Apr 13, 2007

Oh Jerusalem!

In the series of auto-photos that I'm taking (like the one that I use in my profile here in Blogger), I try to pick a nice background, maybe even something meaningful, on a nice day with a nice sky (whenever possible) and shoot it!

Today (Fri, Apr 13) I went on a tour of the security fence in Israel/Palestine. It made my stomach turn a few times, when I heard of some of the arbitrary abuses that Israel has done to some Palestinians (some may even say, to the whole Palestinian people).
I saw with my own eyes the fences, the walls, the villages split in two, and I couldn't see any Palestinians, since they were all on the other side.

But almost at the end of the day we came into Jerusalem, (sigh) oh the holly city! It's so pretty! And even though I have been there many times, I just couldn't resist the beauty of the Dome of the Rock on a sunny Friday afternoon to take one more auto-photo for the collection.

Looking at the city from this view point, it's hard to believe that it is the center of both the most important religions of the world and of such an intense and violent conflict. Being there, just looking at the view, it made me forget for a second about all these problems, war, house destructions, suicide bombings and all that other shit. I just took a deep breath, straightened my arm and pressed the shutter button.

By the way, my head is blocking thousands of Muslim worshipers attending Friday afternoon prayers in the Al-Aqsa mosque.