The periodic eruptions of armed conflicts on our planet, with their irrational blood-shedding, death, destruction, and the loss of innocent lives, seem permanent features of our daily lives. Most recently Ukraine- Russia, Palestine-Israel, and Sudan-Sudan occupied our “news”. All these conflicts have one overarching element in common: The senseless loss of innocent lives. Is it humanity’s destiny, until the end of our times, to resort to violence and mayhem to address our differences? Was not the creation of the United Nations supposed to prevent, or at least ameliorate our genocidal impulses? I have followed not as closely as I would like, or time would allow it, the recent “pro-Palestine” campus protests in some American universities. It has given me if not a sense of historical nostalgia, a sense of hope that amid the rapid descent of the American democratic experiment into an irrelevant corporatocracy, the youth, rightful holder of our future, organically, as they say these days, decided to speak up. Their protest on behalf of Palestinians; against the loss of innocent lives of women, children, elderly, being butchered in Gaza, has great resonance with the protests of the Vietnam era and the struggles for Civil Rights. I am not here to relitigate the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ or Israelis’ claims. The newer version of the actions of the usual colonial European powers and their peons have already determined the outcome. We will sooner rather than later move on to the next conflict, drowning the voices calling for diplomacy and yearning for universal justice. The UN has been long ago rendered irrelevant. In the jungle, only brute, predatory force prevails. I find it necessary to point out the obvious: the hypocritical coverage of the American corporations’ “tentacles of disinformation, lies, and manipulation” euphemistically called “news” media. These “news “outlets’ pernicious influence rendered the American citizenry either indifferent to other people’s sufferings, due to their manipulative coverage, or radicalized by the persistent fascist propaganda promoted daily by these outlets. When this version of the seemingly ever-lasting Palestinian-Israeli conflict erupted- triggered by the deranged, homicidal butchering of Israeli civilians by Hamas- I was immediately stroked by the statements emerging from the upper echelon of the Israeli Zionist’s military and government structure: “We’ll treat them like human animals”, or something along those lines. As if the totality of the Palestinians were responsible for the homicidal rampage of Hamas. A day later, our President was there offering a helping hand and unconditional support. Quickly thereafter, they proceeded to what in my naivete I thought the most repulsive action a human can take toward another, to deprive someone of water. The Israeli government ordered suspending the Palestinians’ water supply. Little did I know, or could have imagined, the additional horror in the making for the Palestinians. But I dare to speculate, based on previous experiences, that this one was going to be a vengeful campaign of extermination or total expulsion of the Palestinians from their territory. Why such an inflammatory assertion? At the risk of being accused of the ultimate crime, anti-Semitism, my answer is a simple one: f a human being is deprived of water, food, medicine, housing, or territory, how is she/he supposed to survive? Systemically, for the past 5.5 months, the Palestinians have been deprived of each of those life-sustaining elements. You may want or not to call it genocide. Your choice. -A cynical thought comes to mind. If one were to leave one’s pet out in the yard, tied up, for more than 24 hours without water, food, or shelter, how long would it take for the neighbors to contact the local authority, charge, and prosecute the actor for animal cruelty.- In a world where one can no longer be surprised by the extent of human depravity and cruelty to one another, two actions I recently found repulsive. First, during “the Donald” administration when, per dictum, under the hateful animus against brown immigrants, his fascist enablers decided to put immigrant children in cages. The second, was when Israelis decided to cut the water supply to the Palestinians. In both cases, I was infuriated by the deafening silence in the media outlets, MSNBC, CNN, FOX, etc., and the lack of outrage for such beastly acts. Are we so accustomed to human suffering that we have lost the capacity for outrage? Or are we so indifferent as to only be concerned about humans who look like us or who live in our country? As a human and a parent, I was appalled by their decision to take children away from their parents, put them in cages like zoo animals, and, worst of all, relocate them away from them to locations unknown to the parents. But I guess in America we do have a tradition of engaging in those actions. Thus, no need to be outraged. All that a man has, especially a poor man, is his children. You take his children away; you may as well murder him. There’s no deeper, more devastating pain than the loss of a child. Thus, as moral individuals, at a very personal level, each one of us must empathize with the loss of another person’s child. Routinely people are horrified whenever they learn of an Amber alert or the abduction of a child. Our hearts ache for the disappearance of that child. “That could be my child”, any decent person would think and feel. However, that outrage does not seem to apply to certain types of children, and/or the media has no interest, other than selectively, in presenting the human side of the tragedies involving them. The untimely death of thousands of children less than 14 years old in Gaza, same as the forceful snatching of the “illegal” immigrant children from their parents’ arms, seemed not to deserve honest coverage, as a moral, unjustifiable loss, in the corrupt and dishonest American media. Even if the Palestinian victims are mentioned, is in passing, with sanitized footage, and in the context of the outrage of October 7th. Immediately both issues get intertwined, and the amount of death and destruction to the Palestinians is justified by the October 7th affront and the ultimate sacrilege act against the untouchables. There’s no equivalency in human life. Not one life is worth more than the other. Not one (1) October 7th death should equal 400 Palestinian lives. Instead of moral coverage and calls for cease-fire and diplomacy, even the so-called “progressive” outfits, display their hypocritical outcry whenever their financiers’ children are butchered by Hamas, or other evil actors while remaining mute to the extermination of Palestinian children. It reminded me of the mandated government rallies in the dictatorships of North Korea, Russia, or China, where the forced attendants compete with one another, to demonstrate which one can clap the hardest to show devotion to their Fuhrer. Under the law, there’s a principle of proportionality inherited from the Talion law. Proportionality means “retaliation” or “punishment in kind”. As Talion’s law evolved, ironically first abolished by Talmudic law, in modern society, we no longer seek retribution to take an eye for an eye. Instead, we believe that the punishment must match the crime. “The measure by which a man measure is the measure by which he will be measured”. In the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli conflict, however, the proportion of deaths has been so far 1400 +- Israelis, including 695 civilians, to 34,000+ plus and counting. A ratio of 1:24 and counting. Followed by hundreds of thousands displaced, thousands of orphans, millions without viable means of life, and so forth. You do the math. According to the Middle East Monitor, the massive Israeli bombing campaign of the Gaza territory, included 45,000 missiles and bombs weighing more than 65,000 tons, over the first 89 days of the conflict. To put it in perspective, they continued: “More bombs than the weight and power of 3 nuclear bombs dropped in Hiroshima” have been dropped in Gaza, including the particularly lethal to civilians “dumb bombs”. Even if the figures were exaggerated, the footage coming from the field renders truthful testimony to the large destruction. Satellite images have also indisputably documented more than 500 impact craters from 2000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs, just in the first month of the bombing campaign. I cannot let go of the idea of a total siege – of civilians- denying a population of water, food, medicine, or means of sanitation, in addition to bombing hospitals and schools. It seemed to me evident that Israelis’ actions became more than retribution, a vengeful military campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and to force the Palestinians’ exodus to the desert. From the beginning of this conflict, the upper echelon of the Israeli military openly promised to respond to Hamas’ butchery, in correspondence with the idea of justice in the Code of Hammurabi and the laws of their God in the Old Testament. For example: “Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the realm of the dead, for evil finds lodging among them”. Psalm 55:15. Or, “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock: Psalm 137:9. Translation: No child, woman, elderly, pet, school, or hospital will escape the wrath of a vindictive God when his “chosen” children have been harmed. Unfortunately for the Palestinian children, they do not belong to the same God. One may also wonder, if the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, influenced the conduct of the campaign: “There is nothing greater and more righteous than revenge in its place and time”. Now, we also hear a lot about the right of Israel to defend itself. All reasonable people would agree with such a statement. However, a couple of thoughts come to mind: -How is the Palestinians, a population under perpetual siege, living under constant supervision within the confinement of what has been described as “an open-air prison”, supposed to present “an existential threat” to Israel? Israel has an army of 176,500 active-duty personnel, the 11th largest on this planet, with an annual budget of $15,000,000,000, -$3.8 billion provided unconditionally by the US every year,- including 500 million for Israel’s missile defense system-, 3870 tanks, 680 aircraft, and 80-200 nuclear warheads. The answer to these two questions remains a mystery. The response of the Israelis to Hamas’ butchery, backed by the colonial European powers and the US, has been if not a surprise, eye-opening. Some European countries, such as Germany, even banned their population from any public pro-Palestinian manifestations. In a world of great ironies, one is that Israel, a country founded in 1948 on the premise of providing a home for the protection of Israelis against persecution, humiliation, suffering, and extermination by others, finds itself in a position of overwhelming supremacy and subjugating others to the conditions they were once freed. A second irony is that of America, “the beacon on the Hill”, the greatest nation ever on this earth; condoning, aiding, and abetting, such despicable acts against humanity as we have witnessed night after night in Aljazeera, French 24, BBC and other news outlets lesser corrupt than ours. The ultimate immoral, sophist’s lie to the American citizens is to want us to believe that all Gazans are Hamas, as if newborns, toddlers, pregnant women, disabled elderly with cancer, or those in dialysis, in Gaza were carrying AK47s during the bombings. “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock: Psalm 137:9. Long ago this conflict ceased to be about Hamas or the threats to Israel. It became a vengeful act a’ la Old Testament, perhaps driven by a deliberate, premeditated, immoral campaign of dehumanization, extermination, and forced exodus of a population. The opus Dei of a supremacist tribe exercising a superbly arrogant disregard for human life. The United Nations, invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter, called for a “humanitarian” ceasefire. Most countries of the world agreed to it. However, when the UN Security Council failed to agree to a ceasefire. One reason emerged: The US vetoed a long-lasting ceasefire. “Humanitarian” is the operative term. Most countries and citizens of the world do not condone the senseless loss of life. Reasonable people agree that there’s a difference between Justice and total Revenge. We, the American people recognize the difference. American society does a great job protecting even our pets, providing them with the care and protection that a moral, righteous society is supposed to offer to the frail and vulnerable. Perhaps the Palestinians should start learning to bark. One professor, in teaching the difference in meaning between accident and tragedy, explained: “If an airplane, filled with very exotic, expensive dogs falls out of the sky, that is an accidental loss. If an airplane carrying one passenger perishes, that’s a tragedy”. Perhaps the Palestinians must start learning to bark. Until that time, kudos to the defenders of human life and progress. P. R. Thompson