Arianna, I see what you're doing on Larry King Live. You're playing to the crowd. You're debating Dennis Prager on the Middle East and avoiding all talk of civilian casualties. In fact, the only one who mentions the dead civilians is Prager who dismisses them as a necessary by-product of a just war. Dresden. Hiroshima. Beirut.
Arianna, you say Israel is wrong to mercilessly bomb Lebanon because the relentless attacks will mobilize Muslims throughout the Arab world behind Hezbollah. I don't blame you, Arianna, for not mentioning Israel's bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure, for not talking about the Lebanese mothers and children who are told to get out of town but then can't leave because the bridges have all been bombed. I understand, Arianna. I do the same thing. I give up on talking about the hideous toll of this sure-to-fail disembowelment of Lebanon because friends, lifelong friends, some who have marched with me to protest the war on Iraq, others who couldn't pass a wounded dog without reaching down to help it, don't give a damn about Lebanese children.
Of course they care about children, in general, and Israeli children, specifically. I care about all children who are victimized by adult brutality, be it in the kitchen or in the theater of war. How dare Israel respond with such disproportionate force to the capture of prisoners, who now, according to some reports, were captured in Lebanon, not Israel. How dare Hezbollah rain rockets down on civilians.
Arianna, are you getting those awful emails? The ones that depict Muslims as hate-filled devils or the ones that say we should give Israel as much technology (euphemism for bombs) as we can so the Israelis can destroy the ideology of hatred. You must be getting these emails, too. Hate is everywhere.
What do social psychologists call this? Demonizing the other? Once the other has been successfully dehumanized, it doesn't matter if 500-ton bombs turn apartments to craters, families to funerals. These people don't count. Or, if they do, they count as trophies. Killed thirty here. Good work. Killed fifty there. Even better. No one says it. But they're thinking it. You know I am right, Arianna.
I open the New York Times to see Israelis on gurneys in a hospital bomb shelter. (See, I mentioned the Israelis first. I've been advised to always do that, lest I completely alienate my audience.) Next to that picture is a photo of members of Doctors without Borders, passing supplies from one to the other, wading in the Litani River because the Israelis have bombed all the bridges in Tyre, blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid. CNN reports 20,000 people are still in Tyre, holed up in basements waiting for Israel's much-promised cyclone of bombs. The end is coming. And they know it. Earlier, Israeli pilots dropped leaflets. Stay in your house. Do not go out on the street. We will bomb anything that moves.
I am sick, Arianna. I can't think of anything but the Lebanese about to be exterminated. (A rabbi told me not to use that word, but I used it, didn't I? Exterminated. Exterminated. Exterminated.) I am sleepless. And I am afraid that my readers, some of them, will hate me for what I say here, for what I shout across these pages. How dare Israel commit these war crimes in my name? In the name of all Jews? Israel, you do not speak for me or kill for me. You are not me. You betray me.
Arianna, I want to know what my readers are feeling -- and so I will turn to them now.
Kossacks, what is your empathy quotient? Who do you feel for? Who do you feel nothing for? Do these feelings or lack thereof trouble you? And what about your friends and family members? What are your conversations like? Do you agree? Disagree? Avoid the subject altogether because the ground is too fragile?
I want to know what's inside your heart. My heart is breaking.