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

INDEPENDENCE DAY 177her before leaving the house was to make sure not to get it messy. Thus is the mind of a child, even whenfacing the awfulness of eternity that their thoughts are always to be found firmly rooted in somethingtrivial and sweet. Perhaps it was the panic stricken appearances on the faces of those around her whowere trying to help that caused her to realize the seriousness of what it was that she was facing, or perhapsit was the unseen whisper into her soul from some divine messenger telling her to hurry up, since timewas running out. Either way, no one really knows.And so in that fifteen seconds before her spirit was liberated from the hellish existence that had beenimposed upon her and upon the rest of the inhabitants of the Holy Land by the self-described ‘chosenpeople’, the little Palestinian child of 9 years forgot all about her cookies, as well as about every other itemof what encompasses a child’s existence, grew up quickly, remembered everything she had been taughtduring the religion classes she had taken throughout her life, and made her last statement of faith. In herlast words, there was no malice, no pulsa de nura—the infamous curses that rabbis and Orthodox Jewshurl daily at passing Christians or Muslims in Israel, no condemnations, no vows of revenge. Hercomposure, as she lie there in a pool of her own blood, was as graceful and as dignified as was that of anypatriot or saint who has secured a rightly earned place in mankind’s memory as a result of having had hisor her life cut short by the actions of men hell-bent upon doing evil to others. For Mona, it would be onesimple statement, without any fanfare or drama, final words that will probably be remembered by few,short of those who loved her more than they loved themselves.The little girl whose life had been snuffed out like a candle, the last fragrance of this little Palestinianflower who had been cut down by the hatchet of Jewish supremacism had nothing more spiteful in herfinal curtain call other than “God is great.”From a bird’s eye view, this was but one of several tragic scenes taking place on that day. A few milesaway, a family of seven had just barely made it out of their home when the bulldozer crashed throughwhere the living room was. There were no warnings that this demolition process was about to take place,and had it not been for the fact that 14 year-old Ismail went to the window to see what the noise was thatwas coming from outside, the entire family would most likely have been buried beneath the rubble. Thiswas a common occurrence these days, of not ordering the evacuation of a home to be demolished, sincethe Israelis cared nothing about the lives of the filthy Arabs who were polluting their sacred land, andthus preferred that the entire mess be hauled away, home and dwellers included.Under the gaze of 3 armed-to-the-teeth Israeli soldiers, the family stood by and watched helplessly aseverything that encompassed their lives was reduced to rubble within a few minutes. There was nothingleft of the meager example of their family’s security and order now, and even though what they hadcalled a life had been a miserable existence anyway, at least they had had a place to call home where theycould eat, sleep, and find refuge from the rain. This home, which had literally stood for centuries, was justone of thousands in recent years that has been bulldozed in order to make way for a new apartmentcomplex for “better people,” the Zionists, who, if you were to ask them, were a race apart and chosen byGod to be the bringers of enlightenment, peace and righteousness to the rest of humanity.Perhaps it was the colors of it that caught his eye, the green, black, brown and white that contrasted withthe sand-colored rubble of his former home’s exterior. Ismail went over to where his bedroom used to beand found it jutting forth from the rubble, the Palestinian flag he cherished and which he had used toadorn his room on the same wall upon which he hung the photos of friends and family members who haddied fighting to liberate their land of its oppressors. He carefully pulled it out from the rubble, paying thesame respect to his country’s colors that is paid by other citizens around the world to their respectivecountries, and forgetting where he was, or possibly, because of remembering where he was, draped the