A Letter From My Student to Obama

Dear Mr. President:

First of all, I congratulate you on the new position. I congratulate you for the actualization of the American dream, the dream of black people and the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. Sorry Mr. President I did not see the inauguration ceremony. In that moment I was busy watching the war on Gaza and numbering the victims of children, mothers, fathers…. while you were being inaugurated.

You are one of the dreamers. You are the one who achieved the long dream for the American black people who were suffering hundreds of years. Also Palestinians have a dream. I’m Palestinian I still have hope to get to my dream, to live in peace in an independent nation as you. But I wonder how to get that dream while you support Israel like who led America prior to you by everything. During the war on Gaza you said “Israel has the right to self-defense...” What is the right you are talking about? Is it the right to brutality or the right to killing children and steal lands in Gaza and the West Bank. And you want more peace, but what kind of peace? Is it like the peace that happened in Gaza before months ago (the war on Gaza)? I think we got too much peace in the last ware on Gaza. It is not enough or what? In the final peace process a lot of children in Gaza lost their families and homes. When somebody wants to take my home do you think I will give up simply? No I will fight back what about you Mr. President? What are you going to do Mr. President? You will fight back exactly like us, as we do in Palestine. The peace you are talking about is represented in arming Israel to overwhelm us by flashy peace bombs as happened in Gaza.

Anyway, let us go to the point that you really want peace and you are the president that we waited for. You want to visit Israel to discuss the situation for peace. But prior to you many American presidents came to make peace between both Palestine and Israel, but they failed. Are you going to do the same? I hope not, and not to disappointment me because you really want peace. If you really want peace withdraw American troops from Iraq, and Afghanistan. Get them back home. In Iraq leave the land to its people and stop supporting Israel against Palestinian afterward the killing will stop. Mr. President be the one who makes unforgettable differences and memorable changes to be remembered forever. Mr. President you can make changes in the region if you really want. Here I’m not asking you to bring troops to get back our stolen lands. I’m asking you to be clear, to stop Israel from stealing land and building new settlements, to put away all plans that were established by others, because these plans indeed won’t bring peace. But if you choice one of these plans like “Annapolis” or “The Road Map” we will see more peace bombs, another war, and more homeless children and families. Mr. President we are humans just like you. We have two legs, two hands, eyes. When you visit us you will see. The thing which I cannot understand is why you are supporting and arming Israel, not Palestinians or Palestine and for what? Can you tell me Mr. President? Is this because we don’t deserve life? However, Mr. President I know your previous president left you a hard mission and many things to repair them. I wish happiness and a good life for you during your presidency. Don’t forget we have a dream that I hope someday will come. I hope this day comes in your time and then peace and peace.


Salem Nazzal, Student
Palestine

Petra and Palestine

Went to Petra. So amazing. I am still reeling from the experience. Whenever I step out of occupied Palestine, I can’t help but weep for Palestine and the people who have suffered so greatly for so long. If only they could be given an honest chance at life, what could Palestine be?

Denying Life

For as long as I have been coming, which is over five years now, I have never met her husband. For as long as I have been coming, he has been trying to get back inside this country. Thousands in plane tickets and lawyer fees to try and try to get back to his family. I know Wafa and her kids very well—she’s family. After years of trying to get in, he finally succeeded. I couldn’t believe it. She had her husband again and the youngest got to meet his father. They finally had their dad in the flesh to be their dad again. Only two months of being a family. He died a few days ago of a heart attack. He was young, and everything seems wrong. Two months of a dad. Two months of a husband. Two months on his land. They were deprived of each other for years, and then when the occupation stopped saying no, fate stepped in.

Israeli Post Censored

Sometimes we imagine that a comparison between other historical experiences and the ones in Palestine are useful. And perhaps they can be. I'm thinking now of the occupation of Iraq and that of Palestine. But the big difference, as I see it, is that Iraq's occupation is primarily military. Here, the military is just one of so many mechanisms that serve to reproduce a complex and devastatingly violent occupation whose aim is not "reconstruction" or, even along more sinister lines, the control of oil. Here, the Israeli occupation is obsessed with making the Palestinian life absolutely un-liveable.

I just opened a package. I had mailed it to myself because I cannot carry even my own writings as they are politically "threatening"--talking about occupation and power structures in Historic Palestine. Hence, mailing them to myself. It took far longer than it should have, but I just opened the documents about ten minutes ago. What did I find? Every single hand written comment or correction my professor had made was whited out. The pages are full of white strips covering the ink. Why? I really really struggle to understand how we can live in a world where that question has no meaningful answer. And that is the case here in Palestine. Why? Who knows?! To let me know they read it? To annoy me? What? I mean, really, how threatening can some grad student paper be to a state that they should censor it? All I can think of is that it's a game to them. Some 18 year old in an office with a white out pen and piles of documents. What a waste of energy! And for what? To remind me that they're watching me. To remind me that my own thoughts only exist within the box they have created, the prison around Palestine. To remind me that occupation and ethnic cleansing here is of a special breed: force them out by making every aspect of life unbearable, even, or perhaps especially, education.

Wadi Joz

Yesterday I went to Bethlehem to visit a friend. I made a comment about the route I’d taken and she was shocked, “You cannot go on that road,” she chided, “it is illegal for Israelis and foreigners.” I understood immediately. The road I traveled is called Wadi Joz. It links Ramallah to the south—Bethlehem and then Hebron. Wadi Joz is a dangerous road because of its severe angle and sharp turns but to make it a proper death trap there are parts that are hardly wide enough for a single car. Imagine trucks and buses winding down the wadi (valley or gulley) at a snail’s pace and then imagine adding to this dangerously steep and winding road the problems that come with oncoming traffic on narrow roads. Needless to say, I was sick to my stomach with fear. Of course Israel doesn’t want Israelis and internationals on such a dangerous road! There is a clear spectrum of human value and my life is too precious to put in the danger that every Palestinian who travel north of Bethlehem must face.

Closing Our Eyes

Sometimes I look around and wonder, "How the hell are we living like this?" I'm writing at this moment because I feel so overwhelmed. With every ounce of effort, we try to maintain some semblance of normalcy in our lives...university and homework, grocery shopping, picking the kids up from school. But we are rats in a cage under a lethal experiment and there is really nothing normal about this and there never ever should be.

It can be easy in Ramallah to forget about the cage. Sometimes you don't feel the occupation because you don't see it. I had my students write on Silwan, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, where 88 houses in which 1,500 people live, are under demolition orders. Ramallah was supposed to participate with all of Palestine in a general strike. I asked the students to tell me why there was a strike and what they were doing. A few participated in demonstrations, but most blamed the weather and their sense of powerlessness for their choice to abstain. We have the luxury here to ignore, to choose not to participate, but most in Palestine do not have this luxury because guns, soldiers, tanks, and violence are daily realities.

Inspired?

I’m listening to music from the play Les Miserables, and with that soundtrack of oppression, injustice, and suffering in the background, I’m reading and grading students’ work. Three weeks ago I assigned my class an interview. They were to find someone who lived through the Nakba and converse with that person, paying particular attention to that survivor’s personal experience as an individual and part of a community, as well as think about the way the Nakba of 1948 is still present today.

These stories are heart-breaking. I gave the same assignment last semester and remember crying half way through, breaking down under the weight of so much grief and suffering. But more than the pain of the past is its presence in the present. 60 years on, nearly 61, and people are still waiting for justice. It is an active waiting in Palestine which asserts itself as resistance against historical wrong doings that have evolved into an intricate and violent occupation which seeps like rotten water into the crevices of daily life, infecting everything with disease. And to whom should the Palestinians look for justice? Hilary Clinton visited last week, presenting a harsh contrast between Obama’s foreign policy and his false message of change. Salam Fayyad (Palestinian Prime Minister) resigned on Saturday, reminding us that the Palestinian Authority is overgrown with deep-rooted corruption and failure. They have so little power under occupation, but what they do have is used to benefit the rich and the few. Israel becomes more conservative by the year, believing the occupation to be justified and the lone option for maintaining its so called security. So, where do we look for salvation in Palestine? Is it really a miracle that we need? In the 21st century, does it take a divine miracle to end state oppression and violent militarism?

I spend so much time working with my students to activate in them a political consciousness, and I realized last week that rather than inspiring them I am debilitating them. When I recognized their hopelessness, I tried to move them to hope but I found myself at a loss for words. I do believe. I do have hope. But I’m not sure how realistic it is. Certainly Obama will be the same coward we saw in Bush and Clinton and every other president before them back to Truman, kissing the ground Israel desecrates. The leadership here does not merit its title. The people suffer greatly. Malnutrition, thirst, poverty, and worst of all, hopelessness. So, what shall we believe? What shall we say? How can we change our reality?

Snow and Blood

I keep saying "I'm going to blog today" and not doing it, so finally I am forcing myself to take the time to write these thoughts. It snowed on Sunday morning. Thick and fluffy and white. It was so beautiful and for the hour that the it lasted, with its pure layer thinly covering everything, Palestine felt clean and pure. Then it melted, and became a sloshy, wetness and reality hit me: this is occupied Palestine no matter how magical the snow may feel--it does not clean away the filth and violence of occupation.

Last Friday in a village in the north, the Israeli soldiers came and occupied a house. It was an old house, dating to Roman times. They kicked the family out and occupied it. They said it was holy to the Jews, and they had a military order, which they had written, that was supposed to be evidence of a higher power's declaration that the imagined significance of this house is greater than the rights of the family who owned it. As it turns out, generations and generations ago, a Jewish woman married a man who lived in the house. He buried his wife in the garden, and to this Jewish woman, settlers will come and pay homage. She was not of any religious importance. Her value is located in her blood--Jews must reinvent their claim to the land and she will now be used, her body and her memory manipulated to serve a political purpose. Is nothing sacred here? Under occupation, the only question is how to "purify" the land.

Boycotting Israel

I am pleased to report the first US university to divest from Israel: http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1846.shtml I can only hope that this is a trend that offers an economic tool to pressure Israel into a more just situation than the current occupation and racism within its state offer.

I'm a vegetarian, and I love tofu. But the only tofu I can get in Palestine comes from East Jerusalem and is in a can, which is completely unappetizing to me. There are health food stores in West Jerusalem where I can find fresh tofu, but the problem is I boycott the Israeli economy in as much as is possible. Yesterday in Tel Aviv I was hanging out with an Israeli who lives in the city. He is vegan. And I told him how much I miss tofu, so he directed me to a store down the street where I can buy tofu. I told him I can't because I boycott Israeli products and stores. He reminded me of what I know all too well: it's impossible. Not simply because I was in Israel itself, but because there is a deeply entrenched occupation that controls the products on Palestinian shelves. In East Jerusalem--legally Palestine--one cannot find the most basic Palestinian products like water. In Ramallah I can but the majority of products are Israeli and those that aren't still have to go through Israel to get to us, which means ultimately that the Israeli economy benefits. Nonetheless I believe whole-heartedly that we who live in Palestine should do our best to support the Palestinian economy and not the Israeli one. It just doesn't make sense to fund the occupation. And while it is so challenging to boycott Israeli products here because they are sometimes the only option, outside of Palestine and Israel it is much much easier. I hope that people around the world join in the growing BDS movement and use their buying power to fight injustice and apartheid. Here's a list of companies who support Israel. I hope it helps you start daily demanding justice in this simple but vital way:

One Prisoner Back on the Streets

Last night a man of 27 was outside my house. He was surrounded with maybe fifty family and friends who were celebrating his return. They stood outside all talking with intense energy and enthusiasm, for this man of 27 was released from Israeli prison yesterday after 6 years there. He was apparently held for a conspiracy against a soldier. I don’t think the way forward in this situation is to blame others. That said, we exist within systems of power relations, and these systems often bind us to certain roles and possibilities. He may or may not have been responsible for planning or was part of the executing of a plan to kill an Israeli soldier. I don’t know, and I don’t care. The point is that there is a cycle of violence here, and not one that we can easily dismiss as intractable and incomprehensible. There is an explanation for conspiracies against soldiers or the state. There is a brutal military occupation of the Palestinian land and people that is enforced everyday by those two mechanisms. This man was bred to violence. Now that may seem a highly contestable claim, but he was in fact born into a violent existence, one created by occupation. The soldier is the symbol of Palestinian oppression and so it makes sense to hate that symbol and to want to destroy it. He may have participated in a conspiracy, and he is accountable for that violence, but that violence cannot be stopped with six years in prison, or even a hundred. It can only be stopped with the violence to which it responds also stops. Only then can 20 year old young men live their lives instead of being defined as symbols of violence.

I'm Back

I’m not sure where to start. I’m back in Palestine. The first change I noticed was when I entered Israel, all of the Israeli soldiers, staff, and passport control especially, were so friendly to me. A lot of friends have asked me how I thought Gaza would affect my ability to enter Israel and return to Palestine (for those who don’t know, the occupation of Palestine means that anyone coming to Palestine enters through Israel and their passport control before crossing into Palestine, which has no air, land or sea control). I answered frankly that I didn’t know. I didn’t have any idea if entering would be more difficult or what. My experience says Israel is giving itself a makeover, embodied in that line repeated to me a good six times as I went through security and passport control: “Welcome to Israel.” My analysis is that the image of Israel is so poor after their massacring the people of Gaza that this is one of Israel’s attempts at rectifying the damage. The problem is, the damage is not just one of image. The damage is someone’s home that they built after 20 years of saving their salaries. The schools destroyed. The mosques decimated. The brothers, the daughters, and grandmothers dead. The father who lost his legs and the mother who lost her skin. The child who lost her eyes. The burned school books and pictures. The clothes and food supplies. Life. The health, safety, education, and future of an entire people. Maybe more than those futures are their presents. No shelter, no food or water, no mother or brother now. All dead, destroyed, massacred. Wouldn’t it be incredible if fixing the damage was an honest endeavor, not about branding Israel differently but of rebuilding lives and changing a decades long policy of ethnic cleansing. That sounds so simple that it rings of absurdity. And yet, how is it that halting violent ethnic cleansing could possibly sound absurd?

The Privilege to be Blind

Talking to an Israeli friend this morning. He said somewhat casually, "Yea, I didn't even know there was a war. A friend asked what I thought about it, and I had to ask him, what war?"

I laughed in shock and said to him, "Isn't that incredible!"

He replied that it wasn't really because he doesn't pay any attention to the news.

So, I elaborated, "No, isn't it incredible that you are bombing the shit out of people less than an hour from your house, and you don't even know about it. You shouldn't have to turn on the news or look at the papers. You should know about it because at night you can see the light in the sky. Everyone is talking about it. Come on! Just think about it, you have the privilege to ignore the news, to ignore the violence. And what a privilege!"

He responded that most people have that privilege to which I retorted rather rudely, "Not the more than one million people in Gaza whose houses and schools and families you are bombing the shit out of!" And it's true, right? I mean, every life is sacred. But 10 dead, with only three civilians and four of the soldiers being killed by "friendly" fire, the loss--while tragic--is minimal compared to the more than 1,000 Gazans dead and 5,000 wounded. I guess my point is that at least my friend can ignore afford to ignore it.

Although he did mention that an emergency alarm was sounded in Jerusalem today. He said he was scared to death and didn't know where to hide. Turns out it was a mistake and went off accidently. The contrast is just absurd.

The Jewish State

If I called the US State Department to inquire about a work visa for a non US citizen whom I wish to employ and were asked if he was black, I would most certainly be shocked by the question and definitely challenge the racism so obvious in such a question. The race, religion, sexuality or gender of any individual who has the skills and experience to be employed are absolutely irrelevant, and moreover illegal to question.

But when an Israeli citizen recently called the Israeli Ministry of Interior to inquire about a work visa for me, he was given some information and then abruptly asked, “Is she Jewish?” My jaw dropped. This would surely be labeled racism were it asked here in the US, but in the Jewish state of Israel, it is practically natural that a Jew could be given a work visa without question yet a non Jew would experience a far more difficult process. How is it possible that now, in the 21st century, a state that privilege an entire race and religion over all others, including both the indigenous people and American citizens, whose money is the largest support Israel receives, is virtually accepted around the world? I think it’s been far long enough and we must stop and think about this exclusive state whose every structure is inherently racist.

As I sat in a Jerusalem bar last week, I struck up conversation with a French tourist. Much of his family had declared aliya (the law that allows any Jew in the world to gain citizenship almost immediately by declaring his “return” home) and lived in Israel. I asked if he planned to do the same. He said no, he was not really Jewish, at least, he clarified, in terms of religion. But he was racially Jewish. So, I asked what he thought of the Jewish State and he told me that it was necessary for Jews to have a safe place since they were unwelcomed throughout the world. Christians, he continued, could go anywhere, but not Jews. I challenged this claim and he responded that he had traveled extensively and never been threatened, and he was a Christian. I was confused. He said he was Jewish. A Christian Jew. But the question remained, how could he invok the Christian part of his identity and credit this with his safety? He said he was a white European and for this reason he was safe. But, I thought, most of the Jewish Israelis I saw were white Europeans, so which Jews were unsafe? Which Jews did Israel exist for? He was a bit confused by this point as well, but maintained that there was nothing racist about having a Jewish state. The US was a Christian state, he asserted. Okay, well, not really, but nonetheless, is Israel a religiously Jewish state or a racially Jewish state? A little of both, but here’s the crux, you don’t have to be a religious Jew to declare Aliya, you just have to prove to be racially Jewish. An Israeli citizen I know was asked if he is Israeli Israeli or Palestinian Israeli; apparently the former means pure Israeli, that is to say Jewish. Can you imagine if American American signified a “pure,” white American as opposed to a Black American? I can because it was not so long ago that “African” Americans were less than those imagined to be American Americans. We’ve come a long way in America, but not far enough. And since I can’t imagine the State Department questioning my race and using that to deny me a work visa, I don’t think we should so easily accept when any other state uses such categories to discriminate most and privilege some.

On Monday, the Israel Central Election Committee banned Arab political parties from running in the upcoming elections. Citizens of the state are no allowed to run for office because of their race. Imagine…but wait, in this country we can simply remember.

Educating in Palestine

Haven't written in a while. To start, I was kicked out of the country. Visa issues. I'd love to write about how a university teacher with a legitimate contract whose position is supported by powers that be in the institution can't get a visa to continue her job, but sadly we self-censor from fear of the future repercussions. It is pretty incredible to think about: I have a totally legitimate job and am having to teach by email and web conferencing because I am denied access to my students because they are occupied by a state who has every interest in denying education, health, food, water, etc. I try to be an observer, to tell what I see without personal analysis, but it's so hard. What kind of education can you hope for when getting textbooks, much less the money to buy them, is such a struggle. Or when your faculty members are systematically denied entry to the country where there jobs are? I'm not the first to experience this. Or when students can't access the university? Ideas can not be discussed under such circumstances nor infrastructure developed. It's just totally unrealistic for us to imagine fighting injustice when education is denied or impaired in the ways occupation impairs and denies it. A visiting scholar must pass herself off as a tourist to get a visa and only has a maximum of three months to do her work. Thank you occupation. At least the West Bank can get her for three months. Gaza is sealed, and they don't even have food there much less can they complain about education problems.

Visas

If you know anyone who tries to work or live in Palestine, you know that the most effective way for occupation to keep us out of Palestine and away from doing our work is to deny us visas. We try to come in on tourist visas, and we are forced to either leave and renew at borders, or to attempt a visa extension at the Israeli Ministry of Interior—a branch of the government that is infamous for is disorganization and refusals. I am, like most others, a victim of the visa. I was naïve enough to believe it would work itself out, but alas I have not only had my requested visa extension denied, but I was forced to buy a new plane ticket and sign a document swearing not to renew the visa. And so, I’m leaving. The crazy thing is, I had all my ducks in a row. I even had official government recommendations requesting my extension. And yet here I find myself refused. What can one do? It is nearly impossible to get a work visa for the occupied areas and that is where my life, work, and heart all reside. I know another guy, with no papers or plans, who went through the Ministry of Interior and found himself leaving with a six month extension. Why> Is there really any method to this madness? Maybe the point is to not create policies, to not have rules, to not have structure or organization. I don’t know. All I know is that it is utterly impossible to build infrastructure and institutions when we cannot keep employees here.

Strike

I remember a Palestinian friend one time saying that even were there no occupation, we would have a state that looked like every other Arab state—is that so much better. Sure it is, well, maybe not so much, but certainly better. As I sit here in a shared taxi waiting for the empty seats to fill up, even if only just one person would come so we can leave, I am thinking about that comment my friend make a year or more ago. We have had more strike days at this university than teaching days. And for what? Apparently the PA was given international aid for the express purpose of higher education. Something around 20 million dollars, not a penny of which any university in Palestine has seen yet. Hence the strike. A day here. A day there. But people are starting to get fed up, and now we are on two or three days a week of open strike. All universities in the West Bank are standing together to demand the PA share the wealth. Personally, I can understand the demand for higher pay. It’s basically peanuts and I don’t know how anyone can support a family on the income of a teacher here. Clearly we have been ineffective so far at holding the PA accountable. And I worry. I worry as I see the taxis lined up for another day without work. I worry as I see the empty cafeteria and dirty halls, workers home for another day without pay. How many thousands of people are being affected by this strike? How many millions by this occupation?

Things Get Worse

Everyone is saying it. Everyone is feeling occupation squeezing tighter and tighter. More land. More water. More roads. More houses. More everything taken by force so that Palestinians are a people without. The military rerouted the Wall in the village of Jayyous. They "gave back" some of the land they had stolen. The new route took my friend's land. The IDF just came one morning and started uprooting trees. One olive tree: gone. Two olive trees: gone. Three: gone. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Gone. Dead. Everything that lives, everything Palestinian, including the olive tree, is in danger of extinction. Life is not sacred in the holy land anymore.

Palestine Stinks

I remember noticing the stench last summer. But it was only in particular areas, mostly the villages that were so unlucky as to have an Israeli Jewish settlement hovering atop them on the mountain. The sewage from the settlement was and is always routed to the Palestinian villages below.

But this year it’s everywhere. Palestine reeks. Maybe it’s the shear number of settlements and that much of the West Bank suffers from their sewage, but I think the land is breaking under the burden of destruction. Olive trees are burned from the sewage that seeps into the soil and shrivel up. It burns to breath in some areas. In Tulkarem the Israeli factories release chemicals into the air that burn your throat and nose when you breathe. And the trash piles, these huge mountains of rubbish that the settlements deposit outside of Palestinian villages. They stink and they rot the earth below them. I just don’t understand. Even if the Israelis want all the land for themselves, how can that happen if they destroy the land. And I can tell you this: they are destroying the land with their waste and pollution. They are killing Palestine.

A Friend in Palestine

I have this friend here in Palestine. He's one of the most intelligent and capable people I have ever met in my life. He's an activist who organizes Palestinians and Internationals to work in solidarity against the occupation. Every time this friend travels around the West Bank, the shared taxi in which he rides is subject to being stopped at checkpoints, which are strategically located all over the West Bank. There are three main terminals--permanent structures that are located so that if closed, the West Bank is wholly divided into three areas with no access.

At checkpoints, this friend and the other Palestinians are told to take out their Hawiyya--the id card written in Hebrew and Arabic that states their personal information: full name, mother's name, religion, gender, place of birth and place of issue. It is held in a green plastic slip cover, which is, like the id, a requirement--for it means that he is a West Bank Palestinian. Such a distinction is necessary for the Israeli soldiers who control these checkpoints. The blue ids mean that the person is from Jerusalem, which is a special category similar to a resident alien. Blue id Palestinians live in illegally annexed Jerusalem and are denied Israeli citizenship. Thus, when we say 20% of Israel's population is Arab, these are the excluded ones because they have Jerusalem id rather than Israeli citizenship. In fact, 50% of the population is "Arab," but only 20% are "Arab Israeli" citizens.

That blue id allows a Palestinian access in Israel and Palestine; it is a coveted card. But my friend has a green id, which is really shit because he is limited as to where he can go. Even within the West Bank itself he does not have access everywhere--though he is Palestinian. Oh the intricacies of this occupation! Every time this friend travels around the West Bank, I hold my breath. Checkpoints are sites of harassment, humiliation, violence and arrests. And as a young Palestinian male, much less one who is politically active, his very life is in danger. I am waiting for his arrest to come. Why will he be arrested? He was born Palestinian. It's that simple.

Still Holding on to Hope

Some have noticed that I have not written for a while. I simply don't know what to say anymore. I don't know how Palestinians have survived this long. I don't know how people love, marry, bring new life into this world, celebrate, study, exist. I just don't know how they live in the face of daily violence and the constant attempts at destroying life here.

It is beyond my capacity for thinking to understand this occupation. It is intricate and it is brilliant. It is well funded and very well staffed. They erect walls and a Wall; they destroy houses and businesses; they "target" and assassinate, and not just those targeted; they watch with state of the art surveillance; they arrest and torture; they deny movement, education, and life; they erect checkpoints and decline permits to pass; they humiliate; they break spirits and bones. How do Palestinians exist after so many years of this? I swear I don't know the answer. I don't know how love can exist here. Even I can't keep my head up, and this is a new battle for me. I am fresh, strong and young. Yet I cannot endure against this omnipresent, omniscient and destructive force.

Today I saw a new comment on an old post. And it reminded me: I am not alone. They may have billions (US dollars) and an impossibly well trained, well armed military, but this is life we are talking about. And isn't the fight to exist stronger than that to destroy?

I hope so. I can only hope that this is true, and that we can hold on to what is humane here, that which this amazingly destructive project of Zionism attempts to decimate in Palestine.