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Good Morning. We’ve entered the Hebrew month of Nissan, when a special blessing is said over blossoming fruit trees, to God who created this world so that it lacks nothing for our benefit and joy. How different from the desolation I’ve seen in Ukraine and witnessed in Israeli and Palestinian villages. The human cost of war is appalling. But nature also pays a terrible price for our violence and I fear and grieve for it too. ‘My gorgeous land!’ wrote a Ukrainian friend after Russia destroyed the Kakhovka dam. ‘The fruits, the tomatoes we grew, gone for a generation.’ I visit an improvised market in a Kyiv suburb. People are buying basics, surrounded by bombed-out homes. One stall sells all kinds of vegetable seeds, signifying hope. But an area of Ukraine big as Britain is laid with landmines, meaning sudden death, not growth. Yet we need this earth, its fields, forests and all its life, for the future of everything. A friend leads me round his kibbutz, Re’im, near Gaza. (The name means ‘neighbours’, as in ‘love your neighbour.’) He relives October Seven, Hamas’s cruel attack. Nearby, they took hostages, some hundred and thirty even now held captive. Here is a burnt-out home; there his friends were slaughtered. This is the children’s garden, empty, gone to weed. A great tree, killed in the marauding fire, stands, a blackened emblem of that terrifying day. I’ve seen pictures, but cannot imagine the appalling desolation to which so many thousands of Gazans, caught hapless between Hamas and Israel, are returning, grief-stricken, in Kfar Yunis. Another friend takes me to the West Bank Palestinian village of Zanuta, abandoned from fear of settler threats. Wild irises flower, blue in the rough grass. Gone are the people who loved this place. I worry for the safety and future of Israel and the whole region; I pray that none of these beautiful lands will be destroyed. For the earth must be our healing. It transcends our transience. Trees breathe life; each spring, hope uncurls with their unfurling leaves. I’ve planted for the dead. My garden has a tree for the Gazan doctor’s three daughters, killed in the previous war. We’ve stood by it in testament together. But I long to plant for the living. It must not be beyond imagining that, on a day not just of sorrow, but also of determination and joy, when, God willing, the hostages are freed and this terrible war is ended, with Israeli and Palestinian companions, we’ll plant trees and fields together.