A legacy of pain and poison
One day, there may step forth a Palestinian generation that is done with homicide bombers and the cult of violence. In this better vision of things, there would be no preachers glorifying violence against noncombatants; religion would return to its proper functions. There would be sober acceptance that the Palestine of the imagination is no more, and that partition is the inevitable outcome of this fight for the land. A leader would tell the multitudes that the Jews are there to stay.
The Gaza sheik was made of different stuff. It is easy to see that he had no mercy for Israelis. But a harder truth can be read into his life: He had no mercy for his own either. Those children, reading their wills and testaments on their way to homicidal missions, are proof of the cruelty and the indifference and the waste of it all.
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