Although I'm fortunate to have never been in an active war zone, I've seen many, many horrific images of war. I don't want to shy away from those realities because it is necessary to really understand the many (sometimes disturbing) facets of human nature & our existence.
The video of the screenshot above really hit me hard, because it instantly reminded me of my 3-year old son (one of the 2 reasons I haven't been posting here as often). However, instead of his brown eyes being filled with the joy & playfulness that a child should be experiencing, this poor boy's eyes are filled with traumatic, debilitating fear. It's a sickening & disheartening scene, and reveals the unfathomable insanity & horror of war.
The YouTube video is labeled as a Palestinian child, who was showing signs of shock, being comforted by a doctor after an Israeli attack in Rafah in southern Gaza. This took place not long after the ruthless Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. I have been wanting to write this post for awhile now, with this boy's terrified face haunting my mind.
I've always been generally anti-war particularly when it comes to wars of aggression, but having become a father has taken my disgust for humanity's brutality to new depths. Seeing what happens in wartime to innocent people, and especially children like this, is just gut-wrenching to the point of despair.
What in the hell are we doing to each other, our fellow human beings on this Earth?? ...and for what?!?
As I get older while now being a dad, the more I grow in pure wonder & amazement at this world we inhabit, while simultaneously being completely fed up by the fucking stupidity of people. War is one of those things that makes me realize we're still just idiotic apes bashing in each other's skulls, 2001: A Space Odyssey-style.
The Israeli/Palestinian situation has been fucked up for so long, that it's seems like a conflict with no end and no solution. I'm not going to rehash the recent history of the region, but I will say that it's a cycle of violence that will self-propagate indefinitely... unless some triumph of human spirit and resolve can work toward a better path for all the peoples involved.
It is an unbelievably tough situation- you can't let murderous terrorists invade towns full of innocent people and wreak havoc, but... goddamn, retaliating by bombing out whole civilian population centers & infrastructure is a sure way to continue the hatred & resentment in future generations. Fighting terrorism by terrorizing innocent people is such an obvious hypocrisy, but psychos can still justify it by dehumanizing people they deem as The Other", instead of seeing them as fellow humans and living, feeling, thinking beings.
I'm old enough to remember the days of Ariel Sharon while Dubya was President & the atrocities of that time. I cynically knew that this horrible event would be used as a pretext to eliminate the Palestinian presence altogether. As I've watched the catastrophic aftermath unfold with the rest of the world over the past several months, it has turned out to be true:
Of course, there are elements on all sides who want the conflicts throughout the world to continue, for various perverse reasons- war profiteering, consolidation of power, & what seems to be a driving force for so much of the bullshit... nationalistic / religious ideology.
People are so childish when it comes to nationality and religion, everyone thinking that their thinking is the only way to think... but they're really not thinking at all. That's the most depressing thing about the Middle Eastern conflict- Jews and Muslims hate each other because they believe a bunch of old stories & laws that are kinda the same, but different enough to get all tribal about it. Everyone believes that their religious ideas are correct. It's all mental constructs that people have mistaken for external reality. Then, you also have certain Christians basing their loyalties in this battle on their own beliefs about Jesus magically re-appearing. It's all so ridiculous, but countless people are murdering other people over it.
This, of course, is not a new phenomenon, nor is it only a feature of the Abrahamic religions. People have been murdering and brutalizing each other en masse all over the world, forever. This is something I always emphasize to those who lament at the current state of affairs. I've been listening to the awesome podcast, "Fall of Civilizations" during my commute to work, and it's a stark reminder about how fucking violent humans, & the societies they create, have always been.
There's so much fighting and hatred over imaginary lines in the desert sand, & whose self-righteous ideas about the world and the Infinite God are the best... it's all just insane, horrible shit. There is no foreseeable end to all the war & fighting in the world. That is the unfortunate, but inescapable fact. So, we just have to try to be a light in the realm of influence we have, to try to make the world a slightly better place.
