Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Talking to my kids about war and anti-semitism

I, along with many of you, have been glued to the news channels on my tv over the course of the past week to keep abreast of the situation in Israel. My kids of course, have taken notice. Especially since I am not so willing to change the TV to the Disney Channel or Noggin in the morning. They want to know why, all of a sudden, that Daddy insists we watch the news.

How do you explain what's going on to your kids? How do you explain to them, that there are some very evil hateful individuals in this world that want to blow up houses and kill people simply because they are Jewish like us, and live in the land that G-d promised us? And of course, the bigger kicker - that its okay for us to bomb them back.

Before you flame me, I believe that Israel is 100% right in what it is doing, but nonetheless, how do you tell your kids that it is wrong for them to blow us up, but it is okay for us to bomb them back into the stone age. Kids don't understand the complex nature of individuals. They don't understand that there are people in this world like Nasrallah, Ahmednijad and Assad that don't value a life the way that we do. That don't care how many people they kill or how much damage they cause because their goal is to destroy us. How do you explain to a child that someone that they have never met, and that they will never even likely be in the same room with, hates them from the moment that they were born and wouldn't hesitate to kill them. Then explain, while they fire weapons at us without warning, how we first blanket the area with leaflets telling people to leave, lest they be blown to bits.

We are a nation that prides ourselves in bringing back not only our captured and our injured but our dead, and their body parts too. We are a nation that has been bullied for six decades by all of our "poor defenseless neighbors" and the terrorists that they harbor. If they kidnap 3 people and we give them 3000, we all know what the outcome will be - they will kidnap more of our people.

Regardless of your opinion on the matter, and regardless of who is to blame, the end result is that tens will die, hundreds will be wounded and thousands more will be adversely affected by all that's going on. Let us up that this madness stops soon.

As for my kids, for now, I have left it as "There are some bad people who don't like the Jews and Israel." When they ask "why do they hate us so much?" my only answer is "I wish I knew. Because if I did, maybe we could fix the problem."

2 comments:

Jasmine said...

Yonah, I feel for you. You are a great dad and your kids are very lucky to have you.

NerdMom said...

Go back to Purim. We don't know why Hamen hated Mordechi but G-D protected the Jews but...They had to fight back. They were instructed to kill anyone who attacked them. I know it is hard. Mine are all under 6 and we just try not to talk around them but we are going to have to introduce it to the oldest soon.