A Somber Post About the Fogel Family

Parents spend a lot of time watching happy, smiley, sing-songy children's programing, and that's a good thing.  Because once you have children, watching the news is scary.  Just this past Friday Japan had a devastating earthquake and tsunami.  Thousands of people, surely young children and babies too, died in the destruction.  Everyone around the globe watched the footage of these events with a heavy heart, but parents of young children can't help thinking, how would I protect my family in such an event?  Protecting your children is always the foremost concern of every parent.  And we certainly worry about catastrophic events in nature.

Yet even more disturbing, on the very same day of the earthquake, came the news of a young family in Israel brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists.  In the silence of the night, two Palestinian terrorists broke into the home of the Fogel family and slit the throats of the parents, and 11 year old boy, a 4 year old boy, and a three month old baby girl asleep in her parent's bed.  Although the death toll is significantly smaller, obviously, this story is even more disturbing, as it challenges our faith in humanity.  As humans, we like to believe in the inherent humanity of all people, even our enemies. We appease our fragile vulnerability by telling ourselves they have reasons for their “anger” and that, no matter how misguided, there is another side to the story.  We reassure ourselves that even pure evil has logic and humanity. But when we witness such barbaric brutality, a baby girl stabbed to death while asleep in her parent’s bed, it leaves us confused and shocked, because our very faith in humanity is challenged.  This week, Mother Nature killed many babies, and we are very saddened and shaken; but a fellow human being raised his hand to slit the throats of young children and a baby, and we just cannot wrap our heads around that.

Hashem Yikom Damam!