I survey the landscape of death that now consumes the middle East and North Africa. Protests and killings have become a fact of life in Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya, Kuwait, Somalia, Morocco and Jordan. We have been numbed to the death tolls in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pakistan has become the most recent focus of an inevitable death march.
I was born in 1952. Where has death by intention, through wars and armed conflicts taken this world since I entered it? From the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the Korean Peninsula, to Southeast Asia and Sudan we have seen battles where some estimate of casualties in each of these areas of the world approaches or exceeds 1,000,000. The Iran-Iraq war may also have the dubious honor of joining the one million plus club.
Genocides have decimated populations in Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan, Guatemala, Iraq, Burundi, Sri Lanka, Equatorial Guinea, East Timor, Argentina, China and Zanzibar. Drug wars have eradicated thousands in Mexico.
Israel and its neighbors have been in a continual struggle since the time of my birth. Short and violent conflicts have dotted the history of this region. Death is always seemingly but waiting at the doorstep.
In my lifetime I have only viewed paintings of our world in the blood red of death by numbers. I wonder if I will ever see a canvas filled with the colors of peace.
2 comments:
Syria, in an effort to divert the world's attention to the atrocities of their dictator, Dr. Assad, have sought to make Israel the reason why their citizens are being shot at. What an OUTRAGE !! But not an outrage to the anti-Semites and Israel-haters who have looked to blame the Palestinian cause as the reason why Arab autocrats mistreat their own citizens and then shoot them with guns when the have the audacity to object. I will be at in Washington this Sunday to hear Prs. Obama in person. I shall report back on what he says about this issue. (Why does the world always blame Jews for their own problems?)
Clearly, the passion for this cause drives you.
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