In these “bein hametzarim” — the three weeks in the Jewish calendar that mark the time between the breach of Jerusalem’s walls and the destruction of the Second Temple — the time when exile became the fate of the Jewish people — we seem to be surrounded by events and images that echo that traumatic and defining time that brought our 2,000-year exile.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is not the lamentations of Eicha that gripped the Jewish people. Yet the pain is inescapable. Food and water are the most basic human needs. They are not only the most basic physiological needs, but their absence causes mental breakdown, too.
I can’t bear this war and pray for its end. Yet, like in all wars, even sadly necessary but unwanted wars such as this one, Israel has made its share of mistakes. Unfairly and wrenchingly, as a result, some innocents have been killed.
Israel’s mission in securing Israel so it does not again experience an Oct. 7 kind of massacre is a complex challenge of epic proportions. Israel is not mercilessly gunning down crowds of hungry Gazans clamoring for food, like social media would have you believe. Hamas intentionally fires shots from within the crowds of these desperate people, which draws Israeli fire, and heartbreakingly, creates casualties. Hamas has even murdered their own Gazans trying to get to the food.
That being said, the documentation is disturbing. The pictures are horrendous. The gnawing begging broken eyes. Worse yet, the totally detached, cold and removed look. I feel Israel can do better. Israel must do better. I wonder, why isn’t the food distribution more dignified?
In this “bein hametzarim” when we are steeped in the echoes of Eicha history that recall the torment, starvation and the exile of our own people, part of that historical consciousness ought to extend to an added sensitivity to others’ suffering, even when the historical parallels between our ancient people’s plight and today’s Gaza are absent.
This is not a simple sentiment to express following the trauma of being targeted by the population of Gaza, as I live with a grounded-in-reality fear, knowing in my bones that not all — but possibly most or at least many there in Gaza would murder me just for being Jewish. Time and again, for many of the people there, their raison d’etre that dictates the maiming, murder and massacre of Jews has been borne out.
Mercy and compassion are tricky things. Misplaced or exploited, they can sometimes trap you and cause your own physical demise. But withheld, they can sometimes destroy our humanity. And sometimes they can warp our morals as the Talmud teaches, “he who is compassionate to the cruel ultimately becomes cruel to the compassionate.”
Balancing this all out is part of Israel’s challenge and struggle right now. As proud as I am of the IDF as a whole and the vast majority of the soldiers as the parts that make up the whole, as proud as I am of the humanity that the soldiers have mostly shown and fought with, I wonder if perhaps, naturally flowing compassion can be counted as one of this war’s casualties, too.
For after Oct. 7, on some level, Israelis have had to act with a certain kind of wisdom and clarity that comes from being targeted for genocide, digging their nails into holding on for sheer survival, come what may, and with it the cost of other competing values at times falling by the wayside. This, too, is a cost of an existential war.
Retaining our humanity without compromising our safety — especially when caught in such fraught situation — is crucial to who we are. Without it, who are we?
Another Eicha echo. The Arab Druze of Syria are being slaughtered — a group of people with whom Israel and the Jewish people harbor no trauma.
As of this writing, the Druzes’ plight has not dominated the news. I suppose that when Israel is not part of the equation, the global “human rights” organizations and “human rights” personalities marching and speaking in outrage on behalf of Gaza and Hamas are suddenly not interested. They go silent. Deafeningly silent. No sit-ins. No encampments. No demonstrations. No protests. No strikes.
The hypocrisy is damning.
An entire staff in the Druze hospital in Syria’s Suweida was targeted and massacred by Syrians. Christians and Alawaite were targeted, too.
Tragically, as with the Yazidis and other small non-Muslim religious minorities, now massacres of the Druze in Syria is taking place.
Many in the world have no clue who the Druze people, descendants of Jethro, are. But our two peoples have had a long standing friendship, including to modern times when Jews living in Arab countries were discriminated against, and the Druze lent a helping hand.
Not to mention the very personal connection and anguish of Israel’s Druze, watching parts of their Syrian Druze families massacred across the northern border of Israel.
True intended ethnic cleansing of a minority by or under the aegis of a radicalized Sunni Islamic leadership? That would be what the Syrian Druze are currently experiencing. An actual attempted genocide, largely left mostly quiet in mainstream media, is being documented and being filmed, Oct. 7 style, by some of the perpetrators and posted online.
Though there are no verified reports yet, it seems that more than 1,000 Druze civilians have been murdered this past week alone, replete with masochistic ISIS-style murders, forcing innocent civilians to jump to their deaths, from rooftops or balconies.
These Druze didn’t endanger or massacre Syrians. There is no land dispute involved. There is no defensive war in order to secure Syria from the Druze. There is no terrorist Druze regime that lives and rules amongst the Druze, bent on Syria’s destruction. The murder of the Druze is pure terrorism. Pure ethnic cleansing. These are brutal, barbaric executioners.
My heart weeps for these innocent Druze.
This too circles back to Eicha. To the Jewish exile. To the pain of the Holocaust. To Gaza.
As painful as the Gaza war is, I watch it and know in my bones that if Israel would not exist, that if the IDF would not be fighting and defending Israel, that if Jews were still in an exile without Israel, we would be in the exact situation of the slaughtered Yazidis and, again to our great sadness, the Syrian Druze.
Just Jews were in this position for millennia.
History has given us the dignity of a home, of a military that fights for us, the dignity of sovereignty.
Now we must extend that protection and dignity to those bereft of it, with gratitude and awareness for where we are at, what we have been given, how far we have come, and of course keeping an eye on how far we still have to go.
It’s this added layer of understanding that we have been in the situation of the Syrian Druze, that if not for Israel and the IDF we would still be in the position of the Syrian Druze; it’s the lamentations of Eicha and the painful breach of Jerusalem’s walls, followed by our exile and its echoes throughout our history, that are a guiding light to how I emotionally navigate some of these very tough situations we are confronted with right now.
© IJN 2025
