Archana Soman 💙🇵🇸

Today we are celebrating my dad @DrGaborMate's 80th birthday. He was born in Budapest on January 6th 1944, two months before Nazi Germany occupied Hungary. He was able to escape the Jewish ghetto after his mother, Judy, gave him to a stranger on the street, who agreed to take him to cousins in a safer area. Staying in a cold, overcrowded flat, they kept him warm by sleeping on each side of him. After reuniting with his parents, who managed to survive, they fled to Canada along with his brother Janos in 1956. Living in Vancouver, he became a student activist, writer, high school teacher, doctor, healer, and renowned author. He and my mom Rae taught me and brother Daniel and sister Hannah from an early age to be uncompromising about the truth, both the personal and political, and to stand up for the oppressed, especially the Palestinians occupied in our name. On his 80th birthday, I honor his life and all that he has given to me and to the world. And my wish is that today's modern-day Jewish ghettos — the Gaza death camp and occupied West Bank — will be liberated from today's modern-day Nazis, the Israeli government, so that every Palestinian can have the same freedom to follow their life path that my dad has been fortunate to have.