Gaza

Unfortunately, I was never brought up, nor ever visited my home country, Palestine. However, living in a neighboring country in Jordan, I can’t help but feel guilty for living safely, while people from my own country are getting slaughtered for choosing and insisting on staying in their land, no matter how horrific the Israeli occupation gets.  

 All is aware of the Israelis’ striking at the Palestinians in Gaza. As of this writing, more than 300 ‘civilians’ died due to the Israeli Air Force attacks two days ago on the occupied Gaza Strip, not to mention the injured hundreds. Arabic Media doesn’t usually show a lot of the footage of the victims’ bodies, they don’t air it in respect for the victims’ families, but this time, Israel’s shameful crime just had to be shown to the world: men, women and children literally cut to pieces, making the duty of giving bodies back to families utterly painful.

 Now without needing to get into the historic ownership rights of either the Palestinians or the Israelis, and disregarding the organization and political parties acts of each, killing civilians is just never acceptable. And if it weren’t for the United States’ support, this probably might have not happened: the US gave Israel this year 186 millions gallons of aviation jet fuel, and $1.3 billion worth of TOW, hellfire and missiles. In short, Israel’s attacks could not have happened without the military support of the United States. 

 I will end this post short, but if you’re interested to learn at all about the whole Israeli- Gaza conflict, I recommend you to read Mona El-Farra’s blog: She is from Gaza and she writes very well describing what happened on Dec. 27^th, and how the siege of Gaza is really like.

http://fromgaza.blogspot.com/

Sharon and My Mother-in-Law

During the last few weeks, there was this huge buzz and advertising about a play that will be performed everyday for a week starting from the 13^th of November, today, at Al Balad(downtown) Theatre in Amman. A play called “Sharon and my Mother-in-Law” performed by Palestinian nationalist performers who immigrated to Lebanon with their family when they were little.  

 I just returned from the play. The play was a brilliant story about Suad, a 36 year old Palestinian female architecture professor at Birzeit University, it tells of her life in Ramallah. She grew up in Amman, Damadcus, Beirut and Cairo, before making the emotional journey back to Yafa, the land she only knew stories about told by her parents, but never actually got the chance to ever visit it because she didn’t have a ‘Jerusalem’ ID, even pets had to have IDs. She waited for years to get the ID promised by the israelis, but somehow they gave it easily to her dog and kept her waiting for much longer. Giving up, she decides to go to Yafa anyways, at the checkpoint in order to pass, she claims she’s the dog’s driver!! A dog with a ‘Jerusalem ID’, and that she wants to deliver it to a Jewish family. So they let her pass!

 That’s when the story begins; she’s stunned with happiness and is finally where she dreamt to be for years. The play shows a series of incidents and details of how their daily life is like under the occupation, not to mention the comedian hilaaarious mother-in-law who drove Suad crazy during the curfews. Bottom line, they played brilliant roles to emphasize that people who stayed in Palestine are there to stay, no matter how bad the occupation is, or the checkpoints, curfews, interrogators and collaborators, they would rather live in misery than let the Israelis succeed in driving them to leave the country and seek a better life..

 I was glad to see people from all over the world there to attend the play. People, and Im unfortunately one of them, do not quite understand the Palestinian cause and what’s really going on there, but a knowledgeable play like this, is a good story of the truth.

If you’re in Amman you have to go watch it. Its funny, creative, spoken in English and included many parts in funny interchangable accents, and the music and lyrics cannot be better. DVDs of the play will be out soon, or so Ive been told, but if you cannot watch it, you can read the hit book in which this play was based on. Same title, by Suad Amiry.

The day most of the world breathed a sigh of relief!

 

Since my 2^nd post is about politics that doesn’t mean by any means that you’ll be reading more politics in my blog. I only talk/write politics when major things happen that just blow my mind away. A defining moment in American history, the first black US president taking the White House, the very same house that aroused and did nothing to the misery black people went through for centuries. Seeing the old African American people’s faces wet with tears after the results were out just gave me an extremely strong chill I’ve never felt before, and im certain it’s not even slightly close to what it felt like for them. If im happy at all of the outcome, Im happy for those people 

The way I observed the whole election wasn’t from a political point of view, but from a business and human psychology perspective. The way Obama’s remarkable flawless campaign was run utilized the fundamental concept of business marketing and it aroused and captured the human emotions, the young crowd in particular. President Obama was very charismatic in his campaign; he made people like ‘him’. He didnt run as the Black Candidate, but as the Change Candidate, thus everyone joined as one and voted for him: Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, realizing that the Republicans were actually the party that divided them. Now will he help make change happen? Help make ‘peace’ like he promised? History taught me not to believe so, but somewhere deep inside, I believe the next 4 years might be as surprising as today was.

Below is a link of a beautiful post entitled “ Tears, joy and Barack Obamas’s Victory” written by Sherrilyn A. Ifill, describing what it felt for her when she heard about the election results.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/11/04/f-vp-ifill.html