...the hurt is even greater when you know it didn't have to be this way.  

I saw a story reported on Friday of a Palestinian dad that went out in the morning to try to get supplies for his family, his wife and four daughters. He told them to stay home in their apartment while he risked his life to retrieve bread and maybe something for them to drink. He successfully made the trip, returning with some supplies for his family but when he got back he found the apartment building where he had left them was gone. Bombed to rubble with people digging through the debris looking for survivors. He joined the digging and found one of his daughters. 

Her body was lifeless, but he picked her up and carried her to the hospital in his arms. When he arrived at the, of course, overcrowded hospital, a doctor immediately pronounced her dead and he sat on the floor cradling his dead daughter in his arms, knowing that there was no hope his other daughters and wife would have survived the bombing of their apartment building. 

The man was not part of nor a supporter of Hamas when he left that morning. I don't know what he felt sitting on the floor with his dead daughter in his arms. Did he think that he should have taken them with him that morning? They would then be alive? Did he think he should have stayed home and spent the final moments of their lives with his family, that he should have died with them? Did he reflect on what was perhaps the final moment of happiness in his life, that he had found bread and drinks for them and was rushing home to share that good fortune with them? Did he think about leaving in the morning without giving each of them a hug and kiss and telling them he loved them? 

Did he realize in that moment that his future would no longer be about counting minutes, nor hours, nor days, it would just be one long and endless hurt? Did he blame Hamas? Will he dream of solutions, or will he fight his shock and rage until his own heart no longer beats? Is his most vivid belief going forward that any kind of death that meets him is all that is left of mercy in this world? 

I know there are Israelis that feel the same things he does and really does making more people have to feel this push anybody closer to a solution? 

I know I don't have to ask you, Mick. We share the grief of being bystanders to the horror of this world and sadly, share the knowledge that there is more to come. 

Grief and rage, they are chains that can bind us to one another. We have to be there for each other to guide one another along a path that leads us away from them rather than toward allowing them to consume us and spread them. They are easy to spread and there are those aware of that and so exploit our grief and rage for their own purposes.