(Photo: journalist Fatima Hassouna, murdered by Israel)
As I sat in church last Sunday, before the service started, I thought maybe I read too much.
I wish I had not read about Mohammed Hegazy, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy who was blinded by an Israeli grenade that blew up in his face as he played outside his home which is now rubble.
His father said he used to smile all the time. “Now we rarely see him smiling. He is having difficulty interacting with people due to his blindness and the psychological trauma he suffers,”
The father added: “He is constantly clinging to me and afraid to be separated from me, even more than a moment.”
More than 17,000 of those killed in Gaza during the past year and a half have been children under 14 years of age. Some four to five times that number have been wounded, many very seriously.
There is something wrong with anyone who does not think all this killing, maiming and blinding of little children is not horrific. And most of it has been done by Israeli soldiers using billions of dollars worth of American bombs, shells and weaponry paid for by American taxpayers.
I wish I had not read about Hossan Shabat,23, a young journalist who was killed by the Israeli military in late March. He had a premonition and wrote shortly before his death the following: “When all this began, I was only 21 years old—a college student with dreams like everyone else.”
He added: “I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury. I slept on pavements…anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my peoples’ side.”
At least 208 unarmed journalists have been killed in this one-sided slaughter. Shabat ended with this plea: “I ask you now: Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting. Keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.”
I wish I had not read about Fatima Hassouna, 24, who also had a premonition and was killed by an Israeli airstrike a few days before she was to be married.
She was a photojournalist who was killed in mid-April along with nine members of her family the day after it was announced that a documentary she made about her life in Gaza would be shown at the Cannes Film Festival this month.
She had written on social media that she wanted “a death the world would hear.”
On April 19, 36 members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews criticized what‘ they called this “most extreme of Israeli governments.”
Their letter said: “Silence is seen as support for policies and actions that run contrary to our Jewish values. Led by the families of the hostages, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are demonstrating on the streets against the return to war. We stand with them. We stand against the war. We acknowledge and mourn the loss of Palestinian life.”
Before he became President, Mr. Trump criticized the war in Iraq. Last year, he criticized the Biden Administration for bombing Yemen. He said as President he would end the war in Ukraine. He said recently that he wanted to cut the U.S. defense budget in half.
A few days ago, his Defense Department proudly announced it had carried out 750 bombing raids against Yemen on behalf of Israel. The Israeli military has expanded its wars to the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, killing thousands more. These wars are creating many more enemies for the U.S.
President Trump received approximately $100 million for his campaign and another $100 million for his Inauguration, according to press reports, from Miriam Adelson, widow of a Jewish multi-billlionaire, apparently for a promise of total support for the Netanyahu government in Israel.
George D. O’Neill, Jr. writing in The American Conservative Magazine for April 16, summed things up best: “When did Jesus say it was acceptable to starve the poor, slaughter women and children, while turning a blind eye to the suffering of the weak? The answer, of course, is never. Yet for years, a vocal strain of American Christian Zionist leaders have supported policies that do precisely that—enabling the starvation and slaughter of Palestinians while underwriting broader wars that have decimated ancient Christian communities across the Middle East. How did we arrive at a place where those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace justify such unchristian horrors.”
