“Thus shall Adonai judge among the nations and make peace among the great peoples. They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation, not shall they ever again know war.”

– Isaiah 4:3

Our community, alongside the world, continues to mourn the tragic deaths of the seven World Central Kitchen employees—Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, Laizawmi Frankcom, Damian Soból, Jacob Flinkinger, John Chapman, James Henderson, and James Kirby—killed by three successive IDF drone missile strikes last week. As media outlets rushed to suggest, this tragedy, as well as the death of nearly 200 aid workers since the conflict began, points to excessive permissiveness in the rules of engagement employed by certain IDF teams on the battlefield, which legitimately demanded further investigation and scrutiny, undertaken by the IDF last week.

As intended, the Israeli investigation identified who, against all odds, bore responsibility for launching three successive missile strikes against an identifiable humanitarian support convoy. Camouflaged beneath that investigation, however, rests another tragedy, one that often eludes public discourse. For while the investigation identified the individuals responsible for the grievous miscalculation that resulted in the deaths of these innocents, further details will likely reveal that these individuals or their subordinates – perhaps still teenagers – had mere moments to make a choice that will now haunt them for the remainder of their days. This is the inescapable truth of war.

No one emerges from war unscathed. And just as we mourn the tragic loss of innocent life among Israelis, Palestinians, and aid workers, we must also discover how to mourn the loss of innocence, for every soldier once possessed an innocence, too, one forever lost on the day they were called to war.

Recognizing and bearing the true magnitude of the grief borne of conflict may represent an impossible task, but I believe that, should we never try, we will never know peace.

— Rabbi Josh Knobel