Communicating Arts - Main Web SiteToday, between doing other things, I may cruise and comment on what I call "the war news" as I encounter it. This may turn out a sad day and one unsurpassed in its inhumanity to the victims of war in the name of Allah.
Let's start with Reuter's top refugee story of the moment, Khalid Farhan's "Misery in the desert for Iraq's dispossessed." [1] The victims? I'll use Shabelle's word but with a twist: "Islamists" who have fled from violence for the sake of their families. Today, more than a thousand of the UN estimated 4.5 million or more displaced Iraqi weather the disaster in a tent camp in a desert. No electricy. No running water. Dirty water. Poor food. Daytime temperatures soaring to 122-degrees-Farenheit.
May the world again hear the part about Arabs, Islam, and mercy.
In Somalia, Presidential Spokesman Mohamed Mahamud "Hubsired" took bullets in the neck and jaw in the latest attempted assassination in that country (and I suggest that if you wait but a few hours or a day or two, there will be another latest attempt or accomplished killing involving another official). [2]
From Gaza at the Erez Crossing with Israel:
"An unidentified Palestinian gunman lobbed a grenade and sprayed gunfire inside the passage, commonly referred to as a tunnel, toward Israeli troops, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. The troops returned fire and at least one of the waiting Palestinians was killed and 17 others injured in the exchange. There were conflicting reports about whether the victims were hit by Israeli or Palestinian weapons." [3]
Credit Fayed abu Shammala and Ken Ellingwood of the Tribune Newspapers for relaying that action (published online by the Chicago Tribune).
"Karim Abdullah, the 35-year-old owner of a clothing store, said he was making his way by motorcycle to pray at the mosque when the explosion forced him to pull over.
"I stopped in shock as I saw the smoke and people on the ground. I saw two or three men in flames as they were getting out of their car," he added."
Thanks to Lauren Frayer and the Chicago Tribune for the quote from Iraq. [4]
Here's a question. If the entire Iraqi population wanted to surrender in exchange for respite from this kind of violence, to whom would it surrender?
Another question: why should the strawberry grower suffer?
The Karni commercial crossing is closed, and unless Israel agrees to reopen it to exports, strawberry grower Mahmoud Khalil has no way to get his berries to market. For Khalil, that means no less than "complete destruction". [5]
Faith. Language. Magical thinking. Myth.
Call it what you will, Israel and Egypt control the border trade between themselves and Gaza. Egypt may continue enabling some flow of cash and arms to Gaza through hidden tunnels or, boldy, it may choose to recognize Hamas in Gaza as a legitimate government and provide it with an open conduit, but the political repercussions from either would prove disastrous for the Arab state at peace with Israel.
For Mahmoud Khalil, however antisemitic, anti-Zionist, or narrowly educated he may be (or secretly, I would guess, literate, democratic, progressive, multilingual and worldly), there's no money for strawberries rotting in the sun.
What has Allah against Mahmoud Khalil?
The header's old now: "Bomb kills 78 in Baghdad, U.S. in big offensive." [6]
(Old--in the Internet news business, that has come to mean by half days and hours).
The Reauters story written by Dean Yates turns up the usual odd details: the truck bomb had been packed with "gas canisters and half a metric ton of explosives"; an old man at the scene, quoted by Yates, says, "Iraqis in this country are being killed every day. No one takes care of them."
Were I writing fiction rather than relaying journalism, I could not with words illustrate the insanity any better than that.
It's 5:03 EDT, and I think I'm going to call it a day on this theme--it seems the faithful live only to get blown up by the self-appointed more faithful; the goverment that most claims to represent its people--I am speaking of Hamas--is the one that throws a grenade into a concrete kill zone and with bullets sprays down the citizens who have found reason to escape its vaunted good graces; and elsewhere assassins attempt assassinations as assassins--nothing else, as no one communicates to others any specific cause or identity.
Cancer, coming from nature, may be more forgiveable or tolerable; this daily violence, coming from who according to what, vanishes before judgment.
2. Mohamed, Guled. "Somalia presidential spokesman shot twice." Reuters, June 19, 2007, 9:48 a.m. EDT.
4. Frayer, Lauren. "78 Killed by bombing at Baghdad Mosque." Chicago Tribune, June 19, 2007.
Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim
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