A day that began with the bleating of goats and the muezzin’s call ended with the pop pop pop of IDF assault rifles. One dead, five wounded, and the usual chorus of ‘we condemn’ from men in suits who’ve never seen a gun except on a golf course. The shooting?
In the West Bank, obviously. Where else would you find a perfectly warm afternoon punctured by bullets? The victim: a young Palestinian, name still a whisper on the lips of his mother.
The perpetrator: a soldier, name already redacted by some faceless bureaucrat in Tel Aviv. ‘Security crisis deepens,’ they say. Deepens?
It’s been a bottomless pit since 1948. But let’s not get bogged down in history; there’s a headline to sell. The five wounded?
They’ll join the queue for prosthetics and trauma counselling, a queue that has its own zip code. The Israeli government called it a ‘complex incident’ which is bureaucrat-speak for ‘we’re not really sure but we’ll blame the victim.’ The UN?
They’ll pass a resolution nobody reads. The US? They’ll veto it.
And the cycle continues, a snake eating its own tail, a tail that’s been bitten so often it’s just a nub. I’ll be at the bar, drowning my fury in a G&T that tastes of despair and juniper.
