The last couple of weeks have been filled with stunning horror in the Middle East.
Still photos and videos show American soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
A pregnant Israeli woman and her four children were deliberately and coldly shot to death by Palestinian terrorists.
According to a New York Times article on Wednesday, May 12,“[Palestinian] gunmen displayed for reporters what appeared to be brain matter and bits of flesh … on a blood-soaked sheet of brown paper.
“‘They were able to take parts of bodies, hands, brains [of Israeli soldiers blown up in a troop carrier in Gaza City.]’ said … a fighter for the militant group Hamas.” He said they hoped to trade them for prisoners held by Israel.
In a separate New York Times story we learned that “Al Jazeera, the Arabic language television channel, broadcast what it said was two Islamic Jihad militants displaying what they called the head of an Israeli soldier, resting on a table in front of them.”
Similar shocking videotaped images were posted on an Islamist Web site of the beheading of the young American Jew from Pennsylvania, Nicholas Berg who had been working as a civilian in Iraq. His family said that he went there to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Like the Bergs of West Chester, Pa., we try to raise our children to love their neighbors and repair the world. Like them we love our children and cannot imagine them meeting such an end.
But a time like this prompts us to wonder to what depths human barbarism can descend and to struggle to understand what options are left to people of good will. Words fail to describe our disgust and grief in the face of such evil.
It is cold comfort (but perhaps there is no other right now) to recall the words of Rabbi Yehoshua in Pirke Avot (2:16): “The evil eye, the evil inclination and hatred of other people remove a person from the world.”
Eventually, those who committed these acts will bring retribution and justice upon themselves — if we in Israel and the United States have the will to seek it, and if the Muslim world remembers the best of Islam’s teachings about justice. (“Let not the hatred of others make you avoid justice. Be just: that is nearer to piety” — Koran Sura 5:8.)
May mourners and sufferers be comforted, and may the memories of the dead be for a blessing.
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