The Traumatizing Stories that Break the Heart

                                                                                         

They say it helps to write, but this is hard, hard to write. Because I often write about anti-Semitism, I have read many of the posts on what happened on October 7^th in Israel. I’ve watched many of the videos. I am traumatized. How does anyone deal with the nightmare image of a family where the father has his eye gorged out, the mother has a breast cut off, the small boy has his fingers cut off and the young daughter has her foot cut off and then they are burned alive.

I read the story of the family of three, a mother and father and their 16-year-old son. The father and mother laid on their son to protect him. He lived. The last thing he remembers from his parents is his father saying, “my arm is gone.” And his mother dying. This struck me very hard because two summers ago I broke my arm at the point where it fits into the shoulder blade, and when I got up from my fall I could see my arm sticking out from my body but could not feel it or control it. I had to take my left hand and reach out to my right arm and move it next to me. I was terrified and how awful one must feel as they are dying to have lost the arm that was probably trying to protect a son.

And the mother who was dying; I watched my husband die with Alzheimer’s. I read all the signs to look for—the breathing is one. As he died he began to breathe with short puffy breaths that one could hear.  And those would probably have been the last sounds of a mother given to her son. My anger and sorrow have not ended; probably will not end until eternity.  

Kevin D Williamson of The Dispatch wrote of how Israeli warriors were not meant to be models of goodness for journalist but were rather supposed to be protecting their people. That a nation’s job was to protect its people.

As a Christian my first duty is “to love my God with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my mind,” and my neighbor as myself—but a nation is called to protect its people before it protects any other. Carefully with concern but still protect its people. It seems too many with a misplaced understanding of history and yes with Jew hatred, with a warped understanding of their own prejudices and biases, believe that Israel is the only nation that should not protect its people.

The darkness that is falling over this world has always been here, it is the reptile hiding in the bushes, twining about the tree, calling out lies to many who allow their hearts to be bittered by anti-Semitism. Even when they smile one sees the hate and bitterness in the face of those who are tearing down the posters of the kidnapped Israelis. Their idealism has turned into a farce. Their activism has turned evil....

G.K. Chesterton in his book The Everlasting Man, with thankfulness that Rome had overcome Carthage, since it was a battle between Rome’s household gods and Carthage’s demons, is not aware when writing of the coming darkness of Nazi Germany. Chesterton explains the relationship of Carthage to Tyre and Sidon, and their god Moloch who could also be called Baal. He explains their method of worship was to throw babies into the great fire of Moloch. The Romans, Chesterton explains, would not understand nor would Chesterton’s contemporaries. He writes:

We can only realize the combination by imagining a number of Manchester merchants with chimney-top hats and mutton chop whiskers, going to church every Sunday at eleven o’clock to see a baby roasted alive.

Such evil returned with the Nazis and now with the Hamas warriors who also roasted a baby alive. There are surely those who are simply concerned about the welfare of Palestinian citizens but far too many are sinking into dark paganism, worshiping the god of anti-Semitism. When protesters won’t cry out against the butchery of Hamas, they stand not with Palestinians but with Hamas, with terrorist, with ancient evil.