NAPLES-- One hundred days and more of pure massacre, of inconceivable tragedies, of a human ferocity equal to and more bestial than that which by nature belongs to animals. 

  The Hamas- Israel political armed and social conflict has reached high levels of violence which sees clashes between standard armies, paramilitary groups, terrorist cells and independent citizens: repeated conflicts, not only from exclusively military characters, cause inevitable involvement of the civil population by indifferently reaping victims of every origin, of every population. 

  An enormous tragedy, a macabre horror that will not seem to blow over. The perpetrated and committed violence can no longer be tolerated at the detriment of those who are blameless of accidentally being born and living in the wrong part of the world.

  I do not find it right that the thirst for power, for domination, for weapons can make people become wicked. I do not find it rational that the conflict in the strip has not stopped yet because the war must continue until the fall of Hamas, according to the intentions of some inhumane and evil leader who does not find within himself the conscience in which to converse and feel remorse, strong and unheard of, of having thrown death all over the place. 

  Life and death, man and nature, man and God, dream and reality: a kaleidoscope of images and sounds. This is what crosses my mind as I search to understand how men, children, women, and humanity could possibly save themselves. 

  The question is insistent: is it possible to not be completely consumed by that poison called war? Can the soul remain pure admist the horror and hatred of war? What will it be, what future, if there is one? 

  Mankind works and acts, often wavering between good and evil. We are immersed in atrocious experiences. Faced with so much evil, suffering, and tragedy, I would like to understand the meaning of a war which transforms men into ungrateful animals, which strips all certainty about oneself and others, that makes us lose ourselves in the inextricable tangles of a world which appears broken and senseless to us. Yet we need to face it head on. And so, I ask myself, where is love? And God who lives in everything, who blows his spirit into every creature like the wind, can He be the meaning which reconciles us with the infinite? 

  Beyond every other human vileness, against all absurdity of power we should all restore the proper meaning to life and let fear slip from our eyes.

  I no longer want the darkness on our children’s faces, I no longer want the lights of missiles and the sounds of bombings to fall from the sky instead of stars, I no longer want one man to be a shield for another, I no longer want to hear the cries that burn the souls of people who are blameless. I want us to be immersed in life and only life to feed on. Death distresses. Like death, war is the end of every horizon of meaning.

  I conclude my article with a thought towards the Israelis, heartless people, who still enforce the cruel law of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ in 2024.

  Each year, for dozens of years now, they remind us that man must not kill another man. Perhaps, however, the lesson was not enough. Perhaps we need an even harsher one. 

SICK SUN

Everything happens. 

Intertwining seagulls and injured hands, 

In a sky covered with white clouds

warmed by the sick sun 

that barely illuminates the earth, 

earth that weeps for the decay 

of children scattered on the streets of a world

that finds depravation and misery 

in every step it takes. 

ft