FOR THE of me, I cannot understand why people insist that the situation between Israel and the Palestinians is “complicated.” It is not. It only seems so to those who are unwilling to call a spade a spade. When injustice is cloaked in the language of security, and collective punishment is rationalized as defense, the world must not remain silent under the pretense of complexity.
What breaks the heart is this: that a people who have known unspeakable suffering throughout history—whose memory of the Holocaust still cries out from the ashes—should now be led by ideologues blind to the irony of their own actions. By what moral calculus do they not see that their unrelenting aggression gives fuel to the very anti-Semitism that once threatened to annihilate them?
Let us be clear: the power to end the starvation, displacement, and carnage in Gaza does not lie with Prime Minister Netanyahu or his government. Nor with the United Nations or the European Union. Not with the United States, Iran, China, Russia, or the Arab States. All these may posture and intervene, but they cannot change the heart of a nation.
The only ones who can stop this are the Jewish people themselves—both in Israel and throughout the diaspora—those who know, from the depth of their historical experience, what it means to suffer violence born of hatred and xenophobia. Only they can rise and say, “Not in our name.” Only they can demand that their state no longer build its future on foundations of vengeance, fear, and resentment. A secure and just nation cannot be founded on the ruins of another people’s humanity.
The Hebrew Scriptures testify to God’s heartbreak over the stubbornness of His people. In Psalm 95, the Lord cries out in verses 10 & 11:
אַרְבָּ֘עִ֤ים שָׁנָ֨ה ׀ אָ֘ק֤וּט בְּד֗וֹר וָאֹמַ֗ר עַ֤ם תֹּעֵ֣י לֵבָ֣ב הֵ֑ם וְ֝הֵ֗ם לֹא־יָדְע֥וּ דְרָכָֽי׃
אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּ֥עְתִּי בְאַפִּ֑י אִם־יְ֝בֹא֗וּן אֶל־מְנוּחָתִֽי׃
“Forty years I endured that generation; I said, ‘They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not know my ways.’ So, I swore in my anger, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER INTO MY REST.’”
These are not the words of a hater. These are the words of a God whose love is wounded by the rebellion of His own people. No curse from outsiders could be more devastating than the silence or sorrow of the God who once called them His own.
May the people of Israel listen—not to their hardline leaders, not to their military strategists, but to the still small voice of conscience. May they remember their patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, their matriarchs Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Ruth and Esther, their prophets Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, their mystics, their poets, and…their God. And may they act—not just for peace, but for mercy and justice, which is the only path that leads to true rest.
שָׁלוֹם לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
Shalom livnei Yisra’el!
