The Sands of Zionism

This cannot be, but it is. The Palestinian child's body lies limp in the arms of the rescue worker, his arms pushed outward by the man's desperate grip, his child palms face towards us, empty of life. Oh words, I have used you for so long, but now when all I can see are the tanks amassing, the young Israeli soldiers milling in the sand, sometimes peering down the long barrels of their war machines, almost seeming bored, waiting for the word to launch all this waiting power onto a people already living in a prison, when all hopes for a future without mutual hatreds are being blown apart, words, how will you protect, how will you hold off the State grown thick with misused history, thick with armament, thick with a nationalist zeal that says this is God's will.  The Israeli mother kneels in the same desert sand, her hand covering the face of her frightened child, not the same, not equal in power or position but the eyes of all children grow dead with this adult loosed terror. Israel plays with its victim, its own ghettoized people, the people of Israel who know both of the horror of entrapment by an enemy without a heart and the depth of resistance such cruelty inspires, turning their back on all they know and choosing vengeance, not wisdom of understanding. Occupations are daily wars; they will never bring peace. Occupations are daily humiliations unto death; they will never bring life. American money bought the planes, the bombs, the tanks; American politics keeps Israel the favorite child, a child grown into a monster. There is another Israel--the glowing embers of hope. In the Haaretz newspaper yesterday, a full page add in Hebrew taken out by The Women's Coalition for Peace, the Alternative Information Center, Yesh Gvul, and New Profile, reads:

     

No to the Election War!

We refuse war and the spilling of blood!

 We refuse the wave of hatred and incitement

against the residents of Gaza.

We refuse the abandonment of the South

for political spin.  Join us for

demonstrations and political actions

throughout the country.

The people I know, the Jews I know, who in Israel and in the US and in Australia who raise their voices against the Occupation is its present manifestation will be called traitors once again. Join us.