When I am laid in earth

They tell the world Israel acted in self defense. the almost defenseless Gazans fell in hundreds and Gaza was savagely destroyed yet Israel was defending itself. The super powers scrambled rushing to the scene of carnage in the wake of Israel's day of butchery during which every possible and impossible war crime was committed under the very eyes of a shocked world, they dashed to show solidarity with the murderers and ensure that the Gazans will never be armed again, never have even the most primitive means  to defend themselves so that they can be butchered quietly, without causing headaches to the free civilized world.  Only Israel has the right of self defense. How dare they let the hyena loose among the lambs? How dare they preach their moral superiority and that of their god-daughter with the shadows of the deaths of hundreds of innocent children hanging over their heads? BUT THEY SEE NO EVIL AND HEAR NO EVIL. The siege of Gaza instead of being lifted is reimposed in more subtle forms and is signed and sealed. Not even a token of arms of any description will reach the Gazans.  The seas and oceans are going to be guarded and the only weapons that will cross them are the huge shipments of the most sophisticated weapons of annihilation on their march towards replenishing the satiated arsenals of Israel. The tunnels which mostly smuggled food and the necessities of life to the hungry Gazans are no more and will be watched by the big brothers of the world from this day henceforth. Strangle and strangle more. Woe to the weak for they will not inherit the earth. Woe to the weak for they shall be destroyed again and again and their seed will be scattered and their land desecrated. Do you call Operation Cast Lead  the right of Israel to self defense? Do you call destroying and targeting the schools, the personnel and the stores of the UN self defense? Do you call bombing the Red Cross and the Red Crescent and bombing ambulances and the paramedics with their patients  self  defense?  Shame on you. What travesty of all that is decent,sacred and humane? What desecration of all human rights and  the International rule of law. Instead of using your formidable armada to enforce the embargo, why don't your ships in addition to policing the seas also break the siege of Gaza and establish a naval humane corridor to relieve the hunger and the distress of the people of Gaza, to evacuate the wounded children and in the future to allow the rebuilding of Gaza? Do you want peace then let us see you work for peace? If the Gazans are going to be left defenceless why don't you defend them. Did you come to end the siege or to start a new one?

 

One hundred bodies were dug up yesterday in Gaza from the ruins of their houses, amidst the lamentations of the mothers and the children who were helping to free the bodies of their parents, relatives and brothers and sisters.The old men and woman crouched helplessly wailing the terrible fate of the living and the dead. The paramedics and the ambulance men worked persistently, their desperation and anguish giving them almost a super human power, as if they were trying to free the souls of the buried people by laying them for a moment on the broken earth under the stunned heavens before taking them away.

 

They shall be remembered and lamented as befitting the departure of those who were living. No body said farewell to them, no relatives stood by their deathbeds and prayed.  They are almost unrecognizable. But they shall be lovingly remembered and gently lamented.

 

Dido, the Queen of Carthage's lament washes all over me and the accompanying tragic  music of Purcell rises and falls taking up the theme of mourning and mingling with the maternal lamentations of the Gazans:

 

...darkness shades me,

On thy bosom let me rest,

More I could, but death invades me;

....When I am laid in earth...

Remember me,remember me...