Rabbi Yonason Johnsonis Director of the Maor Centre, Melbourne Australia
Dedicated to the memory of two pure and holy souls, Kfir and Ariel הי"ד and their mother Shiri הי"ד
Amongst the tragic news headlines coming out of Israel this week, you may have missed this one.
This week, Israel indicted 5 IDF reservists for abusing a Palestinian Arab Nukhba detainee being held in an Israeli security facility. The detainee was a member of Hamas and was suspected of having participated in the Shemini Atzeres (October 7) massacre. After the abuse was discovered, the reservists were arrested and official investigations of the facility were launched. Many Israelis demand their release and consider the charges false and politically motivated, as they may well be, since a doctored film was used as evidence.
Contrast this with the horrific scenes that took place this week just across the border in Gaza.
500 days ago, amongst the over 200 hundred Israelis taken captive to Gaza, Palestinian Arab terrorists abducted the innocent Bibas family, including Shiri – a young mother, and her two small children, Kfir and Ariel הי"ד, who were aged 9 months and 4 at the time.
We have all seen the footage showing the absolute fear on Shiri’s face as she desperately clutched her sons while surrounded by monstrous, bloodthirsty terrorists.
It has now been confirmed that the boys were brutally murdered by their captors with their bare hands, shortly after their abduction, and their bodies mutilated.
As their bodies were set to be returned to Israel to be mourned and buried, the Hamas terrorists engaged in a further act of degradation to their bodies. The coffins carrying their remains were posed on stage beneath Hamas propaganda and as they were being transferred, joyous, celebratory music was playing.
In their culture of death, throngs of the Gazan civilians (whom the world constantly reminds us are innocent victims in all of this) came to watch the “entertainment”. They brought their own young children and toddlers to watch as the butchered remains of two young boys were being paraded.
And in one final, cruel blow, it turns out that they did not even return the body of Shiri their mother as they had said, so that she could leave Gaza together with her sons and be buried alongside them. (That was rectified the same night after Israeli threats.)
When we compare these two headlines, the words of our Matriarch Leah resonate so clearly, “see the difference between these and these”.
The Palestinian Arab detainee was a grown man, an active military member of the Hamas terrorist organisation. He was suspected of participating in the greatest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, an attack in which innocent and defenceless women, children and elderly were butchered, raped and abducted.
Yet, the Israeli soldiers who allegedly abused the detainee were held to account under the law. They were arrested and charged and will be imprisoned for their violation of the detainee’s human rights if proven in court.
The IDF operates under the highest standards of morality. This not only reflects in their utmost care to minimise civilian casualties in war, but also in the justice and protection they extend to the terrorists who have been detained, despite their being the most evil and despicable human beings.
Not so in Gaza. Those who tortured and murdered the innocent young Bibas boys, will no doubt be celebrated as they were by the throngs of “innocent” Gazan civilians this week. They will be paraded as heroes in the streets. They will go home free to their families. They will be honoured and promoted and receive their Hamas salaries.
Amongst the many Mitzvos in Parshas Mishpatim, we read “If you encounter your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of him who hates you, lying under its burden, and you hesitate to unload it – you shall surely unload it with him”.
The Mechilta records the interpretation of Rabbi Yoshiya, that the “enemy” in the verse refers to the non-Jewish enemies of the Jewish people with whom we are at war.
Despite the fact that we are at war with them, that they hate us and seek to destroy us, the Torah obligates us to return their animals when they are lost and to unburden them and care for them when they are struggling. And in fact, IDF soldiers cared for dogs and other animals they found wandering in Gaza.
At the same time we fight to destroy those who seek to kill us, the Torah obligates us to go above and beyond to protect not only their innocent civilians, but even their animals!
Let the social-justice warriors who brand the IDF as war criminals while supporting and justifying the actions of Hamas, look at who they are supporting and who they are accusing of crimes.
Our Torah expects us to treat their animals better than they treat our precious young children. But then again, in the eyes of monsters like Hamas scum, a Jewish toddler is less than an animal.