- Little babies – safe in their cribs
- Forty aligned in logical rows of a Kibbutz nursery.
- Screaming in unknowing terror as they’re butchered,
- Heads cut off in some medieval ritual – the corruption of blood.
- They didn’t deserve to die that way.
- Children, awakened in bed by hushed parents’ tones,
- Hiding in “safe rooms” as they hear unfamiliar language unwelcome at the door.
- Remaining silent, despite the terror,
- Sensing the fear of their own mother’s whispered commands.
- The strange voices fading away, followed by the thud of metal on the floor.
- An explosion, smoke slipping under the door.
- The searing heat as a home is consumed by flames.
- They didn’t deserve to die that way.
- Young soldiers, obligated and proud to serve in the IDF.
- At quiet outposts along the border.
- The holidays; waiting to go home, to Seder supper.
- To family and friends. To younger brother’s Bar Mitzvah.
- To girlfriends at the café.
- Automatic fire cut off retreat, and finally, cut off their lives.
- They didn’t deserve to die that way.
- Young dancers, celebrating life in the Negev.
- Entranced by the beat and the lights; enhanced by the magic of mushrooms.
- Dancing an ancient ritual,
- Some alone, but most in circles of close friends and new strangers,
- Gaining energy from the spirit around them.
- Swaying through the night – waiting to celebrate a desert dawn.
- Quick warning came, followed by the rattle of AK-47s.
- The panic, running; the biting burn, the massive damage of the bullets of war.
- They didn’t deserve to die that way.
- Farmers, wresting crops from land,
- That was barren brown desert only two generations ago.
- Controlling the water to make their world green instead of dry.
- Proud of work, of produce; of crops grown by the force of their hands.
- Dragged into the streets. Murdered before their families.
- Wives and daughters raped in the monster age-old ritual of sex turned power turned torture.
- They didn’t deserve to die that way.
- Old, survivors of the wars.
- Children in ‘48. Teens in ‘56. Soldiers in ‘67. Leaders in ‘73.
- Retired to well-earned rest, their reward a home by the sea.
- Where nations threatened to drive them, to drown them.
- A sea that proved to be their coast to enjoy.
- Dragged from their beds, shoved from their wheelchairs.
- Murdered in public.
- They didn’t deserve to die that way.
- The camps and the tortures. She survived it.
- The single event of history to justify the founding of Israel.
- The Holocaust, Hitler’s Final Solution for the Jewish people.
- She lived to see a new nation grow.
- A life that was the history of her new found homeland.
- Born in struggle, in war, in hatred.
- Survival by strength of will, against the greatest of odds.
- Only a few left, the last of that founding generation.
- She lived through the worst the world could do,
- Only to be imprisoned once more, a victim of the hate that bookended her life.
- She doesn’t deserve to end that way.
- Hamas came with medieval energy, AK’s and grenades instead of scimitar swords.
- They committed atrocities as old as warfare; of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun.
- Retribution born of decades of hate and loss.
- But butchering babies, burning children, raping women, murdering men?
- Their grievances are great, but their acts are beyond exception.
- An abrogation of their humanity.
- What else to do but treat them accordingly?
- Because no one deserves to die that way.
No one deserves to die in that terror or horror. It is impossible to imagine that humans can act that violently towards other humans. There is no society or religion that can condone the atrocities. As a result of these terrorists, more terror deaths and agony will come and unfortunately it is justified.