So, too, a society whose leaders look the other way when its most innocent members, its children, are made vulnerable. Have we not heard too much about the leaders of religious communities turning a blind eye to the predators in their midst? No group can be blameless. The Jewish community too must do everything in its power to protect the most precious among us, our children, and it need not be prompted to meaningful and concrete action by horrific tragedies such what as we grieved over earlier this summer. There can be no excuse or rationalization for those who prey upon our most glorious promise and possession.
Children – indeed all individuals – are safe, secure, and sound only as long as their leaders are concerned about their personal protection and security, and willing to take whatever measures are necessary to guarantee that security.
Yet as hurtful as the world often is, as dehumanizing as it so often feels, certainly no event or context drives home the brutality and impersonal nature of life more than modern warfare. A bomb dropped from a plane or a drone does not distinguish one person from the next. A soldier placed in a dangerous, volatile situation does not have the time or the luxury of considering the fullness of his enemy’s life, when his own life is in immediate danger.
In recent days and weeks, as Gaza has once again become a war zone and international condemnation is heaped upon Israel for its efforts to respond to thousands of missiles, terrorist bombings, and potential infiltrations from below the ground, it is not unfair to ask whether this Jewish value still has meaning.
How can Jewish and Israeli fighters conduct war and still somehow honor our fundamental principles? Certainly, seeking an end to war – peace – is a laudable way to embrace those principles. But it is not so easy to find peace when your enemy insists only on war.
Golda Meir, former prime minister of Israel, famously said that there would be peace between the Arabs and Israel only when “…the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”
In the modern world, there are moments when the harshness of life can be soothed; there can be minyanim where individuals can be celebrated while being part of a community. But can the same thing happen in war?
It is not often the case that “IDF” and “humanitarian” are voiced in the same sentence, but in fact we have ample evidence that even in the haze of war, even while confronting an enemy set on the absolute destruction of Israel, IDF soldiers find ways to honor the deep Jewish principle of the value of each individual life. Consider the following from the July 20 issue of Israel HaYom:
“In yet another demonstration of how Israel differs from its enemies, an IDF soldier on Sunday posted to Facebook a photo of him and his fellow army medics working to save the life of a wounded Hamas terrorist who only moments earlier had tried to kill them.”
The soldier, Daniel Albo, wrote, “Today, my unit and I saved the life of a terrorist who tried to kill us simply because we are IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens. We saved his life simply because we are human. Proud to serve in the IDF.”
The actions of this young soldier and his colleagues was not an aberration. At about the same time, Israel opened a military field hospital on the northern Gaza border to provide medical care to wounded Palestinian civilians.
Could there be a more stark difference between Jews and our enemies? While Hamas strategically puts civilians in harm’s way, Israeli soldiers seek to provide medical care to those same civilians – their so-called enemy. Israel’s humanitarian efforts even as the war was being fought weren’t limited to people injured by the fighting, as the IDF field hospital was equipped to provide obstetric care for pregnant Palestinian women unable to reach hospitals in Gaza.