The Amount of Death and Destruction is Inconcievable

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10059.shtml

A story yesterday

http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2008/12/gaza-massacres-must-spur-us-to-action.html






I'm not really sure what my reaction to this is supposed to be. Part of me wants to tear my hair out and run screaming into the streets... I think it's a pretty significant part. Another part just stares at the words and the pictures in disbelief. And a third part is totally numb and unsurprised. I suppose ever since the Jenin "incursion" in 2002 any atrocity Israel wants to unleash upon Palestinians just seems kind of "normal", and expected to me.

There are two sides in that conflict. But to say it is completely mis-characterized in the western media is a grave understatement. There is not a 'cycle of violence' in that conflict. There is not a "centuries old conflict" in Palestine. There is a conflict just over 100 years old between a people who were living in a certain historic area of the middle east, and a few million European colonialists who used British and American guns and bombs and barbed wire to drive civilians from their homes, destroy their villages, bulldoze their orchards, drain their aquifers, and then at last to construct elaborate fences around these areas to prevent a people of a darker skin and a different tongue from ever returning to them.

There is a persecuted and occupied people that the entire world has turned its back on who are not allowed to import food or medicine into the most densely population area of globe, where just last year the occupying force bombed the only power plant. There are kidney stones, with no medicine, because the water is contaminated and water filters are scarce. There are kids with arms and legs and eyes and noses, blown over sidewalks, into open windows, onto roofs, and into potted plants. And there is no United Nations "humanitarian mission" capable of making sure the correct pieces may ever find the right families in time for a "proper" burial.

Yes... "fighting terrorism".

Until yesterday, no one in Israel was killed since the ceasefire ended on Dec 19th from the dozens of homemade rockets desperately shot out across barbed wire fences and over concrete walls. In the past 24 hours over 200 Palestinians were killed by the bombs falling from US built F-16 fighter jets.

Would you please show me, where is this terror you speak so strongly of fighting? Where are these "weapons of mass destruction" you assert? And what of this race of men, who apparently value human life less that we do?

Because I need to know, how is it possible anyone could value human life any less than we do?