Ruth Peretz was 16 years old and had both cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. She was wheelchair-bound — severely disabled. But she loved music. So her father, Erick, brought her to the desert concert in Israel that was so infamously and so brutally attacked by Hamas. They were among the missing. They have both now been found dead. I hate to say I figured as much. Despite Hamas’s deep desire for human shields, Ruth would have been too much work — keeping her alive would have required a tenderness likely unknown to terrorists. And dead Jews are what they ultimately desire. Ruth’s older sister told media that their father would regularly take Ruth to concerts. Ruth was nonverbal, but she would want to stay, she enjoyed them so much. Ruth and her father are among those we cannot forget.
We’re barely two weeks into the attack on Israel, and it’s striking how many in the West have forgotten the existential war on Ukraine. At the same time, the particularly insidious evil of antisemitism insists we look at the human faces of the attack on Israel in a particularly personal way. It’s as if we can’t recognize multiple simultaneous injustices in the world. Hamas hated Ruth and her father because they were Jewish. Never mind that he was simply a father who loved his daughter and made sacrifices for her and shared joy, even when inconvenient. God must reward such love with great joy.
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