My baby son is staying with his grandparents a few blocks away and we can’t bring him home because of the shootings. We struggled yesterday to send him some milk. I have to take a blood test and a medical infusion and can’t have them. In our quiet street people spend sleepless nights as the sounds of bullets and bombs are horrific and none stop. Some body said that we could have defeated Israel with all these arms we apparently possess! People are being killed in their homes and the level of inhumanity is shocking. A man was thrown to his death from the tenth floor after he was handcuffed. Wounded soldiers were taken to hospital and there they were followed by masked men and killed in their beds. People talk about insane methods of torture like hitting nails in the knees. One camp says the other camp is of infidels” Koffar” and it is the holly duty to kill them. The other camp says they are fighting the Nazis. There is so much hatred and tribal calling for revenge. It is not just a political militaristic power struggle. It is more complex than that. We all have been defeated by Israel and that feeling of humiliation is now venting out against smaller enemies within ourselves. Israel has further brutalized us through torture and oppression and has caused so much pain and trauma that now, as before, is showing the ugly face of toxic and chronic violence. We are now like a group of wild cats that once were spoiled and dignified but now caged in and starved. On the political level the leaders look like small players as the big ones are some where else, like Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran. It increasingly looks like we are just there to be killed by the small and the big so they score against each other with our blood and body. The big question is how many of our leaders know of this? And if they know, why are they in the game?

There seems to be no end to this except of one party breaks the back of the other, which is a recipe for future disasters, or inviting Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran to the Cairo meeting!!

Eyad Sarraj