Israel: The Face
Murder of the most innocent of the innocents.
“The Unspeakable is not far away. It is not somewhere out there, identical with a government that is foreign to us.The emptiness of the void, the vacuum of responsibility and compassion, is in ourselves.”
— James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (p. XVii), 2008.
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (9/24/24)
Of the volcano of obscenities churned out in the US/Israel genocide, the obscene numbers of children vaporized, shredded, maimed, killed and orphaned by American bombs is the most disgusting. Truly, murder of the most innocent of the innocents.
The US/Israel meat grinder is now churning through the West Bank and on into Lebanon, where the diabolical exploding pager and walkie-talkie US/Israeli terror attack has revealed a new, especially twisted depth of cruelty, that will — in time — surely backfire. On us.
Meet Aseel. Study her face. Yes, her left eye is gone. Study her burned, pitted and lacerated skin. The bloodied bandage on her arm terminates at her small hand … with no fingers. Her family’s home in Gaza was exploded by an Israeli missile the middle of last week.
Aseel’s photo was featured in a friend’s Substack (Connecting The Dots) and has embedded itself in my mind, heart and soul. I see her daily in my mind.
She is the face of Israel. The face of the United States. Our face.
At the time of this photo, the Gaza Ministry of Health issued a report listing all the identified dead — over 34,000 — from October 7, 2023 to August 31, 2024. The 649-page document lists every known victim by name, age, gender and ID number. Each page has double columns. The first 14 pages are of children from 0 to 1 year of age. Babies. Fourteen pages.
That is 11,355. A third of the total death toll.
And of course, the list is incomplete. The official Gaza Ministry of Health death toll had grown to 42,000 last week. But even that is a fraction of the actual number of dead, which The Lancet Medical Journal estimated was close to 186,000. In mid-July. The Lancet noted that in modern warfare “…indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths” from military action.
Ralph Nader recently estimated the actual death toll at over 300,000.
And counting.
Those numbers are the dead. They don’t include precious, little Aseel; wounded, maimed and traumatized for life. Did she lose family members in the missile attack on her family’s home? Did survivors have to dig her out from under the rubble of her pulverized home? Was this the first time she experienced such a bombing? I don’t know.
What ghosts of trauma will stalk Aseel and the other children of Gaza? As a retired psychotherapist, I know they will be many and forever.
The photo of Aseel is a mirror, revealing in stark, traumatic detail not only Israel’s face but our face; the United States; who and what we are. And have always been, beginning with the genocide of millions of Indigenous peoples. She is a mirror for the tiny minority of Israelis and Americans with the moral courage and spiritual integrity to really look at her.
As we know, literally, with a phone call, “Genocide” Joe Biden could bring this damnable genocide to an end by cutting off the dark flow of profitable American corporate death. Saving the next Aseel.
But he won’t.
Neither will Kamala Harris.
Nor Donald Trump (recently purchased by Israel).
Meanwhile, Israel is gearing up for the next phase of the genocide as they shut down the media in the West Bank.
Look into the face of little Azeel and know there will be many more like her. All of them reflecting the brutal truth of who and what this nation is really about.
Mark Taylor
About The Writer: Mark Taylor is a writer in the United States. He spent half his professional life as a print journalist and political cartoonist/illustrator. The second half of his professional career was as a psychotherapist doing individual and family therapy. The two halves of his professional experience have merged, given him a deep interest in political messaging and framing of political debate.
Disclaimer & Statement: This is one article in a series by writers who do not share all opinions and approaches, but strongly agree that human rights is universal, and that the genocide in Palestine must be stopped.
“ How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” Henry David Thoreau
Suffer the little children. Her crime is that her parents and the adults in her society dared to resist their sadistic and savage colonial occupiers. Worse, the US provided the bombs and American allies, the gutless cowardice to allow it to happen.