Bystander Or Combatant? Poem by gershon hepner

Bystander or combatant,
active friend or passive foe?
Threatened, who is competent,
injured by the distant blow,
to exclude the innocent
when the guilty hide among
human shields whom they torment,
in the terror Sturm und Drang.
Innocence becomes confounded,
moral lines becoming blurred
when the rules of war that sounded
fair in peace become absurd.
Ultimately those who’re focused
on survival must be ruthless;
ends come to all plagues of locusts:
none however to the truthless.