I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.

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.

Here I am, a Palestinian Arab who only knows how to write in Hebrew, stuck in central Illinois.

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 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.

I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.

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.