Love hurts. Watching a film clip through a window recently shocked your winged observer. A boy moaned on his mattress that served as his hospital bed. He was plastered with medical wrappings over his body, hands, snd head. He was horribly, unspeakably burned. Yet he kept repeating, “I’m OK daddy. I’m OK.” His father, supine on another mattress, tried to console the son he couludn’t touch. The man was himself covered with burns; his own face almost invisible under wraps. His hands were invisible under cloth, yet he pawed his son, trying to console him.

I don’t know who they are. Ukrainians? Palestinians? Israelis? We know they are where they are because some dictator or homicidal sadists launched a war against them. Mr. Putin believes his power should be greater. Hamas murderers want to kill Israelis and drive the Jews into the sea. Both have their reasons, which added together amount to emptiness.

A wise Limestonian observed that Hamas wants to kill all the Jews, while Israel wants to kill all Hamas. Neither will accomplish their goal. Palestinians and Israelis who want to simply live, like you or I, will be slaughtered as a result. The Palestinians and Israelis themselves are the battlefield, just as Ukrainians who want to be free to choose their own leaders are the endless targets of Russian heavy artillery.

I’m reminded of another story. A man was found beaten by robbers on the side of the road. A passerby came and took him in, treated his wounds in a place of refuge and left sufficient funds to see him whole and well again. A young Polish private citizen said recently as she surveyed her vast medical supply center for Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russain savagery, “We can make this work.” The Poles now care for millions bombed and strafed out of their homes by Russians as a second war winter approaches. American officials try to establish a safety corridor for those Palestinians attempting to escape the war their elected Hamas officials started. How can Israelis and Palestinians live together as long as one side wants revenge for their displacement by the erasure of the Jews; while the other wants to kill all those Hamas figures they can lay their hands on?

We once called ourselves the “Arsenal of Democracy.” We saw to it that beleaguered England, alone against the Nazi behemoth, had the wherewithal to fight back. Ukraine is a young democracy, and deserves to survive against so-called strongmen, dictators like Putin who want more naked power. They cry for help. They look to us, the model of a free country. We need to make their defense viable, and so any negotiations meaningful.

We now believe Hamas delivered a psychotic terror against Israelis so toxic it will live forever as an “accelerationist” plan. They seemed to believe that this mad attack against babies, grandmothers and young people at a peace concert, no less, would finally bring about a huge revenge war with the collapse of all current powers in the region. It is mad because it follows with delusional similarity those former West German radicals who thought that assassinating symbolic people of Western governments, military, law, and business, would cause the collapse of Western Europe. Madness.

What isn’t mad is the slow, patient, often thankless work which must be done to really resolve this dilemma. No person, no population, is without hope. Palestinians need first a way out of the combat zone. They are like the wounded man whom the passerby helped in that long ago story, and must be guided safely away. Imagine you were told you have 24 hours to leave everything and go “south.”No destination. No refuge. This happened to the Palestinians. We need to rally all our government capability to help make life bearable for these refugees, while the Israelis and Hamas massacre away. We here in Limestone County have that power. As a free people, we can contact our representatives and remind them not to forget the Ukrainians, fighting to be free. We need to ask our US representatives to rally the United Nations to transform Gaza, so it is no longer a hopeless zone of people unwanted, uncared for.

Much can be said for helping free people defend themselves. Ukraine is a land liberated after years of Soviet domination, enslavement and massacre. They need tools to fight. Gaza needs hope, cynically denied them by their own elected government, Hamas. There is no excuse for the sadistic mayhem that has occurred. No one asked why the man was on the side of the road, nor who the passerby was who rescued him. Our job is to take care of him, until he’s well and whole again.