It’s been a week since Hamas broke through the borders that separate Israel and Gaza.
They bulldozed through parts of the wall, and over others terrorists paraglided two at a time complete with machine guns, bombs, grenades and knives, intent on destroying not only the Jewish people themselves, but life and love and everything that is good and sacred in and about humans.
In the early hours of dawn they reached outpost Kibbutz, places that were created as the last bastions and beacons of hope and freedom. These collectives had dedicated their lives to serve peace and humanity, throwing their arms open to those across the Wall, welcoming them as co-workers and brothers. Their intent was to create a beautiful paradisial garden in the middle of the dessert, watered with communal and shared effort and love.
The Kibbutznicks dissuaded their children from joining the Israeli military when their time for service came, they denounced any form of division between people. Many often went into Gaza with medicines, food, supplies and volunteers, others had protested vociferously against the unjust treatment of the Palestinians people, spokespeople for a two-state solution.
Most of these unique and beautiful individuals are now dead. Killed, gun down, massacred in the most bestial way imaginable.
On the Sabbath that Hamas targeted the Kibbutz the SuperNova Music Festival was also well underway. More than three and a half thousand young revelers, many barely over twenty, were gathered to celebrate life, friendship and infinite freedom, the festival itself sandwiched a couple of miles between the targeted Kibbutz. It was a slaughter.
The terrorists seized the roads that the youth were using to escape with their cars, and by the hundreds they proceeded to gun them down with submachine guns on both sides as they fled. The guiltless didn't stand a chance
These are the headlines we have been reading for over a week. Accounts of the slaughter that are now emerging telling of atrocities too extreme to even contemplate. Severed heads dismembered, scattered burnt, women, girls, boys, grandmothers, torn apart, violated, daughters raped atop of the bodies of their families, their friends, their loved ones.
To make things worse these beasts took hundreds of hostages from the Kibbutz and from the Festival. Children as young as 4-5 months old, babies, girls, grandmothers, anyone they could get their hands on. They took these people into Gaza strip, hiding them well in concealed tunnels that run for miles and from where they will most certainly never emerge. I dare not contemplate nor imagine what atrocities these incident lambs will witness.
What have we become that we are worse than the nightmares we thought to create in books and movies? Who are we really when we dare not face the truth of our ugliness?
Today there is a mass exodus of over 1.1 million innocent Palestinian people. Where are these people meant to go? Israel has issued an ultimatum that Norther Gaza be evacuated, with hundreds of thousands of troops ready to march in at any moment.
The world holds its breath once again. If we continue like this we will surely suffocate.
The curser on my screen continues to flicker on an off, a digital heart-beat as I watch words unravel from under my fingertips.
A deep dark sinking feeling is growing from inside my belly, a bloated distended sense of something imminent. I pull a card and The Tower stares at me from my lap. Death follows suit along with the Chariot Reverse. The dank feeling creeps towards my mouth, a soundless groan.
‘This is what they want’ my groan morphs into words.
‘This is exactly what these failed men with massive god complexes want. The end of the World, or at least the World as we know it now. They want to tear it all down, reflecting what they feel about life themselves.’
And it occurs to me that when I had lost all conviction in life the one thing that gave me faith and hope, that brought me so much solace and comfort and led me through the darkness of my life, my choices and my deeds, is now the whole and solely one reason we are in this mess. Its all God’s fault.
In His name we cut down our neighbors fields, in His name we burn babies in theirs beds as parents watch. In His name the horrors that echo in the silence of the aftermath of the unspeakable madness that occurred that Sabbath morn.
I flicker through the internet, stopping here and there to collect more accounts of insanity. A dogs head blown off, a young girls body being paraded through Gaza with a bullet to her head. A now crimson container that held over 30 young bodies, still wearing their dancing clothes, all huddled in fear as grenades showered them, shredding limbs and heads from beautiful life filled bodies.
In one clip a young girl and a young boy hide huddled together under a tree. She is still very much in a psychedelic state, her eyes are gorgeous and her pupils so wide they could fit the Milky way. She is only 16, she could be my daughter. Both remain quiet and look up at the blue sky that surrounds them in the eerie silence that follows the aftermath of the unthinkable. Birds sing in the distance as the boy mouths 'Thank God we are still alive'. I dare not contemplate the horrors that escaped from Gaza and came to haunt their small fragile young hearts…. My children, my lovely young children who were meant to be safe in My One and Only Church. The Mind.
I contemplate all the times I have taken psychedelics, the beautiful wonderful awe filled places that I visited so often with such feelings of safety and belonging. All this innocent space now defiled and left in tatters, the veil of the dimensions being withdrawn from our reach. How could we spout empty promises of liberty and love ever again when all the while we lie? There is no safety here nor there nor anywhere, we are at the mercy of something so vile and so unimaginably grotesque it does not even have a name.
