Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.
I'm not sure that I recovered, but I also know that I cannot afford going back yet. I see how much the kids are happier, I guess, here and I think that they might have a better future not hiding.
I don't know how it works with the Jews, but here in Beit Safafa, as in every self-respecting Arab community that is respected in turn by the state, there are no street names and no house numbers.
Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.
I hope that one day I will gain power somehow, and somehow convince myself that there is still hope and go back and fight, people who's trying to make that place worth living for both Jews and Palestinians.
For one moment, after I left Jerusalem with my family for life in Illinois, I thought that maybe there's still a chance: maybe there are still enough people in Israel who refuse to rule and oppress another nation.
What kind of people will these ghettos of Palestinians produce? What form of morality, national consciousness and hope will people be left with after so many years of stifling occupation and a sense of hopelessness?
Americans are connected to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel because, generally speaking, Jewish Americans were always there, and many American Jewish people connect their nationality to the Israeli one.
If there was genuine desire on the Israeli side, even without a solution, it would be possible to solve a large percentage of the problems between Israelis and Palestinians by means of simple statements from the Israelis.
I couldn't lie anymore to my kids telling them that they are equal citizens in the state of Israel. They cannot be equal because in order to fit in and to be accepted and to be a citizen in Israel, you need a Jewish mother.
When there's a revolution in Egypt, you can't really get depressed about not knowing what happens after you die. When there are millions out on the streets, that's not the time to start panicking about contracting swine flu.
I hate flying. The first time I flew with my wife, Najat, was the first time I'd ever flown in my life, and that was just a short flight to Turkey. I spent the whole time with my shirt pulled over my head. Then I got used to it.
When I come to the airport, they always send me with all the other Israeli Arabs to the foreign workers' line. I don't mind. I feel like I belong more with all the people from abroad and the foreign workers than in the Israelis' line.
It sometimes seems that the only plan the Israeli government has for the Palestinians is for them to sit quietly while Israel does whatever takes its fancy, equipped with its army, with laws it promulgated, and with courts it established.
I always envied them, the owners of the cars with the white plates who can be seen around Jerusalem. I always wanted to be one of them. We call them U.N., even though U.N. are generally foreign correspondents with leased cars and yellow plates.
There's a lot of hypocrisy and condescension in Israel's institutionalized support for Mubarak's tyrannical rule, in its backing of a corrupt leader who established a brutal secret police state to suppress his citizens and keep their mouths shut.
I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first, otherwise, they will shoot you. So I can tell you a joke and maybe you will laugh at the beginning. But it's not about telling jokes.
Somehow it seems that all parents are certain that they themselves were victims of abuse in school and that they will not allow this to happen to their children. Even though children can also be the cruelest group imaginable - especially the cutest of them.
All in all, we Muslims have only two holidays, and they're always getting moved around from season to season, from month to month, because we're dependent on the moon and not the sun, and unlike the Jews, we haven't created a leap year, so we have no Adar Bet.
Like with all the Arabs, they use the 'suspect procedure' on me. I arrive four hours before the flight. They do a body search in a back room behind the curtain and then escort me onto the plane because they're afraid that on the way I might pick up a bomb from someone.
How I'd like to start a new life in a distant land. Not because of racism or politics. But to be in a place that I knew hardly anything about, in a place where I wouldn't even care to know the prime minister's name. A place where names and faces would have no meaning for me.
I tell you a joke to have you listen to me, and then maybe I will tell you another joke that we can laugh together and feel equal. And then I will tell you a story hopefully that will make you cry. So I think that's the way that I approach the columns, as a surviving tool in a way.
I knew very well that I could not stay. Everything collapsed. Everything in my life just collapsed, and it started with the kidnapping of three teenaged settlers and then judging the life - the young Palestinian from Jerusalem. That was the day that I decided that I have to go now.
I used to give her [my wife] to read the column every week before I sent it to the editors. And sometimes she was so mad - are you crazy? You're not going to send that, or, you're not going to write that about me. So I would go, OK. You have five hours. Go ahead, write the column yourself.
Sometimes I wonder: What are the children thinking? And sometimes I wonder why the hell I'm not buying a tree like the other neighbors. After all, there is no mention in Christianity of Christmas trees, and even if there were - is there any good reason why I shouldn't be buying some red stockings?
I once wrote that the first week in Jerusalem was the hardest week of my life. I was different, other; my clothes were different, as was my language. All of the classes were in Hebrew - science, bible, literature. I sat there not understanding one word. When I tried to speak, everyone would laugh at me.
Probably also due to the political situation getting just worse and more extreme, but also this distance and this sadness of this feeling that I gave up - that I surrendered, that I felt that I lost my small war. So the whole column is different than the columns that I used to write back home, back in Jerusalem.
I couldn't lie anymore to my kids telling them that they are equal citizens in the state of Israel. They cannot be equal because in order to fit in and to be accepted and to be a citizen in Israel, you need a Jewish mother. So basically what I'm trying to tell my kids is just, it's their mother's fault and it's not my fault.
The truth is, I never travel without cash. I always take a few tens with me in case of an emergency. There's never been an emergency, and in time, I realized that Americans don't want to touch customers' dirty bills. They also don't want to touch your credit card: you have to put it through the machine yourself, with your own fingers.
A lot of my friends in my student days complained about how their parents made them play an instrument when they were kids. I always felt compassion for them and didn't believe a parent could be so cruel, but when I check today, those complaining friends grew up to be quite successful, and many of them are now making their children play.