NO SAFE PLACE

A wounded pregnant woman crawls from her car seeking help. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide,  like wooden ducks all in line at a shooting gallery.

On a normal weekday, people in a small city walk near the shopping mall, hear the gunshots and dive for cover, peeking around to see who is shooting, from where, while on the sidewalk innocuous young man in a yellow security vest stands firing randomly, at everyone.

The security guard was closing up the mall after the last customers had gone. He thought he was alone,  ready to go home when he was struck in the head with an axe. The attacker was a man he knew, chatted with, a local butcher who joked with customers at the meat market in the Mall.

Then, at a holiday celebration, in a nature park, to the background of laughter, music and dancing, all turned to horrifying ear-shattering screams and gunfire, the clash of knives, rape, dismembering and vicious murder, expanding to nearby homes and villages to end the lives of more than 1200 human beings of all ages.  Moreover,  in a few short hours, one early morning, hundreds of elderly, adults, children, even babies were taken hostages, dragged away, hidden and abused, some unto death. Even foreign workers were not spared. No one is sure how many of the taken survived in captivity October 7th and even some who did are now likely dead. This was and is Israel's 2023 Holocaust.

Yes, we are Jewish... but who decided that this is a crime worthy of death.  and not only within Israel? The excuse in the Middle East:  because the Brits gave the desolate Holocaust survivors a place in their under-populated mandate of Palestine? If that is so, why attack the Jews in every other land on the planet? It's an ancient hatred and it is found in every corner of the world. There is no logic. The war that began hundreds of years ago still rages today.

Unfortunately, the anti-Israel hatred infects most countries and they condemn Israel for defending itself, turning its citizens  into pariahs in their own land, a land that once and again is their only land. Yet, interestingly, even now, as the nations of the world watch and condemn Israel, their own streets are filling with terrorists. If Israel were to submit, would that end the slaughter and bring peace to the world, to Europe and to the US???  Really??