As the horrific images from Gaza continue their relentless march through my newsfeed, I am haunted by the fact that many of my closest friends and family believe that Israel is justified in its latest attack. It is disturbing to see how easily these otherwise good and decent people have been manipulated into supporting what amounts to a hi-tech massacre. To be sure, lip service is often paid to the innocent victims, but this is usually little more than a rhetorical prelude to a lengthy discussion about how Hamas is really to blame for the roughly 1,000 civilian casualties.
What a breath of fresh air it was to see this Israeli news report by Tzion Nanous. Near the end, 13 year old Tome Yechezkel, who has lived her whole life under the threat of rockets, shows more empathy and common sense than all of her political leaders(and many of my adult friends) put together. Here is my translation of the report’s moving conclusion:
“Tome: I’m here my whole life. I have nothing else.
Tzion Nanous: From the moment that Tome was born, Qassam rockets have been falling in Nir Am. Here she is, 8 years ago, at the age of 5 when the alarm was called ‘Red Dawn’.
‘Red Dawn! Red Dawn!’
Tzion Nanous: Having endured Qassam rockets her whole life, after being sequestered in her house yesterday morning, she maintains a firm view of the other side.
Tome: Think about the fact that all of these bombs are falling on someone. I have a bomb shelter. If I hear ‘Red’…I have a public warning system. If I hear ‘Red’ I run to my bomb shelter. Okay. So it’s not the childhood that people dream of, running to a bomb shelter when there’s a warning. But they have no public warning system…That boom? That’s Gaza without a public warning system. The residents of Gaza who are guilty of nothing. These bombs are falling on them. It’s much easier to yell ‘They should die!’ and ‘They should go to hell!’ ‘Who cares about them? They murder our people.’ But people there are also dying. They’re also being blown up. They also can’t leave…Their life is shit. Worse than mine.
Tzion Nanous: Yuli, Tome’s mother, is scared. Not from Qassam rockets and not from infiltrators, but from the reaction of people to what her daughter just said. ‘How,’ she asks ‘have we turned into a State where compassion for the other side is a position that is almost subversive, almost illegitimate?’ It is precisely the people who live here on the border and endure [Qassam rockets] their whole life who know very well: In the end, after the war, we will need to continue to live at a distance of a few solitary kilometers [from Gaza]. The army does great work, but military force alone can’t solve the problem in the long run.”
It’s difficult to be hopeful at a time like this, but Tome gives me hope for a different kind of future. A future where it’s not so easy to get us to shut off our natural capacity for compassion. A future where the slaughter of 1,000 of our fellow human beings is not met with deflections but moral outrage. A future where I have a difficult time explaining to my grandchildren how this could have ever happened in the first place.