In my previous post, I said I would follow the situation in Gaza, and keep you dear reader apprised of my thoughts on the developments of those events. As someone who has spent the last few years learning as much about the Palestinian people as my time has, and continues to allow, I have nothing but sadness to share with you. For the last couple of hours I have been clicking through Reuters and AP photos, reading updates from the usual suspects, and my heart is made hollow.

Temptation. Tempted by frustration and anger to find someone, anyone to blame. Frustrated for all the times you tried to explain that a better possibility exists. Angry that the in your heart of hearts, you know verily no one will hear you when you say, "A people must find a way to express violence when violence is done to them, even when the pain is self-inflicted." There is no looking to Israel, there is no looking to the Western boycott of Hamas, there is no looking to a dying neocon agenda that holds Palestinian suffering as trite and irrelevant. Today, as brother spills the blood of brother, I can only look at Palestine and try to understand why, why is it that so often in the history of man suffering becomes an excuse for self-hatred, victimhood the prod of self-destruction. I can only try and understand how today the Palestinian is perhaps more like the Israeli than ever in their shared history, and I am all the more ashamed for being empty-handed and impotent.

Salaam / Shalom