Orbiting Dicta

Catholic Christians will not observe the Feast of the Holy Innocents this Sunday, which has been eclipsed by the Feast of the Holy Family.  But no mind — Israel’s hugely disproportionate and cruel “pre-emptive retaliation raids” on suspected Hamas sites over the last three days provided an even bloodier sacrifice as the death toll nears 300, most of them “innocents” – women and children and other civilians caught in the crosshairs of Middle Eastern violence.

 

Perhaps the bombing raid was meant as a parting “gift” to George Bush and the death knell of the “Roadmap to Peace,” once the purported capstone of the desired Bush Legacy, now delivered to the lame-duck President as a burnt and broken brickbat.  Or perhaps Mr. Olmert construed it as the last chance for a crushing blow under the protective right wing of the vanishing Republican administration.  One way or another, the prospects for peace in the Middle East under the Obama administration seem dimmer than ever.

 

As the year draws to its lamentable close, world leaders might do more than offer lame objections to Israel’s defiance of international law and common decency.  The rest of us can pray and, like the thousand Israelis who marched today in Jerusalem to urge a peaceful resolution, make our outrage known.  A just and lasting peace in the Middle East will not be achieved through violence, which so far has served only to engender Hezbollah, Fatah, and Hamas on one side and increased military destruction on the other.  And the death of more innocents.