HUMAN RIGHTS: "Violence is the Common Foe"

Gaza, October 2023

A Report from Middle East Eye: "Palestinian women and girls in Israeli detention raped and sexually assaulted, UN experts say: The rapporteurs also condemned incidents of 'arbitrary executions' of women and children during Israel's war on Gaza."

There is no doubt that women and children are savagely targeted in seasons of war, violence and retribution.  On all sides.  On every side.  There is really only one HUMAN side.  And war is meant to humiliate and degrade.

And so it is that violence itself is our common foe.  So long as hatred thrives--amid occupation, apartheid, dispossession--violence too will feed on resentment and fear.  Is there any doubt that evil persists...where men transfigure rage into rape, and despair into destruction?  Such violence knows no sides, no holy and unholy, no chosen and not.  It is just violence.  And desecration.  Desecration in a kibbutz.  Desecration in Gaza.  Violence is our common foe.

An end to the violence in Gaza, an end to the occupation itself, an end to apartheid: this is where the healing begins; this is where the repair begins; this is where human rights are honored and cherished.  What the peoples of the Holy Land seek is communion and collaboration, democracy and coexistence.  Truth and reconciliation.  Truth and reconcilitiation.  Beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.  And there, there...is the possibility and promise of a world beyond horrific violence against women and children.