They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Yesterday, I saw a picture that tore my heart out.

Three young children were holding a small picture of their father. You could read the sadness in their eyes and their devotion to this man that most of the world would now consider a monster.

These were three of the five children of Khalil Abu Elba, the Palestinian bus driver who plotted his genocidal revenge against any and as many Jews as he could find. Despite Palestinian Authority Chairman Yassir Arafat’s denials, this was clearly a planned provocation and not a traffic accident.

The driver had worked for the Egged bus line for five years. He knew how the bus operated. He knew it could become more than a means of transporting Palestinian workers to their jobs in Israel. It could become an instrument of mass murder.

That explains why the bus was not running its regular route when it smashed into a waiting line of commuters, killing nine and injuring up to 25 more.

Elba’s brother said he had been depressed by televised images of the deaths of Palestinian children. Unless he opens up to authorities about his motives once he leaves the hospital, we are not likely to know exactly why he chose to abandon his responsibility to care for those five young children and serve the new master of Hate.

Everyone involved in the Tel Aviv bus massacre has suffered under that cruel taskmaster. Families have lost children. Victims and perpetrator alike have lost body parts. And five young children have lost their father. When Israel chooses to respond to this terrible act, as it no doubt will, the suffering is likely to increase even more.

There were other painful images captured on this day. Scattered lumps of tissue, the remnants of living, loving human beings, now cast into the street like so much garbage. A young female member of the Israeli Defense Force, her head thrown back, weeping uncontrollably for her lost friends. Gurneys carrying the bleeding wounded to a hospital where physicians, prayer and time would do their best to restore what this day had stolen.

But that one haunting image will not leave me, anytime soon. Three young boys, too young to understand the complexities of politics, too innocent to experience the depths of hatred, too naïve to know how their presence on film might be used to forward the agenda of one terrorist group or another.

Looking into their eyes, you realize they understand just one thing. The father that they idolize won’t be coming home tonight…or anytime soon. And the seeds of hatred have been planted in their hearts, as well.

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