Intentional and Unintentional Acts...

 and seeing Israel in every news story today..., or

Now that the sun has risen, the destruction is incredibly clear.

Intentional acts are ones that would not have happened without will.  The line above is pulled from newspaper accounts we are waking up to this morning about the Sri Lankan -bound ship that smashed into a bridge abutment in Maryland in the middle of the night, collapsing the structure with the magnificent footage captured on camera...

(Reminds me of the Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007, which was caused after construction crews had been digging out sand at the foundations in building Target Field.  Adding a bit of insider construction knowledge here... the union guys talk.)

No word yet on how many were killed in vehicles that might have been crossing the bridge when it went down.

Such a sad story, but somehow acceptable in the way stories of natural diasters that nobody saw coming or could have prevented are sad but not especially tragic.

What Israel is doing to Palestine in the name of defense is, by contrast, an intentional act. Perhaps they do not mean to kill so many unarmed women, children and elders but the act of dropping bombs to destroy Gaza is an intentional act with the defenseless civilians seen as collateral.

Nobody much is buying the media push -- by Jewish-American supporters of Israel here in the media too -- that the civilian  deaths are all on Hamas.

You can't pretend that there was no way for military forces to find those tunnel entrances -- where Hamas and Israel's hostages are thought to have escaped with their lives after the Oct. 7 attacks -- without bombing the civilian populations that surround them.  

David Brooks -- whose son went to fight in the Israeli Defense Forces back when the United States was warring for democracy in Iraq and Afhganistan, and a man who has since allegedly flirted with converting to Christianity himself -- asked over the weekend:  "What would the world do to have Israel defend itself??" as though he wore a naive to military strategy and how the world works, even at his advanced age.

The paper did not print my comment, but the answer -- of course -- has been obvious since Day 1:  the IDF soldiers need to get into those tunnels, no matter the potential high loss of IDF military lives, and pursue their enemies:  the Hamas fighters thought to have taken their loved ones as hostage.

Sure it would be deadly, much like the US military suffered a great loss of life in taking a stinking sulfurous island in the middle of the Pacific during WWII that was thought to be necessary as a strategic landing ship on the island chains outside of the Japanese mainland the United States was thinking we would have to invade before ending the war.

But that's how you win a war.  Sacrifice soldiers' lives in the fight against the enemy.  (see the current grueling gameplan in Ukraine, before they even began attacking Russia proper with US supplied weapons.  Imo, we should have stopped arming the little country when they stopped trying to defend themselves and began a Russian offensive...)

Here's the second line that made me think that Israel's intentional acts in flattening Gaza (even as they try to pretend "Hamas Did That!" and flee from accountablity for the high ration of the lost civilian lives of Palestinians compared to Israelis) will not be forgotten any time soon:

International surveys have shown that societies tolerate violence against people they perceive as the worst offenders, including terrorists, serial killers and perpetrators of violent crimes against children.

That one came from a story this morning about how the apprehended terrorists -- who allegedly attacked the civilian crowd in Russia gathered to hear the band Piknik -- showed up in Court with signs they had been allegedly tortured by Russian police during interrogation.

But read that last line and consider...

As more and more pictures of children suffering in Gaza by Israel's intentional acts come to light this summer, as more and more brave Western journalists infiltrate the war zone and reveal the alleged crimes against humanity, Israel's defense of protecting themselves -- needing to kill all those unarmed and defenseless little ones-- fall on false ears.

This is not time when I think more diversity in American media might have been helpful.  You see, the men and women who support Israel and so fear for her safety in the world are blinded to the consequences of intentional actions.  The world is not anti-Semitic;  the world as a whole simply is sickened by those claiming self-defense in killing vulnerable children.  Always has, always will...

Look at who is the number one known victim of the Holocaust:  Anne Frank, a civilian Jewish child who has become the posterboard face of innocence taken much too soon in wartime.  We don't see her as a Jew so much, but those school children in America mandated to read the book are supposed to see her as a child:  a relatable human being passing from puberty into a mature womanhood she would never see.

 Is Humanity Out of Fashion? ... another non-war-related headline today reads...

 Know Your Enemy is the subtext of another news story recapping an episode of a television show... (how it ever became "news" to summarize late-night comics and tv episodes in respected national newspapers is another bizarre story, owing to the "rules changes" that come into the journalism industry during the digitalization of the news, after (mostly) young (mostly) men -- untrained in the profession/trade -- decided to assemble as activist-reporters and collaborate during the passage of Obamacare to get the historic legislation pass; now we every reporter seems to insert themselves into news stories and we know the political leaning and yearnings of most of them:  they are not neutral reporters so much as "fighters for democracy!" who think they can save the country by spinning news stories:  how's that working out for the country overall, Mr. Klein? Mr. Krugman? et al?) 

No One is Above the Law ... another non-related editorial headline reads, but one wonders if the State of Israel will ever be held accountable for the acts of her soldiers in wartime, where killing civilians -- especially children, even children of the "enemy" -- has always been frowned on by fighting men...

I cannot find the final line -- buried in a news story somewhere today -- that was also not about Israel, but was about a party questioning their own role in helping participate in armed attacks that kill unarmed civilians who are no immediate threat to soldiers.  But this one comes close, and is a good reason why America should start taking steps today to disassociate from Israel before more and more pictures of the Gaza destruction come out:

“Should we kill them? We should. And we will,” ...“But it’s more important to kill everyone involved” in the attack. “All of them: those who paid, those who sympathized, those who helped.”

 If only our allies had listened to we wiser minds, and we had some "non cheerleaders" being honest about the attitudes toward people whose actions kill children, even during wartime.

The saddest thing is:  the IDF has only rescued about 3 hostages since this offensive war on Gaza began... Hamas is still safely ensconsced in the tunnels the IDF is pretty much afraid to infiltrate in great numbers -- everyone is soldier at one time in Israel, and they fear the loss of their own soldiers' lives too much to truly risk pursuing armed fighters it seem; much easier to drop bombs on civilians from above and hope for a war of attrition, starving out civilians until other countries take them in, it seems... which is not likely to happenn as Israeli political leaders -- and "loose lips" Jared Kushner are making no bones about the master plan to clear the population so the "waterfront property" of Judea and Samaria can be claimed by Israel as her own, "as God promised" the American Evangelical community eager to bring on End Times would tell you...  (Beware all those religions that take the Old Testament Torah/New Testament literally)

There's no easy fix now.  There's no amount of money that will restore life to babies...  There's no "do over", no waking up from the nightmare.

Israel has done this, with American support, the world will say this summer. And we did. via our intentional acts.

Now that the sun has risen, the destruction is incredibly clear.