Being Human in Times of War

This is a very challenging time to be a human who cares.

And I’m not saying humanitarian because that definition is now contaminated by selective humanitarians who only care for a certain group of people (based on national origin, sexual orientation and skin color).

I’m taking about real everyday humans who truly care.

Because we all care.

Non of us want to see innocent people die.

And who’s innocent anyways? In today’s standards.

Light vs. Darkness | Hate vs. Love

As an Israeli, I was born into hate.

I was born into the knowingness that our neighbors hate us and will always try to kill us.

My neighbors were born into hate as well.

They were taught that jews are evil and took their land and they should kill us.

When you’re born into hate it’s hard to keep love going.

But somehow, an entire nation, managed to that.

Israel managed to bring light into the darkest, deadliest zone in the world - the Middle East.

We created a country full of life, love, innovation, dreams, freedom and acceptance.

A true Western democracy, in the Middle of the East.

With that love and light we opened our country for Arabs from all over the Middle East.

2 million of them currently live in Israel.

We made peace with most surrounding countries. And recently more countries.

We creates peace movements within us to help bridge the cultural and religious gap.

We welcomed Palestinians, who were raised on hating us, into our country for work and play.

We opened our hearts and lives to people who hate us and made peace with them.

That is our true power. Not only in war - but in creating peace.

Oct 7 has revealed an evilness that we still can’t comprehend.

We knew they hate us, and want our country.

We knew they have extremists who would sacrifice themselves for terror.

But we never imagined the brutality and inhumanity they performed with their bear hands.

As bodies are still being identified, body parts collected, and stories of the horrors shared,

we are filled with rage, anger. And yes vengefulness too.

For the first time in a really long time, possibly ever, we are filled with hate.

Can you blame us?

Watching our children being slaughtered.

Seeing and hearing mass rape testimonies of our women.

Seeing burned to a crisp bodies that cannot be identified.

Finding body parts of children and teens - heads, arms, eyes.

Seeing a pregnant woman cut open with her baby stabbed.

Finding a baby baked in an oven.

And knowing we still have 240 children, parents, teens and elderly kept in captivity…

We have seen the devil at work, first hand.

And it made us enraged, vengeful and hating.

Jews are not used to carrying hate within us.

Even after the holocaust we moved on to build and develop and create our future.

We did not seek revenge.

But now, we do.

Yet, still, all that hate, hasn’t brought out of us the worst side of humanity.

We still fight traditional lawful warfare, with all the applicable warfare rules.

We still notify and alert before every bombing.

We still open humanitarian paths for civilians to escape.

We still help Palestinians find a place of safety.

We still try to target only terrorists, who are hiding behind civilians.

And we don’t march for hate.

We don’t march to force people to help us or save us.

We don’t march against an entire civilazion.

Warfare vs. Slaughter

We don’t kill Palestinians with our bear hands.

We don’t slaughter their people the way they have slaughtered ours.

We are doing to the most extensive and complicated military operation, possibly in history.

Fighting 30,000 terrorists that built underground terror tunnels beneath and entire city, in an urban area filled with hospitals, playgrounds, schools and homes, while trying to rescue 240 babies, children and elderly is nothing any country in the world has ever had to deal with.

And our warfare is extremely calculated -

Notify civillians to evacuate.

Bomb major target terrorist operations building.

Go in by foot to locate tunnels.

Underground warfare.

This far 11,000 Palestinians died.

This number was shared by Hamas - a terrorist organization.

We do not know how factual it is.

We know it took us 3-4 weeks to find, collect identify and match DNA for 1,400 bodies.

It took them hours to count 11,000.

We do not know how many of them were terrorists, and how many are innocent civilians.

But we know there are 30,000 Hamas militants.

But let’s accept these reported numbers -

11,000 Palestinians died.

As a human who cares, we must ask:

Why did they all die if Israel notified them to evacuate?

Why did they not evacuate?

.

Why did Hamas force them to stay?

Why did Hamas not hide them in their tunnels?

The answers came out of the mouths of rescued Palestinians themselves:

Hamas forced them to stay.

Hamas was shooting at them and blocking their roads.

Hamas used them as human shields to disguise and cover for them.

Hamas used the tunnels to hide, leaving Palestinians to die.

Hamas performed warfare from hospitals, schools and private homes.

So 11,000 Palestinian lives were sacrificed, by Hamas.

They scream genocide. But when you look at numbers:

200,000 Syrians died in the hands of their own leaders.

170,000 people died in Ukraine war.

The Chinese killed millions of their own.

Evil nations are used to killing their own people.

In wars many people die.

So what’s different here?

Why is the world so angry at Israel?

Because they know that we are better.

They know we are good.

They know we wouldn’t kill innocent people for fun, or land, or any reason.

So the outrage is blasting the streets and the web.

I guess we’ll take that as a compliment?

People don’t expect us to kill innocent people.

And that’s a good thing.

As a human, I hurt for the innocent Palestinians dying at war.

As a Jew, as an Israeli, I hurt more for the way my people were slaughtered with pure evilness.

As a human, I know with a full heart that we would never do that to them.

As an Israeli, I know with all my being that we do better. We are better.

I served in the IDF - we don't do evil.

As a human, I know full heartedly that Palestinian and Israeli blood is on Hamas's hands.

As a human, I feel sad for the life loss.

As an Israeli, I don’t feel shame or guilt.

As a human, I feel remorse.

As an Israeli, I don’t feel responsible.

As a human, I feel anger and hate,

but mostly for them dragging us into this blood fest.

And that’s the human experience we are all witnessing right now.

Being human in times of war.