Why the Palestinians give me hope. Portion below; whole thing here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ernshire02052008.html
Ramzi Aburedwan, a Palestinian refugee living in the West Bank, also has that power. Sitting on a rooftop in the heat of a summer night in Ramallah 2006, I remember watching him as he played an improvised viola solo to a small, mostly foreign audience. He was suddenly interrupted by the explosions of Israeli gun-fire in the street below but he kept playing while the shooting and bombing grew loader beneath us. He refused to stop. Until a young man rushing across the rooftops whispered in his ears. Only then did Ramzi drop his viola and turn to the audience. 'We will stop now' he said. 'A man has been shot outside and is bleeding to death. It seems the Israeli soldiers will not allow anyone to approach him.'
The audience of visiting French and German music elites stood crowded in the small courtyard of the music center. Visibly shaken and afraid. Those of us who lived in the city rushed outside. Were met with roving tanks and shooting. And at length the site where the young man bled to death.
'This is the reality' Ramzi was saying to the visitors. 'This is how we live. But it doesn't destroy the music in us.' And I pictured his agonized playing above the bombs of the invading tanks.
The Israelis are killing the Palestinians and in the chaos of the region unbalanced by the Western backed Israeli war machine, the Lebanese are starting to kill the Lebanese again; in the hell that the US invasion of Iraq has created in Iraq the people there are killing each other as well while the Palestinians are continuing to be ground into the earth by just about every people of the world and yet Marcel Khalife sings:
We love life if we are able to find a way to it
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