In 2015, relatives of the victims of a mass shooting inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, stood up in court and publicly forgave the murderer of their parents, grandparents and children. That was just two days after the unprovoked, racially motivated shooting.

On Oct. 7, 2023, 1,200 innocent Israelis and other nationals were brutally slaughtered in a surprise terrorist attack by Hamas. Before the day was out, the Israeli military began to retaliate by bombing the Gaza Strip. A full-scale invasion commenced thereafter.

Over 52,000 Palestinians, around 18,000 of them children, have reportedly perished since. On May 5, 2025, Israel’s Cabinet approved plans to capture and occupy the entire Gaza Strip. More bombing. More suffering. More death.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Moses once said: An ‘eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ (Exodus 21:23-25)

A wise old teacher of mine once said: Moses’ words were meant as a moral curb on history’s past practices — don’t take more than an eye for an eye.

If, since Oct. 7, 2023, at least a few leaders — Israeli, American, Palestinian — had found a fraction of the moral strength shown by a handful of extraordinary Black women in South Carolina, what ramifications — for the whole world — might have followed?

Israel’s barbarity in Gaza must stop. Is it antisemitic to say so? Nonsense. Witness the many Jewish people whose hearts, like mine, ache to see such suffering in Gaza.

Lee Chisholm
Freeport