za3tar

I found this pretty good report on Yahoo! news. It talks about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Click on the picture below to view this report. The voice-over is a segment by “Public Radio International”.

The events of this little article by Ola probably happened over the course of 2~3 minutes. But it is really moving. You should definitely read it.

“This weather loves hot chocolate with marshmallows!” That was the message I sent my friend as I sat in the car waiting for my father, cuddled up in the warmest clothes I have and yet feeling my feet freezing.

Drifted away in thoughts, I was brought back to reality by the sight of a little boy, around 9 or 10, approaching a woman who was getting in to her car. The woman reached out to her purse and gave him some coins, although I didn’t see him begging. Obviously, he didn’t need to. He was wearing a jersey with no jacket on, the kind of attire that won’t make you warm enough for an average winter day. The jersey was soaked in the chilly melting ice, the sleeves pulled over his hands, his lips quivering and his eyes drooping in the cold.

Read more….

Traveling thousands of miles to start my graduate education, i was disconnected from the world for about 10 days. With a couple of days driving on the road, and no internet set up at home yet, i had no means to check the news or anything. So, when i was planning to write my next post, i was thinking of talking about my 2-day driving road trip.

However, as soon as i got connected, the stark dark news was hard to escape. The mass punishment of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza is just inhumane. No words can really describe what is going on. It is truly frightening. What would happen if this was done to people in Europe or the USA ? How would the world react ? What description would be given to the country/people applying such mass punishment ? Why is it not done now ? Why is the world turning its blind eye ?

Words escape me trying to come up with something different that what many great bloggers have said about this. I leave you with this nice article by Sabbah.

I have always witnessed bias in media (nothing new here). However, it still manages to shock me as to how biased can they manage to be. I just watched a news segment by ABC news covering Bush’s visit to the region. What shocked me the most is that at the end of the segment they casually said that rockets fired from Gaza continue to hit Israeli towns (during Bush’s visit).

That sentence ended right there, and then they moved on to another topic. No mention what so ever about what Israel has been doing in Gaza and the West Bank. Come on!! Israel still carries a military offensive operation in Gaza, and they were in Nablus for a 3-day offense just a few days ago.

I also hate the words “Palestinian Rockets”. I think these words imply something big, powerful, destructive, and fatal … you know, REAL ROCKETS, the kind that Israel uses. However, the Palestinian “rockets” are homemade, and almost always cause no casualties. Just by looking at the footage of these rocket firings, you can tell how weak they are.

Anyway, this conflict drives people insane, and unfortunately the mass media does not do its job of reporting fairly from both sides

Urrggh, i am still sleepy, so excuse me if i can’t compose coherent sentences.