Saturday morning I awoke to a text from a friend: “War in Israel.” More texts…TV…checking websites…talking to experts…checking in with friends, as layers of horror unfolded before our eyes. By the end of the day the full extent of the catastrophe was clearer. There will indeed now be a long and difficult and evil war. Innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government are, even as I write this, either being tortured or killed or are dead already. Children have been taken hostage. A nation is terrorized. Israeli Military Intelligence, who everyone thought had such vast operational superiority that no one would ever dare do what Hamas has now done, has spectacularly and tragically failed at its job. And yes, I know. These events did not occur in a vacuum. I could write about - and indeed I have, and at length - the myriad injustices Palestinians have endured at the hands of Israel. Pretty much anything anyone could say about that…I get it, I know. But not today. Today I simply want to grieve. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to take a position or argue policy. I just want to grieve. I grieve for the Israeli children and Palestinian children and Israeli parents and Palestinian parents. I grieve for the world that we could not do better than this. I grieve the fact that any sliver of hope for peace in that region is probably set back for decades, possibly even longer now. I will have much to say in the coming days about what is happening in Israel and how I feel the United States should respond. For now, I stand with Israel. And I stand with the Palestinian people. I do not stand with Hamas, nor will I ever. For their cause is not justice. Their cause is terror. May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God to whom Jews and Muslims and Christians all pray - please help us in this agonizing hour.