Grombles

Last night I watched a one hour BBC documentary introduced by Lyse Doucet called The Darkest Days . It was aired exactly 6 months after Hamas murdered over 1,200 Israelis. The documentary was in 2 parts. Footage and interviews in Israel following the attack, then a similar amount of footage describing (in gory detail) the carnage that followed, and continues to this day, in Gaza. I was in tears.  Watching anyone in pain, whether from physical injury or grief, is difficult at the best of times. But watching children and parents suffering - that's really hard to take. After watching it, I asked myself two questions. How could presumably sane people like the Hamas gunmen (of which there were hundreds or more involved) possibly commit those horrors? And what would I have done in retaliation - especially with regard to freeing the hostages?  It's really hard for someone like me, an atheist grandfather, living comfortably in a relatively peaceful society to put myself in the shoes of