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Thank you, Mariam.

A Swedish novelist Henning Monkel tells him an experience in Mozambique at the peak of the hideous atrocities of the apartheid era.

He describes how he saw, he was walking towards the village.

He saw a man walking towards him in ragged clothes, in his words.

In his deep misery, the wretched survivor had painted shoes on his feet in a way to defend his dignity when everything was lost.

He had found the colors from the earth and he had painted shoes on his feet.

Seens like that will evoke many poignant memories among people who've witnessed cruelty and degradation, and also the

steady resistance of the Samuddin borrow Raja Shahada's term for those who endure

a remarkable book on Palestinians under occupation 30 years ago.

Like many of you, and in fact much less than many of you, I've witnessed many scenes like that throughout the world over many years.

Once again, last October, when I was

able to visit Gaza for the first time, I tried earlier, but couldn't make it. Greeting me on my

return home were the reports on the latest outburst of shocking crimes, the November Israeli assault, supported

by the United States, and tolerated politely by Europe as usual. One of the first reports I received

was a photograph by a young Gaza journalist, a man I've known for some years, who I met

again in Gaza. The photograph showed a doctor in a hospital ward holding the hideously charred

corpse of a murdered infant. The doctor is the director and head of surgery at the Jan Yunus Hospital in south of Gaza

were actually a few days earlier.

I had heard his passionate appeal for drugs and surgical equipment so that patients would not

have to writhe in agony while awaiting simple surgery

that cannot be performed for lack of facilities. As the November attack exploded, the United Nations

...