Horrible as it is, I feel we have brought this on ourselves: Our insensitivity to the fate of the Palestinians, our genocidal sanctions against Iraq both demonstrate to the Arab world that their lives and hopes mean nothing to us. Yes, the thousands who have died were innocents--as were the half million or so children of Iraq destroyed by the sanctions.

In our shame at our failure to save millions of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis, we went overboard in our support of the state of Israel, forgetting the millions of people dispossessed by the establishment and the continued expansion of that nation.

I believe that those guilty of these horrendous acts must be hunted down and punished, but to cry for the destruction of the desperate Palestinians in whose name and in sympathy for whose suffering the acts were perpetrated, even as they express joy at our suffering, is dreadfully wrong.

--seed, crying in the wilderness