Gaza’s Afflictions: A Proem

Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –

Empathy will never be exhausted as gaza schools and hospitals 

are torn asunder by pilots in fighter jets, their grievances 

transposed from another time and place into strafing refugee villages with clinical precision;

 All good gained from sufferings of times long past, all dissipated by the voracious bombing of innocents as tens of

thousands of women and children are slain with impunity in a violence that rains down upon terrified heads; 

A puzzled drone operator in Gaza asked “when will the Israeli public wake up to the conflagration that has been taking place 

in their name while turning Gaza into rubble…what is it with these kippah-wearing part-time soldiers with their comments: 

“Nova was their Nakba” I see children crawling out from under rubble looking for remnants and yet we keep bombing; Is there no answer to this happening?

Israeli strike kills grandfather of ‘soul of my soul’ his grand-daughter Reem having been killed by an earlier air strike…Ten more killed in one family in Gaza airstrikes on Dec 17

 “Israeli strike In Deir al-Balah in the central Strip killed 10 people, including the city’s mayor, Diab Al-Jaru (Haaretz)

Palestinians have had a millennium of agriculture and olive groves and goat herds with multiple generations of shared 

Values, but eighty years ago dispossession of six million acres took place with 700,000 forced into becoming refugees; The

vacuously cruel insistence that Gazans are human animals, such phrases resonating among a leadership destitute of 

empathy for what they are perpetrating, an inversion of reality allowing victimizers to victimize the unprotected while ignoring 

the bestial state of mind  that justifies the lethality of bombing. smothering truth with unfeeling biblical hair-splitting ;

According the Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, and The Cambridge World History of Genocide, colonial policies included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples in North America…Genocide intent includes spreading of disease via the ‘reduction’ of [natives] to densely crowded and unhygienic settlements…population removals to barren ‘reservations…deliberate starvation and famine, exacerbated by destruction and occupation of the native land base and food resources…”Economics should never be above moral issues and human rights issues” (Eitay Mack, Israeli lawyer & activist))

but soon a time comes when they are unable to relieve themselves of guilt and shame nor can they continue to 

manufacture counterfeit glee, excusing themselves from the barbarism of murdering children;  thus do the 

perpetrators of afflictions extend their excuses into the 

moral complexities of trauma, while split-personalities are 

rife with vengeful zealotry, a moral decay that cannot be atoned for multiple generations; This holocaust we are 

witnessing puts to rest “never again” by leaders who project 

evils upon their adversaries, while their own annihilating 

contentiousness is blindingly obvious to the discerning; Will they have recourse to the wailing wall to absolve themselves,

or will they continue to resort to biblical self-praising

while conflating 45,000 massacred civilians, including 16,000 

children with 1500 Israelis killed or taken hostage; War crimes become genocide when demonizing permits normalizing the 

daily erasure of a people by punishing them with gross afflictions; Yet zealots possess a moral schizophrenia 

“Gaza’s Afflictions,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024

and an ethical decay that will infuse generations, even though they are genetically entwined and historically linked: 

I’ll tell you what should have been done already yesterday, and many months ago: to shout out for a cease-fire, not only to obtain a hostage deal… but also to protect the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank… We need to protect the Palestinians in the name of a shared future….. Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm

America’s leaders have wrought upon their children’s heads a blame that cannot be erased with well-groomed words; 

Essential thinking is necessary to awaken to conciliation and healing; Did not the Sermon on the Mount preach 

selflessness and love which reflected hillel’s golden rule that “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow [man]; 

that is the whole torah”; One hundred peace groups in israel acknowledge the golden rule but only one member in a recent 

session of the Knesset supported the genocide case against Israel, and he was suspended, indicating that some minds 

can be elevated above the cruel thoughtlessness of militant leaders; Did not Freud say that Yahweh is one-half volcano god? 

Was not Christ born a Hebrew in Palestine? Are we not all 

haunted by the Law of Unintended Consequences?

“It’s like a Ponzi Scheme that collapses when you stop making a profit. Netanyahu is a believer in magical thinking. He supports a war against Iran, but such a war would be a disaster for Israel. These leaders around him  are resorting to biblical thinking., no longer acting rationally…Its an eschatological end-times thinking which they want to believe….(Alistair Crooke)

Consequences take place in the deep recesses of consciousness, where the majority, in their indifference, gnaw 

upon a mountain of platitudes: tectonic plates move slowly but when they erupt in volcanic action the sudden conflagration 

can change the nature of the world, killing not only the innocent but also the guilty in the holy land; The scales of justice are 

finely balanced between vice and virtue but out of the traumas will come a reckoning; The deadly weapons of mass destruction 

result in the intense trauma suffered by civilians while ten thousand children’s limbs are torn apart by lethal weapons,  

to  float in ghostly parables and nightmarish dreams as the rabbinic zealots of upside down thinking confront truth-telling; 

The renowned Rabbi Yakoov Shapiro noted: “Zionism is poison for the Jews; it is a suicidal ideology…and a liability to the Jews”; 

it does not represent Judaism, it is mythological nationalism; Israel is no longer a safe place but a foreign country and not the promised land”. 

Israel is deeply divided, it  is on the brink of an institutional collapse as the law …a wall between the kingdom of Judah and Israel all over again…Radical rabbis rely on oral Talmud that they maintain is the true Talmud….the clash is profound….all based on magical thinking…Armageddon with Iran means to attack the head of the octopus, while in Gaza the aim is ethnic cleansing so as to plant 50 settlements.(Alaisdair Crooke)

No matter if the “greater good” is called upon to justify horrors, there is nothing holy in massacring human life, 

since holiness is a quality to strive for, not a volcano to feed, while attempting  to ignore finely balanced  scales of justice; 

When the golden rule is so blatantly flaunted there is always and everywhere a reckoning for gross misdeeds and vast

atrocities; The pain and suffering and the taking of land rightly belonging to others, shouts out for deep remorse and moral atonement.