The Hope

September 5, 2024

by: Ilse Strauss

Thursday, 5 September 2024 | Sunday was the start of a new school year here in Israel. You know the drill. Back-to-school advertisements for weeks. Pictures of beaming little ones dwarfed by giant backpacks. First graders walking oh-so-bravely through the gates of the “big school” while trying to keep the tears at bay. Mommies dropping off toddlers at kindergarten for the first time and then pausing to weep just out of sight.

The news broke as parents made their way to school. After nearly a year of waiting, yearning, praying and trusting, the bodies of six hostages who Hamas captured during the October 7 terror attack were discovered in a tunnel 12 miles (19 m.) underground in Gaza. They were shot at point-blank range in the back of the head. Executed.

It was like the entire country gasped for breath. “I don’t cry in front of my children,” my neighbor confided that afternoon in hushed tones, her eyes red-rimmed. “I don’t want them to know that such evil exists yet. But I just couldn’t help myself. I sobbed all the way to their school, with them in the backseat asking me why I was crying.”

My neighbor wasn’t alone. Clusters of parents huddled together for support. Teachers choked back tears to welcome little ones who don’t understand the promise into which they were born and the evil that will come against them because of the One who made a perpetual covenant with them.

Days before the six hostages died, their families and friends gathered on the Gaza border. Using a microphone, they shouted messages to their loved ones in captivity, hoping they would hear. The mother of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin sobbed, “Hersh! It’s mommy! I’m here. We are all here. Just survive! Survive.”

Two days later, Hamas executed Hersh. He died next to Alexander Lobanov, whose wife gave birth while he was in captivity. They died next to Carmel Gat, who was one of the first hostages to be taken on October 7 from the first house attacked in Kibbutz Be’eri. I know the house. I walked through that house. They died next to Eden Yerushalmi. Almog Sarusi. Ori Danino.

There’s more. Two weeks ago, Sergent Yochai Chai Glam was killed in Gaza. Despite the tragedy, life must go on and Yochai’s two-year-old twins had to go to kindergarten for the first time on Sunday. But because Yochai wasn’t there to take them, friends from his unit showed up to make sure his wife and daughters were not alone. A picture of the dark-haired twins in the arms of their father’s friends appeared on social media.

Also on Sunday, three Israelis were killed in a terror attack. One of them was First Sgt. Roni Shakuri. Roni’s daughter was a police officer who fought on October 7, defending the police station in Sderot until she ran out of ammunition. Her last message to her supervisor was, “Stay strong! You’ve got this.” Roni’s wife, Ayelah, often meets with our Bridges for Peace team when we visit Sderot. Despite the tragedy of losing their daughter, Roni and Ayelah remained full of hope in God. Now Roni is gone too.

Then, on Monday morning, Israel discovered a car bomb with more than 100 pounds (45kg.) of explosives planted in a gas cylinder near the entrance to the Jewish community of Ateret in Samaria. The bomb was equipped with a camera and was intended to detonate while a school bus was passing by, killing and maiming all the children heading to school. That was the third attempted bombing in the biblical heartland Israel foiled in three days.

On Monday evening, Hamas released a video clip of the executed hostage Eden Yerushalmi, emaciated, skeletal and dark circles under her eyes stark against a ghostly face, telling her mom, dad and sisters how much she loves them. Eden’s body weighed a shocking 79 pounds (36 kg.) when it was discovered. Not once during her more than 300 days in captivity did the Red Cross visit this young woman. And 11 months after October 7, the United Nations Security Council has still not convened to discuss the hostages.

Then, in another act of cruel psychological terror, Hamas said it had recorded a video of the six hostages just before their execution. The terror group made the announcement in a cheap propaganda clip showing a snippet of the recordings, flashes of each of the hostages speaking to the camera, knowing what was to come, knowing it would be their last words to their loved ones. The footage ends with a montage of their faces moments before their execution, with a promise that the footage was forthcoming.

In a separate video on Monday, a spokesperson for Hamas proudly and publicly admitted that the terror group executed the hostages because they were about to be rescued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The Hamas spokesperson then announced—proudly and publically again—that it would continue to execute any remaining live hostages if the IDF closed in on their location and there was any chance of rescuing them and bringing them home alive.

Lucy Aharish, a Muslim Arab Israel news anchor reporting the story, shook her head in disbelief, saying, “To imagine there are college students cheering Hamas on is unfathomable. Just the worst of humanity.”

On Thursday, the IDF revealed footage of the entrance to the terror tunnel in which the six hostages were executed and their bodies discovered. The clip shows the ruins of a family home, with the tunnel shaft opening dug in what used to be a child’s bedroom, with walls decorated with paintings of Snow White and Mickey Mouse. This is where a child once slept and felt safe. And this was the last image the six hostages saw of the outside world before being forced below ground for their execution.

The nation of Israel is reeling. What cuts the deepest, they say, is the betrayal. “The world’s reaction has woken Israelis up to a new reality,” Rolene Marks, a freelance journalist and broadcaster, recently wrote in a Dispatch from Jerusalem article. “We received the message loud and clear from the international community that despite our trauma and despite everything we’ve gone through, they still are not on our side. It has made us extremely strong and resilient, because to be strong and resilient is to be victorious. However, it has also been a massive punch to our gut and a smack to our souls. We came to the realization that we are very much alone.”

It sounds rather pessimistic, I know. It isn’t though. Over the weekend, Israeli swimmer Ami Dadoun won a gold medal at the Paralympics in Paris. A clip of Dadoun singing Israel’s anthem, the Hatikva, The Hope, after he won a gold medal, went viral. If you haven’t seen it, it is well worth a watch. This is what everyone in Israel feels like at the moment. Such sorrow. Such heartache. But hopeless? Never!

Hope isn’t a flimsy feeling of optimism, a passive belief that things will just get better, that the glass is half full, that every cloud will have a silver lining, writes Rev. Cheryl Hauer in her latest teaching letter, “Finding Hope in a Hopeless World.”

“Throughout the entire Bible, there are two words that are used interchangeably: hope and trust,” she continues. “Trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of the object trusted, leading to unshakable confidence. In essence, this is the biblical definition of hope.” The wellspring of hope is thus rooted in the knowing that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He said He would do.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, renowned English Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian and author, famously called Israel the home of hope and the homeland of the people of hope, not because Israel is somehow better or smarter or holier. No. Because the people of hope living in the land of hope is sustained by the God of all our hope, who promised that our hope and our trust in Him will never be in vain.

Israel has been in desperate situations before. A few times. During one of those times, the prophet Habakkuk pointed his arm heavenward in what I see in my mind’s eye as the same way Ami Dadoun did before confessing his hope “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior” (3:17–19).

Yes, the tears fall frequently, but as they do, we lift our arms heavenwards and declare our hope: “We will be joyful in God our Savior.”

Posted on September 5, 2024

Source: (Bridges for Peace, September 5, 2024)

Photo Credit: Screenshot/youtube.com