Earlier this week, on Aug. 27, I wrote in Al-Monitor that Israel must be a part of the coalition being formed against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I claimed that it had a right to be a part of that group of nations that will eventually set out to punish an insane leader who is using chemical weapons to slaughter his people. I argued that vetoing Israel’s participation is the equivalent of isolating the country internationally. Given the barrage of comments I received, either directly or on Al-Monitor’s Facebook page, I discovered that very few readers agree with me. Most of the people who responded to my article seemed to think that I had lost my mind, and that’s putting it nicely.

“This column causes me to question your grip on reality,” one wrote, while another stated that there is no need for Israel to put its soldiers and civilians at risk just to appear humane before the rest of the world. One writer, who identified as a Muslim, complained about the duplicitous morality he saw not only in the article, but also in the worldview of Israelis in general. He wondered how we suddenly became so sensitive and so humane, when the Palestinian people continue to live under occupation.

Normally, I wouldn’t respond to cynical comments mocking what I wrote. I certainly do not need to prove the basic human values of so many Israelis. But then the Religious Zionist youth movement Bnei Akiva announced that its many thousands of members would recite a special prayer for the safety of the Syrian people this Saturday. The prayer was composed by Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, head of the Orot Shaul Army-Rabbinical College. Cherlow is also a member of Tzohar, a group of Orthodox rabbis devoted to encouraging dialogue between secular and religious Jews.

“We are calling on all branches of the Bnei Akiva movement in the Tel Aviv region to pray for an end to the massacres in Syria,” some of its members explained to Rabbi Cherlow as they asked him to compose a prayer to be recited in synagogues during Sabbath services this Saturday.