Palestine

Today, Melissa and I took a very last minute trip to the other side of the wall and spent the afternoon in Bethlehem, Palestine. Israel/Palestine has to much rich and tortured history and I won't get into the politics of it, but I wanted to share the photos I took of all of the amazing murals and paintings that cover the Palestinian side of the giant cement wall that separates Israel and Palestine.

It was beautiful to see and I'm so happy I got to experience that. Messages of freedom and suffering that comes from people's hearts in different forms of expression that covers these walls for miles and miles. Every inch seemed painted!

I have tons more photos on my flickr page here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/90572684@N08/sets/

Truly a sight to see. It worth taking at least a few minutes to stop and flip through a couple and spend a few moments thinking about what you really think about it all.

It was interesting going to Israel and Palestine and putting real people and faces to all of the history I learned about from my Master's degree and the media. It made it real and helped me see how no matter what I might personally feel...I was able to see both sides as a bit more human and understand the tiniest bit more about the issues there.

I'm not Israeli or Palestinian. I have friends that are both Israeli and Palestinian and I have hear different views and intelligent understandings from both sides. I always felt like I could never really get involved or give an opinion...only ask questions to try to understand more. I still feel like that mostly because it's a completely different world view from living through it, to just learning about it. However, after going and meeting people, talking to people, seeing the sights and watching people in their daily lives....I do understand now more of the importance of becoming more educated about the history and current state of both places and most importantly, remembering that both sides are made up of human beings.

The most important things of all is remember that its all about human beings. Its can be easy as an "outsider" reading the news to judge the situation because as an outsider, you're so far removed from the reality. So its just about numbers, statistics, who initiated what this time, etc. BUT those statistics are human. To them it's not about statistics....its about their everyday lives!