Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gaza. Show all posts

Sunday, January 18, 2009

War is all hell


A Hebrew-speaking Palestinian doctor and peace activist is on the phone with an Israeli correspondent, on live television.

SUDDENLY, two Israeli tank shells rip into his house in Gaza. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. picks up the story from there:

"My daughters!" he screamed. "Oh, God, my daughters!"

Three of his daughters and a niece were killed.

Abu al-Aish had been planning to take his family and start fresh in Canada, but no one in crowded Gaza or nearby Israeli towns was immune to shells or rockets during the conflict, which left than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

Less than 24 hours before Israel announced its ceasefire in its assault on Hamas, his daughters and niece were killed by Israeli fire.

Gazan officials identified his dead daughters as 22-year-old Bisan, 15-year-old Mayer and 14-year-old Aya, and the niece as 14-year-old Nour Abu al-Aish, the Associated Press reported.

Eighteen members of his extended family were in the house at the time, and at least two of his five surviving children were wounded in the shelling, AP said.

On television, the Israeli correspondent, [Shlomi] Eldar, choked up as the doctor's wails were broadcast across the nation.

WELCOME TO the Old Testament vs. the Koran. Welcome to a world where Jesus is, at best, a prophet who didn't get the last word. That, or a nut and a blasphemer. Do you recall that "love your enemies" crap from Matthew, Chapter 5?

43
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
44
But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,
45
that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
46
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?
47
And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?
48
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

THAT'S NOT OPERATIVE in the Holy Land, at least for the vast majority of folks who live there. No, this is more like it:

Remember, LORD, against Edom that day at Jerusalem. They said: "Level it, level it down to its foundations!"

Fair Babylon, you destroyer, happy those who pay you back the evil you have done us!

Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock.
And, alas, this:
Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."

WELCOME to a Town, a Territory, a Region Without Pity.

Its agony will end when "the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a mighty roar and the elements will be dissolved by fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be found out."