In a week that was supposed to focus on Passover’s story of deliverance, our attention is now focused on senseless murder.  As Christians celebrated Resurrection Day and the salvation found in a Risen Savior, we are reminded again of the relentlessness of wickedness.  During holidays that emphasize the sweetness of life, lovers of Israel are tragically forced, once again, to confront the bitterness of death.

People around the world now know the names of Maia Dee and Rina Dee and their mother, Lucy Dee.  News broadcasts across the globe have reported on the senseless killing of two sisters and their mother as they were driving, in a family caravan, northward through the Jordan Valley to Tiberias for a family outing.

Many millions of people first learned their names this week, but many hundreds already knew these women, not as casualties of terrorism but as neighbors and classmates.  As residents of Efrat, this family was known and loved by other local families, not as victims of an assassination but simply as members of the Dee family.

I never met Lucy or Maia or Rina.  I cannot claim them as my friends, but I can claim them as friends of my friends.  As one who closely follows news in Israel, I learned of the tragic shooting and then learned their names, but Lucy and Maia and Rina were still strangers to me.  Soon after the news reports were published came personal messages, informing me that many of my friends who live in Efrat and elsewhere were personally connected to the Dee family.  These extended connections made this horrendous event even more painful, more senseless.

With so many friends in Israel, I have experienced this moment before, most notably in September 2018 when Ari Fuld was brutally murdered by someone who shared this same pathological commitment to slaying Israeli Jews.  Like Lucy and Maia and Rina, I never met Ari, but he was close friends with several of my close friends.  His murder five years ago, like the murder of these three women, transitioned in my mind from a news story to a sad occurrence to a feeling of deep grief.

I am the father of two daughters who are approximately the same age as Rina and Maia.  I cannot imagine the grief and loss felt by their father, Rabbi Leo Dee.  My wife and I have six children, Leo and Lucy Dee have five.  We live in different places and lead different lives, but the British-born rabbi with five children is now walking through a nightmare that the Texas-born pastor with six children cannot even comprehend.

Now that the world has been confronted with someone brazenly shooting more than 20 bullets at a passing car, and now that we know names and faces, lovers of God and lovers of Israel must take the next step.  We cannot become numb to the loss of innocent lives.  We cannot be desensitized to terrorism.  We cannot be distracted and let this solemn opportunity pass by. 

Again, I am an outsider to their pain, as are many readers of this article.  We don’t know the Dee family, but we now know about the Dee family.  How should we react?  What should we do?

We can be sad, we can be angry, but we cannot be silent.  Evil must be recognized, and it must be punished.  Let’s start with identifying what happened as what it really is, murder.  Murder is murder, not “militancy” or “freedom fighting” or “pushing back against the occupiers” or an “incident” or a “conflict” or a click-worthy news headline.  Murder is murder.  Evil is evil. 

The struggle faced by the Dee family, like so many others facing similar catastrophes, is both an earthly battle and a spiritual battle.  We who are safe, we who are not victims, can pledge to fight in these battles, refusing to let the apathetic majority silence the brokenhearted minority. 

In the earthly battle, we must demand that political leaders and headline writers properly label murder as murder, evil as evil.  Voters must contact their elected officials and tell them to stand for truth, refusing to accept antisemitic hatred as part of normal diplomatic discourse.  Readers and viewers must contact the media and express the necessity of truthful, factual, well-researched reporting.  Murder is murder.  Evil is evil.

As the BBC reported, “Hamas did not claim it was behind the shooting of the British-Israeli women but praised it as “a natural response to [Israel’s] ongoing crimes against the al-Aqsa mosque and its barbaric aggression against Lebanon and the steadfast Gaza.”  Praised?  Natural response?  Murder is murder.  Evil is evil.

In the spiritual battle, we must ask God to empower both the earthly armies and the spiritual armies to defeat terrorists and protect innocent civilians.  All who stand with Israel can pray, asking the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to comfort and support those who have senselessly lost loved ones.  Jews who feel in their own hearts the pain of the Dee family can cry out to HaShem for the broken hearts of the Dee family.  Followers of Jesus who understand God’s eternal covenant can ask the Lord to place His hand of grace and mercy on Rabbi Leo Dee and his three other children.

Being a Jew in Israel, particularly in Judea and Samaria, must stop being a crime.  Living as a religious Jew in the biblical heartland must never again be a crime punishable by death.  What happened to Lucy and Rina and Maia was not an accident or a dispute or bad luck.  Murder is murder.  Evil is evil.

Lovers of God, Jews and Christians, rightfully run to the Bible for comfort and assurance in times of pain and confusion.  Most notably, students who revere scripture turn to Psalms (Tehillim) for sentiments that we feel in our souls but cannot eloquently express with words.  Even though the verse references are sometimes numbered differently in the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh, the heartfelt cries from humans in pain to a God in heaven are universal.  We need these verses today.

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and His ears are open to their cry.  The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.  The righteous cry, and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.  The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.  Psalm 34:15-18 (16-19)

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1 (2)

You who have shown me many troubles and distresses will revive me again, and will bring me up again from the depths of the earth.  May You increase my greatness and turn to comfort me.  Psalm 71:20-21

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.  Psalm 73:26

Finally, Psalm 68:5 (6) declares that the Lord is the Father to the fatherless and the Champion of the widows.  Today, as we pray for the Dee family, may we join together and beg HaShem to be the Father to the motherless and the Champion of the widower?