by Alison Luterman
Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza: Here is a list of the names we know, from more than 11,500 children killed during Israel’s war on Gaza. Even this is less than half of those killed. | Al Jazeera Newsfeed
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If I'm being honest about it and I'm probably not, I've had my head in the sand all this time, not like an ostrich, but like a person who doesn't know which voice to listen to amid the explosions and the shouting, and I don't know what I'd do if I were in charge of anything over there, which, thank God, I am not, I don't know anything anymore, but still—if the price of the place is to kill and kill and keep killing children, and if you had to see it up close, for yourself, the small, shattered bodies, the homes, markets, schools, the hospital with its roof torn off, the piles of naked, bound men loaded onto a truck going nowhere, and be told, not for the first time, that this was all being done for your supposed benefit or ultimate safety— then what? Not in my name, we say, but that does not change anything on the ground, the knot of history, too snarled and tightly matted with the blood of innocents, cannot be picked apart by even the most nimble fingers, and the riddle: how many babies' bones are worth the illusion of a homeland?
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Alison Luterman is the author of four books of poetry, most recently In the Time of Great Fires from Catamaran Press. She teaches and writes in Oakland, California.
Sad but beautiful Alison! Thank you.
Powerful. . thank you for trying to help me understand. (insert here a broken heart)