Israeli settlers are alleged to have set off a bomb laced with nails and screws at a Palestinian elementary school. Police later detonated a second bomb discovered at the school. Five children, the youngest of them six years old, were wounded. Had the bomb gone off twenty-five minutes later, as many as 350 children could have been killed. [link to New York Times article]

Outraged is a word that has lost its power through overuse. Similarly, adjectives like despicable, deplorable and inexcusable. If I could, I would manufacture a new word, one that means "that which brings the weight of the heavens crashing down upon the world", one that instills in everyone who hears it a genuine and abiding fear for his own life, one that is so terrible, so awful that no one would dare speak it. It would combine the power of Emile Zola's "j'accuse" [link] with the exasperation of Joseph Welch's "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" [link], and would convey to those who brought on its utterance the complete and total contempt and condemnation of every man, woman and child ever to have walked the face of the earth. It would communicate to its targets that they are lower than low, not even on par with slime mold, fleas or the most disgusting vermin. Those to whom this word was directed would know that it was for them that the worst ravages of hell were created and reserved.

If such a word existed, I would use it to condemn the cowards who stood before God on Yom Kippur, praying for the sins of the world during the past year, and then went out and plotted to murder and maim 350 children. Who planted two bombs that were intended to kill children. Who thought that it was somehow justifiable to torture and kill children. That is how I would use this word.