A citizen walking in his neighbourhood one night sees a woman being assaulted by a group of men. Instinctively, and in spite of his 72 years on earth, the man intervenes to protect her and is beaten to the ground and kicked savagely by the assailants.

Yet amazingly, the citizen has been successful. The men flee and the woman, a mother of three, is safe and unharmed. Days later, she recounts the incident and tells of how she had feared for her life until the man acted to save her.

"I'd like to thank him for daring to help," she says. "He's a very brave man; a good man. There's not many of them around any more."

With her simple words, the unhappy story immediately deepens in sadness and darkness, as the age-old anxiety is aroused: the eternal fear that good men are disappearing and bad men are on the rise.

As this small unfortunate event was taking place in the suburban street, a massacre was in progress on the other side of the world. Israeli aircraft were bombing Gaza - the tormented little punishment space of one-and-a-half million desperate and helpless Palestinian refugees, half of them children.

The Palestinians were being crushed yet again in the most cynical, ruthless and brutal way - and as if this was not appalling enough, the government of Israel was also trying to tell the world that this chaotic mire of blood and rubble and burnt human flesh was a legitimate and necessary procedure in the making of civilisation and a better world.

One cannot help but think the Israeli Government a bunch of amateurs in the business of nationhood.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/little-picture-big-picture/2009/01/08/1231004194072.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2