I Don't Blog About Palestine.

Right. Infer what the title says. I don't blog about the land and the people on it. I don't. I don't have anything good to say about irreconcilable differences between people. I have no helpful things to say about the violence. I am not, for a lot of reasons, unaware of or opposed to the rationale of Zionism.

But I've got the pictures of dead Palestinian babies on my Twitter feed. And I know these aren't the first. My human sensibility just doesn't forget embargoes that prevent the flow of food, water and medicine,  and I don't have a way to talk about the warning to the people of Gaza that they should evacuate an area without wondering--to where? Because if the bomb launchers of Hamas are using old people and babies as their human shields, they, able-bodied, can steal away and leave those people, vulnerable.  And still human. Not shields, not things, at all. And less able to go anywhere. At all.

And when I see the roll of the dead, their names and ages, I wonder about them. Because they were people.

There needs to be a place called Palestine. There needs to be a place for these people to lead independent lives. I can't say anything for the dead, but for the living--who will speak for them if they don't have a land and a government and a right? They need a sovereignty recognized by nations so that this assault is understood as war.  I don't know how both sides are to accept this, but recognizing Israel is the only path Palestinians have to getting to the question of where the borders are and where their sovereignty can begin. Otherwise Israel makes its borders up as it goes.

I don't know what even makes that happen. I only know that this air assault on Gaza makes nothing over. It is more than enough. It's punishing, and it is punishing to even innocents. It is a rule of fear, and my gut feeling is it can't be even a little right.