Our hearts can only go out for the Gazans, as news spread today that Israel is preparing an assault on Rafah, the southern-most of the five sections of the Gaza Strip. The Gazans have been driven by the Israelis southwards, and now feel penned in, cornered, no where to go.
"There is a sense of growing anxiety, growing panic in Rafah, because basically people have no idea where to go," said the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA.
The Gazans are among the most-persecuted people on earth. So far, the wrath of war has brought death to an estimate 27,000 of them. These are civilians. These are people who have to clear Israeli checkpoints to go from one section of Gaza to another. Women have been known to lose their newborns because they were held up at the checkpoints as they traveled from one section to another to get to the hospital.
Do you want to say Israel has to have those checkpoints -- that it is the only way to catch the Hamas who are posing as civilians? When you have a pregnant woman trying to get to the hospital, make a quick check and let her through.
The people forced to pass through these checkpoints are subjected to humiliating body searches.
Gazans have been known to have been executed without having a trial to determine if they were guilty.
They are starved. "Every single person in Gaza is now hungry, and people have just 1.5 to 2 liters of unsafe water per day to meet all their needs," said the charity ActionAid. Some, it said, have been reduced to eating grass.
What do we say -- Israel would never do these things; these things are being made up?
What do we say -- the Israelis are God's children; I support Israel?
Do we leave it at that? Or do we say, The Gazans are also God's children. God cares about everyone. All are his children.
Do we say, Wrong is wrong, and right is right. We stand with Israel, but this time we stand with Gaza.
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