Daven For the Asir Tziyon
Lt. Hadar Goldin’s chasuna is scheduled to take place before Rosh Hashanah.
Daven for him. Hadar ben Chedva Leah.
Daven for a quick end to the unimaginable pain of his parents and siblings.
Daven to end the tears of a kallah who is waiting
Will definitely do.
Question: Will you take a couple of drops out of the kiddush club schnapps to mourn the countless number of children killed in Gaza?
[YA – Definitely not. I will FEEL compassion and sadness. (Maharal explains that rachamim extends to those who deserve it, and those who do not.) But I will not EVIDENCE it. Not while the war continues. The source of the drops you speak of is our custom to take a few at the seder for the Egyptians who were killed at the time of the Exodus. We find that the angels in Heaven were chastised for wanting to sing Hallel as the Egyptians drowned. But Bnei Yisrael were not similarly enjoined from singing Hallel. They were not expected to make room for the Egyptian loss, because they had suffered from them in displays of mourning. While we are suffering from Hamas and those who empowered them, we cannot be expected to find a place in our sorrow large enough to include them. Any show of equivalence is horrid and traitorous.]
Reb Yid-I share R Adlerstein’s sentiments 100% and would strongly reccomend that you see RYBS’s words on how Amalek manifests itself today-I can’t imagine how Hamas and its supporters, no matter what their age and gender don’t fit that definition. As long as the men , women and minor residents aid and abett the efforts of Hamas, they deserve no more mercy than the so-called “civilian”populations that aided and abetted the Confederacy, Nazi Germany and Japan. Being merciful to the cruel is not and should never be confused with being a Jewish character trait.
Agreed we should not extend sympathies to Hamas. You conflate Hamas with all Palestinians, and I do not–certainly not with a 5 year old child, or with a homeless family seeking safety in a shelter that has been bombed. No matter what the rationale for the bombing or destruction, these are innocent people who have been killed.
Your binary way of thinking plays into the hands of extremists on both sides. I will pray this Shabbat for the safe return of Hadar ben Chedva Leah. The fact that I will also have in mind (and discuss publically with others) other individuals who have been casualties makes me no less of a Jew, supporter of Israel, or human being–addarabba.
Shabbat Shalom.
Actually, it does. It makes you less of each of the three.
Why should any of us mourn those losses more than the Palestinians themselves?
They rejoice in the political capital they garner from like minded Jew haters (apparently the self hating ones as well).
I wonder how you think you are better than Neturei Karta?
Neutrei Karta goes to visit wounded Hamas activists in the hospital. Saying (or feeling) a few words of sympathy for a five year old Gaza boy injured in the fighting is hardly the same.
It is important to be publicly מוחה (reject/protest) the grotesque type of thinking as expressed in the comment of “Reb Yid.”
Most of us spent the entire morning in kinnos and dirges for calamities in the destruction of Jerusalem, the Crusades, the 1640s, the Holocaust, and more, and NOT ONCE did I see any reference at all to non Jewish victims. There were plenty of non combatants killed in these events. Most of the Roman centurions were drafted into the army with no say of their own. There were many Muslims killed in the crusades. There were many gentiles killed in the Holocaust. But we don’t mourn for them (nor, lest one attempt the distinction, do we “express sympathy” for them.) You know why? BECAUSE WE HAVE OUR OWN PEOPLE TO MOURN FOR.
“Be not overly righteous, and do not be overly wise”, said King Solomon. I would advise these יפי נפש , so touchingly concerned with Arab “victims” – go to the Jewish mothers and father of children, murdered in their beds while they slept, and tell them to have pity on the Arabs. Tell the mother and father of a Jewish solider, blown to bits by a suicide madman, that they should be weeping over the children of the gunman. Go tell them your high-brow moral equivalence theories.
I agree with Nachum. To express a notion such as described above makes a man less of a Jew, less of a supporter of Israel, and frankly, less of a human being.
A family that resided in Gaza ignored warnings distributed by the IDF and stayed in its house or on the roof during a bombing run and sustained casualties deserves no rachmanus simply because its presence aided and abetted the cause of Hamas-regardless of the age and gender of thosewho ignored the warnings. Those who view the victims of Hamas terror through the lense of moral equivalence are illustrating their lack of comfort with being a Jew and supporter of the right of the State of Israel to engage in a basic right of any sovereign state-the right of self defense.
Ben Waxman,
Assuming an equivalence is at least as bad as the NK. Which is what the pseudo intellectual above was attempting.
IMO, the real problem with Reb Yid’s comments is the lack of knowledge as to how a successful war is waged-by breaking down the enemy and its civilian population’s will to fight. As General Sherman said “war is hell”, and that lesson was taught by Generals Sherman and Sheridan in their campaigns in Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley and by the Union Navy in its blockade of Southern ports-all of which broke the willpower of the civilian population of the Confederacy to support its political and military leaders. (We forget that none other than Horace Greeley advocated a truce with the South in the summer of 1864, when Grant was besieging Petersburg, Va) .
During WW2, the Allies engaged in round the clock bombing of German cities, including Dresden, which had numerous military targets, and increasingly fought units with teens, the elderly and wounded soldiers in the campaigns in Germany proper. We also levelled Monte Cassino in Italy, where a monastery of ancient vintage was located, because the same had become a critical German artillery position The US Navy engaged in unresricted warfare , and we firebombed every city in Japan. Yet, only the dropping of the two A-bombs broke the will of the Japanese to send more kamikazes against American ships. I shudder to think what would have been the result if either conflict would have been subjected to the media assault against Israel-we would still have legalized slavery and the Final Solution would have continued indefinitely. If Israel succeeds in breaking the support of the civilian population in Gaza for Hamas, regardless of the criticism from the leftwing academic and media circles, and the wholly unrealistic and academic dictates of “international law”, Israel will emerge as the victor.