Hot Winter

My friend Lucy, has been MIA for a while...last I heard she was back in Nablus. And then all of this:







Tell me this DOESN'T remind you of stormtroopers during WWII...I hope she's alright.

Kofi Annan - Final Speech as UN Secretary General

Today, Kofi Annan has made his final speech as UN secretary general, calling on the US not to lose sight of its core principles in its fight on terror.

"No nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over others," Mr Annan said, urging the US to respect human rights in its "war on terror". Click here to read more...

"Israel needs a wake up call": An interview with Ilan Pappe

When I ordered my copy of "ONE COUNTRY" Amazon suggested a second book to order at the same time and I did called,"The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by Ilan Pappe. The link below is to an interview with Ilan Pappe by a fellow blogger Christopher Brown. Please take a moment to read it as an addition to my post ONE COUNTRY.

"Israel needs a wake up call": An interview with Ilan Pappe

Life Flows On

I have a new friend, Dandoon, a Palestinian lady who actually lives here in Montreal. Visit her blog.

Her most recent post has inspired me to get back to the roots of this blog as the emotional clearing house of a Palestinian living in Montreal. Now, I'm not saying I will stop discussing and exploring the political side of why I am here in this beautiful city, just that I will try to focus again more on the emotional side of what it is to be a Palestinian...who is not allowed to return home to Palestine...for now...

Choose To Be FREE

(Photo by Gazagirl: A Palestinian boy rides his horse leisurely in front of an Israeli sniper tower located just across the Israeli border with Gaza.)


This is taken from another blog I frequent for spiritual inspiration:

"Choose to be Free"
by Velcrow Ripper

"Recently one of the comments on my blog stated - ‘one doesn’t choose to be free.’ Kind of like the idea that we are already enlightened, we just need to recognize that we are. Most certainly we are born free - then slowly, we begin to build our prisons, with more than a little help from society. We take a journey in life, away from the kingdom, out into the world, yet one day we can return to freedom.

Freedom, like love, is a choice. We choose to love - though sometimes it seems to just magically appear - falling in love - but we need to create the conditions. We need to open our hearts, our souls even, to the possibility.

Free will is a great gift. What a different game this life would be if humans were forced to be good, forced to do the right thing. How much more meaningful it is when we take the steps ourselves, when we choose liberation, when we choose to unpack all the filters and cultural limitations that stand in the way of us and freedom. I’m not talking about the kind of freedom George Bush is always going on about - his greatly touted freedom, for which he will lay waste to thousands of innocent humans - is by and large a chimera. Freedom does not mean the right to buy more stuff. Freedom does not mean another 100 channels of television.

Freedom means a heart, soul and mind that is liberated from illusion. Liberated from the controlling clutches of the ego. Liberated from the unconscious drives of hatred, agression, fear, desire, attachment, desperate grasping, that turns us into puppets on a string. The pupeteer is the ego. Cut the strings, and you will be free. Free from the constant looping refrains of the past, and free from the desperate striving for the future. Freedom is, in fact, surrender. Surrender, unconditionally, to what ‘is.’ A human being in a prison cell on death row has the ability to be free. It’s not conditional on circumstance. In fact, time and again I have seen incredible breakthroughs happen in the hearts of those who have every reason to contract into a tight ball of fear. For some, the opposite happens in the face of crisis - an opening magically occurs, and true freedom is experienced. Victor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote that everything can be taken away from us but one thing - the freedom to choose the way we respond to whatever comes our way. He was referring, in this case, to those remarkable survivors of Auschwitz who were somehow able to come through with their spirits intact,and even transformed. With these kind of remarkable examples, how can we, in our own lives, with our own smaller (though by no means unimportant problems), not choose to be free? And once we are free, once we are truly autonomous, we will very naturally be impelled to take action in this world to help others become free, in whatever way is our own true path. Choose to be free - the planet is depending on you."

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As Malcolm X said, "You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

Choose a FREE and re-United Palestine! A Palestine for ALL of it's people, whether they be Jew, Muslim or Christian.