Friday, December 11, 2009
Scenes from a war
An article in today's San Jose Mercury News describes the latest effort of the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund, bringing 15-year-old Mariam Al Shafei here to the Bay Area to fit her with an artificial eye. Mariam lost her eye in January, when an Israeli tank that was part of the assault on Gaza fired shells at her neighborhood as she was eating breakfast. Mariam was "lucky"; her 4-year-old neighbor was killed.
Unsurprisingly, Mariam wasn't the first member of her family to be a victim of Israeli war crimes. "Her father, Hassan, 45, was working in the family's strawberry field four years ago, when he was killed, along with six other civilians, by an Israelis tank shell."
But of the various atrocities described in the article, this is the one that really struck me:
She marvels at how few American children are missing arms or legs.Just let that sink in.
