This saying comes from the rabbinical sages. It has been running around in my head without fading since the beginning of the war. On the contrary, its volume is increasing, and the message it contains becomes clearer to me day by day.

We often say that time heals everything. But right now I feel that as time goes by, and I’m exposed to more stories, and I’m exposed to the magnitude of the horrors that are now being talked about in detail, and I’m exposed to the torture-murders of citizens… all of these engender an infinite pain and a realization of how distorted humanity can become.

All this is happening in juxtaposition with the natural tendencies of a gentle soul that seeks to live in peace and quiet.

Time does not heal yet. At the moment it only intensifies the pain and sadness. And there is almost no more room in the body and mind to contain the tragedies. So this phrase comes up inside me again “One who is compassionate to the cruel, will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.” I understand the meaning much better now.

The Hamas leader named Yahya Sinwar is a cruel, evil and selfish devil. He sat in an Israeli prison for many years after murdering Palestinians whom he suspected of collaborating with Israel. In prison he learned to speak excellent Hebrew. He also thought that he learned how to perfectly predict how Jews would think and respond to any given provocation. When he was in prison, this devil became sick with a cancerous brain tumor. The cancer would have been a death sentence for him, if it weren’t for the talented Jewish doctors who operated on him in 2008 and saved his life. And all this in the name of humanity, compassion and mercy, and the concept of the sanctity of human life that is so strongly embedded in the Jewish DNA.

That cruel man was later released from prison in the Gilad Shalit deal and returned to being the only thing he knows: a terrorist and a murderer.

His whole purpose is to destroy the Jewish people. This is the same murderer whose brain the Jewish doctors drilled into to remove disease. Then that same mind drilled down on a detailed plan of how to be cruel to Jews just for being Jews. He did not see with human eyes. He did not differentiate between a baby, a toddler, an elderly woman, a girl, a man, a soldier or a young lady. He simply prepared a murderous and evil plan. (Only God knows how it managed to come to be so hideously successful. For two months here in Israel we have been trying to understand how this defensive failure happened, and we are left without answers.) This devil sent his murderers into our beautiful country, and they destroyed everyone they met.

If it weren’t for that compassionate and humane decision to treat a fatally sick prisoner without regard for who he was, what he was, and what his background was… If it weren’t for that, this Hamas devil would have rotted and died from the cancer in his brain. However, thoughts of compassion on the part of the Jews resulted in the same prisoner they healed, later acting out utter cruelty to the very people who took pity on him, cared for him and gave him life.

Furthermore, the murderers from the Gaza Strip attacked civilian villages, most of which belong to the “Peace Bloc.” This is the bloc of Israelis whose ideology believes in coexistence, in shared life with Muslim Palestinians. The Gazan murderers entered homes of the very same citizens who had provided them with jobs, food and clothes. These Israelis had in some cases even housed the Gazan workers in their homes. And what did the terrorists do? They murdered, butchered, raped, burned and looted them.

There are countless such cases in our Jewish, humane and merciful country; in which we were compassionate, took pity and cared and opened our wide and human hearts; and then they stuck a knife in our backs. And that leaves me with the question which I direct upward to the God of whom it was said He is

“Compassionate and Gracious“

Do we have to be like you in everything?

Even in compassion?