Part 2: This thing about Jewish and Palestinian children

December 29, 1:05 PMSpiritual Life ExaminerRabbi Ben Kamin

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A number of reactions to my piece yesterday about the sad inevitability of Israel’s current operation in Gaza (these were received through various mediums) continued the mantra questioning Israel’s “right to exist.”  Ironically, some of these spiritually pejorative incitements come from misguided (I think) Bible-thumping Christians, whose earthly connections to the Holy Land depends upon the State of Israel’s unconditional, 60-year defense of all the holy sites that connect people of all faiths to Scripture.

Would some of these folks prefer that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be turned over to the kind ministrations of Hamas?  Do they yearn to have Bethlehem colonized as an Al Qaeda regional bureau? 

When I wrote yesterday about my little niece near Ashdod, Israel being afraid of Hamas bombs, my family had not received word yet that, in fact, her little village of Gan Yavneh was indeed strafed and she sat sobbing in the family “security room” while my frantic and worried brother called home from his office in Jerusalem.  And even though some readers accused me of insensitivity to the myriads of Gaza children suffering through the Israeli airstrikes, did they suddenly lose their literacy skills when it came to those sections of my posting that lamented exactly that?

You can’t love a child in Israel and suddenly forget what a child is all about in Gaza or Lebanon or Iraq.  Unless you so despise children that you use them for decades as pawns in your own sickly Islamic machismo plot to get a whole culture mobilized against a Jewish state just because it is a success in the midst of your abyss.  Unless you turn your entire scriptural tradition into a blueprint for an insane “holy war” against playgrounds, school houses, supermarkets, and synagogues.
 

The drawings shown come from the Neve Shalom (‘Oasis of Peace’) School in Israel—one of several schools, agencies, and camps in Israel that have sprung up over the years to eradicate hatred at the primary level. 

What’s really happening now in Gaza?  Kids are being sent to find crazy killers who murder kids and, in the process, other kids are dying and even the ministering angels are wondering whatever happened to Christmas.