No more apologies

By Yossi Sarid
Haaretz

"It's morning in Beit Hanun. A family gets up, and after week of killing and destruction, decides it may at last send the children to kindergarten and school.

Suddenly the shell lands on the house. The children, still in their pajamas, go back to sleep. The "open areas" (where the IDF says it targeted its shells), again fill with bodies and blood, because in the most crowded, cursed place on earth there is no such thing as an open or safe area.

Please, I beg you, do not tell us you feel sorrow, and do not apologize. On no account apologize again, after who-knows-how-many times - all of them wasted apologies. "The IDF regrets" sounds exactly like "the IDF is investigating." Try living with this death and you'll probably succeed. You've tried before and survived.

Eighteen people were killed by one stray shell, most of them women and children. This achievement is better than the previous one: Three weeks ago, an officer announced to his soldiers the astounding result: 12:0 in our favor. Yesterday the result was 18:0 and it could improve in injury time. Go Israel!

The majors general, brigadiers general and colonels in the South are teaching their colleagues in the North how to score a victory.

The Autumn Clouds dispersed yesterday, it was reported, and the Gaza skies cleared for a moment. But we know from experience that it isn't over till it's over, and it can only be over with multiple killing. Only now, with the shell's arrival, will it really be over until it starts again, when Olmert and Peretz and Halutz and Galant and Tamir no longer hear the blood crying out to them from the earth.

Had they but heard, they would long ago have draped themselves in black flags and vanished from our lives, from our deaths. But no, they persist in continuing, in giving orders, in dragging this country down to hell. It's as though they were saying, "let our soul die with the dead."

One gets the impression that in the last few days, the chief of staff has once again been preoccupied with his bank account, and has not taken the time to check his account in the blood bank. "