The row about an advertisement condemning the Hamas terror group’s use of Gazan children as human shields shares a haunting echo with one of the great poems of World War I.
Jewish Nobel peace laureate, Elie Wiesel appears in the advertisement sponsored by The Values Network, founded by US Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and which begins by referring to the near- sacrifice of Isaac by his father, Abraham. Its headline runs: “Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’ turn”. The advertisement appeared in several leading US newspapers but was rejected by The (U.K.) Times.
The scenario was immediately reminiscent of Wilfred Owen’s The Parable of the Old Man and the Young which is based on the same story. But where 
The poem was published after Owen’s death by his fellow poet, Siegfried Sassoon whose handwritten diaries and poetry notebooks have just been placed on public view.
“The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
“So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
”But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one”.
© Natalie Wood (07 August 2014)
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