Pledge allegiance to America- not Israel please.

https://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/bethlehem.html#postcard

  Dear America,

"US states invest $300m in Israeli bonds since start of Israel-Hamas war"  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/03/state-invest-money-israeli-bond-florida-texas-arizona

I had to read that in the UK's Guardian because America's mainstream media has so seriously failed to do its job as our Fourth Estate. 

State funds should stay here in our state, or at least in the USA- but right now, Pennsylvania's taxpayers are funding a very foreign, very far away government that stands in long term & blatant violation of international law, basic human rights and real democracy here and there: Israel is not a good investment in any way, shape, or form.

America's well being, security, and economic future are being sabotaged by America's lack of compassion for stateless men, woman and children who happen to hail from historic Palestine.

America's "Not In My Name" Jewish activists have courageously tried to convince any one who will listen that Israel's war on the native non-Jewish people of historic Palestine is wrong.  

America's Arab Christian and Muslim citizens, as well as secular humanists worldwide try to speak out too, but they are too often either ignored or demonized and accused of supporting terrorism because they dare speak out in support of ending Israel's racist reign of terror in the Middle East.  

Semitic languages include Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Semites are the people who speak these languages. BUT the word "Anti-Semitic" excludes Arab Christians, Muslims and Secularists, in much the same way that Jews-preferred Israel refuses to give Palestinians full and equal rights, respect or freedom in the land of their birth.

Investing in Israel is not for the public good- here or there.  Pledge allegiance to America- not Israel please.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

American Homemaker & Poet

 NOTES

Palestine Remembered: A picture from inside the house of Hajj Fawaz Hussein Theeb 

Palestinian women wearing their unique traditional dresses from different regions of Palestine... Cultural Heritage from the River to the Sea

Stop arming and exasperating religious extremism and armed rage in "The Holy Land" !!!

New Icon Appears on Israel's Apartheid Wall - Jerusalem, Palestine 2023

A Palestine Belle in a ball gown with flowers in her hair 

Criticism of Israeli State Policies Is NOT ANTISEMITISM 

We need to empower real democracy with full and equal rights and respect for ALL... here and there!

From the river to the sea I (من النهر الى البحر ١), oil on canvas, 2021 by Sliman Mansour of Palestine

Loving Watermelons for Palestine

Israel-Palestine war: A love letter to my Palestinian family around the world by Susan Muaddi Darraj

Dear Elected Leader- Please stop empowering Israeli racism and violence.

Human Rights are NON-NEGOTIABLE

‘I’m so full of grief’: thousands take to the streets in support of Gaza

"The Immigrant" a painting by Sliman Mansour of Palestine

Many Palestinian families still have the keys to the houses they left in 1948. 

Dear President Biden RE our militant "friend" Israel

Gaza must not become a graveyard for international law

 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations

The UDHR is a landmark document that sets out fundamental human rights to be universally protected and translated into over 500 languages. It was drafted by different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world and has inspired more than seventy human rights treaties.

 

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

[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]

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/10/26/why-muslims-should-love-secularism/

Hussein Ibish

By Hussein Ibish,

  Daily News Egypt  /   October 26, 2013
Now

Muslims should love secularism. But very few of them do, largely because they misunderstand what it stands for and would mean for them.

Secularism as an English term – in contrast to the French concept of laïcité – simply means the neutrality of the state on matters of faith. This bears almost no resemblance to the way in which most Arabs understand the term, whether translated as ‘almaniyya, ilmanniyya, or even dunyawiyya.

Secularism has become strongly associated in the Arab and broader Muslim worlds with atheism, iconoclasm, and anti-religious attitudes and policies. And in the process, one of the most important pillars of building tolerant, inclusive, and genuinely free Muslim-majority societies has been grotesquely misrepresented and stigmatised.

The first of these experiences was the overtly anti-religious attitude of the government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which was presented as “modernisation” and “secularism.”

The second is the objectionable and noxious French concept of laïcité, which also tends to be more anti-religious than neutral. This association has been particularly exacerbated by “secular” laïcité laws in France and elsewhere that oppressively prevent Muslim women from covering their hair in public spaces such as schools.

The third, and perhaps most damning of all, has been the misappropriation, abuse, and discrediting of “secularism” by regimes that placed Arab nationalism at the center of their authoritarian ideology. Socialist, communist, and fascist Arab regimes oppressed, abused, and waged wars against their own peoples and each other in the name of, among other things, “secularism.”

None of them were properly secular, of course, but they certainly were anti-Islamist. And that has set up the present-day dichotomy in contemporary Arab politics in which not only Islamists, but also many ordinary Muslims, instinctively mistrust secular politics.

The Syrian dictatorship is a perfect case in point. In the name of “secularism,” among other things, it is waging a brutal war of repression. But for various reasons, high among them Western and Arab government negligence, the opposition has become increasingly Islamist. The consequence has been increasing numbers of religious minorities, particularly Christians, reluctantly siding with the dictatorship, while growing numbers of Sunni Muslims are siding with various Islamist groups. Faux-secularism and Islamism mutually provoke and promote sectarianism.

What devout Muslims need to understand is that real secularism alone offers them something most of them seem to badly want: freedom. If there really is no compulsion in religion, only a secular society can provide that. Only in a secular system can Muslims be free to practice Islam exactly as they see fit. Any “Islamic” polity will of necessity be imposing a particular version or interpretation of Islam, which is an extremely heterodox set of traditions.

The claim that secularism is really just Christianity in disguise is manifestly false. The language is European, inherited from the Enlightenment. But both Western chauvinists and anti-Western demagogues badly misread the fact that although the specific language of modern human rights and freedoms is, for historical reasons, currently packaged in Western terms, this hardly means that they lack non-Western cognates, origins, or bases.

Since at least the 10th century, most Muslim societies have distinguished between political and religious authority, and it’s absurd to claim that religious freedom originates only or even mainly as a concept from the Protestant Reformation. There are deep roots in both traditional and modern interpretations of Islam that lend themselves to political secularism.

The Islamist project of trying to obliterate traditional heterogeneity within Islam and establish religiously-oriented states is misguided and totally inappropriate. In many Muslim-majority states, there remains a vast range of diversity of doctrine and practice that must be accommodated for even the Muslims to be free in religion. This is to say nothing of Christians, Jews, atheists, agnostics, and others who also have a right to freedom of both religion and conscience.

What would be the spiritual virtue of religious dogma that is imposed by the state? It would produce, at best, a false religiosity in many, practice without belief, and mere pretense. Religious leaders generally don’t care what people really believe (because they can never really know that) and instead concentrate on what people can and cannot do. But when such authority is asserted by the state, it demeans and abuses the very concept of faith by mandating the pretense of belief by force of law.

Secularism offers Muslims religious freedom, religious authenticity, and religious meaning. Imposing or privileging religion through state power invalidates all three. Muslims must recognise secularism as the only real path to religious freedom, rather than confusing it with an attack against religion.

Some Muslims can claim to have come by their suspicions about secularism honestly, through a series of unfortunate historical contingencies. But that doesn’t change the fact that, for all their fears, they should not only want, but in reality need, genuinely secular societies.

Hussein Ibish is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.

The American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) provides an independent voice for Palestinian-Americans and their supporters and advances human rights and peace.

  ATFP categorically and unequivocally condemns all violence against civilians, no matter the cause and who the victims or perpetrators may be.