Death of Innocence

The third Intifada has claimed another victim, a few minutes ago, the 20 year old soldier who was attacked in Tel Aviv earlier today succumbed to his injuries and returned his soul to his Maker, ה' יקום דמו

This young soldier was the son of one of my daughter's teachers.

When Yael went to bed a few hours ago, she asked whether her teacher Michal would be in school tomorrow, whether her son would be OK, how he was so badly hurt, and why did someone want to hurt him. She also said that she is afraid - maybe it could happen to her.

As a father, she thinks that I am supposed to have answers, that I should know why a young soldier was murdered today for being Jewish, or why a young woman from Tekoa was murdered, or families waiting at a train station, or passengers on a train or a bus, or teenagers on their way home from school are being murdered - all for the same crime - of being Jewish.

Instead of answers, I only have questions - how could we allow terrorists to walk freely in our county? How is it that our police and security forces can't restore security to the streets of Israel? Why is it that after all these years Eisav (and Yishma'el) still hates Ya'akov.

Now I need to decide how to break this news to my daughter, whether to take her to her teacher's Shiva, whether to tell her about the dozens of other attacks that are occurring on a daily basis. How do you explain that to a 11 year old girl?

May Hashem grant the courage and wisdom to our leaders and armed forces to find the way to stop this Intifada before it continues to grow, and to bring peace and quiet to this tiny beautiful land of ours.