October 8, 2023- Her smiling countenance is what we have left of her, at least for the time being. It is a sweet smile, and yes, it’s framed by a scantily-clad physique-but so what? SO WHAT? If that is the “crime” that led grown men abduct her, throw her in a truck, strip her naked and have women spit at her, while she was either unconscious or dead, it speaks volumes about the nature of the individuals and groups who are manipulating the Arabs of Palestine-specifically the long-marginalized, “rats in a cage” Arabs of Gaza.

We all know what deprived animals do when they are trapped and cornered. How much worse it is, for human beings-and when their own neighbours, their own chosen leaders, are the ones primarily entrapping them-as a means of stoking hatred towards a selected enemy-who responds in kind. Thus a few women in an unknown village, somewhere in Gaza, spat at the body of a young woman-who was unconscious or dead. Thus were girls, not much younger than she, made to watch-and be put on notice by their elders-that this is what happens to those who disobey the ulama, the imams, the Supreme Leader.

I am slated to leave for another part of the world, in less than a week. Some of my loved ones have urged me to reconsider, given the current situation in Southwest Asia. It is a fair request, and I am keeping a close watch on the situation. This journey, like all my travels on public conveyances, is insured to the hilt. If the situation escalates-which it may, and those sympathetic to the terrorists strike in the part of the world where I am headed, then I am prepared to stay in bounds, spend a few days in San Diego and San Francisco, and come back to live the dream. If the situation stays as it is presently-which it also may, I will take one leg of the flight at a time, and check updates, while in San Diego, then in San Francisco, then in T’aipei, to say nothing of being constantly vigilant, while in the Philippines.

Back to the matter of Shani Louk: She was at a music festival, in the Negev Desert, when she was abducted, taken to Gaza, stripped bare and paraded around a village like a slab of meat. There is little difference between this act, and all the other abductions, killings-on both sides of the border and torture-on both sides of the border AND the brutal attacks at a concert in Manchester, England, in May, 2017-except in the degree of death and destruction. There is little difference in the intent of the terror-mongers in southwest Israel and that of the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States-except in the degree of death and destruction.

Like the girls who were made to watch someone, not much older than they, be rendered unconscious, stripped of her clothing and paraded around, in total deshabille, their mothers’ and aunts’ sputum dripping from her body, we can only wonder how the human race got into this mess. Like the survivors of the Holocaust of 1943-45, forced to watch as their family members were herded onto rail cars and sent to “the showers”, never to return, we can only recoil in horror, as it happens again-albeit to a smaller group-so far. Like the innocent people of Gaza, the West Bank and the State of Israel, whose sole crime is living among those who exist by inhaling the stench of neurotically-achieved power, we can only redouble our own resolve to bring those tottering remnants of Byzantine folly to their just retribution. Extremism has begotten extremism-and it’s high time the gauntlet came down.

May Shani Louk be brought home to her mother.