Palestinian Birds found in Missouri

Palestinian Birds found in Missouri

I drive truck for a living as some of you know, and I want to tell you a story about Palestinian Birds.
There are a lot of birds building nests this time of the year, hoping to raise a brood of young ones.
I drive to a factory in Central Missouri twice a day to pick up a loaded trailer and take it back to Kansas City.
For several years I have watched an amazing thing occurring. There is a specie of bird that every year builds a nest in the unused refrigeration unit of a trailer that is used to store boxes in at the plant. The trailer is shuffled back and forth in the yard all day long. It never leaves the factories yard, but it moves many times a day.
So these birds have a time of it. They are working hard bringing straw, leaves, sticks and even string to the trailer, building a nest. It is a very safe place for them to build a nest and raise a family, but they get upset when the trailer is moved. They buzz around the shuttle tractor drivers head as he gets into the shuttle truck, because they know he is going to take them on a ride. They squawk and yell when the trailer starts moving, and fly around the trailer, upset and vocal.
I don’t know what specie of birds they are, I should take binoculars to get a better view, they fly like starlings, and act like sparrows, but they are too large to be sparrows.
I call them Palestinian Birds. And you can probably surmise the reasons I do that.
75 years ago, the term ‘Palestinian’ referred to both Jews and Arabs living in the lands surrounding Jerusalem. Jerusalem was then, and still is a holy place of Muslims, Jews and Orthodox Protestants.
But since those days of peace, things have changed drastically, and not for the better. We all know a little about Europe’s meddling in this area. When the Europeans started what we call the holocaust, Jewish people by the tens of thousands fled Europe. There were very few places upon the earth that would take the fleeing refugees. Even the USA, failed the Jewish people at their time of need. The Jewish survivors decided to return home, and the area around Jerusalem was their home.
The temple of Solomon was built thousands of years ago, and destroyed two times, the final time coming in AD70. It was then that the Roman Armies completely demolished the temple and killed millions of the Jewish citizens of the area. The few surviving Jews then scattered all over the world. You would too.
Muslim believers also consider Jerusalem a holy place.
Without going into the history any more, I want to tell you what I hope for in the area. Peace. And the right for Palestinians to own property in the area they too call home. That is why I call these birds I see everyday, Palestinian Birds. Fate has dealt them a rough path. They brought some of it upon themselves when they refused to participate in the partition of the area. “All or nothing” they said in 1947, and they are still saying that same thing today. Egypt and Jordan refused to help the self-displaced Palestinians, and ever since the day they turned down the offer of partition, they have been chasing that homeland, just like my bird friends chase that trailer they are building a nest in.
I want that trailer to stop moving, so that the birds can call it home. And I wish the same for the Palestinians.
I have had the same dream for thirty years now, Jews and Palestinians living in peace in the area they both love. Why does there have to be a one side takes all, or nothing attitude?
As long as the Palestinians want to drive all of the Jews out of the Jews homeland, there will be nothing stable………the trailer will keep moving.
And as long as the Jews refuse to see that Palestinians love the area also and want to live there and raise families, and that it is possible for both sides to WIN, the trailer will keep moving.
Tomorrow, I’ll see the Palestinian Birds again, and my heart will sink.