* Translation by Yehoshua Siskin ([email protected])
A friend who does not live in Israel explained why, in her opinion, many world leaders are giving full support to us this time around. The governments in Washington, Paris, Rome, and London finally understand that if Sderot was attacked, their cities could be attacked, too.
"Indeed, in the Torah portion of Bereishit," my friend wrote, we read: 'And God said let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . . So God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him.'
"And in the Torah portion of Noach we just read on Shabbat, it says: 'Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man.'
This is not complicated, but rather simple. There are those who kidnap, torture, and murder, and there are those who would never commit such acts. There are those whose vile deeds desecrate the image of God and those whose lives are a testimony to God's presence in this world. It's a matter of light versus darkness and good against evil.
And then I received the following message that encapsulates the enemy's ambition versus our own.
"I am a psychologist who accompanies Zaka -- a search and rescue organization whose mission includes honoring victims of catastrophic death by collecting their remains and ensuring they have a proper burial. I recently sat with a young man who, for the last two weeks, has been busy identifying our dead. He has witnessed unspeakable horrors and has been working around the clock, 24/7. Once in a while, lying on the ground in his sleeping bag, he dozes off for a few hours. I asked him: What keeps you going?
And with tears in his eyes, he answered: 'Hamas wanted to turn names into numbers; I am trying to turn numbers into names.'"
