Empathy after Easter

Im writing this two days after Easter because I’m troubled, frustrated and angry about Israel and the policies of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Estimates are that 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, the majority of whom have been innocent women and children, according to some reports. Like many, I was deeply troubled by the loss of Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, but the six-month-long onslaught of indiscriminate bombing and the deaths and suffering of innocent civilians is horrendous and indefensible.

The continuing financial support and sale of bombs and weapons, as well as F-15 fighter jets, to Israel from the U.S. does not make me feel proud of my country’s current policy toward Israel. When over 100 of us gathered near the Gorge Bridge on Easter Sunday for our annual sunrise service and sang hymns about grace

and peace, we did so with conviction and hope. However, it is becoming more difficult every week to sustain such hope and benevolent optimism.

I have not been to Gaza, but I have traveled to the West Bank on three different occasions in the past decade. I have seen firsthand the oppressive conditions the Palestinian people have been living under for the past 57 years.

We must never become complacent over the plight of others, however distant or far away. Empathy is a word that needs a niche in our minds and a place in our hearts. As the great Jewish rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”

Like so many around the world, I was devastated by the deaths in early April of seven aid workers, employed by World Central Kitchen who were killed by an Israeli air strike. The words of Chef José Andrés, the founder of the WCK, ring true in the midst of it all, “Without empathy, nothing works.”

May we all hear the words of Rabbi Heschel and José Andrés and feel some sense of responsibility and empathy!