‘I’m Crying for the Victims That Are Going to Suffer’
In their Anguish, Israelis Call for End to Violence
Nicholas Kristof / New York Times

TEL AVIV (October 25, 2023) — No one understands terrorism more viscerally than Maoz Inon: His 78-year-old father and 75-year-old mother were among those massacred by Hamas this month in southern Israel.

He mourns his parents, and he despairs for old friends who have been kidnapped by Hamas. Yet he also fears that the unbearable losses his family endured are now being used to justify an impending ground invasion in Gaza.

“I don’t stop crying,” he told me in the hostel he runs here in Tel Aviv. “I’m crying for my parents. I’m crying for my friends. I’m crying for those who are kidnapped. I’m crying for the victims on the Palestinian side. And I’m crying for all the victims that are going to suffer.”

“We don’t sleep at night, we don’t eat, we are under emotional trauma,” he said. “We are just broken. But from these traumatized days, we must learn the lessons from history.” And foremost among them, he said, is the need to break the pattern of escalating violence that feeds hatred, creates orphans and self-replicates indefinitely.

Inon is an outlier, but he’s not alone, and I’ve been speaking with several of those here in Israel who lost loved ones to the terror attacks yet argue that the next step should not be further destruction heaped on Gaza, even in the name of destroying Hamas.

These are Israelis in anguish at their own losses and also fearful that their suffering is being used to justify bombardments and a ground invasion of Gaza, killing innocents there and perpetuating bloodshed. I can’t emphasize enough that this attitude is the exception, but perhaps that’s why I find it so majestic.

I’ve been following the Middle East conflict for most of my life, and I can’t remember a time of such despair, trauma and mutual mistrust. It’s heartbreaking to see the collapse of all hope, and this month may be the nadir: the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and a devastating air assault and siege of Gaza that has claimed even more lives there.

In this grim context, people like Inon remind me of the human capacity for empathy and wisdom — two qualities desperately needed across the region. I told him he was out of step with the public mood, for most people have drawn a different lesson from history: that it is important to wipe out enemies who want to kill you.

“We have been doing exactly that,” he said, referring to reliance on military solutions, yet noted that that approach failed to keep his parents alive. “What I’m saying is we have to stop doing what we were doing before. We need a new policy.”

“Someone needs to be brave enough to stop the cycle of blood, dislike and violence that has been going on for a century,” he said.

This may require Gandhian levels of inner fortitude.

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