There is blame on both sides, people say. Israel has a right to defend herself, people say.

Hezbollah is at fault, the American government says. The Israelis define anyone who doesn't flee before them as being in cahoots with Hezbollah, and Alan Dershowitz agrees with them.

All I know is this:

According to this morning's San Jose Mercury News, 36 Israelis have been killed, 19 of them in the military. 381 Lebanese have been killed, almost all of them civilians, unless you accept the Dershowitz definition that means that anyone in the area by definition is not a civilian. That doesn't even address the issue of the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been given the choice by the Israelis: leave your homes, or die.

So you tell me, who has more blood -- and more innocent blood -- on their hands?

And that does not even touch on the situation in the Gaza, where the Israelis destroyed the only electrical plant in the area. Destroying the power plant is creating a humantarian crisis, causing a shortage of food and drinkable water for possibly over half a million people.

It was neccessary, Israel said, because darkness would make it easier to track militants who had kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

Let's look at that calculus again, shall we? 1 Israeli soldier = significant misery, and possible loss of life for a large number of Palestinians, with up to half a million facing food or water shortages. Oh, but it works out -- because the militants have ties to Hamas, the Palestinian governing body, so all those Palestinians, well, I guess they have it coming to them, don't they?

That's the way the U.S. is acting, at any rate. We're not pushing for a cease-fire -- let Israel kill more Lebanese, make more of southern Lebanon into a wasteland. Oh, nobody says that in so many words, but it comes across just the same.

We Americans collectively have blood on our hands, if for no other reason than we have kept silent when we should have spoken, stood still when we should have acted. And I find that the normal anger and disdain I have for my current government is replaced by something far stronger -- a deep and burning rage: how dare you be complicit in such evil? How dare you, in my name, stand by while our allies do such things?

May God have mercy on our souls.