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This has become the rhythm of my life since this latest genocide began, Operation Protective Edge. I wake, hopeful that the carnage will have stopped, that my country’s politicians will have finally reached a tipping point and are refusing to support state sponsored terror. I am always disappointed.
Amidst the growing numbers of tiny bodies riddled with deadly holes, baring witness to the false nature of this “war”, they press on, these IDF robots. I wonder how a member of the IDF can see that perfectly shaped little head and decide it needs a hole in it because one of his fellow soldiers has fallen. I wonder if the fact that this little boy, let’s call him Adam, hadn’t signed up to be Palestinian, he was born that way, but his dead soldier friend did, is lost on them.
Then I remember, Israeli children are trained for this. As soon as they enter their Jewish only schools, driving on their Jewish only roads, they are enveloped in a fantasy. They are told repeatedly that the world, especially their Palestinian neighbors, is out to get them. That this is their ancestral homeland, their birthright. It is their duty as Israeli citizens to join the IDF and protect their stolen lives. They are insulated, easily brain washed and babies themselves. How can they possibly understand what they are doing, the kind of pain they are inflicting by simply following orders? They haven’t even lived and yet, they are told for their country to exist, they must be willing to die.
And so when they catch Adam in the crosshairs of their rifle, there is no hesitation, no pause because they’ve never held a baby made from the love of two people and felt they might burst open with happiness. They’ve never felt the primal contentment of watching their baby’s chest rise and fall, tracing the beautiful features of their tiny little face in disbelief that he is theirs. They’ve never felt the world set right by ten tiny fingers and toes. They’ve only just begun to live and death is in every Palestinian face they see. What they know of life is limited, but like every human being, they want more. They’re not ready to die and they’ve been told that Adam must, so they can live.
A sharp sound, barely audible amongst the human suffering and shelling, pierces the air. A mother and father will grieve tonight, lament the loss of a piece of themselves and the soldier will move on seemingly no worse for the wear. Perhaps he’ll even brag about it to his comrades and smile uneasily when they congratulate him for serving his country. But that day he’ll have felt something break inside him and he’ll look around him perplexed, making sure he hasn’t lost anything.
One day he will have a child, hold him in his arms, name him Adam and realize the terrible thing that he has done. He’ll have nightmares about someone shooting his child, even behind his cement wall & Iron Dome. He’ll turn to drinking or drugs or both trying to erase the thought of Adam’s perfectly round head being split in two from his memory. But the relief is only temporary and there comes a time when he craves a “final solution” for himself. The life he fought so hard to keep, he now gives away willingly, it has become his curse, a burden. Right before he pulls the trigger he realizes that Adam will be the last image he sees. His final thought, we’re ruined, but it wasn’t the Palestinian they said would get me, it was me. I am death.
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There are no winners in war. To my dear brothers and sisters in Palestine, they may take your lives, but they cannot take your souls. What a cheap people they are, their souls exchanged for greed and murder. Inshallah the scales of justice will even the score.
Jazak Allah Kheiran
Christen
