This week, Palestinians are not waking up to the sound of bullets, rockets, and tanks rolling through their homes; instead they are woken up by the cries and screams of its own people in mourning. They are mourning the loss of their family and friends who have been murdered by Israel’s invading army. For one measly week, the leaders from Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire.
On Dec. 29, 2008, Israeli defenses began this three-week assault on the Gaza. Prior to that, Hamas was firing rockets into Israel. Prior to that, Israel had a blockade of the Gaza. And prior to that, and prior to that, all the way to World War II. Pointing fingers is absolutely impossible to do.
But it has happened. They are pointing at each other, but instead of fingers, it is rockets and guns. 1,300 Palestinians have been murdered in 23 days of conflict. 108 of them were women, 417 were children. One would imagine an equally large number of Israeli deaths, but one would be wrong. Only 10 have lost their lives in this three week massacre.
Those numbers don’t look like a country trying to defend itself, but more like genocide. It seems that no one is being spared. Schools have been bombed, homes, all of it. Imagine yourself sitting in your home with nothing to do with either side, and someone drops a bomb on your children’s school because they were trying to defend themselves from rockets. What kind of country has to defend itself from school children? Unless kids look like little rockets in the Middle East, there is no excuse. Maybe the desert heat is causing crazy mirages like in Bugs Bunny cartoons when a cactus turns into a carrot.
It is about as much self defense as Muhammad Ali would have to defend himself from me. If I started punching Ali as hard as I can, he would lazily swat at me like an annoying fly that won’t quit landing on his nose. Not Israel, if it was Ali it would jump on me pinning me to the ground and proceed to pummel my face. Then it would get up, upper cut my wife, elbow my kid, and kick my dog. It would then spit at my grandma and flip her the bird, all in the name of self defense.
We have one more week of gun silence. One week to hope and pray, naively, that they will not continue. The tanks will roll, rockets will fly, and bullets will find new homes in the chest cavities of men, women, and apparently children. It’s their job. Tanks roll. Bombs explode. Bullets kill. And in one week, they are all back on the clock, despite pleas from the United Nations.
The innocent will continue to die. Unlike the bullets, bombs, and tanks, dying is not the job of the innocent. That is what makes war miserable. Soldiers have signed on the dotted line. They know the risks of entering a battle. But in today’s time, the battle does not take place in empty fields. It is in the streets, by the supermarket, restaurants, malls, and homes. There is no discrimination in these battlegrounds. The only thing needed to be an enemy is that they move.