I'm very proud to say that this is commentary written by a close friend of mine (on her website):
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PLEA FROM AN AMERICAN MOTHER: "CAN WE PLEASE STOP KILLING THE CHILDREN?"
07/31/2006
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Yesterday morning on the news I watched a Lebanese man carry the lifeless body of a small girl, killed in the bombing in Qana, Lebanon. It reminded me of the scene after the Oklahoma City bombing, and the famous picture of the firefighter carrying the body of one year old Baylee Almon. The only differences between the current picture and that of little Baylee were that the man carrying the Lebanese child did not wear a uniform, and we do not know the name of the little girl. And there was one other difference. In the Oklahoma City bombing, Baylee's mother had to bury her child; in Qana, the child's mother will likely be buried with her child.
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To the children who are dead, it really doesn't matter who started the conflict, and what the larger issues are. Of course, Israel has a right to defend itself, but killing children should never be part of self-defense. Nor should Hezbollah be firing rockets that can kill Israeli children. This is the insanity of the still male-dominated human race, and it will not solve or help anything. Israel cannot fight its way to a peaceful coexistence with its neighbors, and Hezbollah does not help its cause by kidnapping soldiers. I condemn them both, but I reserve my strongest condemnation for the leaders of my own country, who could have stopped the deaths of these children with one phone call, but who instead said it was not time to push for a cease-fire because Israel had asked for and been given more time to destroy Hezbollah, and in my opinion, because the longer George W. Bush could use this war as anti-terrorism propaganda, the better for his approval ratings and the more likely a republican victory in November.
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I've been thinking about how much hypocrisy is involved in the President "protecting" the life of frozen embryos by refusing to sign the stem cell bill, and just a few days later refusing to lift a finger to save the lives of Lebanese children. This President finds an embryo that has no chance of experiencing birth to be more worthy of attention than hundreds of children, already born, who are blown up by Israeli planes using American bombs. This is beyond hypocrisy; this is murder and madness. This is evil.
If the men of this world, from George W. Bush to Ehud Olmert to Hassan Nasrallah, and all their armies, want to meet face to face, rifle to rifle, and fight to the death for what they believe in, I say let them. But cowards that they are, these leaders either look the other way like Bush, or order the use of rockets and bombs that keep them safe but fall indiscriminately, killing far more civilians than soldiers. If after all these millennia, men have not learned that they can never permanently settle disputes over boundaries and territories and regimes with the use of violence, then let them go somewhere where they alone suffer the consequences that come from their terrible weapons.
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http://www.outragedcitizen.com/*****************************************Endquote********************************************
My friend, the author, speaks eloquently for me (and, I'm sure, for so many others).
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