What do you say? What do you do?
Friends and family around the world check in because they saw the news yesterday.
How do we explain to them that there is so much going on, but so little one can do at the same time.
Everyone has been called up that can be at this point, unprecedented since the ’73 war and for many of my generation or younger, something they only ever read about or heard about but not experienced.
As much as our children see Jerusalem they can’t understand that we only won it back in 1967. To them it has always been ours.
Now, the innocence we have all flirted with for the last few decades has come to a screeching halt and there is now way to go back for us, our children, or our soldiers going to war, many of them not even 21. This will change our world, your world and the future.
The Western world has never understood this part of the world. It is not civil, it is not just, it is not smooth, it only knows the hard desert truths of the world as it was 5,000 years ago, and continues today.
The naivety of the masses who feel for the people of Gaza. What people do the things they did yesterday to people who could be your mother, sister, your grandmother, your baby, brother, grandfather? And you expect us to just let it slide? Because Jewish blood has no value?
The whole world has wars. some, are inner city, some are country to country, some are state to state, some are terrorists to countries. You can ignore them all you want, but one day it will be on your door step, and what will you do? Try to make peace with them? I don’t think so.
In America, after Columbine or Sandy hook, did that change the gun laws? Did no one care about their own children being killed with no change in policy or order? No, you just accepted it and now this happens so frequently you don’t care when the next one, or 10 happens. Blame it on video games? You are an adult, you probably never played one even, if you are reading this.
Maybe because you wanted to stop loving your neighbors, or even knowing them and it is easier to not relate when it is not your own children.
In Israel, everyone is related. Not by marriage or family necessarily but through friends, school, work, their army service, their garage, and we are all there to help each other, when we need to be there.
Sure on an average day to day, people can be less than helpful but now, when this happens, literally we become Am Yisrael Chai, one nation of Israel that lives. Together, left, right, center, north, south, everyone agrees, we need to do what must be done.
When you see videos like this one my friend recorded early this morning: https://www.facebook.com/634075275/videos/803315954903637/of the kilometers of cars parked on the highways near bases so people can go do what must be done, you begin to understand what makes this country so special and why we say all of Israel is responsible for each other. And why this is like nothing previously.
Justice, in some parts of the world is a process that has laws and takes time and is meant to be unbiased, in theory, but does not favor the hurt or injured parties and thus is flagrantly abused by those that recognize these weaknesses.
But Justice in other parts is darker, sometimes favors the injured parties and does not care who it hurts along the way but sends its message loud and clear.
For 25 years or so Israel has tried the former route, even though it knew it would not work, and was willing to live with certain losses over time, but that just emboldened the enemies to do worse things than we imagined.
The line that we thought they would cross way back then, has finally been crossed.
The mission everyone is on is to never have this reoccur, and there is only one way to accomplish this goal.
It was fitting that as we prayed (it took me 30 minutes and 3 bomb shelters to make it to our shul and I live 1 block away) on Shabbat which was also the holiday of Simchat Torah where we complete the reading of the Torah that this sentence was included in it:
Fortunate are you, O Israel! Who is like you, O people whose salvation is through the Lord, the Shield Who helps you, your majestic Sword! Your enemies will lie to you, but you will tread upon their heights. כטאַשְׁרֶ֨יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל מִ֣י כָמ֗וֹךָ עַ֚ם נוֹשַׁ֣ע בַּֽיהֹוָ֔ה מָגֵ֣ן עֶזְרֶ֔ךָ וַֽאֲשֶׁר־חֶ֖רֶב גַּֽאֲוָתֶ֑ךָ וְיִכָּֽחֲשׁ֤וּ אֹֽיְבֶ֨יךָ֙ לָ֔ךְ וְאַתָּ֖ה עַל־בָּֽמוֹתֵ֥ימוֹ תִדְרֹֽךְ:
May Hashem protect all of the soldiers and people of Israel and return everyone home safely to their families.