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Back to the Future - A Palestinian Tale of Two Cities

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This is my personal blog, where I don't feel obliged to write about a specific domain but simply feel like writing, with the aim of expressing myself rather than impressing others. Rumi Cafe - Amman We have witnessed enough children, women, and men perish, with indigenous people of the land succumbing to the folly of those in power driven by greed and shortsightedness. Lately, I have been reading extensively, seeking answers on when or how this turmoil will cease, or what I, as a humble individual, can do to help. Yet, I've come to realize that only time or divine intervention can bring an end to this suffering. My grandparents fled Haifa after 1948 and settled in Jordan, anchoring my roots in that beautiful city, which I've only encountered through literature and videos of my Christian community still thriving there. Immersed in the history of Haifa and Palestine, I even explored the genetic makeup of the land. Favorite book on Haifa I'll admit, I'm not politically

Ironic Life is the Right Life

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Saint Agapi (love in Greek) With each passing day, life brings uncertainty to our lives, small variations to our daily routine but also at times, major variations that change our lives forever.   With uncertainty comes risk. We always see these major risks as a shock, yet when we overcome these risks, we look back at them as if they were predictable and easily solvable, forgetting all the hard times we faced because of them.   We almost never take hard measures during normal times because they look stupid to people around us, yet if we do take hard measures in preparations for hard times, when hard times arrive and we are prepared (and thrive on them unlike others who mocked us), the ones who mocked us will forget that they thought of us as stupid but rather that they saw it coming (and convince themselves of the lie) and blame their unpreparedness on nature/others/life.   This is life, accept the fact above, and you shall survive and enjoy the occasional satisfaction fro

Don’t Follow Your Instinct

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Head lost in the clouds Life is a maze. You can’t plan the whole thing in advance. I bet you can’t even plan the next step without a big chance of things going in another direction. Now this might irritate you, but it shouldn’t. If everything goes according to plan, then you won’t have the best outcome, you haven’t had it yet. Hence, religions' insistence on appreciating how things are going, for you still don’t know what’s in store.   It all sounds nice so far, but it’s hard to follow. I came to realize that the hardest thing one can do is to control one’s self, especially with all the noise surrounding us. To keep one’s discipline intact throughout the adversity. To embrace change as a habit. To go against one’s instinct when one should. I have been fighting my instinct lately, or to be more specific, in the last year let’s say. Let me tell you something, your instinct is highly correlated with your routine. And, I found out, you can’t live your life to the fullest sticking t

Small Habits, Big World

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My favorite habit: coffee drinking and reading  Time moves but cycles repeat themselves. Only the small details change. But the large details don’t. And nature always prevail. Amid the hectic details of daily life. It’s hard to find peace of mind. Sometimes we just trust things will fix themselves on their own and we only have to believe so, because that’s essential to our survival.  However, we need to trigger the stop button every once in a while. I truly believe so. We need to stop ourselves and just fix things and move on. Because habits can make or break us.  In the past few months I have been focused on my habits in general. Pushing myself to acquire new habits and at the same time breaking old habits and stopping myself from getting into new tempting ones (because I have enough of them already).  Habits cloud our minds. We sometimes don’t know where we are going but we keep on going, because our habits keep pushing us, regardless of our conscious mind.  Juggling between small an

Awesome Oud Solo - سولو عود من الاخر

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 Oud solo by Rakan Jreisat

Human Rights: and Why Some People Don't Deserve Them

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  An excerpt from an Israeli Official’s thoughts In every amazing country in the history of the world, none, of course, are as exceptional as Israel, but there are always class systems. It is just the natural order of humankind. You can have first-class citizens, second class citizens, non-citizens and the list goes down and down until you reach the worst species of all, the Palestinians. Imagine this: you invade a small country at some point in time, being backed by a world power, and its people choose to fight back. They even dare tell you not to take their “Most basic human rights”. On what planet does everyone deserve equal rights? Many of them are already even poor. They don’t deserve the amazing piece of land they live on, and as if this is not already bad enough, they choose violence. We point guns at them, we even shoot at them only most of the times, yet they call us aggressors. Now that I mentioned aggression, in what world does an eight-year-old child throwing rocks at a