We mourn the deaths of six Israeli hostages found killed over the weekend just as we mourn the 47 Palestinians killed the same day by Israel, and the more than 40,000 people killed since October 7, 2023.
These deaths could have been avoided. At least three of the Israelis killed were on a list to be released in July had Israel agreed to a deal which had been accepted by Hamas. But no. The Israeli government decided to kill Hamas’ chief negotiator, and prioritized pursuing its military campaign over the safety of the captured hostages.
In fact, all of the lives lost since October 7 could have been prevented had Israel and its Western backers, including Canada, sought to address the unbearable situation that led to the events of October 7. Instead, we armed Israel and gave it a virtual blank check to act in “self-defence” against an illegally occupied and imprisoned people.
The deaths of the Israelis killed on October 7 could also have been spared had Palestinians in Gaza not been pushed to the point of desperation, had their lives not been forsaken and devalued by Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime. It is sometimes forgotten that the Israelis killed 23,000 Gazans in various attacks in the decade before October 7, 2023.
Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time. But we can move forward in a different direction. One in which the lives of Palestinians are just as valued as Israelis. No more, no less.
Sadly, the disproportionate reaction to the deaths of six Israeli hostages serves to perpetuate the status quo in which the lives of Israelis are valued infinitely more than those of Palestinians. The six Israelis killed are now household names and faces. The tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, by contrast, have by and large died nameless, faceless, storyless. Their lives are equally worthy of knowing and grieving. We object to this racist division of humanity by our government, by Canadian media, by fellow Canadian Jews and by Israeli society.
Our Talmud teaches us that the person who destroys a single life destroys an entire world, and that the person who saves a single life saves an entire world. This teaching is shared in the Quran, which instructs that the one who destroys a single life destroys all of humanity, and that the one who saves a single life, it is as if they had saved all of humankind. We grieve every life destroyed, every possible world extinguished, as an incalculable loss.
Meanwhile, a new protest movement ignited over the weekend in Israel, which saw an estimated 700,000 Israelis take the streets to demand a hostage deal. While these protests give us some hope that a negotiated ceasefire is in sight, they are also a sad display of where Israeli society is at after almost a year of Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Much like the previous mass protest movement in Israel against judicial reforms, the renewed protests are firmly and unequivocally about Israeli lives, with Palestinians having very little to do with it. They came together because Israelis realized that the genocide is putting Israeli lives at risk as well, not because there was a sudden realization that Israel has gone too far in its genocidal campaign.
A cry is heard in Ramah—
Wailing, bitter weeping—
Rachel weeping for her children.
She refuses to be comforted
For her children, who are gone.
– Jeremiah 31:15
We grieve alongside the countless parents bitterly mourning their children, who are gone. We refuse to be comforted by empty promises from our politicians while each day brings more death, and while they continue to do nothing in the face of this genocide. The entire world calls out for a ceasefire, and justice for Palestine.