Back in the 1960s when I lived out by the Twin Bridges, the neighborhood kids would ride our bikes along the road. Trips to the 4-H camp and out to the slab were a daily occurrence. On rare occasions, we found discarded magazines along the road. Needless to say, most were True Detective magazines, with sensational drawings of half-dressed women and masked murders on the covers. To us kids these were real finds. Truth is, we did not yet understand most of what was in the magazines.

There was this one time near the second bridge, we found a magazine different from those others. It was a black and white magazine with real pictures from death camps in Europe after the war. It contained images of horrible things inflicted upon people. We may not have known what the detective magazines were about, but we could tell the images in the magazine were real and bad.

To this day I still remember a few of the pictures. There was an image of an earthen trench filled with people who were not much more than skeletons. Hundreds of people piled on top of others. I don’t even believe you could tell men from women. Other pictures were of an open door to a furnace. Just inside were human skulls and bones.

Dozens of pictures that depicted the terrible injustice put upon these people because of their race, political beliefs, religion and those who were in the way of the criminal government.

There were two images that I could very well understand. In the first one children were holding cups through a fence towards guards with guns. The caption said they were begging for food. In the next picture the kids were laying in piles behind the fences. It was obvious that the guards had shot them for simply asking for food. As terrible as this action was, it is still hard for me to believe they were so bold in their hate that they took pictures to remember what they had done.

Why am I bringing back these terrible images of starving kids and mass deaths, because on the evening news I can once again see women and kids holding cups and pans begging for food. The newscaster then tells that a few hundred were shot trying to get food. Piles of dead bodies in the streets with crying mothers holding babies. Earthen trenches serve as mass grave sites. These are not 1944 images, they are real and happening as you read these words. Only the bold journalists who sneak to take these images will preserve the crimes against innocent people for history to remember.

Where is the outrage? The very government of the people who were brutalized in the Second World War, is the same government who continues to create a modern genocide against a people not of their faith.

Those images I saw of concentration camps have returned in full digital clarity with the blood and starvation in the eyes of children. A child so empty of life, flies cover its face.

The Jewish people are good people. They have suffered throughout history. But their government has become so jaded to killing in the name of their right to retaliate that they can not see history will save these images to be compared to a past holocaust.

Is the Israeli Government re-creating their own Holocaust on other people? Hitler was so full of hate, he believed the only answer was to eliminate an entire race of people. Isn’t the Israeli government doing the same thing to innocent Palestinian’s who just want life safe from fear?

We believe our world is a civilized place. But when lives are taken simply because of race, religion or political beliefs, are we opening the doors to the Four Horseman who will bring suffering to us all? At least that is how I see the Holocaust in the Middle East, as I look Through the Lens.