Battered, Bruised, Unbowed

The national psyche engrossed in the methodical

and orderly maintenance of records and statistics

the Third Reich prescribed meticulous assignments

of lists and methodology, labels and explanations

in their genius for classifications and scientific

enquiries as they prosecuted a bold new experiment

in human annihilation. True, there were/are still

first-person accounts and narratives neither neutral

nor objective but it is the record-keeping and the

pride of accomplishment that etches the history of

genocide. That era long gone, a new one has begun

where mass murder spurred by raging hatred benefits

from new orders of technology enabling recording in

live-time, of torture, humiliation, mutilation, rape and

murder as a grotesque triumph of historical proportions

enriching the saga of Palestinian terrorism's bold new

adventures in sadistic savagery worthy of a self-declared

underdog victimized by their targets' insistence on

existence and the quality of a venerable past through

insurmountable adversity where though battered and

bruised, like the Phoenix of fable the people remain

defiant of their legion of enemies' lethal solutions

adamant in their imperative denying death for life.