Weekend of Sadness

If you haven't guessed by now, Craig and I live in Israel. Unfortunately, the tsunamis that affected the Pacific were not the only "bad news" (or acts of tragedy) this weekend. Very early Saturday morning, five members of a family were brutally murdered.

Murdered doesn't seem like the right word.

I'm going with slaughtered. That sounds more appropriate.

I won't go into the details - you can find them in your local news paper, but I will say this: three children were slaughtered in an act of terror. Their ages: 11, 4, and 4 months old.

To my friends that have children - imagine that one of them was your child. Imagine the horror of having your 4 month old child stabbed to death. Imagine your 4 year old being stabbed for the sake of religion.

Sure, this family lived in an area surrounded by Palestinian villages and cities. Sure, they also lived in the West Bank. You can label them "settlers" if you wish but, to me, they were fellow Israelis. Fellow humans.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the tragedy by saying, "I noticed that several states rushed to condemn Israel for building a house in some place are taking their time in condemning the murder of children."

Thankfully, I don't see slaughters like this on the news every day but it made me think. I'm sad today. I'm sad for the 3 surviving children who no longer have parents. I'm sad for my country - it will take millions of dollars to find the people (or person) who did this and then cost more to house them in jail.

I'm sad because these were my people. They were defenseless and sleeping when they were murdered. They never had a chance. They went to bed on Shabbat thinking that Shabbat is a time for reflection and rest but never had the chance to experience another Sabbath.

There are many things I cannot explain to you, my readers, in terms of feelings and why someone like me - who doesn't live in the West Bank - would be so sad at something like this in the news. If I were in the U.S., I probably wouldn't feel this way. But I live in Israel. It's a smaller country and you know someone who knows someone else who probably knew these people. Each tragedy like this hits home. I can't explain why. But here's what I can do:

Educate you.

We are people, just like you, who have the right to live peaceful lives. We've done what we can to live peaceful and, politics aside, some monster disrupted that peace. I'm not just sad. I'm angry. VERY angry. I'm angry that it's taking FOREVER for ONE Arab country to stand up and condemn this act. Bottom line: three children were brutally slain and the countries of the world say nothing.

Gnaw on that for a while.