Walk in the shoes of a Palestinian American

A war is raging against Palestinians today. Even as I write, Israeli soldiers are killing hundreds of Palestinians. We hear day after day about "Palestinian targets" and "Palestinian militants" or "terrorists."

Lost in this barrage of epithets is our ability to understand and empathize with the Palestinian human beings who live this war and continue to survive the hostile military rule of 35 years.

A Native-American proverb tells us that no one can walk a day in another person's shoes without gaining a new perspective, so I invite you to walk with me for a moment and glimpse the world and the current war as a Palestinian American.

If you are a Palestinian, you are either living in a refugee camp, living under military occupation, living in a country other than your own, or some combination of the above. A Palestinian's daily existence is a struggle to move freely, to go to school, to work, to survive.

The refugee is a person whose life has been collapsed. One day he is a normal person in an orderly world, and the next day he is left with the clothes on his back and with whatever he could salvage from the man-made disaster that has suddenly engulfed his life.

Over one million of Palestine's total 3.7 million refugees continue to live in decrepit camps scattered throughout the Arab world. In these holding stations, no state or government is accountable for them.

Languishing in homelessness and abject poverty, there is an entire generation of Palestinians who were born, live and die in refugee camps. They spend their lives in this non-place and their identities are defined by being from a time that no longer exists.