To those of you who don’t know, we in Lebanon have lived three major wars with Israel, in 1993, 1996 and 2006 not to mention the daily brutalities that Israeli soldiers committed at check points and villages as they conquered various parts of Lebanon from 1982 till 2000.

I know what it feels like to hear the bomb as it drops down wondering if it’s going to hit our house next. I know what it’s like to be a 5 year old boy unable to comprehend why we can’t go out of the house for days, why we have to sleep on the floor with a mattress on top! I know what it’s like to hear the airplane missile as it passes above us and crashes into a neighboring building… what it’s like to hear a human being screaming his last words as he dies … to see a mother looking for her children’s bodies under what’s remained of her house… a father holding the dead bodies of his infants as he tries to save even the bodies from the brutality of Israeli bombs… we’ve lived that and wish that nobody will ever have to live what we’ve seen, heard and felt.

Those scenes are being repeated now in Gaza and the West Bank. Every day Israelis are bombing and killing Palestinian civilians most of whom are children and women.

This is the truth that the world is not allowed to see. You are not allowed to see Israel’s tyranny. But in a world of free social media I wonder what’s preventing us from searching for the truth on our own! Are we that self centered? If the bombings and deaths are not near us then it’s okay not to care? It really is shameful how we treat Palestinians as numbers, we just count their bodies and don’t care to even know the names because they’re just too many.

Stop portraying this vicious attack on Gaza as a mutual conflict or an “exchange of fire” where poor Israel is merely responding for missiles fired from Gaza! If that is the case then why are all the civilian casualties from the Palestinian side only? Why the numbers of Israeli air strikes and bombs are not even slightly comparable to the very few number of low quality missiles from Gaza!

I remember on September 11, 2001 we cried for the innocent civilians who died, we mourned for them because we know what it’s like to live through terrorist attacks. We condemned those acts and stood by the American citizens as they were passing through a national crisis. That’s why I’m reaching out for citizens not governments! Look for the truth, read the true history, don’t settle for what you receive through biased corporate media! Get out of your 1st world issues and see what’s going on in the real world; after all we are all humans, we are equals and no life is more worthy than another! The only way for freedom is for citizens all over this earth to support one another, to look for the truth and push their governments to take the right decisions.

Peace will prosper again in the Middle East, but how many more people have to die for this peace to be achieved? Will this peace be worth it then?