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Good Morning; Shabbat Shalom; Salaam Ailakum, On the radio people are arguing about the atrocities in Israel. One of them, almost as a threat, says ‘make sure you’re not on the wrong side of history,’ as though history was some kind of God that judges us. Meanwhile in Zsterot, in Ashkelon, in Gaza, children are being killed and the blood of these children cries out. While people argue about equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians, the blood of dead children cries out. While generals plan counter-offensives, and politicians draw red lines in the sand, the blood of dead children cries out. If, in the midst of the rage, the grief, we could stop long enough to hear what the blood of these children is saying, what would we hear? I have no authority to say. But when I asked my Israeli friend, Robi Damelin, whose son David was killed by a Palestinian sniper in 2002, she was clear: ‘They are screaming from their coffins – look what you did to us. Stop the killing. Don’t do it in my name. Stop it now!’ Robi is part of a remarkable group called The Parents’ Circle – a bereavement community for Israelis and Palestinian parents. It was here she met Bassam Arameen, a Palestinian whose daughter, Abir, was shot by an Israeli soldier when she was 10. They refused to be enemies, when the world was telling them they should be. They have not only become friends, they are family. They are no longer on different sides but the same side. And have used their pain to campaign against the cycle of violence. As Robi told me, ‘Unless we understand why this violence happens, where it comes from, we are destined to repeat it.’ If Bassam’s first instinct was to avenge, he had to ask himself, will my actions lead to the deaths of more children? He knew the answer. To take revenge would be like killing his own children, he said. We seem to be living at a time where strident voices have the conch. It’s as if you have to pick side and you’re condemned if you pick the wrong one. This conflict particularly amplifies this binary. Perhaps all people assume they are on the right side of history. But history matters little to the dead Israeli and Palestinian children. In this moment of rage and lamentation, it feels that the voices of men and women like Robi and Bassam are desperately needed: we need to heed the cry of their children’s blood and ask how we stop the suffering. Tonight, as the peoples of their land are at prayer, can we stand alongside them and perhaps pray with the Psalmists that God will hear the cries of the afflicted, and defend the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that those who are of the land may terrify no more.