THE FACES OF WAR

I woke each morning on the kibbutz where years later the Hamas terrorists would come to murder young parents and their children in their homes. The first thing I saw was the bright sun leaking in golden ribbons around the closed window blinds.

On the paths to the communal dining hall, I met the children going to school. The youngest held their mothers’ hands (all the fathers had been called up into the army.) The big kids rode proudly on their bicycles, scattering the doves feeding on the paths.

It was 50 years ago, in the Yom Kippur War, and I had gone to Israel as a young physician. I was replacing an injured doctor in the villages just a few kilometers from the southern end of the Gaza Strip. These communities were among those attacked on October 7 by 3,000 Hamas fighters.

I picture the terror-struck faces of those children and their parents in the moments before they were murdered. Their faces haunt me.

Moving an atom

Some of you have been asking me when my next Substack post was coming. The truth is, I’ve felt derailed by the cruelties of the Israel-Hamas war that have brought back images from that previous war. Like most of us, I feel helpless.

We yearn to feel that we can make a difference; to feel that somehow, in some way, we can move a tiny atom in the universe.

Now that I’m retired from medical practice, my quixotic tries at moving that tiny atom are through writing.

On October 7, the Globe and Mail published my article marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. The Faces of War: My Time as a Doctor in the Yom Kippur War Left Me With Haunting Questions

In 1973 Egypt and Syria unleashed coordinated, surprise attacks on Israel, and Israel’s defences were initially overwhelmed. Taken by surprise, the country was initially threatened by catastrophe. In the article, I described abruptly leaving my young family in peaceful Vancouver, Canada, to go as a medical volunteer. The power of seeing the actual, human face—and faces—of war altered my mental landscape; from then on, my world was changed.

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“Outside (the hospital), the war was being portrayed differently. The talk in the media was of battles on land and in the air, territory lost or gained. The statements of generals, presidents, and prime ministers. Here, in this muted hospital ward, such talk felt artificial.

“The surprise attack and the new, deadly weaponry were now personalized, made human in the saddest possible way. Here l had the overwhelming realization that war was about young people, full of promise, full of dreams, struck down.”

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“Sadly, the recipe for war remains,” I added, and innocently submitted the article. What were the chances that the day the it was published would be the very day of the Hamas horrors, the massacre that started the new war?

If the crystal ball had had a sharper focus, I would have written differently. First, the atrocities committed by Hamas did not occur in the Yom Kippur War. Second, the war in Gaza is already much longer than the Yom Kippur War, but in contrast to that war, there is no decisive end in sight. Finally, the previous war was fought between armies; those killed were soldiers. In this war, starting with the murders of people at a music festival and in their homes, and continuing with Israel’s retaliation to destroy Hamas, most of those killed on both sides have been civilians.

Emotional trauma

The change wrought by the war is horrendous not only in loss of life and in injury, but also in psychological trauma.

One can only imagine the trauma suffered by survivors of the nightmare in Gaza. Exhausted aid workers and medical staff are working with flashlights in terrifying conditions, while Israel attacks what it says is the Hamas command centre sheltered beneath Al-Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital.

In Israel, psychiatric hospitals have issued urgent calls for volunteers, as their limited staff cannot handle the emotional-trauma support that is needed by the 200,000 Israelis evacuated from the country’s south and north. Israel's Health Ministry’s plan for psychological assistance is based on massive, long-term volunteering by psychiatrists, psychologists and other therapists.

Beyond ideology

I cannot see a way forward without being both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian. By the latter I certainly don’t mean pro-Hamas, with its messianic regime in Gaza, and its Charter calling for the total annihilation of Israel. Hamas political leader Fathi Hamad, invoking the permission of God, has said, “You should attack every Jew possible in all the world and kill them.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathi_Hamad

On the other side, I also don’t mean extremist settlers who persecute Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. No; my hopes reside with the moderates of both peoples who are tired of endless conflict, and want to live in peace and security. The ordinary people on both sides who would be willing to listen to each other, and make the compromises needed in order to reach that normalcy.

I mean the kind of people who can see beyond dogma, and look into each other’s eyes.

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Far from the Israel-Hamas war, ideologies also blind people in our own safe countries. There has been a nauseating rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia as the war grinds on. We are witnessing the mind-boggling stupidity of some who turn their political stance into generalized hatred of an entire people. Jewish children in North America are feeling unsafe and  fearful, seeing that police are needed to guard them at school.

On university campuses, protesters are glossing over the Hamas atrocities, even denying them. We shake our heads in disbelief. These ideologues appear to think that if the occupation is wrong, it’s okay to hold infants hostage. For many, a simplistic, ideological lens distorts the basic facts regarding the Hamas attack on Israel.

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Empathy?

Certain people consider it forbidden to empathize with innocent Israelis or Palestinians. Some have been tearing down posters of the kidnapped hostages. Seeing the pain only of the side they’re on, they are unable to look into the eyes of “the other side” and acknowledge that they are people.

“Be human,” I would like to tell those with blinders. “If you see somebody in pain, try to see that pain.”

An innocent child suffering is not a “Palestinian” child, or a “Jewish” child. He or she is a child suffering. Period.

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True empathy is hard, of course—empathy is not only understanding another person's feelings, but also imaginatively entering into those feelings. Yet even without true empathy, just simple decency and compassion will do.

I see the vivid faces of war, then and now: the faces of the children and their parents, murdered in the bedroom where I slept. The faces of today’s kidnapped hostages; of the innocents on both sides.

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Thank you for reading. I welcome your comments. 

Peter