Lord of the Universe, We, the soldiers of the People of Israel, come to You in humility and pray for Your help. Once more, we are asked to defend our people and the Holy Land against our enemies. We ask You to have pity on us, to help us watch over our People with clean hands and a merciful heart.

Give our people the strength to remain in good spirit, live in unity and walk in Your ways, the ways of justice and truth. Calm our women, children, mothers and fathers, lift their spirits and give them strength while we fight for our people.

Prevent us from making mistakes by hurting or killing our fellow brother/soldiers with friendly fire.

Please, let our bullets not hurt those children of our enemies whose "defenders" place them deliberately in danger spots, fire on us and then shield themselves behind their own people so as to fault us when their children get hurt, or even killed. Let us not accidentally hit schools, hospitals or convoys which provide food and medicine, as we are men who stand in awe before You and this would unwittingly cause the violation of Your holy Name, Remove the evil spirit of these "defenders"; make them realize the wickedness of their actions.

Stop their teachers from manipulating their students by spreading hatred against us in their schoolbooks on the radio, television and internet. Let good people in the Diaspora not be indoctrinated with evil talk about us by those who manipulate the media and are motivated by anti- Semitism.

Erase the evil intentions of those members of the Security Council who distort the truth.

O God, as one of our Prime Ministers said: We may one day forgive our enemies for killing our children, but we will never forgive them for forcing our soldiers to kill.

We beg You, do not allow our Jewish souls to undergo this ordeal which we cannot bear.

We are the children of Avraham, your servant, who prayed for the evil people of Sedom in the hope that they would repent and live decent lives. We therefore entreat You to make our enemies repent, force them to understand that we are good people who wish to live in peace with all our neighbors. O Lord, remove atrocities from their thoughts such as those in which they dip their hands in our blood. As Jews, we cannot fathom doing this to even our worst enemies.

You commanded us to live in a country barely larger than a tiny island, our population smaller than that of many single cities. You asked us to live here so as to send Your holy word to all corners of the world. But we are surrounded by many nations comprising more than a hundred million people. They inhabit one of the largest regions of the world, yet deny us the right to live in even the smallest corner of our planet, and only wish our extinction.

Give the Arab nations and the Palestinians leaders who are men of justice, who truly care for their people and will not bring their own brothers to despair and unbearable pain while accusing us of grave injustice when we try to help them.

Now, after thousands of years dwelling on Earth, after many exiles, pogroms, tortures, expulsions and holocausts, we finally found our way back to our small homeland, that which You promised to our forefathers. But once more our dreams of peace have gone up in smoke as we tried, risking our own lives, to find a way to allow our neighbors to live their own lives. While we were prepared to make sacrifices for the well-being of these people, as no other nation ever did, while we offered them land, peace, finances, even firearms with which to defend themselves, we pay the price once more for being a people who want to trust another nation and its leaders. Once more we have been misled. Why do so many wish to portray us as an evil people? Perhaps to deny Your existence and Your moral demands? They hide behind their own wickedness and cover up their and their fathers' immoral acts which they brought upon us and our forefathers for thousands O God, You know that no army in the world history has used so much restraint as ours. No army is as careful not to hurt or kill as ours. But what can we do when we're fired upon by thousands of rockets, and have to defend nearly one million of our brothers and sisters in the south of our Holy Land, and are not even given the option to clearly show this to the world?

Please, God, bring peace into the hearts and minds of our enemies. Let them be uplifted with a spirit of righteousness. Stop them from hating us for being Your people. Let us sanctify Your name, For this is our mission and dream.

Allow us the possibility, once again, to teach Your ways to the nations of the world and make them hear and understand. We hate war as nobody else does, we abhor the need to carry weapons, and we cannot stand the sound of our own artillery and tanks. We are the People of the Book The Book which demands holiness, kindness and integrity. Our heroes are not the generals or marshals, but rather our prophets and our sages, men of righteousness. So, deliver us from this anguish, bring peace to the nations.

Let us not be compelled to use force against them for they will have no escape.

Let the world not forget that we are fighting not only our fight but a fight for all of mankind, to undo the evil of terror which has swept Your world. Bring us home from the battlefields, alive and unharmed, if not in our own merit, then in the merit of our women, children and parents, so that we can sanctify Your name.

Let the blessing which You gave to Avraham come true, "And through you all the families of the Earth will be blessed". For this is our hope.

Written by: Nathan Lopes Cardozo