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One October day in 1948, a little boy packed his and his family's belongings into two carts and fled the bloody war in Palestine to Lebanon.
On the way, bomb shrapnel hit his little cousin who began bleeding heavily. The boy carried him on his back and walked all the way to Lebanon. That border crossing was open.
The little boy thought he would return to his home, his land and his people within days. He thought he would see Palestine again soon. That was the last day he saw his beautiful Palestine. That boy was my father.
My dad learned one very important lesson over the decades, and after watching war after war: nothing feels more bitter and painful than injustice.
What is happening in Gaza today is just another extreme form of injustice. Innocent civilians die for no reason under the fierce, one-sided attacks. Children become a target or accepted collateral damage. All basic human needs are non-existent; water, food, medicine.
What kind of a world do we live in that would allow the only occupying force in the world to commit such atrocities in the name of fighting terrorism?
What logic would accept labelling Israel as anything less than an apartheid nation, built over and protected by terror? What else can we call these atrocities in Gaza? How do I respond to my children when they see pictures of badly hurt children on TV and ask what happened and why?
Public opinion shows the world is disgusted by what is happening in Gaza today. People have had enough of Israeli propaganda and its arrogant, murderous actions. Demonstrations across the world called to end the war.
Yet US president George W Bush calls it an action of self-defence. This is an insult to our intelligence. What self-defence? I am not defending Hamas in any way, but this war has nothing to do with Hamas. It is an all-out war on the Palestinian people. This is ethnic cleansing by all and any means.
It is very hard to see anything positive in these events today. I see no light at the end of the tunnel of violence and killings. The language of power is short-lived, because all it will do is create more enemies and more hatred.
As an optimist, I hang by the thread of hope. Right now the only hope to me is spelled: O-B-A-M-A. I may be naïve, but the only hope is that US president-elect Barack Obama comes to the White House with a 180-degree change in the way he approaches the Middle East.
Obama is not expected to be pro-Palestinian, but to look at this conflict as strategically important globally, and to America. The only superpower and the biggest ally of Israel should force a just solution to the Palestinian issue. Without it, I see no hope - at least in my days.
