In the New York Times this morning, a letter from Jennie Goldstein, writing from Neve Daniel on the West Bank, who knew one of the Israelis murdered by Hamas this week, Kochava Even Chaim:
I am a proud former resident of Brooklyn who moved to Israel three years ago with my family. For some, the terrorist attack in the West Bank on Tuesday killed four nameless settlers. For us, the attack snuffed out the life of the loving special education nursery teacher who greeted our developmentally delayed son with boundless love and dedication every day for the last two years.
Kochava Even Chaim was on her way home to her own family after attending the nursery’s “welcome back” party at which her adoring special students, who are incapable of understanding hate, decorated new school bags with her just one hour before her murder. In Hamas’s cynical attempt to derail the peace talks, it wasted a life devoted to hope.
Kochava was a teacher in Efrat next to Neve Daniel. You can see it here. She is survived by her husband and her eight-year old daughter.
Relatives of Kochava Even Haim react during her funeral in the city of Ashdod, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010. (AP Photos/Dan Balilty).
We forget that each of the four murdered were an entire world, the latest in an expanding universe, with faces and families. Look here -- and scroll all the way down.
The cartoon like others such as the old Dagwood and Blondie in the 50s or Peanuts resonates because of a kernel of truth at which we can chuckle not an accurate mapping of reality. To try to turn this into some big life lesson with homilies about intervention for social change is something that Scott Adams and the Dilbert gang could probably have a lot of fun with.
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