My working title for my latest piece was Gaza, Alabama. But in hindsight Birmingham, Palestine would have been a better fit. I enjoyed writing something that has more of a story to it.

They likely bemoaned how long it was until their next chance to eat as they were always hungry, a common affliction in tweens and early teens stuck in a seemingly constant growth spurt. Maybe they whispered about crushes, taking a few years off their parent's lives, or at least sprouting a few new grey hairs, even if they were out of earshot.

The explosion ripped through the girls and their surroundings so quickly that, counterintuitively, they never heard the bomb that struck them. It may be of little solace that they were killed quickly, definitively, the brutality of the act limiting their suffering: Overwhelming violence bringing finality to their lives in an instant.

My hope was to move even just a single person past the mental block they hold on the humanity of Palestinians. There are too many people who would venerate the teenage girls killed in the 16th St Baptist Church bombing, but think that Palestine girls of the same age deserve the bombing they face. Or who might see that bombing children is wrong but refuse to acknowledge the role our government and tax dollars play in allowing that to continue. It's something I struggle with regularly as a parent of a teenage daughter, whose tax dollars are killing her peers, based only on where they were born and the color of their skin.

Flash forward to today, in Gaza, an individual decided to target someone for death. An individual decided the nearby family, neighbors, or even hostages weren’t important enough to be spared from death. An individual approved the list of targets. An individual decided to pull the trigger. There are many people individually responsible for those girls’ deaths.

We are among them.

Read "Does anyone win when children are bombed?" on Public Square Amplified

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