Oh! lighthearted,
Multi-lateral love and forgiveness is a wonderful thing,for sure.
Our souls and hearts YEARN for it!
But,right now,at this point in time,the Palestinian mind and instinct is focused on daily survival,and their National soul and heart is in great pain.
Their daily life,in fact and reality,means that all those 'luxuries',of neighbourly love and forgiveness,are on hold,while they try to survive,and the rest of the world looks, to them, like it couldn't give a damn.
Which is UNTRUE.People DO CARE and SEE!
The International Legislatures(UN,EU,AU,NATO etc) are weak and cowardly, and complicit,in allowing Israel to maintain it's UNGODLY,illegal and murderous strangle-hold on an innocent people,purely because they are NOT JEWISH!
It's against ALL THE TEACHINGS OF GOD and the ethics,morals of human GOOD CONSCIENCE.
It's easy for us to preach love and forgiveness.We are not under the same daily torture and pain!
But,right now,the Palestinian people can't even expose their hearts and souls,for fear of LOSING THEM or having them BROKEN.
They stay 'lighthearted' only because they are SO HEAVY-HEARTED and in despair,inside! And all of their feelings ARE JUSTIFIED!

They don't even have the human right to breathe deeply,relax,drink clean water,shower/wash adequately,dress proudly,sleep peacefully.Their cupboards are bare of EVEN the most basic of food items.
Simple clean water to drink(which is BOUNTIFUL,and wasted,just outside the refugee camps)is a RARE LUXURY!
Their days are torturous,in the Israeli-created open prisons of Gaza and West Bank.
Their "audacity of hope",as Obama says,is measured in SECONDS,because any minute they could be killed by the occupying forces.
No work,no food,no livelihood,no recreation of any distinction.
Closed colleges,frozen international scholarships(Fulbrights). No schools,places of worship left unabused or without threat.
Transport/mobility is made as DIFFICULT as possible for the SIMPLEST of tasks!
Their nights are filled with nightmares and pending Israeli attacks,bulldozer demolitions and racial harassments.
Remember 'lighthearted',this is all coming FROM a small group of paranoid,irrational deluded political people called ZIONISTS,who abuse the notion of "chosen" by God(therefore DIFFERENT from all OTHERS!) to further their OWN political aims.
They are SO 'DIFFERENT' that they are an INSULT to Judaism AND GOD!
Because the God that I feel in my soul and heart would not allow:
-children to see their fathers and brothers stripped naked,abused,phsically and emotionally humiliated,blindfolded,bound and marched off to indefinate-term detention camps and Shin Bet(Shabak)torture 'parlours',JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE Palestinian NON-Jewish MALES!
-children to see their MOTHERS and siblings shot,or blown to pieces(by tank missiles)before their eyes by IOF soldiers who come in to destroy Palestinian lives,homes,history,identity and DIGNITY.
-illegal(and often drunken)Israeli settlers SQUEEZING the indigenous Palestinian people into wire-cages surrounding what's left of their homesteads,whilst hurling their garbage,stones,and verbal abuses,that would SHAME GOD,at them.
They can't walk down the street without being 'picked off' by Israeli(or Russian mercenaries)snipers!
Their children's playgrounds and schools are nothing but bombsites.Toys,bikes and books and sentimental treasures lay under concrete rubble that once was a loving HOME.
If Palestinian children want to play outside they feel they must carry a WHITE FLAG,with them,to show they MEAN NO HARM, LOL, to the soldiers WHO MEAN THEM HARM! Where are the Geneva Conventions the UN Resolutions when those WHITE FLAGS are covered with PALESTINIAN BLOOD!
The Palestinians are being exposed to chemical weapons,cancer,amputated limbs,semi(or full)paralysis,and have to live with constant PTSD,and TBI's.
Sadly,the nights are not for sweet dreams,of peace,love and harmony.
They are filled with flood-light intimidation,no air-conditioning,no medicines,symtoms of migraines,hypertension,diabetes,enuresis,vitamin-defiency,anemia,not wanting to sleep incase you NEVER wake up,with what you went to bed with!
Outside,where there should be a gentle,comforting night,there are Israeli helicopters buzzing overhead,flood-lights glaring,sonic-bombs exploding,'anonymous' telephone calls(from the IDF/IOF)in the night saying,"we are coming to demolish your home in TEN MINUTES,get out,leave everything behind,or be killed" .
These are ALL the things that Obama should have seen,publically,because he KNOWS it's there. But "diplomacy" can be very inhuman sometimes,and an awkward obstacle as much as it can be a safeguard!
He knows,that when he is IS President,these are all the things that he will have to deal with,because our fossilized/dinosaur American Government was complicit in all of this!

The hardest task is changing the mindset of set-in stone cowardly ideologies.
Dumping old guilts and regrets.
Accepting that Right will win over Might.That souls will NOT BE CONTAINED!

Facing and accepting good conscience and saying,WE ARE FALLIBLE AND WE WERE WRONG!
Those are the REAL walls.But not ones that CAN'T be climbed!
The iron/concrete walls and checkpoints of Israel,in comparison,are merely dust,and as easily shifted,as the sand on the dunes,when the wind is in the RIGHT direction.

The way that Israel is going,it will IMPLODE on itself.
They are filling the 'balloon'with TOO MUCH PRESSURE and shame,and if they don't cease,it will burst in their own face!

I have blown balloons at my childrens/grandchildrens parties,and had a few,under too much pressure,pop in my face.LOL!
Man,it's messy and embarrassing,and completely avoidable.

A wall of oppression is no more than a balloon about to burst.
So,there HAS to be change!
The Palestinian people have always had GREAT hearts and MIGHTY souls.
They will fly free again,just like kites on the breeze,on a sunny sky!
Then,hopefully,they will have the luxury of breathing deeply,sleeping peacefully and dreaming sweetly.

Peace,Salaam,Shalom...oh! and Shanti too! LOL!

I appreciated your editorial perpective on Obama's speech at the Berlin Wall. I am very glad he made it, and made it there, not at the wall in Israel at this point. I believe he made a speech about that wall without directly making it which is the smartest thing he could do as a nominee: to state what he believes without creating a controversy that could undo his candidacy.

I do not know how his grassroots approach will apply to foriegn policy, but I look forward to finding out. I do not know how anyone can broker a real and lasting peace between such unforgiving violent factions including the Israeli gov't. He has appealed to people in the US to make a stand for change, with a slogan, "WE can do it" -- not I can, but we. Quite a bit of change is necessary in the US and in the world. Perhaps the day will come when the Palestinian and Isreali people who want to peacefully coexist will take a stand together for nonviolence. If there ever were a person to be US president who would encourage and support that, this is the one. Politics, economics and business as usual will not solve our dilemmas, the solutions need to be UNusual.

I send love and peace to the intrepid souls who suffer on all sides of this and all the terrible wars. "Grassroots" is correct in saying that people's souls and will to freedom become indomitable. It is up to us, We the Peoples of the world to love, forgive and make peace a priority in all we do. Politicians cannot do it, clearly. We must. May the souls be filled with love overflow in forgiveness and peace throughout the world.

Peace, Salaam, Shalom. Shanti, Pax, Pace...
-the lighthearted1

No jamal! LOL!
That's not the fleeting fantasy.
The Iron/concrete wall is the fleeting 'fantasy'.
It's a FALSE dream of those who are FAR AWAY from reality.
The wall represents what is wrong,inhumane and oppressive.
More and more Israelis/Jewish and all faiths are seeing the shame,embarrassment and hypocrisy in it,and distancing themselves away from the 'architects'of the wall.
Right will triumph over MIGHT! You cannot enclose Gods/a peoples soul,dignity and freedom for long before it spills forth!
No paltry wall is bigger than a collective soul of GOOD CONSCIENCE,and a collective brain with intelligence Jamal!
Remember how much time,sweat and toil it took to build UP the Berlin wall?
Then remember how quickly,joyfully and easily it was torn DOWN?
A tenth of the time and a tenth of the cost!
And pieces of the wall,are now souveniers on mantle-pieces all over Europe,to remind people,that never again,should walls be built with such hatred and venom,to divide people.

Barack Obama is juggling a lot of political and diplomatic 'balls' in the air,and,like you,I had to "pinch" MYSELF,LOL,with all the media hype,and remind myself,"WAIT,he ain't Pressie yet"!
It would have been SO GOOD,to hear the realistic and hopeful Berlin speech IN Israel.
He would have shown COURAGE and progress.
But the Berlin audience isn't obsessively paranoid is it?

Treading on political egg-shells,pre-election,can't be easy.
But,I have faith in him,and feel he is worth the bet. As sure as Bush/Cheney should be in JAIL!
As an optimistic realist,I feel it's early days.
But I feel,in my ole' bones,that he will become a strong,fair,transparent and balanced leader/public servant.
He's intelligent,a good listener,calm,reasonable,unburdened by heavy fossils/dinosaurs,no chips on his shoulders,no incumbent 'debts',no 'pre-washed'demented brain,and hey,he is a CONSTITUTIONAL Rule of Law LAWYER!
And he RIDES A BIKE TOO! So he's lean and Green! lol!

At a time when America is smelling like well-rotted s**t,internationally,I believe he might well bring us up,smelling OF roses,orange groves and figs! LOL!
He knows we hold the votes and his "audacity of hope".
No Jamal,the fleeting 'fantasy'(nightmare) is the WALL.
Right OVER Might.
Souls surpass walls!
Peace,Salaam,Shalom!

Last night, I watched Obama making his speech in Berlin where the infamous wall once stood, "the walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand," he said. I imagined him delivering the same speech with the separation wall Israel has created in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Dis, in the background...but it was only a fleeting fantasy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamal-dajani/obam-and-the-wall_b_114988.html