Suffer the little children to come unto Me.
–Luke, 18:16
And suffer and come unto Him they have in Gaza today. Leila Abu Saba reports 20 children killed today. Here is the story of the liquidation of one entire family:
The Samouni family knew they were in danger. They had been calling the Red Cross for two days, they said, begging to be taken out of Zeitoun, a poor area in eastern Gaza City that is considered a stronghold of Hamas.
No rescuers came. Instead, Israeli soldiers entered their building late Sunday night and told them to evacuate to another building. They did. But at 6 a.m. on Monday, when a missile fired by an Israeli warplane struck the relatives’ house in which they had taken shelter, there was nowhere to run.
Eleven members of the extended Samouni family were killed and 26 wounded, according to witnesses and hospital officials, with five children age 4 and under among the dead.
Hundreds of members of the clan flooded in to Shifa Hospital, all from Zeitoun, many in shock. Masouda al-Samouni, 20, lost her mother-in-law, her husband and her 10-month-old son. She said she had been preparing food for the baby when the missile struck. “He died hungry,” she said.
Haaretz reports the elimination of the Samouni family along with two others:
Over the past 24 hours, two Palestinian families were killed. In the Shati refugee camp the parents and five children of the Abu Aisha family were killed. In the Zeitun neighborhood, the seven members of the Salmuni family were killed. In another incident, a pregnant Palestinian woman and her four children were killed.
How long, O Lord? How long must this go on? Sometimes I think if I could just get Israelis supporting this Operation to visualize the effect of an F-16 missile, or tank shell tearing into a tender body of a young Gazan child, I think perhaps they could begin to feel some of the revulsion I do. But I know it’s probably a hopeless exercise. Most Israelis and their supporters have innoculated themselves with arguments and certainties that prevent them from feeling such emotions of regret or uncertainty.
But just keep this ratio in mind: 100 to 1. One hundred Gazans for every Israeli killed. That one Israeli means everything. Those 100 Gazans mean nothing. That is the moral calculus of this nightmarish war. Phil Weiss reports a commentary written by one of his readers Jules Rabin in which the latter quotes the eulogy for Jewish serial murderer, Baruch Goldstein: “A million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” Is that what we have come to as Jews? To, in effect, accept the racist, genocidal words of a crazy settler rabbi?
Must we kill many children to ensure that our own can live? Is that part of our religious belief? I know that religion has little to do with Israel’s motivation in this war except in the propaganda sound bytes emanating from the mouths of Israeli politicians, but I can’t help but seeing this conflict as a reflection, in some way, of my religious values. I wish the generals and ministers would be thinking more of theirs.
This reporter is not fair and confuses his arguments. Israelis do feel for the families that are mourning their loved ones. We understand their pain and we blame Hamas! Hamas has sent thousands of missiles into Israel and it has been a miracle that more Israeli lives have not been lost. Are we expected not to react when the missiles are landing in OUR kindergartens and schools. We do not target civillians, Hamas does. We give warnings to innocents, Hamas does not, they relish in killing any Jew. We do not. Please dont bring up fringe extreme personalities and paint a picture that is simply not true. If we are looking for true tikun olam, we can not be biased or ignore reality.
Thank God for people like you, Phil Weiss, Jennifer Lowenstein, Glen Greenwald, and Gideon Levy! At least a few Jews willing to speak out against the unspeakable crimes being committed in our name. Unfortunately there are all too few radical dissenters.
I spent every waking hour since this entire fiasco started broiling with contemplation as to whether or not we are doing the right thing by embarking on this violent onslaught in Gaza.
But reading this post and seeing the images embedded in it, I can only shed tears.
Please, even though I’m an atheist (of Jewish descent), I beg to whatever voice would hear me:
Make this tragedy stop.
Just for the record, I don’t have my Oxford here, but as I remember, “suffer” was commonly used to mean “allow” or “permit” until the middle of the 19th century.
In older usage “passion” as in “The Passion of Christ” was employed for “suffering” in the meaning “experience moderate to extreme unpleasantness.”
@Crimson Ghost
Not sure how quoting the New Testament is speaking for the Jews! I read the book and there are plenty of slanderous things said in there about “us.”
@Marc: Neither Crimson Ghost nor anyone else in this thread quoted the New Testament.
@Richard, Marc above meant you, as your quote is from Luke. Still a pretty stupid comment by “Marc”
Ah, now I understand. Yes pretty inane.
@everyone
“At least a few Jews willing to speak out”
Crimson compliments Richard and others for their willingness to speak out. That is commendable, but speaking out by quoting the NT (top of the article). Not sure how that makes me the dumb one…
@ Marc: Do us all a favor & get off it. Making a federal case over this as you have is ridiculous.
More slanderous things said about Israel in the Bible:
Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey; they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain. Her prophets whitewash these deeds for them by false visions and lying divinations. They say, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says’-when the LORD has not spoken. The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice. (Ezekiel 22:27-29)
Thanks for this blog.
There are things that can be done to help bring aid to the children in need of humanitarian aid in Gaza, even with the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip getting worse by the day.
Mercy Corps is working to held bring aid to the many families who have been cut off from the outside world and are in need of food, electricity, water, and heat.
Mercy Corps, a non-profit humanitarian aid organization is actively trying to help Gazans affected by the recent violence.
With humanitarian needs growing and no end in sight to the crisis, Mercy Corps is calling for immediate humanitarian access to Gaza’s families. Only a trickle of goods is making it in, and it is not nearly enough to meet the needs of thousands. You can sign their petition by clicking here. This petition urges the U.S. government to push for aid to be allowed immediately.
And, you can help Mercy Corps get the humanitarian items they need once the border is open by donating to Mercy Corps’ Gaza Crisis Fund. Mercy Corps has a four-ton shipment of food that’s supposed to enter Gaza tomorrow, and they’re deploying additional aid workers to Jerusalem and Egypt to prepare to do more.
@Toby
1-The Jewish prophets were divinely inspired. You are accusing God of slander!
2-It says in the prayerbook for every Torah holiday “because of our sins we were exiled from our land.”
3-Jews don’t accept the NT as being divinely inspired.
This is a link to Mark Regev being interviewed by (I think) BBC’s Newsnight.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_mwwCk-Y1N0
No one should need any kind of spiritual guidance to know this is just plain wrong. If you can’t see that you need help from a qualified professional. There is NO amount of justification or obfuscation that is going to explain away this barbarity. You can’t ‘accidentally’ drive off rescuers for 3 days.