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It is the responsibility of the Jewish people in relationship with evangelicals to assert at one and the same time the moral obligation to practice self-defense and the acknowledgement of the suffering that brings upon the innocent. This is the dilemma of the moral person in an immoral world. There is shared responsibility. The Christian who sits in Lebanon must acknowledge that he or she, with nary a word of protest in the past six years, has witnessed this murderous group build huge stores of rockets with the purpose of raining down upon the civilian population of Israel, and to embed themselves in the midst of the civilian populations. How was it allowed that armed terrorists could take up residence in hundreds of Lebanese homes to play upon Israel's excruciating difficulty in attacking the wicked who dwell in the midst of the righteous? And in response to this, Israel does what no other army in the world does: She announces in advance where she will bomb, thus giving the enemy the opportunity to flee. Or worse yet, to lie in ambush. When Israel bombs, and Lebanese civilians die, that is a mistake, a failure, and unintentional—and it is mourned, painfully regretted, and not forgotten. When Hezbollah rockets fall on Israeli civilians, it is purposeful, a success, and intentional—and celebrated as a victory.

It is too easy, too Clinton-esque to declare each to the other, "I hear your pain." By this standard of the Torah, the fulfillment of hearing one's pain lies in deeds. And deeds begin with learning the other's circumstance. Already palpable is the Jewish people's anguish for the loss of civilian life and for human suffering in Lebanon. There will be more of this accompanied by deeds in the days and weeks to come. This will be based on the Torah's standard that even where there is no guilt, there is responsibility (see Devarim-Deut.21:1-9). Indeed, Israel has in the past affirmed this principle for its armed forces. And how will the evangelical world learn to hear the Israeli sense of the threat that awaits on borders where evil crouches?

These are the hard hours. We must meet in the texts that summon us. As we do so, then we can hear the voice of the other in pain and anticipation. There is no other way.

Rabbi Yehiel Poupko is Judaic Scholar at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.

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This article is one in a series of commentaries on the Hezbollah-Israel conflict.

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August (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50