I invite you to check out Enough is Enough, a website dedicated to remembering Israel’s victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks since September 2000.
This site is one of many that remembers the people, not just the statistics. There are videos and presentations, and on the righthand side, there is a list of Israeli victims of terror. Each name is a link to a page about the person, including a photograph and brief details about the victim’s life, age, home, family, and the circumstances of his or her death.
They had hopes and dreams, families and friends and communities who cared about them and miss them. They were people who, just like you and I, just wanted to live their lives. And all of them had their lives cut tragically short. Media reports tend to quote the death tolls as crisp statistics, and few of the victims are truly remembered outside of their home communities.
It is far too easy to get caught up in the numbers game and to reduce victims to mere statistics. It’s harder to remember them as the living, breathing people that they were. But we must try, because if it could be one of them, it could just as easily be one of us.