How about we pray for our ghastly hypocrisy?

I have been hesitant to weigh in on the terrible attacks in Israel by the Hamas terrorist group because I am not an expert on the region, nor the ongoing, many-decades-long disagreements between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Old age has taught me to try to stick to writing about what I know, and to be damn careful when commenting on the ongoing events in this region, where opinion on both sides can strike with lightning, and is lodged in solid, immovable rock.

I have spent a long time in the news business dealing with death and despair, however, and have lived a long enough life that I feel qualified typing that what took place earlier this week was among the most brutal, disgusting things I have ever seen. The images of the attack are nauseating, and truly beyond comprehension.

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As an American, I also feel particularly qualified to comment on the truly-awful wherever and whenever it crawls out of hell, because where I live, grown men can easily acquire military-grade weaponry at our stores or online, and then wander into our schools to hunt down and obliterate our innocent children.

It happens all the time here, because our politicians have given up on trying to do anything meaningful to stop it, except encourage people to buy more guns to protect themselves, and to fall to their knees to pray for the dead.

The truly morbid politician will actually bend hard to the ludicrous by asking for our money to protect our guns, so he or she can then provide this absurd, cold-hearted counsel the next time our children are massacred.

Because, as we all know by now, there is always a next time.

I see this week that many of these praying politicians are absolutely outraged by what happened in Israel, and want the offenders of this brutal attack to pay with their blood. They are saying we should do whatever is necessary to make sure this kind of terrible thing never happens again.

Prayer is optional in this instance.

I feel qualified to tell these politicians to kindly go slither into the nearest gutter and shut the fuck up, because when they’ve decided a child’s life isn’t worth their time and effort, they have given up on any notion of being a meaningful human being. Their opinion on literally anything is as worthless as they are.

If you think I am wandering off a bit from the evil that transpired in Israel you might be right, but stay with me a little longer, because I am telling you the same type of man that was part of that awful attack there, is doing the same awful things here with the blessings of our praying politicians.

So far this year, nearly 30,000 have been killed by gun violence in the United States — more than a 1,000 of them have been children. Since 1999, 338,000 children have experienced gun violence at school.

Every year, more and more children are being shot to death, because every year there are more and more guns.

Look, my only real opinion on the events in Israel and the Middle East is forged from my time working at newspapers and trying to figure out what to present to our readers on the endless conflict. During my time in journalism, we published hundreds of stories and did our level best to explain the seemingly unexplainable in the region to our subscribers.

What we learned from them in countless readership surveys, is that most of ‘em just couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. Many of the comments we got from these readers sounded something like this: “Things will never change there.”

I’d be as bold as to reckon that 90 percent of the U.S. population couldn't even begin to explain what has been going on over there the past 75 years in anything resembling cogent terms.

This does not make what has transpired in the region all these many years any less grim, but it does highlight a reality: When people think there is no hope, they will simply tune out, and take their interests elsewhere.

If averages hold, 12 children will be gunned down in America today. Some politician somewhere will ask us to pray, and maybe even for our money. Too many people will simply throw their hands up and say, “Things will never change here.”

Let us pray.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough)