Just moments before, I sat reading what is the definative new beginings of an all out War in the Middle East. Rage boiled in my blood and sorrow flooded throughout my body as I read what I know to be blatent propaganda diseminated by the NY Times - and thought about the results that will ensue.

It hurts to see how many people seek their own blind comfort over the truth of things that are going on in the world. People actively turn away from the pain of others. 'If we don't admit there is a problem then it really doesn't exist'. This is how evil grows and spreads - such activity pumps it full of life. We can't make such people wake up to reality - they've already denied it. But some do care. Some do what to know.

As the Cassiopaean's have said:

Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in terms of their interaction with the creation. Some people think that the world exists for them to overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals, the worlds will cease. They will become exactly what they give to life. They will become merely a dream in the 'past.' People who pay strict attention to objective reality right and left, become the reality of the 'Future.'

The apathetic are fodder in this worldwide psycological war. They ignore - living in a fantasy that hides the actions of those who wish to dominate and overcome the world. They pretend the world others are suffering through doesn't exist, and thus allowing the reign of the US and Israel to grip the entire world. This manipulative and pathocratic group of blood thirsting Nazis planned and orcastated the events that are coming to pass. Israel was long prepared to invade the Gaza strip before any kidnapping. You can bet the same will hold true about this attack on Lebanon.

And with all of Israel's destruction in Lebanon - the genocide being commited in Palestine is continued to being ignored. Any attention they did get in the past weeks will now be removed in favor of bigger things that Israel has drummed up in Lebanon. The thing about this is, it will allow Israel to lay a complete siege on the Palestinians with no one looking. Think about what Israel has been able to do in the past when attention was placed on them. The bombing of Lebanon's people and infastructure doesn't seem to make any sense - until you look at Israel's intentions and efforts of the past. They are and have been working for the complete genocide of the Palistinian people.

Last night I read, A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer, a true account of unthinkable abuse that reaches the darkest depths of true evil. It reminded me of our current world situation.

Dave Pelzer writes:

I timidly watched Mother as she turned the cold water tap in the bathtub fully open. I thought it was odd that she forgot to turn on the hot water as well. As the tub began to fill with cold water, Mother tore off my clothes and ordered me to get in the tub. I got into the tub and laid down. A cold fear raced thoughout my body. "Lower!" Mother yelled. "Put your face in the water like this!" She then bent over, grabbed my neck with both hands and shoved my head under the water. Intictively, I thrashed and kicked, trying to desperately to force my head above water so I could breathe. Her grip was too strong. Under the water I opened my eyes. I could see bubbles escape my mouth and float to the surface as I tried to shout. I tried to thrust my head from side to side as I saw the bubbles becoming smaller and smaller. I began to feel weak. In frantic effort I reached up and grabbed her shoulders. My fingers must have dug into her because Mother let go. She looked down on me, trying to get her breath. "Now keep your head below the water, or next time it will be longer!"

I submerged my head, keeping my nostrils barely above the surface of the water. I felt like an alligator in a swamp. When Mother left the bathroom her plan became more clear to me. As I laid stretched out in the tub, the water became unbearably cold. It was as thoughI was in a refrigerator. I was too frightened of Mother to move, so I kept my head under the surface as ordered.

(...)

Before the family sat down for dinner, Mother came into the bathroom and yelled at me, telling me to get out of the bathtub and put on my clothes. I responded immediately, grabbing a towe to dry myself. "Oh no!" she screamed. "Put your clothes on the way you are!" Without hesitating, I obeyed her command. My clothes were soaked as I ran downstairs to sit in the backyard as instructed. The sun had begun to set, but half the yard was still in direct sunlight. I tried to sit in the sunny area, but Mother ordered me me into the shade. In the corner of the backyard, while sitting in the P.O.W. position, I shivered. I wanted only a few seconds of heat, but with every passing minute my chances of drying off were becoming less and less. From the upstairs window I could hear the sound of "the family" passing dishes full of food to each other. Once in a while, a burst of laughter would escape through the window. Since Father was home, I knew whatever Mother had cooked was good. I wanted to turn my head and look up to see them eating, but I didn't dare. I lived in a different world. I didn't even deserve a glance at the good life.

The bathtub treatment soon became routine.

(...)

During the last week in October, it was tradition at Mother's house for the boys to carve designs on the pumpkins. I had been denied this privilage since I was seven or eight years old. When the night came to carve the pumpkins, Mother filled the tub just as soon as I finished my chores. Again she warned me about keeping my head under the water. Then she stormed out of the bathroom, turning the light out as she went. Looking to my left, I could see through the small bathroom window that night was begining to fall. I passed the time by counting to myself. I started at one and stopped at one thousand. Then I started over. As the hours passed , I could feel the water slowly draining away. As the water drained, my body became colder and colder. I cupped my hands between my legs and laid the length of my body against the right side of the bathtub. I could hear the sounds of Stan's Halloween record that Mother had bought for him several years before. Ghosts and ghouls howled, and doors creaked open. After the boys had carved their pumpkins, I could hear Mother in her soothing voice telling them a scary story. The more I heard the more I hated each and every one of them. It was bad enough waiting like a dog out in the backyard on the rocks while they enjoyed dinner, but to lay in the cold bathtub, shivering to keep warm while they ate popcorn and listened to Mother's tales made me want to scream.

Mother's tone of voice that night remined me of the kind Mommy I had loved so many years ago. Now, even the boys refused to acknowledge my presence in the house. I meant less to them than the spirits that howled from Stan's record.

I can only imagine the hate, saddness and humiliation that this boy endured as his brothers and father looked away as his mother starved, burned, stabbed and brutilized him. The isolation and severe disconnect of any love from all people around him is something truely difficult to comprehend. How could nieghbors, relatives, and his own family turn their back when a human being is in such pain? What will become of the world if we continue to deny the terror of humanity in favor of superficial comforts? It will become a dream of the past. But for those who want a future, we must pay attention. We must see the world as it is and expose the truth. We must see that the pain of David the abused child is the same that the Palistinians are experiencing - and Americans are the family that ignores the brutality their parents inflict. However, we are not children and so we have a responsibility. The Palistinians are suffering and America is allowing it.

Signs Editorial:

Dispatch from Gaza: We Suffer Together

Testimony recorded by Silvia Cattori on July 14, 2006

Our friend Swiss journalist Silvia Cattori is in Palestine reporting on the criminal actions of the Israeli army in Gaza. She sent us this report.

The testimony of this Palestinian living in the north of Gaza gives an idea of the way Palestinians are reacting to the events that are hitting them.

Silvia Cattori: What is the mental state of the population after weeks of bombings and deprivations?

A: We have suffered. We are in a dramatic situation. The Israeli army has entered up to Saladine Street; the military has cut Gaza in two: it is like it was before. They have installed a base. There are a dozen tanks with bulldozers. They are in the process of razing land, greenhouses; they are destroying all that remains of life. For two weeks, the F-16s and the drones bomb and destroy our homes. There are hundreds of dead and badly wounded.

S.C.: Is it blind bombing of everything as opposed to bombing that is targeting "terrorists"?

A: The day before yesterday, for example, the Israelis attacked a house, assassinating an entire family, under the pretext that it sheltered Mohamed Daif, the head of those firing the Qassam rockets. However, it wasn't true. Unfortunately, an entire family, a father, a mother, five daughters and two sons lost their lives.

S.C.: Having cut Gaza in two, are the soldiers threatening the population from this position?

A: Yes, their tanks, posted in the centre of the Gaza Strip, between Del Balla and Kahn Younes, are currently firing rockets - just like in the north of Gaza.

S.C.: Are the tanks moving?

A: No, the Israeli soldiers are chicken; they are afraid of being attacked by the resistance.

S.C.: Do the members of the Hamas Government still show themselves on the street?

A: We are seeing no one. They are all on the list of the next assassinations. They only come out when they have a rendez-vous, but it is always done with great secrecy.

S.C.: During the two weeks of the bombings that have left you without water,
without electricity, without food, have you been afraid for your family?

A: The first attack by the Israeli planes at Betlaya was near my house. It was there that there were a large number of wounded and killed. The children were in a panic. Fearing that Israel would attack our neighbourhood, we left our house to move away from the zone. Now, we have returned home.

S.C.: How do people put up with living in such a horrible situation? Do theywant you to free the captured soldier as quickly as possible to end Israel's pretext to continue the collective punishment?

A: The majority of the Palestinians support the position of the resistance,
the position that the soldier won't be released until Israel releases 1000 of the weakest prisoners they hold, women and children. Prisoners that are living - contrary to the Israeli propaganda film shown recently on television in the west that we have heard about - under inhuman conditions. This film didn't talk about the torture of the prisoners, didn't show prisoners being held like beasts in tents, plagued by insects and disease, didn't say that most of the prisoners can
only see their families once every six months. [1]

S.C.: Has the accord signed between Fatah and Hamas two weeks ago taken affect?

A: They were speaking of an entente. But on the ground, it is the contrary. The Fatah militia continues their assassinations, so the Palestinians continue to be threatened by two enemies: that is, by Israel and by those Palestinians who are collaborating with the occupier in order to destablize Hamas. The Israeli attacks actually prevented a civil war between Palestinians. At this moment, each Palestinian, no matter what party, feels above all like a target of Israeli shooting.

S.C.: Can even the father of a family like you, who has nothing to do with the resistance, be hit by what they call a targeted assassination?

A: You must know that our crime is being Palestinian, to belong to Palestine. If I find myself by chance in the same taxi as someone that an Israeli plane wants to assassinate, I can be killed.

S.C.: For that you will have to face more and more aggression? The Israeli army has announced that Operation Summer Rain will last as long as necessary.

A: You know that Israel is government by lunatics at this moment. They are narrow-minded politicians. They have unleashed war in Gaza, and, as of two days, they have declared war on Lebanon. Maybe that will give us a bit of a break because the pressure is only longer only concentrated on us.

S.C.: One thing that is worrisome in any situation of war is the trauma undergone by the children. Are they still normal after all they have had to endure?

A: The other day I wanted to take my kids to the sea. My three-year-old daughter started to cry. She said, "No, Daddy, I never want to go to the beach again." I asked her why. "I don't want to die." I said, "OK, if you don't want to die, I'll go with your brothers and sisters." "You neither. No one should go to the beach," she cried. You can see how a three-year old child reacts after seeing on television the family massacred on the beach. If I talk about the beach, she cries.

S.C.: Were the victims these last months people like you, people who are not armed, who have no protection, and who do not harm anyone? A: Almost all of the victims are civilians. However, the Israeli army justifies the bombings of families who are eating or sleeping saying that there are fighters among them. There are members of the resistance, but they aren't among these victims. Everyone in Palestine, with the exception of the collaborators, is a resistor in spirit.

S.C.: With such a catastrophic situation, one that is ongoing, in what kind of mental state are you?

A: We continue to live in spite of the unlivable situation Israel imposes upon us. We are accustomed to living this life that isn't a life. There is no food, there is only brackish water, there is no electricity. This is our life. But it is better than living a life were we crush ourselves.

SC.: How will you be able to rebuild yet again the entire infrastructure that the Israel bombing is destroying? Do you think they can be put back in action quickly?

A: The Israelis will never leave standing anything we build. Each time that we repair the transformer in the north or the south of Gaza, they bomb it again. We have yet to hear any protests from the Arab or European states. Some states have condemned the Israeli operations, but their condemnations are too weak. It isn't enough to make Israel back off. From the moment that Europe cut off our aid, it meant they have been collaborating with Israel in its collective punishment, to starve us and to make us suffer more.

S.C.: Do you have the impression that the journalists who obtained permission to enter Gaza have been correctly informing the world on the suffering you are undergoing?

A: It is always the same thing, whether they come or not. I would have been very happy it if had been you who had gotten permission to come, because I am certain you would have reported with honesty. We follow the news. It is always a superficial and Israeli version of things that is shown. The suffering of the people, our pain, all those at CNN, Fox News, the BBS, have no idea what it is. They lie in our faces. We watch their lies live.

S.C.: Don't you think that those journalists that ignore your reality and repeat the same things are led into error by the Palestinian chauffeurs and guides accompanying and supervising them and informing them in a biased way?

A: All they have to do is what you do, go out into the street and get people to talk. It's not by them all staying in the same five star hotels in Gaza that they will be able to find the truth.

S.C.: They don't go out into the streets?

A: Even when they go, they conform to the information given by Israeli press
officers or the supervision of their agencies. At the end of the day, they say what their Jerusalem or other office tells them to say and don't say what they have been told not to say. You're a journalist; you should know how it works.

S.C.: I wasn't able to enter Gaza this time and can't report on what is happening to you. It makes me all the more sad because I have remained very attached to the place and I knew so many Palestinians who were suffering and two members of the ISM as well as the London journalist James Miller - who wanted to report about your suffering and the assassination of children - who were killed in 2003 by the Israeli army.

A: They won't let you in because you are too honest. Israel well knows that you do not look at our reality in the same way as the journalists who generally come here. If you were seeing everything through the eyes of Israeli propaganda, you could have entered Gaza....

S.C. I was interrogated by the Israel secret service Sabak on my arrival at Ben Gurion airport. Won't I put any Palestinian I meet into danger if these services, which have their spies on every Palestinian street, are watching me now?

A: You can't put anyone in danger. Every Palestinian is in danger. At any moment, the drone that is flying overhead can strike me. Don't let yourself be intimidated. Do you know why they intimidated you when you arrived and why they follow you? Because those people are afraid of you?

S.C.: Afraid of me? Are you joking?

A: All of these soldiers and spies that make up the most formidable army in the world, in spite of their power, are afraid of anyone who uses his words...to speak the truth. They are afraid of those who speak the truth. They are weak people. We can win this fight even though our means are nothing compared to theirs, because we have the will and the courage that they don't have.

S.C.: What I have seen since I started traveling through the West Bank is without a doubt less atrocious than what is happening in Gaza, but, believe me, it is already too much to support. I cried when I saw a group of people being held like animals in an enclosed space at the checkpoint in Bethlehem. I cried when I arrived in Naplouse and I saw the crowd of silent people who were waiting for the soldiers to condescend to let them leave. You Palestinians seem so strong in the face of all of these humiliations they impose. Do you cry sometimes?

A: Of course I cry. I often cry now when I see all of these families who have been assassinated. A quarter of the victims are children.

S.C.: Does your wife cry, too?

A: Yes, often. Everywhere around, here in Gaza, or over there in the West Bank, are people struck by misfortune that breaks your heart. We are one people and we are suffering together. We are one unique body.

[1] It may be the film recently shown by the television network Arte. P.S.:
This interview was conducted via internet and telephone. Translated by Signs of the Times