Kinah for Tisha B’Av 2014

Has it come to this, that we have become like them?

Has it come to this, that to protect our children we have had to kill their children?

Has it come to this, that we have become a disgrace unto the nations?

Has it come to this, that their dead are less than our dead?

Perhaps it would have been better, if we had never seen this day.

Perhaps it would have been better, if their hatred of us had not made us haters of them.

Perhaps it would have been better, if we had taken their blows and not responded.

Perhaps it would have been better, if we had remained the victim and not the aggressor.

Is it a little thing, that we mourn our dead and not their dead?

Is it a little thing, that the millions that they have slaughtered now excuses the thousands that we have slaughtered?

Is it a little thing, that we have discomforted ourselves, making ourselves odious unto the inhabitants of the lands?

Is it a little thing, that we speak of collateral damage and not dismembered corpses?

Is it a small thing, that their mourning parents are our logistical inevitability?

Is it a small thing, that we grieve for the loss of our Temples, and not of our nobility?

Is it a small thing, that we mourn our own sad history, and not the sad future we have made for the survivors who hate us?

Is it a small thing, that we remember our enemies from the past, and not the enemies we have newly created?

In the war of 67, we emerged glorious from the threat of the three nations.

What glory is there is the war of 14?

How will we pride ourselves on the destruction we have caused?

What heroes will we count, from among our own people?

They say their attacks on us are justified, because ours is a conscript civilian army:

Should we say in return that their babies would have been raised as jihadists, and therefore deserved early extinction at our hands?

Did we not know that thousands were sheltering in legitimate targets?

Or did we not care?

Has it come to this?