I had driven down to Los Angeles anticipating glorious times among family and Southern Californian wonders, plant life included. Instead my head is filled with disbelief and grief about the atrocities unleashed upon the world.

Mourning for civilians of all ages massacred in their homes, at festivals, in the fields. In numbers that, relative to population, would amount to over 40 000 here in the US in a matter of two days. Not counting the wounded. Not counting the innumerable ones left behind, having lost children, parents, siblings, friends. Not counting the trauma that will cling to the survivors for ages. Not counting the disillusionment of the idea there would be one safe place in the world for Jews.

Mourning for civilians of all ages with almost half of them under the age of 14, exposed to white phosphorus bombs, deprived of food and water, told to leave their homes within a 24 hour window, with no place to go, all border crossings remaining closed. A population that has seen the last election in 2006, when 1 million of them were not even born, under the thumb of fanatic Islamists whose goal to destroy any Jewish state includes the knowing sacrificing of their own people. Bent on undermining rapprochement between parts of the Arab world and Israel.

Mourning for the peacemakers on all sides who have been out-gamed by religious zealots on all sides who scorned compromise or political solutions.

Mourning for the consequences of an all-out war for those who will be killed and maimed and traumatized. A war that will create displacement, re-enacting the Nakba, the catastrophe for Palestinians expelled from their lands in 1948. Consequences that will also include fuel to the fires of anti-Semitism, when the extent of suffering of a civilian population trapped in a 140 square mile strip becomes visible to the world, a world that historically preferred to ignore the plight of the Palestinians. Mourning for the Jewish civilians who will then be victimized in the next cycle of violence, in Israel and across the world. As Steven C. Beschloss wrote:

“It’s a stunning, heartbreaking moment on so many levels: The violent horror for every individual and family involved. The grim fact that this will escalate not only as a result of Israel’s retaliation and effort to recover hostages through urban warfare in a densely packed city but possibly also by increasingly triggered neighbors. The tragedy of a Mideast region in which war not peace, conflict not calm, has defined its modern and ancient history. The terrible reality for people who continue to confront a world where enmity is a central fact of life.“

Mourning. But also determined to cling to our basic humanity and acknowledge the suffering of all victims caught in this maelstrom. That does not imply justification of terrorist actions, or excusing potential military defiance of the laws of war. It does not mean political analysis – time for that comes later. It means empathy with the barrage of sorrow unleashed upon this world.

Here is a poem by German Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko who fled Nazi Germany to exile in the U.S and then Israel. It reminds us of the compounded trauma that exists and has been triggered again.

Music today provides a ray of hope, but also tears.