I watch life trickle from the bullet wound of a sixteen-year-old "example" and marvel how things weak, even words, will turn vicious and merciless to gain power,despite reason or history

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation.

Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian?

We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.

A persistent breeze lifted the thin curtains, fluttering a few moments of tranquility into the turbulent day.

For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed.

Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.