Sadly, dear reader, with the events of this past week it appears that we may be witnessing the collapse of what we call a civilized society.
As I write this, wanton sudden death, violence, and destruction in Northern Israel is increasing, spreading and threatening much more chaos, vengeance and bloodshed in neighboring territories. And as you can see on TV, these dark, evil deeds send their echoes throughout our world.
Logic and common sense are immediately tossed out the window when war raises its evil and ugly head.
Just with one sudden blow, everything changes. The thin veneer of polite society crumbles and the masses tend to mindlessly and blindly react with extreme emotion.
You could, I suppose, characterize war as societal mass psychosis. It is the total opposite of order, reason and sanity.
Stupid, totally destructive and crazy could be another fit description of warfare. So many years and decades of laboring, building, investing and working to put things together for an improved living environment are instantly shattered. And everyone suffers.
As you know, in the initial phase of this current horrible event, many innocent civilians were murdered, wounded and taken hostage.
Granted that Hamas had many legitimate grievances after enduring years and years of Israeli occupation and percussion. But slaughtering innocents does absolutely nothing to rectify this. On the contrary, it brings much more backlash and retribution on the Palestinian people as we are now viewing.
First there were hundreds. then there were thousands and if we don't collectively come to our senses, soon there may be millions of casualties!
I would say that for so-called religious societies located in the Middle East, the crossroads of religions, this barbaric action is a mockery and betrayal of true religion.
Hatred and vengeance are like rapidly spreading viruses. And they've just been re-released in a much stronger strain in the Middle East. So many people are affected and infected by choosing one side or the other as they add to this evil, destructive force.
And force begets force. Just look at the current blockade and bombardment of the open-air prison they call Gaza. It's being pounded, shelled and bombed into dust, ruble and oblivion. With over two million inhabitants: by the time you read these lines how many will still survive?
Gaza, as I stated, is a location populated with two million plus Palestinians. Hamas, on the other hand, is a military organization within Gaza composed of several thousand troops.
They are totally separate and distinct entities, even though many people group them into one category. Gaza is not Hamas and Hamas is not Gaza.
However, all receive equal collective invasion and punishment, innocent and guilty alike. All are being crushed by the Israeli military (the IDF).
It happens that Gaza's population is young. Over one million are just kids and a sizable percentage are women.
The whole world watches as these innocence’s are being cut off from fuel, food, electricity and especially from water. They are locked in, trapped and seemingly doomed!
They have nowhere to escape to. They have done nothing to deserve this but to be born Palestinian in Gaza.
World powers so far do nothing but stand by or mildly rebuke the IDF's hardline offensive.
The US and some European countries are sending in military aid in the form of warships to back up Israel. The US defense company, Boing, rushed in a flight of a thousand bombs for Israel. How's that for help?
So, at this point, over one million innocent children face an imminent death sentence unless someone stands up to take responsibility and bring order.
Children are our future and if this is how we treat (or mistreat) them, do we even have a future?
So, dear reader, let us hope and pray for the return of some semblance of sanity.
Who among us could look in the eyes of those children and not want to help them?
Let us hope there's a better future: some form of solution for this chaos infecting mankind.
And let's hope and pray for a future for the children of Gaza
Google more articles at danhughoconnor@gmail.com