Eyeless in Gaza

"I hear a loud explosion. My cab driver picks me up and we drive down the main street in Gaza City toward Erez. Suddenly, unexpectedly, there is a smoldering mass of wreckage in front of me, a car surrounded by boys picking at its still-hot exterior. Inside are four blackened, seared human shapes, crispy at the touch, faceless from the burns, charcoal, shreds of steaming cloth, a smell of barbecued human flesh, sirens in the distance. Burnt and vaporized metal looks like what you see in a science fiction movie. Burnt humans look like singed paper mache monsters whose pieces fall off at the hint of a breeze." CounterPunch, Nov. 10, 2006

I tremble at the shouts of the foe,
at the cries of the wicked,
for they bring down evil upon me.
They assail me with fury.

My heart is striken within me,
death's terror is on me,
trembline and fear fall upon me
and horror overwhelms me.

O that I had wings like a dove
to fly away and be at rest.
So I would escape far away
and take refuge in the desert.

"A boy of 14, who was wounded, said, 'We were asleep and we were awakened by shells hitting the house of my uncle next door. Then the windows to our houses were blasted away. We fled the house only to be hunted outside. The shells killed my mother and sister and wounded all my siblings.'"

These are the gifts that American Christians have bought for the people of Gaza. Expensive gifts. What are these Christians and Jews seeking but the will to political power and the domination of others in service of a fantasy that sucks the life out of those who believe in it? When will we see and believe God in the person of Christ, who was powerless and crucified, who died to set us free from the desire to have power and domination over others? When will Christians take on the cross that lies on the broken backs of our brothers and sisters in Gaza? This is the imitation of Christ to which we are called today - the suffering love for despised, betrayed and beaten human beings, living at the edges of our polished world, not to betray them again with a false objectivity, but to take passionate sides with the dehumanized.