Glenn – No Beauty In The Beast – Israel Without Her Mascara

176INDEPENDENCE DAYIndependence Day“I have to get home to my mother, she will be so worried if I am not back soon.”9 year-old Mona clutched at the gaping hole in her stomach, blood pouring out of her as if someone hadturned on a faucet. There was something so terribly and indescribably out of place in her frail words, thecolliding of two disparate worlds, that of a mother’s child, and that of a little girl facing down the ugliestof what life and humanity had to offer.The man who was kneeling at her side however knew better. He was a trained medical professional, andin a war zone known as Gaza of all places. He had seen this scenario a thousand times before, and athousand times too many as far as he was concerned. This child would not be going home, at least not herearthly home, given the fact that she had just been shot in the stomach at close range by a soldier wieldinga machine gun, the bullets from which produced exit wounds on her tiny body that were as large as golfballs. Had she known that her insides had just been turned to mush, it is highly unlikely that she wouldhave been as composed as she was at this moment.Her gesture in worrying about her mother, about not wanting to cause a beloved parent any grief waspartly genuine, and partly an attempt to distract herself from the fact that she knew something terriblehad just happened to her. Indeed a child’s sweetness knows no bounds, irrespective of where such a childcan be found in the world. As she lie in a bath of her own warm blood that increased with each passingsecond, while frantic adults attempt to effect that which they know is futile, all she can think is that hermother must be worried, and how she wishes she could be home with her now, if only for enough time togive her one final embrace, tell her of a daughter’s love, and to say goodbye.In the end, it all came down to sweets, an indispensable part of any child’s life, even in places that havebeen torn apart by warfare for the last century such as this. Today, little Mona, despite having grown upin a world of bullets and mortars, allowed the carelessness of her childhood to overpower her reason justenough to persuade her towards venturing forth into that deadly world of never ending violence to buysome cookies at the corner store. The fact that Israeli soldiers were busy with their latest masterpiece inbutchery nearby did not seem to arouse her concern. After all, when all things were considered, this wasjust another day in the life of someone who knew she had been born under a sentence of death and whohad developed an intimacy of sorts with this fact as if it had been her own skin.On her way back, humming something sweet and armed with nothing more dangerous than the cookiesin her hand, she was indiscriminately shot by an Israeli soldier, who, like all the rest of his ilk, had beentold by both political and spiritual leaders that it is the religious duty of all good Zionists, a mitzvah, tocleanse the promised land of any impurities that may be infecting it, a process of sterilization whichincluded, if it can be imagined, slaughtering helpless Arab children. And so, this courageous and obedientsoldier from among a group of people who fancy themselves as being a light among nations, without theslightest hesitation pulled the trigger, simultaneously swatting away at the shred of what remained of hisconscience as if it were some species of annoying insect.For little Mona, it merely felt like a lit match touching her insides momentarily, and it was not until shebegan to feel the sensation of warm wetness on her dress that she began to panic. Her first instinct wasthat she might get into trouble for having gotten her new dress dirty, since the last thing her mother told