Sometimes it becomes a challenge for the mind to take in the prospect that not everyone's conscience recognizes the same type of human emotions.  Raw humanity not far removed from their tribal bare-existence roots is capable of demonstrating a marked lack of conscience and humanity.  And the salving balm that religion is capable of providing to the faithful turns against their well-being when it is being exploited by the powerful among them.

Because human nature is so flawed in its dark swamp of emotional excesses that can be called into play through disruptions to normalcy or whatever passes for it, eclipsing the ability of the human mind to think rationally, it becomes difficult to predict how people will react.  And when people are inextricably mired in an emotional-political-religious conflict of deep tradition and gut-level  antipathies what we think of as civility and humanity is revealed as a very thin veneer.

We ask ourselves: how can people behave like that?  What kind of reaction does that reflect as far as human compassion is concerned?  When a human tragedy occurs why does it elicit such a triumphal glow within those who view those who suffer as their enemy whom a higher power has allowed them to strike down?  All religions exhort their followers to behave humanely, responsibly; to 'do unto others as they would have done to themselves'.

Israeli police officers examine a destroyed bus at the site of a bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012. A bomb ripped through an Israeli bus near the nation's military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, wounding several people, Israeli officials said. The blast came amid a weeklong Israeli offensive against Palestinian militants in Gaza.

(AP Photo/Dan Balilty) (Dan Balilty)

It is explicable that people feel a rush of immediate visceral satisfaction upon hearing that some malevolent individual responsible for planning and executing mass atrocities has met his timely end.  It is infinitely less explicable that people should take it as an occasion to exult on hearing that innocent people having nothing whatever to do with the unfortunate condition that others find themselves in, are targeted for mass slaughter.

Of course this is a matter of very personal perspective sometimes.  A perspective that leads one to the opinion that people suffering under an unjust rule that brings misery to them are partially responsible for their plight, having 'elected' to rule those who run amok over their civil needs in their haste to inflict injury over a neighbour, bringing calamity down upon those they purport to represent, by using them as human shields.