These are the things I can do without

The children go to sleep listening to the sound of bombs." ~mother of wounded child in Gaza

Until two days ago, I haven't been able to even look at the news in the latest round of the endless fight between Israel and Palestine. It's too heart shattering. I finally broke down and watched Al Jazeera live for the first time for about 20 minutes the other night. Who knew it would be a good news station? Reminded me of CNN when it first started. More or less straight news with little editorializing.

I saw video footage of the bomb damage. In Israel, I saw a hole in a building about half as small as the hole in the ground pictured here. No one was injured or killed.

Then they showed the damage caused by an Israeli bomb. It looked exactly like this:

I get the whole right of defense argument, but ye gods, this just strikes me as leveling your neighbor's entire house because his kid broke your window with a BB gun. The internet tells me the Israeli bombs have struck over 1,600 times in a city about twice the size of Washington D.C.

And then there's our country's response to this horror, summed up rather perfectly in this graphic making the rounds.

So much for blessed be the peacemakers. I'm at the point where I want to shout so loud the whole world could hear: EVERYBODY! EVERYWHERE! Stop. Dropping. Bombs. Please.

I've been seeing conflicting reports all afternoon about a pending ceasefire. I hope it happens, but have no hope it will end the needless deaths unless they can figure out how to share the land. It all seems so insane to me. It always has. For what the world spends on killing, (or threatening to kill), each other we could house, clothe and feed the entire world. Which I suspect is what most of the world's population would prefer. If not for the power mad leaders and crazy theocrats of all stripes, we could have it. [photos via Sean Paul Kelley]