Grief is not a currency

I have seen too much grief and suffering and death in the last 507 days – the weight of it all is crushing – and I mourn:

I have seen a man leave his home to register the birth of his twin daughters, only to return and find his wife and newborn babies buried beneath the rubble.

And I mourn.

I have heard the cries of a little girl named Hind, waiting for an ambulance that never came. Her voice—small, breaking, desperate—pierced the silence of a world that had already decided her suffering was inevitable.

And I mourn.

I have waited for over 500 days for two babies and their mother to come home. I have lit candles and scanned the dark night sky for a shard of hope, amidst the cold dead stars. I have waited, stood vigil, prayed and wept, wept and prayed — bore witness as Hamas paraded black coffins on a stage, while throngs of families jeered and celebrated the murders of two innocent children, a loving mother, and a devoted grandfather.

And I mourn.

Yet when I speak of my sorrow—when I cry out in anguish for the Bibas boys, for Kfir and Ariel, for the copper-haired babies stolen with their mother, Shiri and Oded Lifshitz, a dedicated peace activist —so many do not meet me with empathy, but with the despicable deflection of “what about?”

As if grief must be rationed. As if mourning for one innocent life negates the mourning for another.

This is not an either-or equation. The death of any child, in any place, is a tragedy that should shake the heavens.

But here is the inescapable truth: the children of Gaza would still be alive today if Hamas had not stormed into Israel on October 7. If they had not murdered parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. If they had not raped and mutilated and desecrated. If they had not kidnapped those two sweet, copper-haired babies and their mother, and turned an entire country’s joy into mourning.

The devastation in Gaza is profound. It never should have come to this. But at the end of the day, the unbearable weight of this war does not rest on Israel. The true burden, the original sin of this horror, belongs to Hamas.

Mourning should never have to be justified.

The Bibas boys should be here. They should be tumbling over one another, laughing, their
copper hair bright in the sun. They should be clinging to their mother’s legs, pressing sticky fingers to her cheeks. Their absence is a wound in the fabric of the world.

And I mourn.

And so is the absence of every child who has been lost.

Shiri Bibas should be here.

And I mourn.

Hersh and Shiraz and Aner and Vivian and Zechariah and Amichai and Shani and way too many others should be here.

And I RAGE.

And that makes me mourn, too.

Grief is not a currency to be bartered. It is a light to be held, a sacred space where we meet each other in our shared humanity. I refuse to extinguish my sorrow for one child, one human, to make space for another. There is room for all of it. And that, in the end, is what makes us human.