: Oslo brought 'political normalization' but no benefits "83.3 percent of the respondents believe that settlement construction increased “unprecedentedly” in the Palestinian territory as a result of the Oslo Accord."

Israel's policy of erasure : A path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires not simply dealing with settlements but with the whole complex of displacement, suffocation and erasure.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt

UNITED NATIONS 2013: The nations of the world call on Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, the 2004 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice concerning the apartheid wall and all UN resolutions.

2013: Palestine refugees’ properties and their revenues ...Recalling its resolutions 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 and 36/146 C of 16 December 1981 and all its subsequent resolutions on the question

"The direct threat to Israeli and Palestinian existence — and, in fact, to the existence of all peoples in the region — is the absence of peace in Palestine." Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh in The Jordan Times

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

Christians are being driven out of regions around the world where they are a minority

Palestinian villages subject to Israeli mock raids not told they are exercises: Israeli military rejects complaints by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din over 'training' arrests of Arabs and raids on homes

Washington Post 2013: Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

Israeli Settler Violence Map

'It is where religious freedom is most dishonored or repressed that the forces of violent religious extremism are likely to thrive.' Katrina Lantos Swett, vice chairwoman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom: JFK's call for religious freedom can transform...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1

• 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

Live by the Golden Rule

Dear President Obama... Let Freedom Ring

194

Globalizing Martin Luther King, Jr.


This Week in Palestine: In Palestine we have no physical control over our borders, and therefore have no say in how anyone could be treated at any given moment in time. But what we do have control of is the Palestine we write about, describe, and photograph in the folds of this issue’s pages.

At ATFP Gala, White House Reaffirms Commitment to Palestinian State, Opposition to Settlements and Settler Violence

"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." ATFP's Ziad Asali: To honor a tragic history, we must work for peace

Pomegranates in season along the path!

The Arab Peace Initiative

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.

Jordan's King Abdullah II explains that extremism has "grown fat" off of the longstanding conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Charter for Compassion is a call to restore the Golden Rule to the center of religious, moral and civic life. The path to a just economy and a peaceful world requires listening, understanding and treating all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

Freedom for Palestine - OneWorld

Ashrawi Calls on the EU to Investigate Sunday Times Report

Tuesday, 22 October 2013
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/national/5983-ashrawi-calls-on-the-eu-to-investigate-sunday-times-report

 [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]

PLO Executive Committee member, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, called on the European Union (EU) to investigate the misleading Sunday Times report on EU funding and the alleged Palestinian mismanagement of billions of Euros in European aid.

"Such a blatantly inaccurate report and subsequent commentaries constitute a targeted and flagrant attack on the Palestinian leadership and signify an attempt to slander the whole Palestinian political system. This serves an anti-Palestinian and an anti-peace agenda." Ashrawi continued, "It should be stressed that similar accusations have been made in the past and eventually turned out to be inaccurate."

She added, "Thus, we call on the European Union to investigate and debunk such claims of corruption that have nothing to do with corruption or combating it. It is evident that such reports are politically motivated and represent an attempt to put pressure on the EU to end its support for the Palestinian cause by maligning the Palestinian leadership."

Ashrawi's statements came during a meeting in Ramallah with Consul General of the Netherlands, Birgitta Tazelaar, Representative of Denmark to the State of Palestine, Anders Tang Friborg, and Swedish Consul for Political Affairs, Lena Skoglund.

Dr. Ashrawi also highlighted the importance of the EU guidelines banning dealings with Israeli settlements.

She said, "We believe that this is a positive contribution by the EU to inject legality and fairness in the pursuit of peace. It is our hope that the EU maintains this position despite Israeli and American efforts to circumvent the implementation of the guidelines."

The meeting also addressed the latest political developments in Palestine, the negotiations, Israeli measures and violations, regional developments, and future cooperation.

"And when we speak of our faith, it can’t be just about our personal relationship with God, it has to also be about our personal relationship one to the other, each to everybody else." John Kerry, Secretary of State, Remarks at the Ramadan Iftar Dinner 2013

State Department Hosts Annual Iftar Dinner with Sec. Kerry... ATFP's Dr. Asali is pictured sitting to the right of Kerry at the dinner table.

The State Department hosted a group of distinguished guests, including ATFP Pres. Dr. Ziad Asali, to commemorate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at their annual Iftar dinner on Wednesday, July 24, 2013.

During his address, Kerry discussed the importance of religious tolerance, freedom, and cooperation. Kerry cited the need to transcend religious differences and find common ground for the sake of peace, prosperity and a better global future.

Kerry also emphasized the pressing need to achieve a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine and said that the necessity for this has “never been greater than it is today.”

Remarks at the Ramadan Iftar Dinner

John Kerry
Secretary of State

Ben Franklin Room

Washington, DC

July 24, 2013

Thank you very much. Assalamu alaikum. It’s wonderful to be here with everybody. And Farah, thank you for an extraordinarily gracious introduction. And most importantly, thank you for an absolutely extraordinary job, I think you will all agree, as our Special Representative to the Muslim Community. We are really pleased with what you’re doing. Thank you.

 She said in her introduction that when I was a senator, she never dreamed that she could call me boss, but I want you to know, since I was an elected official, there were lots of things she could call me – (laughter) – and probably did. But I’m honored to, quote, “be her boss” today. I don’t think of myself that way. We’re a great team here at the State Department, an extraordinary group of people, all of whom – I see our Under Secretary Pat Kennedy here, and Under Secretary Wendy Sherman, and I haven’t looked around the whole room, but many other members of our team are here, and we all join together in welcoming you here to this break of the fast.

It is a privilege to do this. I know that Washington being sort of a little bit further north – try this in Boston or even further north, you wait till later. But I know the sun sets late, so we figured it would be a heck of a lot better to have an Iftar here at the State Department than to have a Suhoor. (Laughter.) And one thing I know as a former elected official, never keep people from their meal, and believe me, after a day of fasting, even more so. So eat. Everybody has to eat while I say a few words here if I can.

We are joined this evening by a really remarkable group of people. And I want to welcome my former colleagues from the United States Congress who are here, members of the Diplomatic Corps who are here, some of whom I saw just last night as we received many of them here. But I also especially want to recognize our Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, and Rashad Hussain, President Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. We’re delighted to have them here. (Applause.)

Most importantly – and I say this without any artifice – every single one of you were invited here because you are all doers. You are all active. You’re all engaged. You’re all involved in trying to make the world a better place, and you’re all involved in reaching out to other people and practicing, if not your faith, certainly practicing the best tenets of how human beings can live together.

And we are celebrating the holiest month of the Muslim calendar year, Ramadan. It is a time for peaceful reflection and for prayer. It is a time for acts of compassion and charity. So to all of you tonight, and to the millions of American Muslims across our land, and to the many more around the world, Ramadan Kareem.

I want to – (applause) – thank you. You can clap for Ramadan Kareem. (Applause.)

I want you to know that the tradition of sharing respect for this particularly holy month actually reaches back to the earliest days of our Republic. This is the Benjamin Franklin Room, and it’s a fitting venue for this occasion because Ben Franklin was really our first formal diplomat. And he was also among the earliest proponents of religious freedom in our country. He wrote in his autobiography, “Even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.”

To find a pulpit at one’s service, to profess one’s faith openly and freely, that is really a core American value. And I’m proud to say, as all of us are who are American here, that it is enshrined in our Constitution, and hard fought for. And it has been at the center of our story, our national story, since the 1600s, when a fellow by the name of John Winthrop, who happened to have been my great grandfather eight times removed, led a ship full of religious dissidents across the Atlantic to America in order to seek the freedom of worship.

Throughout its history, America didn’t always get it right. In my home state of Massachusetts, John Winthrop and Puritans overreached, and people ran away from Salem and from other places to found New Haven, Connecticut, and found Providence, Rhode Island, named Providence after wandering a year through the woods in the winter in order to escape from persecution. So we didn’t always get it right.

But throughout our history, we have struggled with the divisiveness of religious differences. I can proudly say today that no place has ever welcomed so many different communities, so many people, to worship so freely. The diversity and the patriotism of America’s religious communities today are sources of strength for all of us. And our freedom to worship is a powerful reminder of the traditions that we share. E pluribus unum: from many, one. And from many faiths, we do stand together in one shared country. Now ultimately, our sense of kinship is grounded in our shared sense of humanity, a moral truth that emerges based on the dignity of all human beings.

So tonight, I just pose a question to you: Can our great faith traditions – the Abrahamic faiths that Farah referred to – can they forge a common effort for human dignity? My faith and the faith that I have seen in the lives of so many Americans tells me that the answer to that is resoundingly yes. Our faiths and our fates – our fates are inextricably linked. It’s not enough just to talk about greater understanding. Our partnerships, the way we work every day in life, the way we reach out country to country, people to people, they have to foster a mutual respect and underscore the freedoms that we seek.

I think it’s safe to say – I hope it is safe to say that may there are four partnerships that will be critical if we’re going to live up to our obligations to one another: partnerships for peace, for prosperity, for our people, and for the future of our planet. Let me begin just quickly with the fourth.

For many of us, respect for God’s creation in almost every scripture really demands and translates into a duty to protect and sustain God’s first creation. Our response to climate change ought to be rooted in a fundamental sense of shared stewardship of the earth that emerges from that tradition. We must also obviously strive to forge a partnership for peace, and there is no religion, no philosophy of life – whether Hinduism, Confucianism, Native American tenets – nothing that doesn’t talk about peace and the responsibilities of each human being to another.

I’ve just returned, as many of you know, from the Middle East, and I can tell you the need for lasting peace and security between Israelis and Palestinians, between Sunni and Shia, between so many different minorities and so many different people has never been greater than it is today. Our partnership for peace obviously extends far and wide, from the Syrian people to people on every continent on this planet, all of whom seek to achieve the freedom and the dignity that they so richly deserve.

We also can find a common ground in the partnership for prosperity. Tahrir Square, a fruit vendor in Tunisia – these weren’t religiously motivated revolutions, not at all. They were demands for respect and opportunity by individual human beings frustrated by the inability of governments to address their needs. And when youth see no hope for escaping from poverty or improving their lives, then problems can become truly insurmountable.

And to meet the demands of these populations for dignity and for opportunity requires new and creative partnerships. We need to reach beyond governmental and beyond government itself in order to include business, civil society, and of course, people of all walks of life working together in order to invest in the future through collaborations like the Partnerships for a New Beginning.

This brings me to the fourth partnership quickly, and then I will close. That is the partnership between our peoples. Earlier this evening, I met very briefly in the Monroe Room there with a group of outstanding representatives of the State Department who are part of programs we sponsor working with Muslim communities around the world. I’m very proud of the work that they are doing, and as Secretary of State, I not only find it inspiring, I think it is something we need to export and grow. All of these initiatives, in the end, add up to the way you find a different way of doing things, a different way of bringing people together to work for these common goals.

I’m pleased to tell you tonight that we’re in the process of expanding our capacity to do just that here in the State Department. We’ve created the first faith-based office, which will reach out in a major way across continents and oceans in order to try to increase our engagement with faith communities, and you’ll be hearing a great deal more about this effort in the days ahead.

Before I close, let me share – just share a couple things with you. I was impressed when I first visited Saudi Arabia, and I met King Abdullah, and I listened to him talk about his sense of urgency about bringing faiths together and his own initiative to try to reach out across the divide and bring Muslim and all other religions together. That has grown. There are Jordanians – Prince Ghazi and others – who are working similarly in efforts to try to reach across the divide and prove that radical, political Islam does not represent the true heart and faith.

I’ll share a story with you. It’s a story of bringing people together and of what makes a difference. It involves a rabbi, a Greek Orthodox bishop, and an imam. Now I know that sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke – (laughter) – but I want to tell you right up front, it’s not, it’s a true story. And I think Congressman Keating from my home state is here, and you can ask him, because he lived this story as I did. It embodies the kind of partnership and the way in which all of us need to think and ways in which we can be inspired.

Back in the early 1990s in Massachusetts, the Muslim community in Quincy, Massachusetts, home, I might add, of former President John Adams and John Quincy Adams, this – the Muslim community was looking for more land on which they could build an Islamic center – not a mosque, an Islamic center. And they found a large parcel in a nearby town. But when the residents heard about the plans, not unlike what happened in New York and elsewhere, they tried to keep the mosque from being built.

Dr. Ashraf, the President of the Islamic Center of New England, was about to give up hope, literally about to quit. He called everybody and talked to people. Then, out of the blue, unsolicited, he received a phone call from a man in another town, who just said simply, “Dr. Ashraf, I heard you need some land on which you want to build a mosque and a school, a center. And we would love for you to come and build your center here. We welcome you.”

My friends, when they finally broke ground, there stood three men holding shovels, breaking ground together: a rabbi, a Greek Orthodox bishop, and the imam. Today, that center stands tall and proud, and tonight, Dr. Ashraf’s niece stands right here. This is Farah Pandith’s uncle. (Applause.)

This is what our shared humanity asks of us, even demands of us. And when we speak of our faith, it can’t be just about our personal relationship with God, it has to also be about our personal relationship one to the other, each to everybody else.

I think you will agree with me. I have never met a child in my life – two years old, two and a half years old, three years old – who hates anybody. They may hate their broccoli or something else they’re forced to eat, but they don’t hate other people or kids. They learn that. It is taught. It is passed down.

And what we need to do is care for our fellow men and women, whatever the differences. If we are doing God’s work, we can do that. So let us act in faith – act in faith – even as we preach it. Let us treat each other with respect. Let us lift up humanity and live our faiths fully and freely and draw inspiration from this day of fasting and every day of fasting in Ramadan. Ramadan Mubarak. Thank you.