Chopping carrots to make “Zuppa Corbette” last night, I realized that unlike hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza I actually had carrots.

That morning, as I do each morning, I watched the BBC on television for the latest news from Gaza. Horrific images flashed in my head, distracting me from making my nice homemade Italian soup. If I wasn’t more careful I might slice a finger.

Even if I cut through the skin all the way to the bone, my personal longtime health care hospital is about ten minutes away in my Hill Section neighborhood. In a pinch I could walk to the emergency room. Doctors would quickly care for me under the best modern conditions.

I’d heal.

I’d live.

Then I thought about doctors, nurses, paramedics and others who live and die in Gaza under constant attack from Israeli bombs, good people who use skill and courage to treat the wounded and the dying.

Each day on TV I watch misery in motion.

Reports from veteran humanitarian workers, Israeli military apologists, scholars, reporters, victims and others fill my head with a sense of doom that reflects devolution of our species. We don’t have to wait for an asteroid to smash into our planet. Human animals have already flattened compassion and mercy for others who share the globe.

And there I am chopping fresh carrots.

Just that morning Stephanie picked up fresh vegetables at the massive supermarket where she shops.

Fresh celery, too.

And onions.

Don’t forget the onions.

Some of us who cook call the combination “The Holy Trinity” as in the sacred Christian doctrine of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost that spins off the central concept of God.

I believe in carrots.

In celery.

In onions.

I believe in the sad people of Gaza where food is consciously denied to the multitudes who lack basic nutrition crucial to survive even if the bombs don’t crush them. But the Israeli government and military, at the bequest of the majority of the Israeli people wield famine as a weapon – an evil strategy designed to kill Hamas, the political party whose armed wing attacked Israel on October 7 and slaughtered civilians.

In return, the Israeli military under orders from the Israeli government has slaughtered Palestinian civilians.

One Hamas atrocity on a single day does not justify a continuing barrage of Israeli government atrocities for 60 days. Around the clock bombing, a ground invasion, restricting humanitarian aid and fuel, cutting water and electricity, toxic sanitation and closing hospitals spells “apocalypse.”

Just by itself, starving men, women and children constitutes a war crime.

“No soup for you,” said the “Soup Nazi” character on the silly Seinfeld TV sitcom.

No carrots.

No celery.

No onions.

No Holy Trinity.

Like the snarling fanatics say while cooking up their savage recipes, “Kill ’em all.”

Let God sort ’em out.