Now, We Are All Palestinians.

The latest Israeli assault on human decency--will this atrocity simply fade from public consciousness, day by day, as other stories emerge to take its place?  Oil spills, Miley's new shoes, or the newest episode of CSI?

What's painfully clear is that the might-makes-right dictum too often plagues our world, whether local, national, or global.  Perhaps some tyrannical boss at the office trashing ethics or a politician you trusted betraying his promises or some foreign power bullying anyone in the way of its "national interest."

We watched our faithful U.S. government-backed Israeli stormtroopers come blasting aboard an unarmed mercy fleet, like Blackbeard's pirates on a plunder.  All because some humanitarians were simply trying to give hungry, homeless refugees in the world's largest open air prison some food and housing materials.

It is sickening beyond words.

The insult to injury is Israel and its apologists' appalling fabrications trying to justify such cruelty, a relentless process that began over 60 years ago when the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes.

Not that such barbarism and suffering has been limited to the Middle East, of course.  It's a universal curse and has been the root of so much grief.  One of the most overpowering expressions I've ever witnessed of this angst is a 1965 ballad, utterly timeless.

You'd only have to graft some contemporary events onto the lyrics and one would never tell the difference.



"The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don't leave a trace...."

The Dylanesque message resonates like few others have and the singer unleashes it with a pathos that nearly mows me down.
 
But like that potent scene of DeNiro getting battered in the ring in "Raging Bull," he taunts his tormentor with the assurance that he "nevah went doooown."
 

 
Even if he did, or you do, just get the hell back up, no matter what.  Stay on your feet, moving in the direction of the headwaters of faith. 
 
Maya Angelou's immortal words sparkle in the water.  Get in.  Rejuvenate.  One beleaguered person, or an entire nation under siege, it works.
 
"Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide,
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise....."

And with the elation, the promise of a different kind of "eve" comes into view.

A more spiritual, comforting realm.

Call it, for want of a better term......the "Eve Of Construction."