This is the World You Live In

Well, Bush's war is finally coming home. My children, 4 and 7, have asked me more times than I'd like to say if the Iraq war would "move" to our country. It's not the Iraq war, maybe. But a Muslim-American man has exploded his hatred and rage here in Seattle onto six Jewish women killing one and critically wounding five others, including one pregnant woman.

This afternoon, around the time I was picking my four year old daughter up from her downtown Seattle pre-school, an unidentified man entered the downtown offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and opened fire screaming, "I am a Muslim American angry at Israel!"

I'm not sure what to say. This man is a murderer. He deserves no sympathy. But what drove him to kill a Jewish woman and wound as many others as he could before being caught by police? To brazenly sweep into a Jewish agency with the intent of informing the world, or at least our community, that he was bursting with anger over this never ending war between Israel and the Palestinian people? A war that has spilled out onto Lebanese soil and will surely spread throughout the Middle East with the aid of President Bush and the United States.

I am sad and I am scared. I have been trying not to think of the kind of world my children will inherit preferring just to work myopically as hard as I can to change the world. But I slammed on the brakes tonight and the car came to a screeching halt. This is the world my children live in. This is the world my Jewish children live in. This is the world your Muslim children live in. This is the world your African American children live in. This is the world your Palestinian children live in. This is the world your Somali children live in. This is the world your Israeli children live in.