OPINION: Running out of tears

Six more hostages are dead and polio, a deadly virus that was once nearly eradicated, has gotten a foothold among the children in Gaza who were already living through an apocalypse. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his fight, which he says is to avenge the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 and to eradicate the terrorists responsible for it. In the process of this mission that is both righteous blood lust and political self-preservation, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. And amid all this unfathomable horror, some seem to believe that their reservoir of tears must be rationed. To cry for the families of the hostages who have died and the ones who are still missing, to weep for the totality of violence that has been inflicted on Israelis, means that all that’s left is dry-eyed numbness for the pain of the Palestinians. To shed tears for those living under bombardment in Gaza means turning blind eyes to the terrorizing of Israelis.

Americans are used to crying for victims. We support the underdog and take on bullies. We have been told we are the world’s hero. But in this case, so many of the parties are both wronged and wrong. Instead of the black and white of moral clarity, we’ve become engulfed in a catastrophe of awful choices, immoral rationalizations and chickens coming home to roost.

Perhaps our tears are constrained, perhaps we are stingy with them because we find it inconceivable that this hellscape exists in a gray zone of man’s own making. To wit: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump posted on social media an all-caps declaration of hindsight and hypothesis: “THE OCTOBER 7th ISRAELI CRISIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE PRESIDENT!”

Israelis are protesting their own government for what they believe is a failure to prioritize the return of the 97 hostages that Israeli officials say are still held. Palestinians are still dying. Terrorists are still fighting. The American government continues to supply Israel with weapons. And Americans remain divided and angry over their culpability and responsibility.

When Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president, her speech carefully addressed the war in Gaza — not in its full geopolitical complexity, but in the simplest, human terms. “Let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself. And I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7,” she said. “At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.” She didn’t say, yes this, but that. Her phrasing did not suggest that one action canceled out another. Her words underscored that there’s no competition in misery or grief, even though so much about this war is rooted in who has the deepest wounds and who has endured the most grievous generational trauma. There’s too much trauma for which to account. There are gaping wounds everywhere.

But for some listeners, voters and absolutists, there is no “at the same time.” Netanyahu — charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, along with leaders of Hamas, by the International Criminal Court — has made that plain. To question him is to be against Israel — even if the question is regarding his tactics, widespread hunger in Gaza and the deaths of children. And within the pro-Palestinian movement, from the student tent-dwellers to the uncommitted voters, there are those who have plummeted into antisemitism, who have equated a people with their government and lauded Hamas as brave rebels.

The British government has decided to restrict certain arms sales to Israel. Netanyahu has called this “shameful,” and humanitarian organizations have declared it “nowhere near adequate.” This isn’t surprising, because with Gaza, no choices are fully satisfying. But at least it’s something. And something must be done.

Relief organizations have undertaken a mass vaccination effort during a pause in the fighting. This is evidence of the dedication and tenacity of medical staff, but also the capacity of the combatants to stop. They can still choose. They can choose to stop.

Humanitarians may be able to contain a virus, but cruel misery in the absence of empathy grows into despair, anger and hatred. And hatred has no respect for borders. It can’t be eradicated with a single shot, a caravan of food and medicine or an airdrop of foreign aid. Hate festers and grows until it can’t be negotiated away, bribed into submission or bombed into oblivion. But for now, there are still choices.

How deep is the human reservoir for tears? For grief? One wonders if it’s bottomless or if, at some point, the weeping simply stops. Not because people cease caring or because they’ve made peace with man-made despair, but because the mind simply can’t comprehend how bad things have gotten, because every new, terrible thing seems like the worse possible thing and then the nadir of the human condition sinks just a little bit more. A Palestinian father’s newborn twins and their mother were killed in an Israeli airstrike while he was out retrieving his babies’ birth certificates. An American family’s son, kidnapped by Hamas while attending a music festival and who lost an arm in the assault, was killed while in captivity. A toddler in Gaza is paralyzed by polio, which was supposed to have been eliminated from the region a generation ago.

Human nature, or at least American nature, means viewing the world in bifurcated form: right and wrong, good and evil, friend and foe. There’s a tendency to highlight the facts that make the lines of demarcation clearer, to believe that any breaches can be repaired through time and money, and that the worst of everything is soon behind us.

The war in Gaza reminds us that things that are right aren’t always just. And it’s only a failure of imagination to believe that things can’t get worse. It’s important to keep the tears falling freely and fully for all. They’re a reminder that our imagination has not yet failed us. There’s still time to choose.

Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large for The Washington Post, writing about politics, race and the arts. A 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, Givhan has also worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press.

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