As I sat in the hospital accompanying my husband during his second chemotherapy session, I was reading in the paper about the sniper who has been terrorizing the Washington area, and I was not surprised that the residents of the area were petrified to move around. Yet I could not help but wonder about all the violent movies and even cartoons that are shown on TV and somehow end up being stories in real life. How many movies we see on TV about snipers, gangs breaking into banks and shooting to kill anybody blocking their run-away, crooks murdering old rich women at home, children kidnapped for money and people taken as hostages. The themes are endless. One does not need imagination to be a criminal these days, or a "terrorist" for that matter, thanks to the writers of such trash which reaches us also in the Middle East as part of globalization. Of course the good guys end up winning at the end and the criminal is caught, but in the process so much is learnt, and in meticulous detail, which enables potential criminals to get free lessons, and end up being in the limelight, due to the media coverage of violent stories. Nice and humanitarian stories never hit the front pages or even get covered by the media. No wonder oppressed people resort to violence to get their story heard. I seriously started thinking that my next e-mail should really be to Mr. Bush so that he will deal with this domestic problem rather than waste his energy on a war very far away from home.

In the meantime my daughter came in to see us. She signaled to me in a way that only women can understand, and we both left the room. Whatever she wanted to tell me, I knew she did not want her father to know. She broke the sad news of the shooting to death of Shaden Abu-Hijleh as she sat embroidering in her enclosed verandah at home. Her husband and son were also at home. An Israeli army jeep simply stopped in front of their house and without any provocation started shooting. Luckily the men were spared, but for slight injuries. Shaden was the maternal grandmother of our granddaughter Zeina. A couple of days later the mother-in-law of my brother, over 90 years old, passed away in her sleep and a second cousin of ours, almost as old, passed away peacefully at an old-age home. What a blessing, I thought; it is indeed a privilege to die in bed these days. The brutality of the occupation has made peaceful death to Palestinians indeed a privilege. But very often, the Israelis themselves have not been spared, because they refuse to accept the fact that their living and dying in peace cannot be realized as long as they are depriving a whole population of their basic right to exist and live in freedom.

We are indeed the world.
Only if we have reason to fear what is in our hearts need we fear for the planet.
Teach yourself peace.
Pass it on. – Alice Walker