Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

With the fourth of July being celebrated today, and following up on my previous blog "apaled", let's take a look at the Marquis de Lafayette and what he did for the United States of America in the Revolutionary War. Why would some one want to travel across the dangerous Atlantic just to fight in a war that didn't concern him?
His full name was Marie Joesph Paul Roche Gilbert Du Motier Marquis de Lafayette. He was born in 1757. His father died in battle before Lafayette was two. His mother died when he was twelve as did his grandfather. He was a very young wealthy orphan. He entered the military in 1771 at the age of 14. When he was 16 he married into an even wealthier family. His wife was related to the King.

On August 8, 1775 while attending a dinner, he learned of America's struggle for freedom. He and Baron Johan de Kalb decided to make their way to America to help in our fight for freedom. They each had a written agreement from Silas Deane that they would become commissioned as Major Generals. Lafayette convinced several other French officers to go with him. He arrived in Charleston, South Carolina on June 13, 1777.

Later that summer he went to Philadelphia to meet with Congress. He freely volunteered his services without pay. He was so patriotic in the American way that he was given a commission of Major General on July 31 that same year. He met George Washington and a lasting friendship was formed that would last until Washington's death. Lafayette wasn't even 20 when he first met Washington. He was very young but also very educated in military battle. During the battle of Brandywine, he was wounded. He quickly recovered and rejoined the American forces in the fall of 1777.

He joined Washington at Valley Forge. During that winter, members of Congress tried to get Lafayette to help them relieve Washington from his command. Lafayette remained loyal to Washington throughout. Later that winter General Gates wanted Lafayette to lead an expedition invasion into Canada. Supported by Washington, Lafayette went to check out the expedition before it started. He saw that it was lacking men money and supplies. He also discovered that Canada knew of the possible invasion. He told Washington that it would be a bad idea. He returned to Valley Forge in April of 1778. He fought in the battle of Barren Hill on May 20,1778.

As the British were leaving Philadelphia in June that same year, Lafayette wrote letters encouraging Washington to attack from the rear. Washington took this advice to heart. Later that same summer, Lafayette was asked to go to Boston to meet with Admiral Estaing, the leader of the French fleet. He encouraged Estaing to get his repairs made quickly and attack the British Fleet. He did this against his better judgment for love of America's effort for freedom. He was later commended by congress for these actions. He was also given permission by congress to return home to France.

After he arrived in France he was placed for a short period of time in exile. This was because he had went to America without the King's official aproval even though the King had financed his "mission". While he was home, he secured money and supplies to help America with its continuing battle for freedom. He returned to America with troops under himself and General Rochambeau to help America in it's continued fight. With the fall of the British on Oct19, 1781, Lafayette asked Washington to be relieved so that he could return home. He returned to America on several other occasions. and even assisted Thomas Jefferson on several matters.

In 1824 he was paid $200,000 for his past services as well as given land in Louisiana, which he never saw. In 1834 the great General died. He was considered a leader of freedom who devoted his life to the just cause of freedom. But more than that, the Frenchman was considered a friend of America, and since then our two country are bound by an undestructible friendship, so many time forgotten by some nowadays...

On America he once said, " Humanity has won it's battle. Liberty now has a country."

One might say that Lafayette was a romantic. But the bottom line is that he fought for the freedom of the United States of America and succeeded at it.

FINALLY !!!......

SHE IS GONE!... MAYBE NOT FOR LONG, MAYBE NOT VERY FAR, BUT FOR NOW SHE IS GOOOOOOOOOOONE !.......

This was certainly the best decision she ever made in her life (as long as she stays away, silent and unvisible forever....) and some already said it is one more of her "bizarre behaviours"... well, she is bizarre per definition, so there is nothing bizarre in her behaviour this time, it is a perfectly normal, common sensed (sp) and weighted decision...

What would be even more normal and less bizarre in her behaviour is if we would learn tomorow that the clown is moving to Russia to run against Dmitriy Anatolyevich MEDVEDEV in the next election and to re-instate Putin a First Vice President to make sure she will be seated in the Kremlin's Foreign Affairs departement....

Yeah... and when she will be sat on the porch of her datcha she will say... "I can see America from my house!..." LOL
Well good ridance!... Go Sarah Go!... Go and never come back!
Because we know one think, we know that...

GO SARAH GO!!! GO AND NEVER COME BACK......

Apaled...

Tonight I was apaled by a thread that I read on the "traveltalkonline" forum..... I do not post on this board since many month after strong disagreement of moderators policies and strong exchange of words with the owners of this site but I do read the forum, maybe by curiosity, maybe just to still be kept informed of what our visitors are thinking about the island.
The thread is a monument of ignorance and closed mindness to its best! I even couldn't imagine there were still, in 2009, this type of speech which promote hate based of faulty discriminatory's facts... and how low the level of historical knowledge could be!
The thread started as a short, contradictive and relatively negative "trip report". But one or two sentences caught my attention in the first place, and I thought on the begining it was kind of stupid , but never expected some of the comment posted afterward.
Here is the link to the thread :

http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=stmartin&Number=1021250&page=1&fpart=all

I couldn't beleive someone could be wacked enought to put in parrallele the new French nudity policies on Orient Bay and the aftermath of September 11th !!!!.... And neitherless an idiot nicknamed "coco" would overbid the statement by making his/her own claiming the French didn't supported the U.S.A. after 9/11 !!!! Oh boy ! Where those people get their facts??? Is it what they teach to their children?... and you wonder why people are so ignorant growing up, from one generation to the next.

Neitherless I would like to recall, as rightfully did one of my compatriote in his/her response, that France was the first country to react, gave strong support to the United States and propose aid in theimmediate aftermath of 9/11 and that the Frech President Jacques Chirac was the first European leader to go to New York after the terrorist attacks and he strongly supported military action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and was the first to invoke the NATO charter!

And some are convinced that the reason the Americans are angry with France is because we show no support, because of course it must be an explanation for the cause to effect. How sad that people could be so un-educated to the point....

We didn't supported the Iraq war because it wasn't related to the events of 9/11 and was strictly motivated by personal agenda and oil interest! Period... This decision wasn't based on our relationship with the Arabs, but on knowledge of un-manipulated inteligence! Our relationship with the Arabs weren't better than the Bush family very close relationship with the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia.. (Saudi Arabia from where were coming from 15 of the 19 September 11th hidjackers...)

We didn't "hate" the American for the Iraq war, we just felt sorry for them, for their choices and for their vote to elect a bloody idiot as President and a greedy manipulator as Vice President! We didn't hate the American, we just dislike their administration, the same way the American at one point in history dislike the French De Gaulle administration (neitherless to suspect that the anti-french feeling in some of the American people come from this period of history and were passed blindly from generation to the next without any consideration of change in the two nation relationship).

And the usual argument " if it wasn't for the U.S. your country would be called Germany"
Oh wow... then , if it wasn't for the French, the population of North America would be still singing "God save the Queen" .. This is bullshit! France and the French are more than gratefull regading the WWII liberation, and it is full part of our history and post war culture... How many of Americans and American children still know about le Marquis de Lafayette, how many of them comemorate his troups who died for one day the People of America could salute their own flag? This is systemantically forgotten by those who like to pour oil on the fire of the relation between France and United States.

Those two countries are friends, their bond is undestructible, for the simple reason that the young Nation of the USA was born out of that frienship...and that the old Nation of France survived thanks to this friendship! That's what friends do, they fight and defend eachother.. it is obvious, normal and understanding that they cannot agree on everything everytime and that sometime there could be some disagreement, but at the end we share the same values of Freedom and Democratie...

It is so sad that some people are still thinking this way, maybe because they are manipulated by ultra conservative ideology, but certainly because of their lack of education and knowledge in historical facts...

Thankfully, I know it is a minority of people thinking that way, you've got morons in every countries, we certainly have our share in France too, but I really never heard such strong anti Americanism feeling equivalent to the anti french feeling I just read and witness in 2003 in the street of NY... I know many many many Americans who like France, and I know many many many French who like America, and fortunatly those feeling are I want to beleive part of the majority.

Michelle O.

"Michelle, ma belle.

These are words that go together well,

My Michelle.

Michelle, ma belle.

Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble,

Très bien ensemble."

In "exclusivity", the cover of VOGUE for march 2009

Poor Palestine...

We cannot redo history but we must still return although a little bit, or at least I need to try to simplify it to the basic. Yet, what is the bloody fucking problem with this part of the world?

Religion? The rich, the poor? North, South? What...

This is the land. Only the land!

After that it degenerates into hatred and blood, but initially it is a history of land, "promised land" too, I think....

Thousand years before Christ, Palestine was the Jewish kingdom of King David. That's why at the end of the nineteenth century, Jews increasingly persecuted in Europe (the Russian pogroms in particular) have returned to or have the aspiration to return to their ancestral land. It is a question that comes back every time: why the Jews, when they felt the need to retreat into a space for them, why did they choose Palestine rather than Laos or Manitoba, or even Argentina how it was once suggested by the zionist congress?

Because in their mind Palestine is home now.

Except that it was home 2,000 years before. But it happens much in 2000 years in Palestine; It happened in particular that it had become the land of the Arabs.

After the war, the Nazi persecution having accelerated their movement, they were close to 700 000 Jews ready to go back on this "promise land." Promised by whom and to whom, 2,000 years later, it was not so clear. So before the dispute began with the Arabs, the UN has given half of Palestine to the Jews and half Arabs. That was in 1947.

If they have known what was reserved to them in the next half-century, Palestinians would have accepted the United Nations plan and we would have now, today, two states that hate each other, that's for sure, but one can dream, would be hate without waging war. Everyone at home shouting "nonsense" to the other over the top of the border.

But the Palestinians have rejected the UN plan and it was the war (1948). Palestinians are literally massacred. The Israelis use their victory to remake the partition of the territory: instead of 50% allocated by the United Nations, the Arabs now have less than 25% of the territory.

New war in 1967 (known as the Six Days), a new victory of the Israelis who decide that the territory of Israel is now ... all of Palestine. Period.

No more Palestinian state?

"Well.. lets wait! We'll see later. We'll see what we can give you when we have finished installing our colonies and settle our people on what was your land."

That's it. It's been 40 years that we (the international community) discuss the borders of an eventual Palestinian state. It decreased from 25% to 19% to 10% with the peace plan of Ariel Sharon in 2003. With the Sharon plan, the Palestinians would be confined to 10% of the territory they occupied before 1947.

Did the Israelis have not withdrawn from Gaza in 2005? Yes they did! And so what, here it is : this is the Palestinian state.

Look at a map. Gaza is nothing. A peanut. And the Israelis did not went far! Proof! In fact if Gaza is not occupied, it is still besieged, the entrances and exits of people and or property locked and controlled by the Israelis.

Should we also talk about the wall, which when completed, will gird what remains of Palestine for hundreds of miles - watchtowers every 200 meters? A wall that judges of the International Court declared "contrary to international law"? A wall of shame, the same type of wall who encircled the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto ( my other post here bellow describe what was Warsaw ghetto for the one who forgot or the one s who ignored...).

Seven hundred people dead on one side. Nine on the other side, including two killed accidentally by a "friendly fire"... Let me explain: The nine Israelis were killed by «terrorists» . That is the proof that Israel's security was threatened!... The 700 Palestinians, them, were killed by soldiers, nothing can be done about it, it is war.

I understand nothing? Maybe.

I'll tell you what I understand. I understand that Jews and Arabs argue for that land for so long that the former have often humiliated the latter, and that the latter are trapped in a deeply unquenchable hatred that can not be any outcome on the ground .

I understand that whenever some «moderate» , I think of all those Israelis who see themselves in the position of the newspaper Haaretz, for example, or in those, writers like Amos Oz and David Grossman, whenever moderates begin an attempt of compromise, every time an attack, a suicide bomber just torpedo their efforts. I can understand the response and the retaliation. I understand the spiral. I understand that the forces are so unequal that one week later, there are 700 dead on one side and 9 on the other. I understand that it’s only the lack of power which prevents Palestinians to massacre a few thousand Jews. I understand that we are facing a cancer.

What I do not understand at all on the other hand, what I never understood, that’s the Americans in there.

This is not true that there is no solution. There are some. Some which are known. Seen a hundred times. Two countries. Each one and everybody at home. The Israelis who renounce their colonies. Palestinians who renounce all these villages, cities, such as Haifa, which were Arabs at one time and that they had dreamed of seeing again Palestinians.

This solution, the Americans have the power to impose it.

For this, it would be necessary that the United States cease to be so scandalously always in the same camp. Protectors of Israel? Of course. But this crushing weight on the same side of the balance? This unconditional support systematically? This systematic vetoe of any resolution written to proted the right of palestinians?... This has to change! It doesn't serve the purpose of the United States anyway, specially its respect in the world, and it only fuel more hatred and anti-american feelings.

We saw how diligently Bush gave the green light to Israel‘s bombs, this time again. We have seen how Mr. Obama (who I admire beside that...) expressly also appointed Mrs. Hillary Clinton (who I admire also by the way) as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton, the great friend of Israel, who was also once upon the time a great friend of Mrs Arafat...

Poor Palestine.

What will be next... 3% of the land?... or less? or none?...

Do you detect some similarities?...

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettos located in the territory of General Government during the Second World War. The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940.

At this time, the population of the Ghetto was estimated to be 440,000 people, about 38% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 4.5% of the size of Warsaw. Nazis then closed the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16, 1940, building a wall with armed guards.

During the next year and a half, thousands of the Polish Jews as well as some Romani people from smaller cities and the countryside were brought into the Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhus) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 184 kcal, compared to 669 kcal for gentile Poles and 2,614 kcal for Germans.

Unemployment was a major problem in the ghetto. Illegal workshops were created to manufacture goods to be sold illegally on the outside and raw goods were smuggled in often by children. Hundreds of four to five year old Jewish children went across en masse to the "Aryan side", sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did. Smuggling was often the only source of subsistence for Ghetto inhabitants, who would otherwise have died of starvation. Despite the grave hardships, life in the Warsaw Ghetto was rich with educational and cultural activities, conducted by its underground organizations. Hospitals, public soup kitchens, orphanages, refugee centers and recreation facilities were formed, as well as a school system. Some schools were illegal and operated under the guise of a soup kitchen. There were secret libraries, classes for the children and even a symphony orchestra. The life in the ghetto was chronicled by the Oyneg Shabbos group.

Over 100,000 of the Ghetto's residents died due to rampant disease or starvation, as well as random killings, even before the Nazis began massive deportations of the inhabitants from the Ghetto's Umschlagplatz to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Gross-aktion Warschau, part of the countrywide Operation Reinhard. Between Tisha B'Av (July 23) and Yom Kippur (September 21) of 1942, about 254,000 Ghetto residents (or at least 300,000 by different accounts) were sent to Treblinka and murdered there. In 1942 Polish resistance officer Jan Karski reported to the Western governments on the situation in the Ghetto and on the extermination camps. By the end of 1942, it was clear that the deportations were to their deaths, and many of the remaining Jews decided to fight.

On January 18, 1943, the first instance of armed resistance occurred when the Germans started the final expulsion of the remaining Jews. The Jewish fighters had some success: the expulsion stopped after four days and the ŻOB and ŻZW resistance organizations took control of the Ghetto, building shelters and fighting posts and operating against Jewish collaborators. During the next three months, all inhabitants of the Ghetto prepared for what they realized would be a final struggle.

The final battle started on the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, when the large Nazi force entered the ghetto. After initial setbacks, the Germans under the field command of Jürgen Stroop systematically burned and blew up the ghetto buildings, block by block, rounding up or murdering anybody they could capture.

Significant resistance ended on April 23, 1943, and the Nazi operation officially ended in mid-May, symbolically culminated with the demolition of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw on May 16, 1943. According to the official report, at least 56,065 people were killed on the spot or deported to German Nazi concentration and death camps, most to Treblinka.

Gaza awaiting for a "Sabra and Shatila" status

A UNICEF statement on the crisis in Gaza was issued by Sigrid Kaag, regional director, Middle East and North Africa, on Monday warning that the Israeli invasion of Gaza was taking its toll on the children in the Strip, who are almost half the population. "The humanitarian crisis caused by the current violence in Gaza is hitting children and women the most. Children form over half of Gaza’s population of nearly 1.5 million and are bearing the brunt of the conflict. Being the most vulnerable part of the population, children are the first to be psychologically distressed, the most in need of medical support and the most exposed to injuries among civilians in times of conflict.
As of 3 January 2009, 70 Palestinian children were killed and at least 650 injured, out of a tally of 550 deaths and 2800 injuries, according to data provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Gaza has been facing an 18-month long blockade which has resulted in the destruction of livelihoods and a significant deterioration of infrastructure and basic services.
The number of children in Gaza affected by the loss of a parent, damage to their home, displacement, lack of needed medical equipment and treatment and the interruption of their education is yet to be fully measured. But it is significant.
The children in Gaza are currently deprived not only of the basic human rights any human being should enjoy but are also denied the fundamental rights specific to children, to which the signatories of the Convention of the Right of the Child are duty bound. These include the right of children to be protected from all forms of physical or mental violence and injury, and the right to education, development and access to healthcare services.
The intensity of the current violence renders impossible any action to relieve their plight.
UNICEF reiterates its call for an immediate end to the violence and to allow humanitarian aid and relief efforts to be fully deployed.
UNICEF urges all parties to the conflict to abide by International Humanitarian Law to ensure that children are protected and receive essential humanitarian supplies and support.
Children should never be the silent victims and unheard voices of a conflict. Their long suffering must end."

In the mean time the health care committees in Gaza reported that Israeli warplanes bombed on Tuesday their central headquarters which included a specialized medical center in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza city in addition to three mobile clinics and one ambulance.
In a press statement received by the PIC, the health committees added that the bombed mobile clinics were trucks equipped with medical equipment received few months ago from a Spanish humanitarian organization.
Dr. Nihad Al-Akhras, the head of the union of health care committees, said that the Israeli air raids on medical facilities in the Gaza Strip aim to destroy the infrastructure of the Palestinian people in Gaza and undermine their steadfastness.
Dr. Akhras appealed to the Red Cross and UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs to intervene to put an end to the killing of civilians and medical personnel in Gaza and to help the hospitals, medical centers and crew to fulfill their humanitarian duties.
Palestinian interior minister Sa'eed Siyam called on the Red Cross and the international human rights organizations to shoulder their responsibilities towards the protection of headquarters and crews of civil defense and medical care.
In a statement received by the PIC, Siyam said that Israel bombed most of the civil defense buildings and a number of fire trucks and ambulances.
In another statement received by the PIC, the Palestinian health ministry called on the Egyptian authorities to facilitate the entry of volunteer doctors to Gaza in addition to the humanitarian aid sent by Arab states.
In the same context, volunteer doctors and medical crews strongly criticized the Egyptian authorities for blocking their entry to Gaza over the past few days in order to provide Gaza people with medical care and assist in alleviating their tragedy.
Arab and Greek doctors stated that there are many workers in the medical field from Europe and around the world who expressed willingness to join the other volunteers as soon as the Egyptian authorities open the Rafah border crossing.
The Egyptian authorities have also refused to allow trucks carrying food and humanitarian aid into Gaza since the Israeli ground invasion started except for small quantities, which were handed manually through the main gate of the Rafah crossing.

The Shifa hospital in Gaza city, the biggest in the Gaza Strip, has appealed to the concerned international parties to supply the hospital with morgue fridge units after all its units were crammed with the growing number of bodies.
The hospital administration explained in a statement on Tuesday that the big number of martyrs whose relatives could not bury them due to the Israeli occupation forces' aggression and ensuing conditions.
Dr. Hussein Ashur, the director of the Shifa medical complex, said that there was no more space in those units and that the bodies were strewn on the floor in the rooms of those units.
He warned that the bodies might decompose if they continued in this state for longer periods outside the refrigerating units.
Dr. Ashur called on concerned international institutions to expedite supplying his hospital with those units before a "humanitarian disaster" occurs.
He noted that 40 martyrs were rushed to the hospital morgues in Monday only while 100 wounded mostly women and children were admitted into the hospital by noon.

Droit de reponse...

Obviously and as I expected my views and position regarding the Gaza/Israeli issue I exposed in my previous post are not really appreciated by some of my readers who aren't pleased about them, but it is understood that everybody is entittled to have an opinion and a belief. Interestling enought, though, the critics weren't posted here on my blog since the commentators respected the policy of this blog "like it or leave it", but directly through private message on a bulletin board I frequent or by email...

My views are clear... and whatever may think some of my readers am not misleaded nor misinformed. The matter of fact is that my opinions on the situation are not biased, but base on facts, study, and analysis, as well as testimonies... They are not based, as some of my readers opinions could be, on religious beleifs, birth or ethnic background, governement and media brain washing... I understand that, being Americans, they were mostly raised with the idea that the Arab world is dangerous (except when it is a matter of Saoudi money a/o oil...), that the muslims are "bad" and the jews are "good", and that everything has to be done to support, protect and safe Israel and the jewish population no matter what.

I am not a die hard supporter of the muslim religion nore the Arabic population overall and I am not an antisemit or anti- jewish either... I grew up in Africa, and I have pretty good knowledge of the muslim "culture", I saw misery and sufferance during a large part of my life and with my parents we tried to alleviete it from the people, I have had and still have many friends from islamic confession, and the large majority of my American Friends are jewish, as well are some of my French friends. My views and judgements are oriented by justice, injustices and peace aspirations...

Some people tend also to forget very easily that the State of Israel is a young recently "men made State", a colonialistic (colonizer) and an occupant (occupier) states, created by the international community to serve the purpose of the jewish people after the Hollocaust of the second world war, and that the Palestinian people are the first to suffer from this international community decision of creating a Jewish State on their land, victims of this colonisation and occupation, since their land, farms, houses were taken away, since they were chassed away and deported, became refugies parked in some small over crowded territories, trying to survive humiliation, siege and human abuses.

I wonder to know how the American people would react and "behave" if part of their land were taken away or occupied by... the Arabs?... would they just "bend over" and say "amen" (or in that matter "Inch Allah"...) or would they organise themselves in resistance and fighting groups trying to free their people and their land from the Arabic occupation?

So now, hopefully my critics managed to read up to here, and since at least three of them had the same approach that I "should walk in their (israeli) shoes" before judging or condemning, I would like to ask them to take one of the isrealie shoe out of their feet and to put one Palestinian shoe instead... and to read those testimonies of what is the daily life for palestinians in occupied territories, that I posted after "brief history" facts (kinda long list in fact...) explaining what and how here bellow:

So lets start refreshing the memory with this long list of events and escalations:

1904 the Fourth Zionist Congress decided to establish a national home for Jews in Argentina.

1906 the Zionist congress decided the Jewish homeland should be Palestine.

1914 With the outbreak of World War I, Britain promised the independence of Arab lands under Ottoman rule, including Palestine, in return for Arab support against Turkey which had entered the war on the side of Germany.

1916 Britain and France signed the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divided the Arab region into zones of influence. Lebanon and Syria were assigned to France, Jordan and Iraq to Britain and Palestine was to be internationalized.

1917 The British government issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, in the form of a letter to a British Zionist leader from the foreign secretary Arthur J. Balfour prmissing him the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

1917-1918 Aided by the Arabs, the British captured Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. The Arabs revolted against the Turks because the British had promised them, in correspondence with Shareef Husein ibn Ali of Mecca, the independence of their countries after the war. Britain, however, also made other, conflicting commitments in the secret Sykes-Picot agreement with France and Russia (1916), it promised to divide and rule the region with its allies. In a third agreement, the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain promised the Jews a Jewish "national home" in Palestine .

1918 After WW I ended, Jews began to migrate to Palestine, which was set a side as a British mandate with the approval of the League of Nations in 1922. Large-scale Jewish settlement and extensive Zionist agricultural and industrial enterprises in Palestine began during the British mandatory period, which lasted until 1948.

1919 The Palestinians convened their first National Conference and expressed their opposition to the Balfour Declaration.

1920 The San Remo Conference granted Britain a mandate over Palestine. and two years later Palestine was effectively under British administration. Sir Herbert Samuel, a declared Zionist, was sent as Britain's first High Commissioner to Palestine.

1922 The Council of the League of Nations issued a Mandate for Palestine.

1929 Large-scale attacks on Jews by Arabs rocked Jerusalem. Palestinians killed 133 Jews and suffered 116 deaths. Sparked by a dispute over use of the Western Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque ( this site is sacred to Muslims, but Jews claimed it is the remaining of jews temple all studies shows clearly that the wall is from the Islamic ages and it is part of al-Aqsa Mosque). But the roots of the conflict lay deeper in Arab fears of the Zionist movement which aimed to make at least part of British-administered Palestine a Jewish state.

1936 The Palestinians held a six-month General Strike to protest against the confiscation of land and Jewish immigration.

1937 Peel Commission, headed by Lord Robert Peel, issued a report. Basically, the commission concluded, the mandate in Palestine was unworkable There was no hope of any cooperative national entity there that included both Arabs and Jews. The commission went on to recommend the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral sacred-site state to be administered by Britain.

1939 The British government published a White Paper restricting Jewish immigration and offering independence for Palestine within ten years. This was rejected by the Zionists, who then organized terrorist groups and launched a bloody campaign against the British and the Palestinians.

1947 Great Britain decided to leave Palestine and called on the United Nations (UN) to make recommendations. In response, the UN convened its first special session and on November 29, 1947, it adopted a plan calling for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem as an international zone under UN jurisdiction.

1947 Arab protests against partition erupted in violence, with attacks on Jewish settlements in retalation to the attacks of Jews terrorist groups to Arab Towns and villages and massacres in hundred against unarmed Palestinian in there homes.

15 May 1948 British decided to leave on this day, leaders of the Yishuv decided (as they claim) to implement that part of the partition plan calling for establishment of a Jewish state. The same day, the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas in a full-scale war (first Arab-Israeli War). The Arabs failed to prevent establishment of a Jewish state, and the war ended with four UN-arranged armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The small Gaza Strip was left under Egyptian control, and the West Bank was controled by Jordan. Of the more than 800,000 Arabs who lived in Israeli-held territory before 1948, only about 170,000 remained. The rest became refugees in the surrounding Arab countries, ending the Arab majority in the Jewish state.

The rest is history, but here are "few" more related dates:

1965 The Palestine Liberation Organization was established

1967 Nasser's insistance in 1967 that the UNEF leave Egypt, led Israel to attack Egypt, Jordan, and Syria simultaneously on 5th of June.The war ended six days later with an Israeli victory. Israel occuiped Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula, Arab East Jerusalem, West Bank, Golan Heights.After 1967 war, several guerrilla organizations within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) carried out guerrillas attacks on Israeli miletary targets, with the stated objective of "redeeming Palestine."

1973 Egypt joined Syria in a war on Israel to regain the territories lost in 1967. The two Arab states struck unexpectedly on October 6. After crossing the suez channel the Arab forces gain a lot of advanced positions in Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights and manage to defeat the Israeli forces for more then three weeks. Israeli forces with a massive U.S. economic and military assistance managed to stop the arab forces after a three-week struggle. The Arab oil-producing states cut off petroleum exports to the United States and other Western nations in retaliation for their aid to Israel.

1974 The Arab Summit in Rabat recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people

1982 Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon aimed at wiping out the PLO presence there. By mid-August, after intensive fighting in and around Bayrut, the PLO agreed to withdraw its guerrillas from the city. Israeli troops remained in southern Lebanon.

1987 Relations between Israel and the Palestinians entered a new phase with the intifada, a series of uprisings in the occupied territories that included demonstrations, strikes, and rock-throwing attacks on Israeli soldiers.

1988 The PNC meeting in Algiers declared the State of Palestine as outlined in the UN Partition Plan 181.

1990 Yasser Arafat addressed the UN Security Council In Geneva demanding UN emergency force to provide international protection for the Palestinian people to safeguard their lives, properties and holy places.

Feb 1994 An American-born Jewish settler in Hebron, Baruch Goldstein, opened fire in al-Haran al-ebrahime crowded mosque, killing 29 Muslims and wounding 150 more.

Sept. 1995 Israeli and PLO officials meeting in Taba, Egypt, finalized agreement on the second stage of eventual Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands. Special arrangements were agreed upon for Hebron, where Israeli soldiers will remain to protect the 450 Jewish settlers living there.

Nov. 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated in Tel Aviv by a right-wing extremist.

June 1996 Right-wing Likud Party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu become the new Prime Minister of Israel.

June 1996 Arab summit discuss the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's peace plans.

Dec. 1996 Israeli authorities release plans to expand the Jewish settlements in Arab east Jerusalem, which causes outrage among Palestinians.

Oct. 1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat signed at peace-for-land agreement at the conclusion of negotiations in the U.S. the agreement calls for Israel to relinquish control of portions of the West Bank in return for active measures to be taken by Palestinians against terrorism.

Nov.1998 Palestinian President Yasser Arafat inaugurated Gaza International Airport.

Dec. 1998 President Clinton stood witness as hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel. Clinton urged "legitimate rights for Palestinians, real security for Israel."

May 1999 Winning a crushing victory over hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak promised to forge a secure peace with the Palestinians, pull troops out of Lebanon in a year and heal the deep divisions among Israelis.

Oct.1999 Israel and the Palestinians agreed to establish the first open land link between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so-called "safe passage".

Mar.2000 Kissing Palestinian earth and warmly welcomed byYasser Arafat, Pope John Paul II made a prayerful pilgrimage to the town of Jesus' birth.

28.09.2000 - Al-Aqsa Intifada
On September 28, 2000 the Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, with a Likud party delegation, and surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, visited the mosque compound of the Al-Haram Al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in the Old City of Jerusalem. The mosque compound is the first Qibla of Muslims and the third holiest site in Islam. It also contains the area for the most holy site in Judaism. The pretext for Sharon's visit of the mosque compound was to check complaints by Israeli archeologists that Muslim religious authorities had vandalized archeological remains beneath the surface of the mount during the conversion of the presumed Solomon's Stables area into a mosque.

On February 6, 2001, Ariel Sharon was elected as the new prime minister of Israel, and he refused to meet in person with the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

27.08.2001 - Abu Ali Mustafa, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is assassinated by an Israeli missile shot by an Apache helicopter through his office window in Ramallah. Abu Ali Mustafa was born in 1938, in the northern West Bank town of Arraba, the son of a farmer. In September 1999 he returned to the West Bank under a deal struck between Yasser Arafat and Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. In July 2000 he was elected as the new general secretary of the PFLP after Habash retired. He was killed in a targeted assassination by two rockets fired from an Israeli helicopter as he sat at his desk in Ramallah. At the time, he was the most senior Palestinian political leader to have been killed by Israel. The PFLP subsequently renamed their armed wing in the Occupied Palestinian Territories the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. They turned into resistance called "terrorism".

March 2002 - Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed a Saudi peace initiative in March 2002 that formally changed the Arab world’s position on Israel. The proposal, endorsed by the Arab League, asked Israel to withdraw to the 1949 borders and establish an independent and sovereign state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. It stipulated that displaced refugees should either be allowed to return to their homes or be compensated for their loss of property. In return, the Arab states would consider the Arab-Israeli conflict over, sign comprehensive peace treaties with Israel, and normalize relations. The proposal was received with skepticism by Israel and had little practical effect.

13.03.2002 - U.N. Resolution 1397
The U.S. pushes through the passage of U.N. Resolution 1397 by the Security Council, demanding an "immediate cessation of all acts of violence" and "affirming a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders". Fully ignored by Israel with the US support.

14.03.2002 - Ramallah under attack
Israeli forces continue the raid on Ramallah and other West Bank towns. A helicopter attack near Tulkarm kills Mutasen Hammad and two bystanders. A bomb in Gaza City destroys an Israeli tank which was escorting settlers, killing 3 soldiers and wounding 2. A taxi in Tulkarm explodes, killing 4 Palestinians. Palestinians execute two accused collaborators in Bethlehem, planning to hang one of the corpses near the Church of the Nativity until Palestinian police stop them.

29.03.2002 - Palestinian cities under attack (Deja vu, and of today's actuality...)
Israeli forces begin Operation Defensive Shield, Israel's largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War. Within twenty-four hours, the Israel Defense Forces had issued emergency call-up notices for 30,000 reserve soldiers, the largest such call-up since the 1982 Lebanon War. The stated goals of the operation as claimed by Israel government (as conveyed to the Israeli Knesset by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 8, 2002) were to "enter cities and villages which have become havens for "terrorists"; to catch and arrest "terrorists" and, primarily, their dispatchers and those who finance and support them; to confiscate weapons intended to be used against Israeli citizens; to expose and destroy "terrorist" facilities and explosives, laboratories, weapons production factories and secret installations. The orders are clear: target and paralyze anyone who takes up weapons and tries to oppose our troops, resists them or endanger them - and to avoid harming the civilian population." By April 3, the IDF was conducting major military operations in all Palestinian cities with the exception of Hebron and Jericho. The major points of conflict were, Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah. During the operation, strict curfews were placed on at least six major Palestinian cities, resulting in complaints by human rights groups that essential medical attention was being denied to sick and elderly Palestinians, as well as complaints that Israel was practicing collective punishment, which is prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In some cities, there were scheduled breaks in the curfews. In others, curfews continued uninterrupted for a week or more. Throughout the two weeks of fighting in Jenin and for a few days afterward, the city and its refugee camp were under curfew. The city of Bethlehem and its environs remained under curfew for five weeks, though there were periodic breaks, until an impasse involving Palestinian gunmen who had held hostage the clergy in the Church of the Nativity was resolved. Most of the armed Palestinians in the Church of the Nativity agreed to go to the Gaza Strip. The rest were exiled to Cyprus. Notable events were the battle of Jenin and the siege of Yasser Arafat's compound.

June 2002 - Israeli apartheid separation wall
Israel begins construction of the West Bank Wall. The Israeli West Bank barrier is a physical barrier being constructed by Israel consisting of a network of fences with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average 60 meters wide exclusion area (90%) and up to 8 meters high concrete walls (10%). It is located within the West Bank. The barrier is a very controversial project. Opponents claim the barrier (i) is an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security (ii) violates international law (iii) has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations and (iv) severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel, thereby undermining their economy.

21 August 2003 - The assassination of Ismail Abu Shanab
Five Israeli missiles incinerated Ismail Abu Shanab in Gaza City on 21 August 2003, killing one of the most powerful voices for peace in Hamas and destroying the ceasefire. Israeli helicopters struck the car carrying the third most senior Hamas leader. The missiles also buried a seven-week ceasefire already strained by Israeli killings of Islamic militants and retaliatory bombings, and threw the US-led road map to peace deeper into crisis. Hamas declared an immediate end to the truce and vowed a bloody revenge for the death of Abu Shanab, who was married with 11 children.

21.03.2004 - The assassination of Shaik Ahmed Yassin
Ahmad Yassin was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter missile strike on 21 March 2004. Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles at Hamas' spiritual leader, Shaikh Ahmed Yassin, as he left a mosque after performing the Monday dawn prayers, killing the Hamas leader and six other worshippers. A reporter who rushed to the scene after hearing three loud explosions found the blown-up remains of Yassin's blood-soaked wheel-chair. Witnesses at the mosque said Yassin's body had been evacuated to Al-Shifa Hospital.

17.04.2004 - The assassination of Abdul Azziz al-Rantisi
Rantisi was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter missile strike, as he returned from a visit to his family on 17 April 2004. Hundreds of thousands of citizens, including prominent political figures, participated in the funeral procession of Hamas leader, Dr. Abdel Aziz Al Rantisi, and two of his bodyguards.

06.06.2004 - Marwan Al-Barghouthi jailed for life
On 06 Jun 2004, An Israeli court Sunday jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Al-Barghouthi for life for resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine but he said his people's statehood quest would not be broken.

16.10.2004 - North Gaza Strip under attack
Israel officially ended a 17-day military operation, named Operation Days of Penitence, in the northern Gaza Strip. Operation Days of Penitence conducted between September 30, 2004 and October 15, 2004. The operation, focused on the town of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia and Jabalia refugee camp, which were used as launching sites of Qassam rockets on the Israeli town of Sderot and Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. This israeli operation resulted in the deaths of between 104 and 133 Palestinians, and 5 people on the Israeli side, demolished 77 houses and damaged hundreds more; damaged public facilities, including schools, kindergartens and mosques, and destroyed farmland.

The attack resulted in a proposed resolution of the U.N. Security Council condemning the Israeli action, calling for Israeli withdrawal and respect for human rights of Palestinians. The resolution was vetoed by the United States on October 5 who criticized it from ignoring terrorism against Israelis

RESULTS :

25.01.2006 - Hamas won the Legislative election
Hamas wins by landslide the majority of seats after the Palestinian legislative election, 2006. Israel, the United States, European Union, and several European and Western countries cut off their aid to the Palestinians; as they view the Islamist political party who rejects Israel's right to exist as a terrorist organization.

09.06.2006 - The killing of 7 family members on Gaza beach
Following the Gaza beach blast, in which seven members of one family and one other Palestinian were killed on a Gaza beach, the armed wing of Hamas calls off its 16-month-old truce. Israel claims it was shelling 250m away from the family's location; Palestinians claimed that the explosion was Israeli responsibility.

01.11.2006 The town of Beit Hanoun has been under the very tight control of a large force of tanks and troops who have ordered the tens of thousands of local people to stay off the streets for all but very brief periods. The Israelis destroyed Beit Hanoun, they destroyed the infrastructure, cut the water pipes and the telephone lines. Hundreds of men have been rounded up and questioned, and some have been taken away to Israel. The entire town of Beit Hanoun remains under Israeli control and troops have ordered residents to stay indoors.

07.11.2006 Israel's army says it has pulled out of the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, after a six-day operation targeting rocket-firing militants. Witnesses confirmed Israeli troops had left. The army says it has taken up positions in surrounding areas. Some 60 Palestinians, majority of civilians, were killed.

08.11.2006 At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 40 wounded by Israeli tank fire in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinian officials said a barrage of tank shells hit civilian homes, and women and children were among the dead. Palestinian hospital officials said 13 of the dead belonged to the same family, and two of them were women and six were children. TV footage from Beit Hanoun showed the victims being taken to hospital in their sleeping clothes, some with terrible injuries. Sources counted about eight impacts. They confirmed that the shells appear to have landed roughly in a straight line, starting in the fields at the end of the street and hitting houses on either side of it.

11.11.2006 The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli attack in Gaza that killed 18 Palestinian civilians and urging a quick withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area.

Overall to resume... here bellow, what it was supposed to be:

and here bellow, what it is:

and it goes on and on....

So now the testimonies I would like my critics to read, so they could wear at least one Palestinian shoe on their feet:

The first article was written yesterday by a reporter of the British news paper "The Independant". It's a very personal testimony but it deserve to be known, here is the link bellow:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-the-death-and-life-of-my-father-1225793.html

For the next testimony, no link, just copy and paste, it is written by a social and health worker in Gaza, which happened to be also a mother:

"This time I’m writing my own very personal story. But it is also the story of 1.6 million Palestinians in Gaza who are living under the siege and the hurtful cruel occupation and collective punishment.

Last June, I decided to send my 16-year-old daughter for a vacation in the UK. We had to go through a very complicated procedure for her to leave Gaza. The borders opened twice but she, like many students and patients, was not able to leave. My daughter holds a British passport so the British Consulate put a lot of efforts towards getting a permit from Israel for my daughter to leave Gaza with some other British citizens via the Jordan River.

Six weeks after the start of the summer holidays, my daughter was issued the permit to leave Gaza. She traveled north through the Erez crossing then to the West Bank and over the bridge to Jordan. From there she flew from Amman to Manchester.

After a short visit she flew back to Amman. She was on her way back to the Jordan River crossing when we were informed that there are new regulations and we would need a new permit for my daughter to enter Gaza again!!!!!!!!!!!!!I applied for this permit from the Israeli army via the Palestinian coordination office in Gaza several times but received no reply.

For six long weeks my child stayed in Amman with relatives, unsure what will happen next. We waited and waited but meanwhile her school in Gaza opened and she was very much concerned, as were we all, about her education.I tried contacting human rights organizations in Israel to ask for assistance but everybody said it might take months to get her a permit to return home!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just one small piece of paper was preventing my child from coming home!!!!!!!!!!!!! Though she is privileged to hold a British passport this still did not secure her return home. In the eyes of the Israeli occupation she is treated as any Palestinian, because she holds a Palestinian ID card as well.

Our family decided that Sondos should return to the UK and enroll in one of the colleges there. But it was not easy for a 16-year-old girl to adapt to different educational and social systems, new surroundings, and late school entry. All these pressures besides being 16!!!!!!Back in Gaza I decided to travel to the UK to help my daughter settle in to her new environment.

For three continuous months I tried to find a way out of Gaza. The Rafah border was only opened once for 3 days in all that time.

I waited among a throng of people at the border but I, like so many others, was turned back when they closed the border again on the third day. After this experience I took a decision to leave Gaza on one of the Free Gaza Movement boats to Larnaka.

From there I flew to UK where I am now staying with my daughter. She still finds it very difficult to cope with the educational system, but it is even more difficult for her to adjust to the new social framework or structure.

As for me, I was invited by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Liverpool Friends of Palestine, and others to give talks about my life in Gaza. So I tell audiences about the Gazans who died because they weren’t allowed to travel abroad for treatment and we didn’t have the necessary medicines or equipment to treat them in Gaza.

I explain what it’s like to live in the dark because the power supply is cut off most of the days and nights. I give voice to the hundreds of newborn andpremature babies in our hospitals who are dying slowly , because we cannot accurately measure the gas system in their tiny bodies due to the interrupted power supply.The numbers are staggering. Eighteen percent of children under the age of 15 in Gaza have stunted growth and forty-five percent have iron deficiency anemia due to lack of proper nutrition. Eighty percent of the population is now living in poverty and two thirds are refugees that were ethnically cleansed from their villages 60 years ago. More than 650,000 children under the age of 16 suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.But the stories are worse. I explain what it PTSD means for these children, how they suffer from all sorts of nightmares, anxiety, and inability to focus at school, phobias, bedwetting, stress, and depression.But the worst feeling of all is our feeling of abandonment. Enduring the hardships of daily life in Gaza under the siege and occupation is less harmful than having to live day after day without hope. We are losing of faith in the outside world for not taking serious actions against Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza.

I'm determined to go back to Gaza, to continue my responsibilities, in the Red Crescent Society ,as well as my responsibilities as MECA Projects director, where I coordinate cultural and health projects , for children community centers and the relief work I coordinate for hundreds of families , .

My life will be torn between the two things I love most: my children and my work for my people in Gaza."

Two days ago she wrote:

"It is extremely difficult for me to be here in the UK watching events unfold on the ground in Gaza from this very far distance. With a broken heart I watch the news from this unprecedented and savage Israeli attack on my friends, family, and colleagues in Gaza. In the last two days around 300 Israeli air strikes have hit dozens of locations in the overcrowded Gaza Strip. Their “military targets” are mixed in with homes, schools, hospitals, and universities. As of this writing, 294 people are dead and more than 600 injured.

Unnecessary deaths:

I am distraught thinking about the fate of these injured people. I know the situation of hospitals in Gaza well through my health and humanitarian work. The siege of Gaza has left our hospitals without one hundred basic medications and many important diagnostic and laboratory equipment is not working because spare parts aren’t available and the fluctuation of current from our irregular power supply has left some equipment beyond repair. In this period of crisis, Gaza hospitals are also lacking crucial medications and supplies for their operation rooms.I’ve watched the chaotic scenes inside Gaza hospitals as staff struggle to find space for all of the injured and dead. The unprecedented numbers of casualties come in from ambulances and cars in a near-constant stream. But emergency situations are nothing new in Gaza; it is the impact of the siege that has changed the odds. I know that we would be facing a different situation if the 18 months of siege hadn’t drained our supplies of medicines and food, making it difficult to treat and feed patients.I’ve spoken to several of my fellow doctors in Gaza and each one of them is overwhelmed and demoralized. Even with all of their training, the material conditions in Gaza are preventing them from doing what they are capable of. They could have saved many more lives.I remember how ambulance drivers were not allowed to reach the injured in previous military attacks on Gaza. Many lives could have been saved then too if the ambulances reached the injured at the right time. A few minutes can be the difference between life and death. I wonder whether we will hear reports like this again once the emergency situation is over and there is time for truth and reflection.

No place is safe in Gaza:

The first military air strikes struck at the exact time that school children make their way home. W here I live in Gaza City, several primary schools are very close to the police headquarters which were among the first targets. These horrifying facts explain the high number of women and children amongst the dead. Thirty children and nine women have been reported dead and another 130 children and 38 women injured.I’ve spoken with friends and family in Gaza and my heart sunk further with their first-hand accounts of the death and destruction. On a personal level I am mourning the loss of one of my cousins, Ibrahim Mahmoud El-Farra, age 22. He was killed in the first attack on the presidential palace. F16 fighter planes fired three big missiles at the building. Neighbors tell me the ground shook and that the blast broke all the windows of my nearby apartment building.My cousin, and an unknown number of other victims, is still under the rubble. The scale of destruction is too large for Gaza’s small number of rescue workers. They are slowly pulling body parts out of the rubble as Israeli air strikes make more and more piles of rubble and people.The number of reported deaths will increase in the next few days as more bodies are recovered and more of the seriously injured cases die because their serious but treatable wounds cannot be treated in Gaza.

No justification:

As a mother, I believe that all children are precious and deserve love and protection. If Israeli children are terrified and confined to the shelters because of the Palestinian rockets, this is wrong. But it is no justification to kill Gaza’s children and innocent civilians, who make up the majority of victims. Israel’s actions are creating more and more hatred. While families in Gaza cower in their homes, ready for death to strike, how can Israel talk of peace? Neither building the wall in the West Bank nor attacking Gaza so savagely will bring peace to Israel. Only peace that is based on justice and respects the rights of us all will work in the end. We are humans too.

With an aching heart I continue to watch Gaza from a distance. I cannot turn the TV off, cannot detach myself from what is going on there. Not while my medical colleagues work hard under such extraordinarily circumstances. Not while my friends, my family, and the whole population of Gaza face such horrible atrocities and constant fear. The nightmare isn’t over."

This following testimony is coming from a Gaza resident, film maker and social worker:

from mohammed magdalawi, he live sin Jablia In Gaza.
There are holocaust and killing Four hundred martyrs and about two thousand injured by Israeli air raids.I want to write about suffering of my people and my family in these days.
In my house we can't get basic needs such as, No foods, No bread ,and Natural gas.
Yesterday , my father went to bakery from 5 AM he waited 5 hours even get one bundle of bread. This bread was not enough for my family because it consist of 11 members . But today I go to all bakeries. I can't find any loaf of bread due to be closed. We and my family cannot communicate with our relatives and friends because of the lack of the connecting network also every hour we have a martyr or even more because of the raining missiles on our homes , mosques and even hospitals . There is no safeplace we can go to.
In the day our life concentrated in burial of the martyrs who were thousands in hospitals after a short farewell or even without a final look because of the time shortage those martyrs are graved in groups imagine that a group of martyrs graved in one grave.
At night our camp like ghosts city no sound but the sound of the various military aircrafts in every attack our heats and the children hearts is shaking.
There is a horror in every minute and it is clear especially on the children, for example, there was four sisters in one family killed from the Israeli occupation, when stay in their home, and there is children in the south of Rafah.
Also, A woman was going to the bakery to buy bread for her family when she was walking in the street killed the Israeli occupation.
I have two message to the world: My message to the lovers of peace and freedom in the world.
The First message: Imagine your life, your everyday life is no electricity , destroyed homes , voice missiles of the day and night , and no food, no water!!!!.
Imagine your children and your family tell you we are afraid of the missiles cannot sleep from the Voice of the aircraft.
Imagine you and keep the commentary.
The second message: Make to end the siege and stop the killings and demolition of houses for our children and to provide assistance to the people through rallies, sit-ins.
Finally, I invite you to come to Gaza and see the Holocaust! What the Israelies did to our land since years....

With Best Regards :Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi Film Maker and Social WorkerGaza strip _ Palestine

I hope my readers (and critics...) managed to read up to here, and I hope they opened their eyes to the "other side" of the story, instead to only follow what they are being told...
May peace comes out of this horror, and when I mean peace, I really belive that once this conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelies will be resolved the rest of the world will be also at peace, because it is what is undermining it...

SHAME !!!... SHAME AND DISGUST...

I am disgusted!... totally outraged and disgusted... It is becoming worse than ever, and to me Israel lost the little of credibilty it still had by continuously following its politic of destruction, colonisation and genocide !
I know of course that many will disagree with me, but regarding how we spell their name, there will be no surprise, and in my eyes, their opinions are biased...
Since years, Israel is doing to the people of Palestine, what the Nazi did to them in the Fourty's... Colonisation, deportation, elimination... Elimination by killing, impoverishing, starving, etc... Up to emprison people behind walls or fence, parked in closed and congested territories, like the warsaw guetto was to the Polish Jews... And then claim, with the blind support of the "greatest" Nation in the world, their right to defend themselves! So what about the Palestinian right of self defense then? ugh?...
Watch those picture and try to think if those people, those mothers and fathers, those childrens, will love Israel and the USA in the future or will join militants groups, (called "terrorists" groups by Israel/US coallition) to defend their people, thier nation and their right to survive?
A little reminder : during WWII, the French resistance Groups were called "terrorists" by the Nazi occupation forces ! So it says it all: It all depends on which side you stand to call the others that way...
Israel, through its action and with the total blind support of the USA, is fuelling war and "terrorism"... Total blind support which can be easilly explained, since the Natives Americans were threated pretty much the same way...

Endless !!!... Free them ! give them back THEIR land ! Give them back the right to return to all the deported refugies ! and this will certainly stop.

That's the ONLY solution to the problem...

And the sagga continues...

What can we say?... Joe the plumbers/Sarah the shooter/ joe six pack, etc... the "trailer trash sagga" continues... You think it would be a poor scenario for a third class soap opera, but no...: that's for real!...

The mother of an 18-year-old man who plans to marry Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter, Bristol, has been arrested on drug charges, authorities said on Friday.
Sherry Johnston, 42, was taken into custody at her home in Wasilla, on Thursday after an "undercover" narcotics investigation, Alaska State Troopers said in a statement. I guess someone will claim again it was politically motivated... For what? "Vote Trailer Trash" maybe?... LOL
She faces six counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance, said trooper spokeswoman. She was released on $5,000 bail shortly after her arrest. I guess they weren't going to ask her $10 millions, it woulb be a bail to nowhere... All the charges are felonies.

The trooper spokewoman declined to release any further information about the case, saying police needed to protect the investigation.... I wonder why?... another "troopergate" in perspective.

So let me see... her daughter conceived outside wedlocks, she is pregnant from a kid who may marry her this next summer, and the mom of this kid is a Drug adict and a felon... Nice family ugh?

But there is no surprise here when not so long ago you could witness...

Can't wait for 2012 and have a good laught again....
BTW, she wouldn't be that evil to manage to through her own daughter "may to be mother in law" in jail, just to stay in the spot lights of the media?.... noooo....

Being "Blonde"...

Kellie Pickler thinks Europe is a country and french is the official language here. Budapest? Hungary? She's never heard of these.

Third grade geography questions : A great display of stupidity

Bush and some of his legacy

Are you sure you are not going to miss him ? LOL... Here below is a little reminder of the last past 8 years, on the humouristic note of course...

Daily Mirror, November 5th, 2004

Bush dances with members of Kankouran West African Dance Company during a Rose Garden event to mark Malaria Awareness Day at the White House.

Bush gives German Chancellor Angela Merkel an uninvited neck massage during the G8 Summit.


During a commercial break, Bush wipes his glasses on the shirt of an unsuspecting assistant to David Letterman...

Bush waves the flag backwards at the 2008 Olympics. As Keith Olbermann quipped, "It is the best summary of his presidency, which is: everything looks perfect from his point of view."

The infamous "My pet Goat" moment, 9:05am September 11th 2001...


Bush picks his nose at a Texas Rangers game.


Bush Pardons a Thanksgiving Turkey

What's in a Name?

Or I should say "what's in a code name"?
Barack Obama and his family had chosen their secret services code name this week, as they were given the first letter "R" to start with and I was curious about what were the definitions of those words. Beside my little comments about them I'll let you to judge by yourself is they fit the character of the person or not... some are very interesting in all aspects and are speaking for themselves.

So, from now on...

Barack Obama is:
Renegade: someone who rebels and becomes an outlaw or someone who breaks with established customs. A deserter from one faith, cause, or allegiance to another. An individual who rejects lawful or conventional behavior... (Not sure how it will be interpreted by his opponents and other bigots or fanatic conservatives but it is a sure bet that Obama was not thinking about the word's origins when he picked it up.... According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Renegade's earliest meanings had to do with deserting one's religion, coming from the Spanish word 'renegado,' originally 'Christian turned Muslim.)

Michele Obama is:
Renaissance: A rebirth or revival. A revival of intellectual or artistic achievement and vigor. (Sounds like her...)

Malia Obama is:
Radiance: the quality or state of being radiant marked by or expressive of love, confidence, or happiness; brightness.

Sasha Obama is:
Rosebud: a rose which has not yet fully opened. (a literary reference to) a pretty young girl.

But what was (is) the code name of the out going first family, and the ones of McCain and Palin's family?

Georges Bush was (is): (Make your pick)
Tumbler: An acrobat or a person who performs somersaults and other acrobatic feats. (Oh yeah.. we noticed how he flipped flopped and manipulated)
Any of various domestic pigeons that tumble or somersault backward in flight or on the ground.
A drinking glass without foot or stem and originally with pointed or convex base. (particularly appropriate for a heavy drinker like him...LOL)
A piece in a gunlock that forces the hammer forward by action of the mainspring.
Also, eager to leave something better in his legacy, he decided to change his code name and went for «Trailblazer»
Trailblazer: Someone who marks a trail by leaving blazes on trees. An innovative leader in a field; a pioneer in a particular field (would this field be «ignorance» or «stupidity» maybe?)

Laura Bush is:
Tempo: rate of motion or activity. Pace. The rate of speed of a musical piece or passage indicated by one of a series of directions (as largo, presto, or allegro) and often by an exact metronome marking. (she must have been a «bolero» since she went un-noticed during 8 years...)

The two Bush's Daughter are:
Twinkle: To shine with slight, intermittent gleams, as distant lights or stars. To be bright or sparkling, as with merriment or delight
Turquoise: a mineral that is a blue, bluish-green, or greenish-gray hydrous basic phosphate of copper and aluminum, takes a high polish, and is valued as a gem when skyblue.

(I personally thought that those two girls code name were «Drunk» and «Drunker»...LOL! I don‘t know where I got that!)

John McCain was:
Phoenix: A bird in Egyptian mythology that lived in the desert for 500 years and then consumed itself by fire, later to rise renewed from its ashes. A person or thing of unsurpassed excellence or beauty; a paragon. (Oh boy! My friends... talk about having a big ego!...LOL)

Cyndi McCain was:
Parasol: A light, usually small umbrella carried as protection from the sun. (I guess «Phoenix» was so bright and so shiny that she needed one to protect herself...LOL)

Sarah Palin was: (sure she will keep the same for 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024...LOL)
Denali: a mountain in south central Alaska; the highest peak in North America. (Ego sound to be the norm too, or maybe it defines a superiority complex!)

Todd Palin was:
Driller: (should I comment or define this one?...LOL ! Does someone remember Sarah rhetoric: «drill Baby drill»?)

Dancing with the Stars....

Well.... My good friend Barbara blogged this morning about "what the hell" and I believe this one is appropriate for her blog to... Except that I would say : "What the fuck"!
Really!... Where does Sarah Palin is coming from? I don't get it... And I thought my blog was going to dies after this historic victory because I wouldn't have any topic to write about?
Sainte Sarah proved me wrong: She is now willing to take over the "First Jackass of America" tittle which is lately in the hand of "W"...LOL
But I really don't get it and she really pissed me off AGAIN with her stupid arogant comments! When will she go back home to eat some moose burger and shut the fuck up??

Sarah Palin, after hurling her rhetoric about Obama being a socialist and palling around with unrepentant terrorist, and almost making Barack one, is now saying she would be "honored to assist and support the New President and his administration"... she "would be willing to seize this opportunity" and she "think this time is full of optimism"!!!
How does she dare!
After spitting on him, now she want to dance with the Star... But, being questioned about her comments she said : "well you know the campaign is over. That chapter is closed. Now is the time to move on and make sure all of us are doing all that we can to progress this nation"
No Sarah... we don't want you to do all that you can to progress this nation! This is why the "we the people" didn't voted for your ticket and you still don't get it either!
So I guess there will more blog post to come.

Three steps ahead, two steps backward

The first vote was cast before gay marriage was legal anywhere in the nation. Eight years later, both Massachusetts and California allowed same-sex couples to wed. Whether gays should marry was now a cultural battleground. Polls showed young voters overwhelming for gay marriage. Older voters, churchgoers and African Americans tended to be strongly against.
The California Supreme Court voted 4 to 3 on May 15, 2008 that a state ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The ruling also elevated sexual orientation to the constitutional status of race and gender, an elevation that provides strong legal protection from discrimination.Equal protection is supposed to prevent the targeting and subjugation of a minority group by a simple majority vote.
In October 2007, opponents of same-sex marriage filed an initiative with the state that was to become Proposition 8, in anticipation of the Supreme Court's May decision overturning a statutory same-sex marriage ban passed by voters eight years ago. Proposition 8 had language similar to the previous law but was a constitutional amendment, which would give the ban greater legal protection. The amendment states: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California."
The magnitude here is that you are effectively rendering equal protection a nullity if a simple majority can so easily carve an exception into it.
Voters in two other states – Florida and Arizona – placed same-sex marriage bans in their constitutions Tuesday. Gay couples already were barred by statute from getting married in both states.
On November 4th 2008, America took a giant step ahead toward equality by electing Barack Obama, but on that exact same day, America took another step backward by allowing to discriminate and voting "yes" for amendments in states Constitution promoting such discrimination! It is plain wrong to write discrimination into the state Constitution
California's State Attorney General Jerry Brown, who said he supports making same-sex marriage legal, nevertheless announced yesterday that he will take Proposition 8's side in court.
Brown said he will oppose any effort to use Proposition 8 to nullify the thousands of same-sex marriages recorded since the Supreme Court ruling took effect in June.
The city attorneys of Los Angeles and San Francisco also are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the ban.

Well for the ones who do not know us very well, or for the ones who knows us but aren't aware, I have some news, and for the ones who oppose equality and promote discrimination, I have a question...

William and I committed together and married almost 12 years ago on January 15th 1997, in the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship church of Stony Brook, Long Island NY!




I would like to quote some of the sermon that night:

"We have come here this evening to celebrate the intertwining destinies of William and Philippe, who have chosen to be married.
Bill and Philippe know that love is a quality of spirit and an attitude of the emotions, but marriage is a life's work and a spiritual art form. For marriage is a going-forth, a bold step into the future. It is risking what we are for the sake of what we can be. And in the giving of oneself and sharing with another, the mysterious process of spiritual growth can take place by which the eternal in life can emerge and be known.[...]

So may this shining hour be an open door through which Bill and Philippe will go forth to build that dearest of all relationships, a happy, harmonious marriage. May the years deal gently with them; walking together may they find far more in life than either would have found alone; and even more fully may they come to know this one supreme truth -- that life is eternal and that love is its crown.[...]

As Philippe/William places the ring upon the other's finger, they repeat: "The circle is the symbol of the sun and the earth and the universe. It is the symbol of holiness and of perfection and of peace. In this ring, it is the symbol of unity, in which my life is now joined with yours in one unbroken circle, in which, wherever I go, I will always return to you, and to our togetherness.[...]

Since the marriage ceremony is not the highest point of their relationship but the beginning of a greater mutual commitment, closeness and regard, love and esteem, grant to them everything that they need to enrich their relationship: strengthen the bonds of love and deepen their understanding and acceptance of one another that each may be to the other a source of support and strength, comfort and healing, blessing their lives at all times.[...]

Since you have consented to join together in the bond of matrimony, and have pledged yourselves to each other, by the power vested in me by the Unitarian Universalist Church, which recognizes every true union of love, I declare you to be married.

Now you are two people with one shared life before you.

Go now unto your dwelling place to enter the days of your lives together. May your days be good and long upon the earth.

I hereby present to you, Philippe and William, partners in life."

So here is the question:

To all the people, bigots, ignorants and other conservatives morons who opposes and deny us the right of equality, the right of commitment, the right of recognition of love:

What our solemn commitment and marriage 12 years ago changed in your life?
How did our power of love and personal choice to commit to each other and spend the rest of our life together interfered with you and your pathetic daily routine?...

I know the answer already... there is not much of it.
Please , live and let live!