וְאָכַלְתָּ֣ אֶת־כׇּל־הָֽעַמִּ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ נֹתֵ֣ן לָ֔ךְ לֹא־תָח֥וֹס עֵֽינְךָ֖ עֲלֵיהֶ֑ם וְלֹ֤א תַעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־אֱלֹ֣הֵיהֶ֔ם כִּֽי־מוֹקֵ֥שׁ ה֖וּא לָֽךְ׃ (דברים ז:טז)

“You shall destroy all the peoples that your God יהוה delivers to you, showing them no pity. And you shall not worship their gods, for that would be a snare to you.” (Deuteronomy 7:16)

 

Compassion shouldn’t be a political issue. But these days, it is.

On Wednesday evening, Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin reminded us of this truth.

In a return to their hometown of Chicago to address the thousands of delegates at the Democratic National Convention and millions on television, Jon Polin boldly stated that

“There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict of the Middle East. In a competition of pain there are no winners.”

Many will recognize Jon and Rachel as the now-famous parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was taken from the Nova festival on October 7, after his best friend Aner Shapiro was murdered (along with hundreds of others), and after his left arm was blown off from a grenade thrown into the shelter where they were hiding from Hamas terrorists.

During their 8-minute speech, they paused the politics.

“This is a political convention, but needing our only son and all of the cherished hostages home is not a political issue,” Polin declared – to which the crowd responded with expressive applause.

“We’re heartened that both Democratic and Republican leaders demonstrate their bipartisan support for our hostages being released,” Jon Polin said.[1]

Rachel added her plea: “We must not turn a blind eye to the suffering of these human beings, along with the suffering of all innocents in Gaza,” exclaimed Rachel in a display of anguish and compassion.

This excruciating conversation has been ongoing for the last several months. It is heart-wrenching and divisive and offers no perfect solutions.

These unbearable dilemmas are only made worse by the distrust most Israelis and many in the international community have for PM Netanyahu and his extremist coalition members. They are made worse by the distrust many in Israel and the Jewish community have for their regional neighbors and Iran proxies on their borders. They are made worse by the anti-Zionist protesters who feel the pain of the Palestinian victims of the war but can’t, or won’t, feel the pain of the Israeli victims of the Hamas aggression that started this war.

In his keynote speech at the DNC, President Biden stated that pro-Palestinian protesters “have a point” as he emphasized his commitment to getting the Gaza hostages home and a ceasefire agreement. They have a point in reminding the world of the dire situation in Gaza and the need for humanitarian aid. But no, they do not have a point in advocating for an end to the State of Israel, declaring that anyone who is a Zionist is a racist, and conveniently failing to mention the Hamas attacks of October 7 as if Israel was attacking Hamas in Gaza out of nowhere.

Political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin, writing in Haaretz, summed up the division in Israeli society well: “‘Smash Hamas’ vs. ‘Bring Them Home’”.

But, compassion is at the heart of Judaism is it not???

We emphasize it in our daily prayers and will reiterate the belief that our God is a compassionate God during the High Holiday liturgy in just a few weeks. But then there’s this verse from this week’s parasha that we will read tomorrow morning:

“You shall destroy all the peoples that your God יהוה delivers to you, showing them no pity.” (Deuteronomy 7:16)

Sadly, and alarmingly, there are those in positions of real power in Israel who wholeheartedly espouse this verse as their duty

Ariel Kahana, an influential columnist from the Israel Hayom daily, wrote this week that Israel must first “destroy [Hamas], smash it, crush it, ram it and deny it all forms of ‘humanitarian aid,’ [author’s quotation marks] until they howl and say enough.” Only then, he said, “will the conditions truly be ripe for a deal.”

He, and others like him, articulate a brutal position against any possibility of compromise or deal-making with Hamas. They seem convinced that doing so will only backfire on us, as it did on October 7, and often simply are not moved by the devastation in Gaza. Vice President Kamala Harris is not wrong in her assessment that “…what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives, hungry people fleeing to safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” she said in her acceptance speech for the Presidential nomination during the Democratic National Convention Thursday night.

Of course, it’s easy for a room full of convention attendees who won’t pay the price that released terrorists from Israeli jails could exact on Israeli civilians to push for an end to the war and for Israel to taper its fighting in Gaza. Some clearly will fault the Goldberg-Polins and the other hostage families for advocating with their emotions and not with a clear strategic mind.

So, what do we do with this?  A few options:

  1. We could simply reject those harsh voices like Kahana and the extremist politicians who are willing to sacrifice the hostages in service of (what they perceive to be) a higher purpose. In so doing we would likewise reject the verses in the Torah that are abhorrent to us.
  2. We could live with the uncomfortable verse(s) and juxtapose them with the many sources in our literature and tradition that teach Chesed and Rachamim – compassion and mercy, offering a values equalizer that prioritizes love of the stranger and for all of God’s creatures over the vanquishing of our enemies.
  3. We could lay out a cost-benefit analysis and conclude that it would be far preferable to take a deal that brings the hostages home as opposed to risking moral corruption in following the Torah’s directive to “take no pity” on Israel’s enemies. If we took the deal to get our hostages home, leave the remaining Hamas fighters in place, and exchange Palestinian prisoners (as we no doubt would be required to do) our people could suffer again down the road. But, leaving the remaining hostages in hell or being killed in captivity because we have a skewed version of what it means to be victorious is no decent option.
  4. We could conclude that the Torah’s injunction to choose life (stay tuned for Parashat Re’eh coming soon) far outweighs the contradictory command to doom the idolatrous Canaanite nations and aptly apply that to the current situation.

It’s all very confusing and difficult, but I believe that Israel should not persist in fighting in Gaza until every last Hamas fighter is eliminated (if that is even possible), even if that means endangering or sacrificing the remaining hostages. I believe that Israel should “choose life” and push for a deal to end the war – or at least a cease-fire – to save the lives of the remaining hostages (now at 109 assumed to be alive), prevent additional soldiers from being killed, and begin to deal with the miserable and unthinkable humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Shabbat Shalom.