One country is bombing two countries. The impunity might be astonishing, were it not habitual. Timid protests refer to mistakes that were made. How much longer will horrors continue to be called mistakes? This slaughter of civilians began with the kidnapping of a soldier. How much longer will the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier be justification for the kidnapping of Palestinian sovereignty? How much longer will the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers be justification for the kidnapping of the entire country of Lebanon? For centuries, the slaughter of Jews was the favorite sport of Europeans. Auschwitz was the outflowing of an ancient river of fear, which had flowed across all of Europe. How much longer will Palestinians and other Arabs be made to pay for crimes they did not commit? Hezbollah did not exist when Israel razed Lebanon in earlier invasions. How much longer will we continue to believe the story of the aggressor under attack, which practices terrorism because it has the right to defend itself from terrorism? Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon: how much longer will the extermination of countries continue in impunity? The tortures of Abu Ghraib, which generated a certain universal uneasiness, are nothing new to us in Latin America. Our military forces learned those interrogation techniques at the School of the Americas, which may no longer bear that name, but whose techniques live on. How much longer will we continue to accept that torture can be legitimized, as the Supreme Court of Isreal has done, in the name of legitimate defense of the homeland? Israel has ignored forty-six resolutions of the General Assembly and other U.N. bodies. How much longer will Israel enjoy the privilege of deafness? The United Nations makes recommendations, not decisions. When it does decide, the United States makes sure it cannot, though its right of veto. In the UN Security Council, the U.S. has vetoed forty resolutions condemning Israel. How much longer will the United Nations act as if it were just another name for the United States? Since the Palestinians have had their homes confiscated and their land taken from them, much blood has flowed. How much longer will blood flow so that force can justify what law denies? History is repeated day after day, year after year, and one Israeli dies for every ten Arabs. How much longer will an Israeli life be be worth that of ten Arabs? In proportion to the overall population, the 50,000 civilians killed in Iraq -the majority of them women and children- are equivalent to 800,000 Americans. How much longer will we continue to accept, as if customary, the killing of Iraqis in a blind war that has forgotten its excuses? How much longer will it continue to be normal that the living and the dead are treated as first, second, third or fourth class? Iran is developing nuclear energy. How much longer will we continue to believe that this is sufficient proof that a country is a threat to humanity? The so-called international community is not in the least concerned that Israel already has 250 atomic bombs, despite the fact that it is a country living on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Who calibrates the universal dangerometer? Was Iran the country that dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima? In the age of globalization, the right to apply force is more powerful than freedom of expression. To justify the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, war is called peace. The Israelis are patriots, and the Palestinians are terrorists, and terrorists sow universal alarm. How much longer will the media transmit fear instead of news? Is the slaughter today, -which is not the first and I fear will not be the last-, happening in silence? Has the world gone deaf? How much longer will the outcry of indignation be sounded on a wooden bell? The bombing is killing children, more than a third of the victims, almost half. Those who dare denounce it are accused of being anti-Semites. How much longer will the critics of state terrorism be considered anti-Semites? How much longer will we accept this form of extortion? Are the Jews who are horrified at what is being done in their name anti-Semites? Are the Arabs -who are as Semite as the Jews- also anti-semites? Are there not Arab voices that defend a Palestinian homeland yet condemn fundamentalist insanity? Terrorists resemble one another: state terrorists, respectable members of government, and private terrorists, madmen acting alone or those in organized groups, from the times of the Cold War against communist totalitarianism. All act in the name of God, whether he is called Allah, or Jehovah. How much longer will we ignore that fact that all terrorism scorns human life and they feed off of one another? Is it not clear that in this war between Israel and Hezbollah, it is the civilians, -Lebanese, Palestinian, and Israeli-, who are dying? And is it not clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the invasion of Gaza and Lebanon are the incubators of hatred, producing fanatics on assembly line? We are the only species of animal that specializes in mutual extermination. We devote US $2.5 billion per day to military spending. Extreme poverty and war are children of the same father: like certain cruel gods, they feed off the living and the dead. How much longer will we accept that this world infatuated with death, is the only world possible? (Translation ALAI) - Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist, is author of "Open Veins of Latin America" and "Memory of Fire."