I took a social media break after the heartbreaking news came out yesterday of the gruesome discovery of the bodies of the three teenagers kidnapped in Israel, who were missing since June 12.
I don’t have a lot to say. I don’t understand politics. I don’t understand what it must be like to lose a child simply because they were coming home from school and someone decided it was a courageous and admirable political act to kidnap, murder them, and leave them in an open field.
I looked at my sons as they went to bed last night and I thought of the mothers who spent their lives tucking their boys in, and making them lunch, and bandaging cut knees, and holding them when they had their feelings hurt. I thought of their dreams for their sons to marry and become fathers and tuck their own children in. Heartbreak. That must be what it feels like to lose your son like this: like having your heart broken.
I know Israel will retaliate. Will that help? I don’t know what will help anymore. I don’t know what help Israel needs. I know what those mothers needed. They needed their boys back.
I don’t want things to get worse for civilians living in Israel, or for those who live in the West Bank or Gaza. I hate war and I hate innocent lives lost. I understand the plight of the Palestinians and it keeps me up nights. Not all “Zionists” are racists. We aren’t.
I can hold two emotions at once. I can hold two thoughts at once. But the Unity I have been raised to believe in and the Oneness that is eternal is the One we call Shalom: Peace.
There has to be peace. Peace of mind, peace of body, peace of territory, and peace for the souls of all of the children killed, because we just cannot seem to get it right.
Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s “I Have A Dream” speech said this, referencing the Book of Amos: “No, no, we are not satisfied and will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Indeed.
We–the international community–should not be satisfied until the leaders of both the Israeli people and the Palestinian people have done their part to make that a reality.
May God who makes peace in the highest heavens cause it to rain down on us, and on all of Israel. Let us one day be able to say to this: Amen.
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