The piano had clearly been through hell. This instrument once made beautiful music at the hands of Oded Lifshitz, an 83-year-old whose body spent 503 days in Hamas custody. And so it can never be a mere piano again. It is a relic of martyrdom, an artifact of an ongoing war -- a hell on Earth for hostages and families living a prolonged agony. It can never be forgotten. Lifshitz was kidnapped alongside his wife, Yocheved, from their home in the Nir Oz kibbutz. He had been shot in his hand and was lying at the edge of his property the last time she saw him. The proper response to the confirmed murder of Oded is: May his memory be a blessing. Which means we must know how he lived and how he was murdered.
Lifshitz's wife was among the first hostages released. There's a video of Lifzhitz playing that piano during what would seem simpler times, except they had a room in their house to retreat to during rocket attacks -- or worse. Such is life for a Jew in Israel. Today, Oded's musical performance appears as a prayer for miracles. Peace seems like a naive prayer, even if it is the right thing to plea for, while every human instinct cries out for justice and vengeance.
Another video shows the day Ariel Bibas met his little brother, Kfir. It's a display of such pure joy. It's everything important in the world - new life and family, rejoicing in both. The bodies of the Bibas brothers were released by Hamas on the same day as Lifshitz's. Every image of the Bibas boys smiling, is a reminder of the torment of their father, recently released by Hamas. It's a grief shared by the people of Israel and by Jews around the world. As humans, we should all share in their anguish. We must recognize and combat the particular evil that is antisemitism.
In the days after the initial attacks on the Israeli people, I saw -- and sometimes participated in -- non-Jews approaching Jews to say hello and "I'm sorry" and "I'm praying." It's not much. It's not enough. But it's not silence in the face of the evil happening today, as we live. The parade of free hostages resembling Holocaust survivors essentially happens via livestream. Even though we do most days, we cannot go on as if it is merely something happening elsewhere in the world, to other people. Here in my New York, there are still pro-Hamas outbursts in the streets, most recently in Brooklyn.
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"When the Palestinians have nothing to lose, we will lose, big time," Oded Lifshitz once wrote. "The question is, what do we do then?" It's not just a question for Israel. What does the Christian do for the Jewish family next door? This question matters -- for individuals and for cultures. Their torment should not be foreign to us. We must enter in and give "Never again" meaning. Or else our consciences have been deadened by the forces of hell.
(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book "A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living." She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan's pro-life commission in New York, and is on the board of the University of Mary. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
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