My sons and Legos

An oversimplified parable for a crisis

My oldest child is four and my youngest is going to turn two this winter.

This morning the baby destroyed the four-year-old’s Lego Batmobile, his most prized possession. It took him one month to build.

To my oldest, it is unthinkable the baby did this. His rage and grief is completely real. And yes, the baby is completely obsessed with destroying his Legos - the urge can’t be reasoned with. If given the chance, the baby would break every Lego vehicle his older brother will ever build, from the living room to the kitchen.

How do I counsel my four-year-old to retaliate?

Do I tell him, “Go into the baby’s room and obliterate everything you see? Take his lovies and throw them into the street? You were here first, and you are morally in the right, so go at it?”

I tell him, “This is horrible. I’m so sorry. We can do everything we can to re-build your Batmobile. What does your brother need?”

The baby needs his own Legos. The four-year-old, through his fury and tears, gives him a small pile of his own Legos. The baby plays with his pile.

We live another day.

*

This oversimplification is to say: We should be screaming for the hostages back.

Netanyahu’s military strategy has returned zero children. They are sitting in tunnels while the IDF rains missiles over their heads, radicalizing and recruiting survivors of this slaughter into Hamas’s most loyal generation.

We need to denounce Likud if not for the horror and bloodshed, for the hope of an Israeli future.

He has lost the moral war and his military retaliation is directly, demonstrably endangering Jews everywhere. At a moment when the world should be unambiguously protecting us, it is un-PC to so much as call out antisemitism when people see it because — yes — of how insidious antisemitism is, and more immediately, because the Palestinian death toll has so quickly obliterated ours.

We need to remove Bibi’s death ministers to restore sanity and the hope for peace. I believe in a homeland for the Jewish people, and I believe this will not happen with a maniac at the helm, surrounding the holy land in a sea of endless blood.

We will never forget the children killed in their beds on 10/7. The children taken. The babies. What Hamas did was horrific and what it is doing to so many of us is horrific. When we become blind to the suffering of Palestinian children, we lose our humanity and we lose our minds.

I am begging you to keep yours.