There is a mental image I'm carrying with me. A mother, a bit younger than me, sitting on a folding chair in front of a cement wall. She is holding a toddler who clings to her like a life raft. Her eyes are closed and exhaustion is written in every line of her face. Another night of the alarms going off, the family racing to the bomb shelter, the frightened child trying to sleep in their mother's arms.

Another mental image: a desperate father holding a malnourished child, pleading on Bluesky for the aid that would enable him to maybe get a loaf of bread. There are so many people like this that they run together in my mind. I'm not proud of that. I want to be able to say that I take every person's suffering seriously. I know that every human being is a spark of God, made in the divine image.

The mother holding her child is Israeli. The father holding his child is Palestinian. I know one of them personally, and read her Facebook updates often. The other is a stranger to me. I ache for both of them. Their situations are not the same, but both are suffering. Their fates are bound up together. As a recent Forward article notes, neither of these peoples is leaving that beloved land. 

I know that Israelis are lucky to have bomb shelters. (I wish Gazans had them too.) I also know that doesn't erase the trauma from the barrage of rockets, coming now from the Houthis. At least I think that's who's bombing now. It's hard to keep track. And it's easy to feel like everyone hates Jews anyway, so does it matter who's trying to kill us this time? Isn't someone always trying to kill us? 

Some people hate Israel because they hate Jews, and they would prefer that we not exist at all. (Sometimes that takes the form of actively trying to wipe us out, which is an old story but apparently one that is evergreen.) Some people abhor the actions of Israel's government, or the actions of several consecutive Israeli governments. (Some of the most ardent among that group are Israeli Jews.) 

Some say: but the occupation, and the brutality of the war on Gaza, mean that Israelis deserve to be bombed. And some say: but October 7, and the first and second intifadas, mean that Palestinians deserve to be bombed. And some say: empathy for "those people" just normalizes evil. My heart rebels against all of those views. No one deserves this. This is not the way the world should be. 

My heart breaks for everyone living under fire. My heart breaks for every Palestinian parent trying to keep their child warm and safe and comforted during a famine, in winter, in war -- and for every Israeli parent trying to keep their child warm and safe and comforted in a bomb shelter.  Anguish on behalf of suffering parents and children is not partisan. This suffering doesn't nullify that suffering.

I keep thinking about every parent who is terrified for a child, or trying to comfort a child, or God forbid grieving the loss of a child. I think about the Prayer of the Mothers and Women Wage Peace. I think about the Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace by Sheikha Iktisam Mahameed and Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum. I know I can only imagine, from a distance, what parents in that place endure.

The thought I keep coming back to is: no one should live like this. Surely every Israeli and every Palestinian has PTSD -- not just from the last 456 days but also from the years that preceded them. No one should live (or die) like this. And yet countless thousands are living and dying like this. I put my hopes in the coexistence activists of Standing Together, though their dream feels distant.

I didn't want to begin a new year without acknowledging that the suffering in the Middle East is a constant background hum. In the words of Yehuda HaLevi (d. 1141), my heart is in the east. Of course, 1000 years ago he was yearning for a Jewish return to Zion; it's different now. But the constantly of the yearning remains. How I yearn for all of the peoples of that land to live in safety and peace.