This needs to be said . . .

My dear friend Laurie Klein posted to her blog, a story about a young Israeli man who lost his entire family to war in Palestine. I know it yanked at her heart and brought tears to her eyes. I know her, and even though she is 1500 miles away, I can see her tears and I can see her kneeling to pray for this young grocery store meatcutter, to a God who so far hasn’t done so well in living up to the promise to end wars. As friends, I love Laurie and Bill because I know their hearts, but when I look at the shambles of Palestine, it doesn’t take me long to remember that the loser in every conflict is ultimately the one who retaliates. Ten sons not coming home will do that. You can read Lauries post here: https://lauriekleinscribe.com/ambushed/#comment-98260 this is my response. It reflects my own pain for her frustration, as well as the anguish I feel when I see the horror and devastation of the Middle East in general and most recently, Palestine, Not to mention the brush fires in the rest of the world. As long as we tolerate the violence, it will continue.

Maybe this is a bit harsh, but your young man is a victim – of US. We sometimes are confronted, in our insularity, with the realities of a world bent on the destruction of it’s own humanity. Increasingly, we find it here – at home. We are armed to the teeth and wonder why people are being killed. We arm our allies to the teeth, and then in our posturing, decry their violence. When the poor and least among us strike back with rocks and pitchforks, not to mention the occasionally igenious piece of lethal weaponry, we cry ‘shame!” and rally to our “allies”.

What am I doing?’ I might just as well shovel the sand back to the sea. I live my life and hope it will be over soon – not my life, but the killing. One way or the other. I marvel at how the working people of all civilizations shrug in frustration at their leaders, and go back to their local, workaday problems. I think of how my parents reacted to The Great (maybe: Not so Great) Depression, world war II and all of the nonsensical and brushfire wars and confrontations they lived through, by going to work every day. I remember playground fights in grade school, (which I was seldom a part of) when the breakup came, and questions were asked, the first words of the militants as “Well he started it!!” Our “leadership” is like a bunch of playground bullies. They are, regardless of party or ideology, complicit. How many fishermen will die over a phantom drug “war” because those lives don’t matter? So, another country and another generation of pissed off orphans who hate America. And so it goes . . . with apologies to Linda Ellerbee. (AND, to my dear friends.)