Bob Schwartz

Any man’s death diminishes me.
John Donne, No Man Is an Island

I listened to an interview about the developing ceasefire in Gaza. The subject of the interview said there was much left to be done, and emphasized that international law had to be upheld. The implication was that the war in Gaza had breached such law.

The interviewer said that surely the man was happy to see the return of the hostages taken by Hamas. Of course, the man replied.

Throughout the Gaza war, this has been a tension. Talking about the war, whether in the news, in politics, or in the congregation, involves measured attention to either or both the horrific massacre that prompted the war and the responsive death and destruction inflicted on Gaza and its people. A certain degree of equivocal heartbreak is not entirely inappropriate, nor is situationally ignoring one to emphasize the other.

This does raise a question. If every life is precious—it is—does scale of death matter?

Reports of all sorts of mayhem, from family shootings, to mass shootings, to pandemics, to wars, inevitably mention scale. Modern Jewish life includes one the largest scale deaths by hatred in history—the extermination of the six million.

So it seems that scale of death does matter. One way we balance death at scale is by virtue of a cause. To return, as so much of modern history does, to Hitler, the scale of military and civilian casualties is in relation to the victory in World War II over unrestrained evil.

Scale of death can sometimes mask the individuality of the suffering, which is the point that John Donne makes in his famous line of poetry. Whether 400 dead or 50,000 dead or 6,000,000 dead, the meaning of each death is a personal pain with singular effect.

The return of the Hamas-held hostages is worth celebrating, as the death of those Israelis on October 7 or in captivity is worth grieving. But in Gaza tens of thousands of innocents have been killed and most of a territory—homes, businesses, hospitals, etc.—has been destroyed.

Every report and every discussion doesn’t have to reflect both of these related matters. But everyone raising—stressing—the grief and suffering of the people in Gaza should not be considered thoughtless and heartless, let alone antisemitic, when it comes to any and every person, Israeli and Palestinian, who has been and continues to be a victim. Any person’s death diminishes all of us.

© 2025 Bob Schwartz