For Gaza's dead children

We have been flooded with your memories. Do not think your faces have blended together. Each of you has died a horrific and unique death. And we honor you and remember you. We remember you.

We see your chest, riddled with dime sized holes from phosphorous munitions...and know our silence was complience.

We see your eye lids stitched shut, after a bomb's fury ripped out your eyeballs...and we know our governments helped do this.

We see your porcelain faces, calm like a sleeping doll...and know we must fight so your brothers and sisters will never sleep this macabre slumber.

We see your body without legs and arms...and feel shame.

We see you without family, without your beloved parents...and know this is an unbearable loss, a void that no cease-fire, or two-state solution can ever fill.

I feel a sense of responsibility for these losses, these deprivations. That somehow, something I-- we-- could have done, would have spared these children their lives...and the loss of their beloved families. Their deaths and losses are done. We cannot bring them back to life through tears or guilt. But we can remember them. We can remember that their deaths do not have to be repeated. Ever. They were, and are, preventable. I think it is important to remember that this number of 1,300 is comprised of unique, beloved, funny, grumpy, smart, creative, stubborn, generous, strict, curious, human individuals-- each person has a story and a name. What we read as numbers of casualties and piles and piles of names, each one holding the story of an entire person, who was loved by many...both living and dead. We must remember they are human. They are not numbers.

In particular, I remember the lurch in my stomach reading about Shahed Abu Sultan, an 8 year old girl who was killed by an Israeli helicopter who shot her in the head. Her father wrote her a letter...

"I cried a sea of tears for you but those tears have not calmed my heart because you left, my daughter. I have no tears remaining, but my heart wants to go on cryng blood, my daughter, my beloved Shahed. Your smooth smile, your sweet and angelic face, we miss you with each moment, our darling. My daughter Shahed died once, but I die a million times a day...My heartache will go on forever."

We continue to fight for the children of Gaza, so they may have a future brighter, and less destructive, than phosphorous bombs. And for the babas of Gaza, so they will never have to cry again.