Courtesy | Moira Gleason

There were bullet holes in the ceilings of their houses. 

When I stood in the house where Sivan Elkabets and Naor Hasidim were murdered by Hamas along with 60 other unarmed Israeli residents in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023, I had no words. The house had been cleaned up, but photos showed its original state: chairs overturned, belongings scattered, blood splattered on the walls and furniture.

I traveled to Israel with the Hillsdale group over Christmas break because I wanted context for the conflict that has consumed college campuses and online forums for the past two years. Instead of answers, I found myself confronted with an evil greater than I had ever encountered and invited into the suffering of a people to which I had no capacity to respond. 

In my head echoed one of the closing lines from Edgar in Shakespeare’s “King Lear”: “The weight of this sad time we must obey / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

Generalizations are easy when massacre is an ocean away. When social status depends on what you have to say about Israel and Palestine, pressure rises to pick a side. Unsure of the facts, we follow podcasters who tell us what to think and whom to hate.

But when the full reality of terrorism and war looks you in the face, black-and-white judgments become more difficult.

As Americans, it matters what we think and how we speak about the conflict between Israel and Hamas because Western aid and military force are the best hope of opposing terrorism in the Middle East. As Christians, our language matters because we are called to love and to spread the good news of the Gospel, and we can preserve good by naming evil. 

In Israel, I started to “see feelingly,” as Shakespeare would have it. I stood on the field that was once the Nova music festival dance floor and looked at photos of the 378 men and women killed there on Oct. 7, slaughtered at the hands of Hamas fighters. I read their stories while Israeli artillery fire sounded in the background from a post in Gaza a few miles away. I stood in the yellow dumpster where 17 men and women my age hid and nine died, and I read the last WhatsApp messages they sent to their friends and families: “We are going to die, bro. Tell my parents I love them.”

I watched the eyes of a woman who lived in Kibbutz Kfar Aza as she told her story and her voice broke. Her heart has been turned to hatred toward the Hamas terrorists who killed her friends: “You want me to make peace with these people? I don’t think so.”

I heard the stories of former soldiers who lost friends on and since Oct. 7 and who recalled watching 14-year-old Hamas fighters approach the line between Gaza and Israel and weighing whether or not to shoot.

But for every individual Israeli seeking revenge, another wants peace and an end to the bloodshed. I think of Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Even after her son was murdered by Hamas after 11 months in captivity, she became an advocate for a peace deal.

“Hersh is not coming back,” she said in an NBC interview in Oct. 2025. “That is something that I have to figure out — how do I carry that weight for the rest of my life? That clunky weight of grief and loss and mourning and suffering that a mother will always have for her son. But I don’t need more people to die.”

In the Middle East, Israeli leaders and soldiers must make moral judgments like whether to bomb a hospital to destroy military infrastructure in the tunnels underneath. In the West, we are fortunate to fight the battle of ideas. Victory at the level of ideas means refusing to soften the reality of terrorism. It also means opposing the narrative of a zero-sum contest between Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews. 

When we talk about Israel, we must deal in particulars. Resorting to generalizations is easy but accomplishes nothing. More importantly, we cannot downplay the harm suffered by innocent Palestinians and Israelis caught in the conflict or justify the evil of terrorism by speaking about Hamas as a governing power on par with Israel.

At the very least, have compassion for the greatness of the pain of these people at a human level. Take Edgar’s counsel: See and speak feelingly.

And pray for peace.

Moira Gleason is a senior studying English.

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