Saturday, January 17, 2009

What's Happening While We Prepare for the Inauguration?


(Video: Israel's Channel 10, 2009.01.16)
For English subtitles, click the triangle in the lower-right corner
and select the middle of the three icons that pop up.

From Reuters:
Israeli television broadcast desperate cries for help from a Palestinian doctor on Friday after his children were killed in an Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip and troops later helped surviving members of the family.

The telephone calls created extraordinary scenes during evening news broadcasts, as the doctor, a Hebrew-speaking physician who spoke regularly on Israeli television, said three of his children were killed in a tank strike and others were wounded.
h/t Pax Pac

If you pay taxes in the United States, you paid for the explosives that killed Dr. Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish's children.

We can argue all we like about who started what -- the Israelis and the Arabs have been killing each other for the love of God* for millennia -- but a realistic appraisal is that both sides share responsibility for the conflict. Each side is responsible for their actions, and there are innocents (on both sides of the border / conflict) caught in the middle. We who pay for the weapons bear some of the responsibility.

America's image overseas is formed, in part, by support for Israel. In a very real way, to much of the world, it is America who is killing children in Gaza.