Military Occupation

On a Friday afternoon in Levittown, Long Island my fourth grade best friend, Kat and I took our time getting home on November 22, 1963.

It was eerily quiet and calm in the streets and not until Phil passed us by on his bicycle and yelled, "Kennedy has been shot!"

Did I even have a clue as to why nobody else was outside.

Six days later after that day that changed the world as I had known it, on Thanksgiving Day, LBJ took the oath of office standing next to a very distressed widow and announced that Florida's NASA Launch Operation Center would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center and he asked the public to remain "determined that from this midnight of tragedy we shall move toward a new American greatness."

It was on the second Saturday in September, 2007, while in Arlington, Virginia, at George Mason University attending the 6th annual US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, that I first heard someone say when they were asked their organizational affiliations, reply, "I am here as a free radical."

Free radical, Keren Batiyov, is also a poet, writer, a nonviolent activist with ISM/International Solidarity, and a Russian history maven. Keren was born and bred in a fundamentalist Christian home, but at the age of 40 connected with her Jewish roots and converted Jesus from God back into his originally understood role of divine prophet; and a prophet can best be understood as one who points out impending doom and provokes people to remember God.

WAWA Blog September 5, 2007

[West Bank: Occupied Territory] In a verdict released on Sept 4, 2007, justice ruled in the Holy Land!