(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Compounding Horror [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-13 I am from Israel. What I’m about to share is how many of us feel. It also confuses (some) people, sometimes angers them. But I wanted to have this voice out there. Out here. The thing is, none of what is happening over there is binary, and none of it is good. It’s all horrible, and heartbreaking, and impossible to contain. Yet contain it we must. So yes, it is possible to hold the following thoughts in the same mind, in the same heart, at the same time. It is. I do. So many of us do; not just Israeli friends, but Palestinian ones (us expats from that blooded region mingle a heck of a lot more than anybody thinks). Here is the first one. What Hamas did – not “what happened”, none of the passive voice – on Saturday was beyond the pale, from a humane perspective. Calling them “animals” insults animals. No amount of sophistry can justify butchering entire families who are cowering and burning them, beheading babies and children, raping women and killing them and parading their naked bodies in the street, breaking the bones of the frail and the elderly in ecstasy, before killing them in cold blood. Nothing justifies this. This is the worst kind of evil that humans can come up with because it’s one-on-one. From a moral perspective, I think, even atomic or biological or chemical weapons, with the horrors they bring, are just a wee bit more sterile than this, because they are not so up close and personal. It takes a special kind of evil for a human being to do this to another, helpless human being in such a personal manner. Before anybody jumps, I understand that the tally in this kind of killing is lower than in those other forms of horror, or even “conventional warfare”, but that makes me want to throw up. Just as this whole thing that people are doing by comparing the tally of the dead on both sides as some way of keeping score. That’s vomit-inducing. This isn’t a football match. Which leads me to the the next thought, which flips the equation, and yet, does not contradict the one above. What is happening right now to innocent people in Gaza as the result of Saturday’s events is gut-wrenching. It’s awful. So many are dying, also children, also elderly, also women and, yes, men, too. I am a man. I deserve to live. So do they. Yes, there is a difference in intent; a military euphemism describing the killing of civilians during war is “collateral damage,” which is so nice and clean, isn’t it? But it is why I am using the passive voice. The outcome is still just as awful, miserable, it’s terrible and heartbreaking. I don’t want to see them die. I don’t. There were a couple of hours Saturday when my shock, my desperation, my fear, they all came together and boiled into this demented form of rage, where I could hear myself say to my significant other, “stay away from me, because otherwise I will say things that will be unpleasant.” She did. She was wise, because how I felt in that moment is echoed by signs hung on overpasses in Israel right now, urging the “flattening of the Gaza strip.” Like collateral damage, that is a euphemism for “… and if 2.1 million Palestinians die in the process, oh well.” Served, perhaps, with a side of relish. Well, no, not oh well. No. I can’t accept that. That can’t be an answer. It especially can’t be answer for me as a Jew. We all have some ties to the Holocaust. Just based on that, genocide can’t be the answer. It can’t. One tragedy leads to another, bigger tragedy, and the cycle goes on, because there is always a tragedy handy that somebody can use to deliver another one. The Atrocities People Render, the APR of senseless death. Here is another seemingly impossible thought conflict. I love my people in Israel. Of course I do. They scare me sometimes, though. And I love the Palestinians in Gaza, even the ones that scare me a lot because they seemingly hate me simply for existing. Who am I to judge what they are going through? But most of them – most of us, all of us – are good and decent and loving and we just want a place we can call home and be with each other and make babies and tell stories and share a meal and laugh and sleep without fear. I know this. They know this. WE know this. The grief I feel every day for the past week is almost impossible. It’s present grief, because that Saturday hit too close to home, and because of my mother’s voice trembling in fear on the phone, and because of my dad’s anger, rage even, as he can’t see anything but the hatred. But it’s also because of my friend’s tears as we hug and he – barely, through gritted teeth – mentions his cousin who died yesterday because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a Hamas ammo cache was blown up, and his family, and his friends, whom he can’t even reach on the phone anymore. And it’s anticipatory grief, for the horrors that have been are nothing compared to the horrors that are to come, and worse, the knowing that this is going nowhere except a twisted version of population control. And the horrors, they compound. They compound. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/13/2199309/-Compounding-Horror?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/