So in today's news, an Israeli soldier was gunned down while engaged in the unspeakable act of taking food to an elderly palestinian woman. Another was killed and two more wounded trying to come to his aid. And they were there, in Rafah, once again trying to retrieve the remains of other soldiers who were killed trying to retrieve the remains of yet more soldiers who were there to blow up bombs before they could be used on women and children in cafés and shopping malls. The search will continue, with the blessing of the IDF's chief rabbi, on Shabbat.
Have we had enough yet? No, of course not. Anyway, we'd much rather go and look at at photos of horrific behavior by American soldiers. For some reason, we're much more comfortable being indignant over that. For some reason, we reserve our outrage for that. For some reason, the media finds that it simply cannot get enough of that.
When I started this blog, it was in the hope that it would help me to make some sense out of the bloodbath being perpetrated against Israel and the inexplicable indifference and even approval with which most of the rest of the world was responding. It's not working. In fact, my attempts to keep on top of events and to interpret their implications are only turning me into a bigger bundle of nerves than I was before. Now, today, I see that my stats have also gone nuts on searches for "Nicholas Berg" alone, so I expect every blogger who's mentioned his name is experiencing a similar meaningless flood. Well, you'll find no videos here.
In the midst of all this, one of my few avenues of escape, the only current television show that I actually watch, is concluding its season with a story about bombs exploding people in Gaza. And somehow, in the interest of "balance" or "fairness" or God knows what, the erstwhile writers have managed to insert misinformation about the motivations of suicide bomber Rim Riyashi as well as adopt a version of Chris Hedges' disgusting "baiting" libel from his infamous "Gaza Diary." (And since President Bartlett used to freely refer to "Arafat" in previous episodes, I wonder why the chairman of the PA has suddenly become a fictitious character.) Yeah, well, it's only a TV show.
At any rate, this is a roundabout way of saying that I'm taking a mental health break of uncertain duration. I'm hopefully going to be spending more time in the garden and actually talking face-to-face with people and less time in front of this box. Maybe that will help. We'll see.
Shabbat Shalom.
