A piece of my heart looks like this:

I spent a semester in Israel in college (an experience I still intend to reflect on here someday), returned for another 3 weeks shortly before Danny and I got engaged/married, and is the one place I long to travel to with Dan. Nostalgia and good memories are wrapped up in the place for me. But more than that, Israel is the Promised Land. It is the setting for all the stories I love the most. The background for my favorite Book. And the homeland of my Savior. It's a remarkable blend of ancient and new, a far cry from our "old" cities, like Boston, or even the history and architecture of Europe. The people themselves are fascinating, and the story of their survival through millennia, and through the modern establishment of their country is nothing short of miraculous.

So my heart breaks a little when I hear, again, of Israel's struggle to defend themselves against those determined to remove them from the face of the earth. Then it breaks a little more when I hear our media elevate terrorists to the same moral ground, with the same rights and expectation of sympathy as those who have carefully targeted those terrorists. Naturally no one wants to see civilian casualties in any war, but when even Palestinian leaders admit that it's often impossible to distinguish militant from civilian, how can one blame the terror-fighters? Why not blame the terrorists? The ones who continue to shell innocent Israeli citizens -- indeed targeting civilians. My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones in the current manifestation of the conflict (forgive my politicing here), but can we give Israel a little break? Don't fall for the media's oft-unbalanced presentation of what's going on. Remember that the Jews are, as always, fighting for their lives.