“well, if i’m wrong,I hope God realizes that i tried extremely hard to make sense of it and failed, and forgive me for my limited capabilities because i genuinely cannot see much sense in many areas of faith.”

“Don’t ask me how I was so sure of this, or what this had to do with any other part of my ideology. As anyone who has ever had an ideology knows, you do not ask; you just look for confirmation for a set of beliefs. That’s what it means to have an ideology.”

“Rude, inconsiderate, full of shit people should go to hell! They are a disease we should combat.”

“My students will have no choice but to read the Sunday paper from this Sunday up until December. The sports section does not qualify as news worthy.”

I hate Raccoons! This brings back horrific memories!

The Tent of Nations project seeks to bring youth of various cultures together to build bridges of understanding, reconciliation, and peace. Tent of Nations invites youth from around the world, especially from areas of conflict, together for face-to-face interaction. It also offers programs and facilities for solidarity movements, churches, youth organizations, and tourist groups.

Open Spans of empty pieces of land in the Palestinian areas are standing there with no one to watch over them, on the edge of a serious threaten of confiscation, the only hope left for them is the people who will work and bring life to them and protect their endurance.

Tent of nations put an enormous effort to protect massive pieces of land by bringing young people from local areas together with international groups, in order to maintain projects and activities on real ground. These projects aim to prepare and pioneer the young people for a better future and teach them the true belonging for their country, It also seeks to build bridges of understanding, reconciliation, and peace on a broad-spectrum base.  On the long-term Tent of Nations desires to prepare young people for a positive contribution to their future and culture by bringing values of understanding and tolerance into their life experience, and to teach them the true belonging to their country. Tent of Nations is devoted to address cultural conflicts around the world, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by facilitating positive encounters between young people from different cultures.

The website is not fully functional, however it has enough background information on the goal and vision of this project. These are exactly the types of projects and centers we need more of in our Arab World.

 This summer, ten artists, teachers, and youth workers from Loughborough, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby will be travelling to Palestine to take part in running the first of an annual Children’s festival.

The UK volunteers will be joining forces with ‘Tent of Nations’, a Palestinian organisation, for the two-week festival for children from the Bethlehem area. The event will include Olympic games, World Cup football, a treasure hunt, a production of Romeo and Juliet, and various other art projects.

Paul Gent, an artist from Loughborough, said; “This will be a chance for children to experience camping for the first time and learn about their rural heritage in a peaceful location. The creative projects will be educational, promoting tolerance and peace and will challenge prejudice, but most importantly the festival will be a chance for the children to have a break from the harsh conditions under the Israeli occupation. For the volunteers, this will be a chance to personally discover what life is like under occupation, but also to enjoy Palestinian rural life amongst friends- it will be a rewarding experience all round”

Many of the children will be relieved from the suffocating life in the refugee camps where violence from the occupying soldiers is normal daily life. Tent of Nations hopes to be able to bring Israeli and Israeli settler children to the festivals in the future. Check out for more: www.linkpalestine.org

I hope to be there for next year’s festival!

Jordan has become the first Arab state to send a fully accredited ambassador to Iraq, a major display of political support for the U.S.-backed government in the face of past kidnapping-slayings of Muslim diplomats.

Ambassador Ahmed al-Lozi presented his credentials Thursday to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [source]

Perhaps not the right time for this ..but will there ever be a good time? Rebuilding Iraq should be taken seriously…this is a positive step!

This movie opens today … I cannot and will not watch it. One of my biggest fears is snakes. I hate them. I cannot look at them. My last encoutner with a snake was not long ago. As I was walking to my car, it jumped right in front of me … I jumped, screamed and literally had a very embarrassing accident at the sight of it!

Anyway, I don’t know what this movie is about. Is it really about snakes on a plane? how many? have the snakes taken over the plane entirely? horrific! Who would want to put themselves through 1 hour and 45 minutes of pure torture by watching this movie! I wonder if I should try?

The Hebrew caption on this poster reads, “Buy Hebrew Watermelons.” A seemingly innocuous fruit advertisement, the poster is evidence that even during the yishuv (Hebrew: community) period, approximately 1918 to 1948, friction was building in Palestine between the newly arrived Jewish immigrants and the indigenous Palestinians.
The caption for this poster currently at the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) reads as follows:

Farm products of the Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel were pitted in a stubborn struggle against fresh produce from local Arabs and neighboring countries.The very existence of the Jewish settlements’ agriculture and industry was at stake. Watermelons were one of the fruits that needed protection against foreign products.

Ironically, the word “foreign” is used to describe the produce of the indigenous Palestinian farmers. Indeed, for centuries prior to the arrival of Zionist halutzim (Hebrew: pioneers), Palestinians had been growing vegetables, fruit, grains, and legumes and all manner of crops in what is present-day Israel.

Source: “Images of A State in the Making,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website

Sometimes in the future, you may want to be a parent. You will convince yourself that (despite how good your parents have been and continue to be) you will be a better parent than your parents and their parents have been. But being a good parent is not generational, it is deeply personal, and it all comes down to this: If you can bring to your children the self that you truly are, as opposed to some amalgam of manners and mannerisms, expectations and fears that you have acquired as a carapace along the way, you will be able to teach them by example not to be terrorized by the narrow and parsimonious expectations of the world, a world that often likes to color within the lines when a spray of paint, a scribble of crayon, would be much more satisfying.

For the sake of those children, you must look backward instead of ahead, to remember yourself from your own childhood days, when you were younger and rougher and wilder, more scarwl than straight line. Remember all of yourself, the flaws as well as the many strengths.  ~Anna Quindlen

Technorati Profile

What? Ceasefire
When? After 34 days of fighting between israel and Hizballah ..
and of course now everyone and their mother has a view on the ceasefire, who came out the winner, who came out the loser, lessons to be learned, bla, bla, bla …and of course I too have an opinion of my own which I shared on some blogs, with friends, family, co-workers and even random people on the elevator …

Some Facts:
Lebanese deaths:
About 1,000 - mostly civilians
No precise data on Hezbollah dead
israeli deaths:
Soldiers: 114 (IDOF)
Civilians: 43 (IDOF)
Lebanese displaced:
700,000 - 900,000 (UNHCR; Lebanese govt)
israeli displaced:
500,000 (Human Rights Watch)
Lebanon damage:
$2.5bn (Lebanese govt)
israel damage:
$1.1bn (Israeli govt)

Some Opinions:
Haitham: Israel claimed that they are going to war to return their two prisoners of war; however, their aggression was way beyond what one could imagine. It had nothing to do with the PoW; it is a Terrorist State that can’t live but on blood of others. Unlike Olmert, Sayyed Nasrallah promised and fulfilled his promises; VICTORY!

Naseem: After such a long history of Israeli occupation and atrocities in Palestine the region’s people have been begging for a military victory and Hizballah has offered that. Images of bloody Israeli soldiers retreating coupled with images of Israel’s high ratio killing of women and children have served as an affirmation of some sense of justice and vengeance the likes of which have been absent for the longest time. Not to mention that most of the 150 Israelis killed were soldiers as opposed to the high number of Lebanese civilians killed. And we are talking about mostly unguided katyusha rockets in the face of tanks, jets, missiles and bombs. (Read on …)

The death toll in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli “Summer Rain” operation that followed the capture of the Israeli soldier Gil’ad Shalit is now 193 dead and 790 injuries. In a statement received by Ma’an, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the number of children under 18 killed in the operation so far is 58, and the number of women killed has reached 25. There have been 283 injured children and 89 injured women. [source]

National Unity? We need it.  ”Speculation centers on the likelihood that the current Hamas government will be replaced after the war in Gaza by a Hamas-Fateh unity cabinet, catalyzed by the Prisoners’ Document the two sides have reportedly agreed on. Depending on its composition and its guidelines, such a government might be better able to interact with the international community, receive aid and possibly even dialogue with Israel at the economic and political levels. Here, too, a lot depends on the way the war in Gaza ends and the possibility of new initiatives emanating from the international community.” [source]

The film “Dreams in a Grey Spot” has achieved the best seller at the Capalbio International Film Festival, which took place at the Italian city of Capalbio, near Rome, between 21st July and 15th August. Films from France, Italy, Germany, United States and Colombia competed in the festival. From Palestine, two other films were in contention: “Paradise Now” and “Godly Hand”.

The Italian newspaper Il Terno praised the film which the associations of the refugee camp of Deheisheh, in Bethlehem, helped to produce.

According to Muhammad Abdun-Nabi Al-Lahham, the manager of Hiwar Centre, the idea of the film is very simple: a young man who lives in a refugee camp talks about his dreams as a poet, a painter, an actor and writer. The film is special because it was developed and filmed by young people under the age of 20 and was never intended to be a technically superior film. The members of the Hiwar Center at Na’l Al-’Azza attended the screening and said, “The audience were surprised to know that the film cost just $60 to produce, as all the technical needs were borrowed for free, and the participants in the film were volunteers.” “Even the translation into Italian was done by a 10 year old boy from the refugee camp whose mother is Italian.” [source]

Livin’ a little…Ramallah’s men showing it off!
Palestinian bodybuilding enthusiasts Perform at the Sport line Body Building Championship in the West Bank city of Ramallah August 4, 2006 [source] …

So much talk about winners vs. losers in the israeli vs. Hizballah war. How do we really measure wins and losses in a war? israel has not achieved its goal of ’freeing the soldiers’ and disarming Hizballah…which means,despite Lebanon’s major economical loss, vast destruction of its infrastructure, more than one thousand lives and displacement of more than 900,000 Lebanese, israel has lost in the respect that it did not achieve its goal. 

an interesting read:   

TODAY, THE war entered its fifth week. Hard to believe: our mighty army has now been fighting for 29 days against a “gang” and “terrorist organization”, as the military commanders like to describe them, and the battle has still not been decided.

Yesterday, military sources in Israel announced that 400 of the 1200 Hizbullah “terrorists” have been killed. That’s to say, a mere 1200 fighters have been standing against the tens of thousands of our soldiers, who are equipped with the most advanced weapons on earth, and hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens are still under rocket fire while our soldiers continue to be killed.

WHO? ME? Now everybody already admits that something basic has gone wrong in this war. The proof: the War of the Generals, that previously started only after the conclusion of a war, has now become public while the war is still going on.

The Chief-of-Staff, Dan Halutz, has found the culprit: Udi Adam, the chief of the Northern Command. He has practically dismissed him in the middle of the battle. That is the old ploy of the thief shouting “Stop thief!” After all, it is obvious that the person mainly to blame for the failures of the war is Halutz himself, with his foolish belief that Hisbullah could be defeated by aerial bombardment alone. But it is not only at the top of the army that mutual accusations are flying around. The army command accuses the government, which is retaliating in kind.

On the eve of his downgrading, Udi Adam publicly accused the government of tying his hands. Meaning: the government is guilty. Ehud Olmert did not remain silent and declared that the army had not submitted any plans for widening the campaign. That’s to say: if you are incompetent, don’t blame me!

(Read on …)