This is our first, but hopefully not our last meeting on the pages of "Usefilm", Mr. Hamdan and this is my first encounter on these pages with a Palestinian. I know that putting politics into these pages may spoil the friendship, but there are some things I see differently than you describe in your bio, which I read carefully. All the land occupied by Jews before 1848 was bought with good money from Atabs. In 1947 the UN declared the partition of what at that time still known as Palestine, giving us about 20% of the land. Then we were attacked by the armies of seven Arab nations. We were 600.000 (six hundred thousand) and lost 1% of that population in killled in the battles that followed, but managed to drive all the armies back to what was then to become the"green line." In 1967 Nasser assembled his forces on our southern borders and closed the Tiran passage for Isreali shipping. I admit that we pre- empted his attack and drove the Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians, who joined Nasser, to what is now known as the "crimson line." As soon as that war was over, Dayan, who at that time was our Minister of Defennse waited by the phone for a call from the Arab leaders in order to give back almost all the land occupied in that war in return for piece, but the Khartoum convention decided: No peace, no negotiation and no recognition of the state of Israel, the "famous three no's." This, at least, is the way we see it from here and everything is a developement from that. I like your photo and would also like to tell you that the year after I finished medical school I worked in three Arab villages. If Sharon's plan works out well, as I, at least hope, we might even meet and become friends not only virtually. You are, of course, invited to read my bio and pay further visits to my portfolio. Like you, you will see in my bio that I became fascinated with photography from a very young age and at one stage or another, might have ownned a Minolta like the one on my photo, which now belongs to one of my grandsons. In the meantime I would like to thank you for your kind words about my "Photographer's dream." Ma'a salami, Dr. Rafael (Rafi for future communications) Springmann
Hi,Kareem to get more comments you need to visit the others and comment on their works, if they respond to your comments, then next time you need to visit their work again, till you build up some friendship with whom exchange comments and share thoughts, that?s why I have many comments most of them friends I know them for more than one year. regads.Saeed
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{K:89517} 1/27/2005
