Fury and Fear

This was supposed to be a different post.

I was supposed to write about my eight-hour (with frequent junk-food breaks) chemistry marathon, and the frequent aspersions that I cast on the legitimacy of my instructor's lineage. I was going to write about the joy of being in a piano bar for the first time in months, seeing Maggie Wirth, Luke Sandford, and assorted old friends at Rose's Turn and Marie's. I was going to make an amusing crack about The Lovely Wife(tm)'s squealing reaction to meeting the legendary Michael Dale.

But I can't.

Reading The NY Times's coverage of the Israeli Army catching and disarming a young Palestinian potential suicide bomber, my mind and emotions are in complete turmoil. Yes, this is not the first time Palestinian terrorists have recruited youngsters, but seeing the photos of a scared barely-teen wearing an explosive vest, then stripping to his underpants as armed soldiers crouch behind concrete bunkers, machine guns at the ready, has me in a complete whirlwind.

The easy emotion is fury. Rage at the heartless cowards who would send death on the body of a child, who would consider this act a thing of religious beauty if it had succeeded. There's plenty of that, but there's more. It's easy to hate a faceless enemy. But this is a young boy. Imagine being a soldier, in full uniform and gear, having to aim a machine gun at someone half your age, preparing to make the moral decision to pull the trigger if needed. The sheer "what the @#!! is WRONG with this world?!" factor.

My regular political readings on Israel range from the extreme right to the extreme left. I consider myself an "intellectually honest liberal Zionist," if you must have a label on me, but I can't see how anybody doesn't read something like this and scream in anguish. I don't care where your political sympathies lie; a child was used as a weapon, and someone had to be ready to kill him for it. What the @#!! is wrong with this world?