WhimsyLand

There's something tragically wrong about the carnage in Lebanon. Oh, I know it's politically correct to say Israel and Lebanon, but get serious, it's been a 10-to-1 death toll since the get-go, and that's counting Israeli combat personnel. Those of the 750,000 rural southern Lebanese who didn't know enough to flee, after watching the leaflets drop from the sky, to non-Shiite, non-rural areas of their country are now cited in the Israeli and American press as "potential Hezbolla sympathizers", which apparently is enough to assuage our guilt over the hundreds of dead women and children. The Hezbolla militants are numbered in the thousands, armed with second-world armaments. The Israelis called up more than that many reserves just this week, have spy drones circling Tyre that are more sophisticated than their enemy's rockets, and tanks, battle armor, artillery and aircraft that are one generation behind their aid donors (that's us). Not to mention a nuclear arsenal that is in the world's top 10 collection of unthinkable devastation. 20 Congressional Democrats actually threatened to boycott the Iraqi Prime Minister's speech over his denunciation of Israel's excesses. It makes me ashamed of the only party I've ever registered for, and that only recently, if they think the "Jewish Vote" can be bought as if it were the Religious Right.

I watched Schindler's List the other night. There's that scene where the SS line up three Jewish resistance members front to back to be shot with a rifle to save on ammunition. And the camp's weeping naked women on parade. And the mothers and daughters being led to the showers. And the young female architect who is shot in the back of the head for arguing about the construction of housing. And the young child picked off by the camp commander on his balcony, just for fun. I'm sure that if these things didn't happen, things equally horrific did. I can remember how sleep evaded me for weeks the first time I saw the film. The bad guys were all wearing black, but in real life there is no color for political expediency and no limits to a persecution complex. There is no greater irony in my lifetime than watching a nation slowly adopt the means of those who would have destroyed it.