By Joseph Aaron
I can’t stop looking at the names. I can’t get myself to look at the faces.
The Hezbollah war is over, at least for now. We are now in the phase of consequences, something Jews are particularly good at it. And so we will endlessly talk about the job Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did in his first real test as leader of the Jewish state.
But I have little interest in the Monday morning quarterbacking. What I care about are the Israelis, 159 of them, who gave their lives in this war.
Per capita that is the equivalent of almost 8,000 Americans. That is more than triple the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq, and more than double the number of people who died on Sept. 11, 2001.
In one month, we lost 159 Israelis. Imagine if we lost 8,000 Americans in one month in Iraq. We can’t stand it that about 2,500 U.S. troops have died in Iraq in more than three years.
Before we move to the game of blaming and finger-pointing and pointy-headed analysis of the strategic implications, we need to, as Jews, stop and feel the loss we have suffered. Really feel it.
159 Israelis, most of them young. Noam Meirson, 23. Philip Mosko, 21. Moshe Ambao, 22. Shaul Michlowitz, 21. Daniel Shiran, 20. Itamar Zur, 19. Andrei Brudner, 18. Alon Feintuch, 19. Adi Cohen, 18. Ilan Gabai, 21. Michael Levin, 22. Shimon Adega, 21. Edan Cohen, 21. Shimon Dahan, 20. Yiftah Shreirer, 21. Lotan Slavin, 21. Kobi Smileg, 20. Yonatan Hadasi, 21. Yotam Gilboa, 21.
Remember the wounded
I don’t know which make me ache more, the names of those young Jews who never got a chance to live their lives, most of whom, my guess is, were not married and didn’t have children; or the names of those soldiers who were almost certainly married and had children.
Yosef Karkash, 41. Shmuel Halfon, 41. Daniel Ben-David, 38. Zvi Luft, 42. Yehoshua Kochva, 37. Dov Steinshuss, 37. And more.
The number I hate most is how many have been wounded. It’s always high. The number of Israelis wounded is put at more than 1,000.
Problem is, we hear wounded and dismiss it. Only wounded. Wounded, so what? At least they weren’t killed.
Wounded can mean having had arms amputated, not being able to walk, a hole in the chest and extensive damage to major organs. Wounded can and often does mean a living hell.
More than 1,000 Israeli wounded. Per capita, that is as if 50,000 Americans were wounded. All in a state the size of New Jersey.
I’ve got opinions about this war. But it’s too easy to get lost in all that.
First, we need to ache and to mourn. We need to feel that these were people with names and with spouses, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, who gave their lives protecting the land that is the birthright of every Jew.
But it is a tiny handful of us who are called on to make the ultimate sacrifice in ensuring that birthright, which is why I have made it a point to read their names, to know their ages. That helps make their loss a human tragedy, a Jewish family tragedy, not just a number on a TV screen.
And it is why I find it impossible to look at their photos. The pain is too overwhelming. To see all those young, fresh faces, and know those faces will never get any older.
Which is not to say that I don’t also feel pain at the loss of Lebanese life. Many more civilians died in Lebanon than in Israel, and I do feel the heartache that their wives and girlfriends, husbands and boyfriends, parents and cousins and grandparents must feel.
It is important for us as Jews to feel their pain and to make sure to express it. If being the Chosen People means anything, it surely means that.
That’s why it upsets me when Jews rant about how the terrorists use civilians as human shields, put their weapons in residential neighborhoods, sacrifice their own countrymen to kill Jews — as if that makes it just tough luck that innocent people are caught and killed in the middle.
Because we are Jews, it is vital that we couple our criticisms of the terrorists’ tactics with compassion for the price too many Lebanese civilians have had to pay.
We must learn to distinguish between our need to fight that enemy and our responsibility as Jews to care about, to mourn the loss of every human life.
Which is not to say that I mourn for the Lebanese lost as I do for the Israelis. I do not.
Just as I tell my right wing friends that it is wrong if they only care about the Israelis who have died, so I tell my lefty bleeding heart friends that it is equally wrong to care equally about the fallen Israelis and Lebanese.
There is nothing wrong, and everything right, with caring first and most about Jews. We are family, and we should care about each other more.
So as you go about talking and arguing about the war with your friends, please remember the Israeli soldiers who have died and how much each of them did for all of us.
Joseph Aaron is editor and publisher of the Chicago Jewish News.
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