There are no words… Yet we should never stop talking!!!

Julian Resnick

JULIAN RESNICK writes from Israel

Almost a year and a half into this awful war. Remember the responses in the early days? Most significantly the Hebrew phrase,
אין‭ ‬מילים ‬“There are no words.” And, of course, endless numbers of words have been used by those who both hate us unconditionally (there are many) and those who love us unconditionally (thankfully, many as well).

And so often I read these words from my home in Israel, many written by people far away, and I ask myself, why do they not get it? (Both those who spew hatred, and those who celebrate and mourn with us). 

So, I decided, with permission, to bring you two pieces written by those who have paid the price of this war. One you all know, or think you know, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s mother; and the other, Captain Eyal Mevorach Twito, the son of my cousin, Shiri Gevish Twito and Motti Twito, and grandson of Simcha Gevish (once Simon Golshevsky from Woodstock) and Masha, who grew up in Lod. Read both pieces out loud.

First, a poem written by Rachel while Hersh was still in Gaza being held hostage. You can find it in the beautiful anthology of poems written after October 7th called “Shiva”, edited by Rachel Korazim.

One Tiny Seed
There is a Yiddish lullaby that says, “Your mother will cry a Thousand tears before you grow to be a man.”
I have cried a million tears
in the last 67 days.
We all have.
And I know
…way over there,
There is a woman who looks
just like me,
Because we are all so very similar
She has also been crying…..
All those tears.
Our sea of tears
They all taste the same.
Can we take them, gather them up, and remove the salt,
And then pour them over our desert of despair….
And plant one tiny seed
A seed wrapped in fear, trauma, pain and hope?
And see what grows….
Could it be that this woman,
So very like me,
That she and I could be sitting together in 50 years
Laughing without teeth because we have drunk so much sweet tea together,
And now we are so very old,
And our faces are creased like worn-out brown paper bags
And our sons have their own grandchildren
And have long lives
(one without an arm, but who needs two arms anyway?)
Is it all a dream?
A fantasy?
A prophecy?
One tiny seed.

Second, words written by Eyal on the morning of the day he fell in battle in Gaza, and read by his younger brother at the Azkara (Memorial service held in the Yavne cemetery on December 12th, 11 months after his death):

“For me, some of the more complex issues which I must face, as an officer, are the issues of morality and moral behavior in times of war.

Is it legitimate to take any of the material things we find in the houses we take over, to use for our own benefit? And, what about the food that we find? And many similar questions. Beyond all of this, when in the battle situation, you are often doing things which fly in the face of who you are in the normal situations you have lived through. It begins with dumping trash in the house you are using, continues with having to destroy any evidence of your being in a place to prevent your movements being traced, all the way to having to throw out or destroy any leftover food before you go into battle so that the enemy will not be able to sustain themselves using our food. Over time over here, in Gaza, you can see how each soldier adjusts to the situation in his own way. If in the beginning I forbade my soldiers from even drinking a can of Sprite they found in a home, now, we are searching for food and drink, and when we find it, we cook it, eat it and drink it.

This disturbs me a lot. I worry that I will lose the ethical code I was brought up with, and in the end will not be able to draw the lines for my soldiers to follow. 

When we were on Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the things that pained me most was seeing the havoc and destruction caused by the Hamas terrorists. In homes where they did not find people, they destroyed everything. They smashed windows, destroyed TVs and all the furniture. Everything. Entering those homes, seeing the level of wanton destruction, the evil energy of the terrorists, pained me greatly.

When I am here, in Gaza, I compare myself, often, to the terrorists of Hamas in the homes they occupied. In what ways am I different from them? How is my behaviour different? Why is what I am doing is OK, while what they did to me and my people, is not OK?

Of course, there are many differences between us and them. There is no comparison. And still, I compare.  I find that one of the major differences between us is my conscience. As a child, I was taught never to throw away food. Bal Tashchit (‘Thou shall not waste/destroy’). We were taught to bless food and thereby bestow holiness on it. Destroying food, and on top of it, destroying the houses we were in, feels unnatural, and in a decent world, inhuman.

What I cling on to in these situations is my personal moral conscience. When I give the order to destroy, I order my soldiers to destroy only what is necessary so as not to give anything away to the enemy which they could use to their advantage. I do this so as not to damage our moral core, which we need to stay sane and to maintain a clear distinction between who we are and who they are. 

It is this which maintains a feeling of the just nature of the path we are taking in this battle.”

I share these with you, because, if you read them carefully and pay attention to the nuance, you will find that they share something crucial, in my mind. They both defy simple, knee-jerk responses to the questions of ‘the other’. They both raise the questions of what is moral behaviour and acknowledge that we share human responses to extreme situations. Eyal, a young officer, 22 when he fell, brought up in a home where the Halachah was a towering presence, but not only of rules, but also that which provided a moral framework, struggles in the battle situation. He realises just how complicated it is, and how hard he has to work to maintain a moral code, especially in light of what he saw on Kibbutz Be’eri, and he raises one of the questions we are dealing with in this war: How do we hold on to our moral code when confronted with evil? A quick response from me, as a former combat soldier: It is not easy.

And Rachel, when many around us, both at home in Israel, and in the Diaspora, are thirsting for revenge – even though I do not share this thirst, I can understand it – recognises the humanity in mothers on the other side. In Gaza. In Lebanon. She sees the mothers on the other side, and her dream is not that of vengeance, but hopefully, possibly, one day drinking tea together.

May their memories be for a blessing and help us, the Jewish People, to continue the work to create not only a safe home for ourselves in our land, but also continue to strive to live a moral life and work to bring peoples together.


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