COVER N. 507 - PALESTINE

Postmark: Bethlehem 20.08.24

Posted on the 2oth August; Received on the 13th September 2024

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Palestine...what can I say...  need I say anything....isn't turning on the tv enough? To see the sufferance of millions of people cornered in their own land, with nowhere to go, without access to the most basic facilities that every human being should be entitled to is something that defies reason, defies moral, defies ethics and yet, day after day, they are told to move,  only to be bombed again and told to move once more....

To "neutralise" one terrorist, dozens of innocent people, women, children, sometimes entire families, are wiped out of this world, or smashed dead in the rubble of the buildings where a regular (if living in a tightly controlled ghetto from where you cannot go out at your own will, can ever be called regular)  daily life once pulsated...

Supreme irony: in the morning you get a polio shot, in the afternoon, you are shot!

When will this lunacy, this barbaric behaviour stop? When will the people of Gaza be free from the oppression of the lunatic terrorists of Hamas and the state terrorism (I find no other definition to what I see....) of Israel? 

What will ensue of this war?   It is not hard to believe that many of those children who are now given the polio shot will one day be easily brainwashed by those who, themselves, have nothing but hate and radicalism in their hearts and minds...  a never ending vicious circle....with God, that Supreme Entity capable of everything, constantly evoked by both sides, watching in utter indifference...

I received a cover from Palestine with a stamp issued by the Palestine Authority. My thanks to Alex (who, by the way, I was very happy to meet here in my country) and to someone in Bethlehem, Palestine, again a rather symbolic city...

My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Them?

On the 1st July 1997, the United Kingdom handed over the Administration of Hong Kong to China after one and a half century of British ruling over what is now one of the two Special Administrative Regions (the other being Macau which was under Portuguese administration until 1999) of the People's Republic of China, which substantiates the One Country, Two systems principle. 

On the occasion, the Palestine Authority issued the single stamp souvenir sheet which can be seen on the cover, illustrated with a view of the bay of Honk Kong in the setting (or is it rising?) sun framing the single 225 Jordanian fils stamp with what I believe is called a Junk (?), sailing the waters of the bay.

Of note is the stampmark with a T, on the side, which Alex tells me indicates that the letter was mailed with insufficient postage, although it did arrive to its destination.