The hundreds of emails I have gotten from those defending Israel tend to: change the subject (look at how bad Syria is…Boko Haram is…etc.) Or: repeat the uncritical allegations of the IDF that Hamas is “hiding” among civilians. Where else the f– are they supposed to go NOT to ‘hide”? Gaza is all civilian! There is no battlefield! And the responses also try to establish false equivalencies — ie an Israeli father was killed by rockets.
Now try to really hear this: THOSE REFLEXES ARE THE PROBLEM. There may be merits logically/intellectually in each of these “positions” but faced with the systematic brutal murder of children, of families, the issue for me, the urgent, demanding, compelling, house-on-fire issue, is the collective HARDNESS OF HEART that these intellectual contortions reveal among us.
FIRST should be our empathic response — this can’t be done this way — this suffering must cease. The fact that we go FIRST to tortured logic says to me that we are SCARED TO SEE AND FEEL THE TRUTH. And that is a corruption of our hearts and souls.