For frightened parents, children and grandparents living in the Gaza strip ongoing terror now pervades and hounds its millions of citizens.
At night, the destruction is personal, up close and graphic, seen in the tiny forms of babies, toddlers and elderly folk lying sprawled and dead in the public roads of old Palestine, permanent and deeply mourned refugees from the winds of politics, history and the savagery with which drugged terrorists attempt to destroy all Israel, ancient and modern.
Next door and just down the road, Israeli hands are wrung in sorrow as the Kaddish prayers of mourning and leave-taking float among the smoke of battle – chanting for war-dead from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem across the land from Dan to Beersheba. And worse is to come.
A people backed into what they perceive as a wall are likely to do either fighting or fleeing, but since the Palestinian civilians have no open door to run anywhere, their anger rises amidst fallout from current shelling and the massive attack which Israel now must mount in some form, so no Israeli ever again dies at the hands of his near neighbor. History affirms this.
In long-gone days when war and grief were, if anything, greater than the earth sees now, Gaius Julius, a great Roman general who became Rome’s first Caesar, led legions driving across ancient Gaul to attack a huge hill-fortress built by a Gallic tribal confederation under the leadership of Vercingetorix, their general.
The memory of a massive slaughter which resulted is made worse by the decision of the Gauls to send their women and children out the massive doors of their fort, thinking to spare them the dying which was to come. But to count upon the mercy of an ambitious and powerful man in any culture, ancient or modern, is unwise, and the General’s mood that day was grim. Seeking to pass through the lines of battle-ready Romans surrounding the huge Gallic fort, the noncombatants found no pity from him or his centurions. The refugees were not allowed to pass to safety.
Driven back into a muddy ditch between the defending warriors behind them, staring at the approaching legions’ battle flags and heavy armor - if ever any noncombatant was in a hopeless situation, it was there in the fields of Gaul The battle did not fare well for the children and their mothers, nor for desperate men behind them on the fortress walls.
Finally, the Gallic commander surrendered, offering himself as hostage, and he was accepted, taken away and hauled along Roman streets in defeated shame, kept in prison for years, and finally executed in public during a Roman festival.
Not a happy end for an ancient commander whose heroism and mercy were documented. Now the same hopeless battle is here, again. Except for frantic street-demonstrations and desperate international diplomacy, there is no large sympathy in the west for Hamas/Isis terrorists who assaulted and murdered families with children and babies, beat old women and men and slaughtered them within their own homes in kibbutzim planted far too close to the Palestinian gates.
What did the attackers expect to gain – perhaps world sympathy for their displaced and confined Gaza state? There is some. HRH Rania al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, is Palestinian, and she is livid, as her recent fiery CNN interview shows clearly. Fear and rage, whipped up by televised atrocities, have created a regional, hellish tornado of violence which cannot be stopped, or barely contained.
As history repeats itself and the months and years of frequent bombing, oppression and death roll on, if ever there was a day in this ancient, holy land to call upon God, it is now. He plays no favorites. With one exception: Israel is the land, and the nation, into which the Christ was born long ago and He is surely interested in peace within His homeland. Let us call upon Him for relief of suffering, for there is no relief here. And “mercy rejoiceth against judgment” is something we could all use more of.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
