Tyranny & Terror- A Study in Hard Hearts, from Pharaoh to Hamas (Jan 13)

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Excerpt from Torah United: Teachings on the Weekly Parashah from Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and the Chassidic Masters by Aaron Goldscheider (link)

The oppression of the Jews in Egypt can be traced to the kefiyat ha-tov, the ingratitude, of a single but exceedingly powerful man. The Torah relates that "a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Yosef" (Exodus 1:8), on which Rashi comments, "he made himself out as if he did not know Yosef." Everything that Yosef did for Pharaoh at the end of Genesis, solving the grain crisis and enriching Pharaoh in the process, had been forgotten. The very title "Pharaoh" bears this out: when read backwards, it yields "the nape". Pharaoh turned his back on those who had done him good. He was nothing more than an ingrate.

Moshe, on the other hand, was an exemplar of hakarat ha-tov, gratitude. When delivering God's message, he told Pharaoh that he would strike the waters of the Nile with the staff in his hand and it would turn to blood (Exodus 7:17). However, God then specified to Moshe that Aharon would hold the staff and initiate the plague, which he did by striking the waters of the Nile (Exodus 7:19-20). God gave Moshe similar instructions, which were duly followed, for the plague of frogs (8:1-2) and the plague of lice (8:12-13), which required striking the dirt of Egypt. Why was Moshe not the one to perform those plagues?

Rashi writes beautifully that for Moshe to have struck the Nile personally would have been to bite the hand that fed him, or rather saved him. The river's reeds sheltered Moshe and its current delivered him safely into the open arms of Pharaoh's daughter. The same was true of the earth: the relative ease with which the sand could be shifted to hide the body of the Egyptian Moshe killed allowed him to escape immediate Egyptian retribution. To commit violence against these personal lifesavers would be a symbolic act of gross ingratitude.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook viewed gratitude to be more than a moral principle. It is a spiritual capacity with cosmic significance.

"Gratitude is the greatest and loftiest pillar of morality, which when fully developed in the heart of man contributes greatly to collective perfection."

The inclination to express gratitude to others and reciprocate their kindnesses is inborn but requires continuous development. And though it comes to us naturally to give thanks to those who support us most, such as our parents, spouse, and close friends, we all too often neglect to show our true appreciation to the Almighty who gave us life, sustains us, and protects us. The reason, in Rav Kook's view, is because of "man's smallness and the greatness of the Benefactor and His beneficences."

How does one become more mindful of God's blessings? By taking note of and appreciating the material gifts be they big or small, that serve our needs. The more we accustom ourselves to recognizing the manifold gifts that surround us, the more likely we are to recognize God's grace and the fact that we are beneficiaries of His countless kindnesses.

-pages 180-181

NBC NEWS ARTICLE- LOOTERS STRIP GAZA GREENHOUSES (LINK)

SEPT 13, 2005

Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses on Tuesday, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for $14 million last month and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up $500,000 of his own cash.

Palestinian police stood by helplessly Tuesday as looters carted off materials from greenhouses in several settlements, and commanders complained they did not have enough manpower to protect the prized assets. In some instances, there was no security and in others, police even joined the looters, witnesses said.

“We need at least another 70 soldiers. This is just a joke,” said Taysir Haddad, one of 22 security guards assigned to Neve Dekalim, formerly the largest Jewish settlement in Gaza. “We’ve tried to stop as many people as we can, but they’re like locusts.”

The failure of the security forces to prevent scavenging and looting in the settlements after Israel’s troop pullout Monday raised new concerns about Gaza’s future.

ADDITIONAL PARALLELS

1. UNLIKELY HEROES

Ami Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Windward, woke up on October 7 and realized that people needed help. He pivoted to use tech and AI to deploy anyone available to rescue individuals trapped in the South, coordinating requests via hundreds of WhatsApp messages sharing location pins and cries for help with people who could get those people out.

EXCERPT FROM "INVESTED BY ALEPH" FEATURING AMI DANIEL, CO-FOUNDER & CEO OF WINDWARD (LINK)

And and I'm getting these locations from people and I think at that time I think what's crazy is there are terrorists in the houses. It's not that this is done and the army's like, you know, there are three to five terrorists in every house.

Oftentimes and I've spoken to many many families- and I help them- they're in their shelter locked the the dad is pushing the the door handle so people don't open it. The terrorists are setting the house on fire because they can't open it because of that; they are waiting for hours and the door is becoming hot and the terrorists either putting it on fire or not putting it on fire and waiting outside the door ambushing the forces.

So at that time what I end up telling the forces is not just that there are people in this house- because they don't know where they are because many have been kidnapped- but also where the terrorists are. To the extent that right now, listen, they send me WhatsApp pictures from the ground and send me live location and I send them back maps with drawings that I do on my iPhone of where the terrorists are and and I try to help them [the IDF] understand in which windows are the terrorists and where did they miss them. And we had one family, the Mor family, where the dad has ALS and he just- he’s in a wheelchair. So we had to tell the two kids to jump through the bathroom window while the forces go in and blow up the door. And we knew there are two terrorists hiding from them, one in the stairs and one on the second floor. And it's very surreal because I'm just like, I'm just a CEO of a tech company, right? I don't usually, I don't usually work with ground forces to tell them where the terrorists are.

2. WARNINGS

Excerpt from "Vaera- the Plague of Blood" by Rav Michael Hattin of Gush Etzion (LINK)

UNDERSTANDING THE BLOOD

While Rashi addresses the fundamental question concerning WHY the river was struck at the outset of the process, he does not elucidate the particular and grotesque nature of the plague. According to Rashi we do not know why the Nile was transformed into blood to render its waters undrinkable. It could have easily been stricken with some other malady or effect to make it unpotable. But who could fail to hear in this opening salvo the echo of an earlier crime perpetrated at the river's edge, by a zealous and cruel people who worshipped their own tyrannical king as an all-powerful deity? Recall that an earlier Pharaoh, the one who had ushered in the age of oppression and slavery, had attempted to check the ever-increasing population of Israelites in Egypt's midst. First he had subdued them with national labor and then he had pressed them into bondage, but still their numbers burgeoned. And as we discussed last week, his commands to the midwives to slay the male children at birth mercifully went unheeded. Then it was that the wicked Pharaoh pronounced his cruelest of decrees: "let all male newborns be cast into the Nile, so that only the females might live!" (1:22).

Perhaps the blood, then, was meant to serve the Egyptians as a striking reminder that they had brought the disaster upon themselves by so enthusiastically shedding the blood of the Israelite children whom they had heartlessly (but surreptitiously?) cast into the Nile's murky depths in the Book's first chapter. It was as if those depths now disgorged that innocent blood and revealed the evil crime for all to see, for elsewhere in the Tanakh we find that the theme of "blood exposed" indicates the uncovering of a murderous felony that had been intentionally concealed by the perpetrator (see Bereishit 4:9-10; 9:4-7; BeMidbar 35:3-34; etc.). God's power was thus matched by His concern for justice, for unlike the gods of Egypt who went about their business unfazed by moral ambiguities, the God of Israel demanded accountability.

EXCERPT FROM "WHEN THE WORLD GETS PLAYED" ON THE IDF SPOKESPERSON SUBSTACK, PUB DATE NOV 5, 2023 (LINK)

The IDF is fighting Hamas, not the people of Gaza.

Getting Gazan residents out of the line of fire so that Israel could contend with Hamas directly and prevent another October 7th massacre is and has been a top priority. To date, Israel has distributed over 1.5 million pamphlets in aerial drops across Gaza, imploring them to leave.

RADM Daniel Hagari, the IDF Spokesperson, sharing footage of a journalist in Gaza holding the pamphlets that Israel dropped. RADML Hagari clarified that in some cases, the Israeli Air Force prioritized dropping leaflets over other missions.

Israel has sent over 4.3 million text messages asking them to move south, to safer areas in southern Gaza. Over 5.9 million prerecorded phone calls were placed and nearly 20,000 live phone calls were placed. Our military has been pushing the message on social media for weeks. It’s a priority.

EXCERPT FROM BBC'S "'I’m calling from Israeli intelligence. We have the order to bomb. You have two hours'" PUB DATE NOV. 7, 2023 (LINK)

The call to Mahmoud Shaheen came at dawn.

It was Thursday 19 October at about 06:30, and Israel had been bombing Gaza for 12 days straight.

He'd been in his third-floor, three-bedroom flat in al-Zahra, a middle-class area in the north of the Gaza Strip. Until now, it had been largely untouched by air strikes.

He'd heard a rising clamour outside. People were screaming. "You need to escape," somebody in the street shouted, "because they will bomb the towers".

As he left his building and crossed the road, looking for a safe place, his phone lit up.

It was a call from a private number.

"I'm speaking with you from Israeli intelligence," a man said down the line, according to Mahmoud.

That call would last more than an hour - and it would be the most terrifying call of his life.

'We will bomb three towers'

The voice addressed Mahmoud by his full name and spoke in flawless Arabic.

"He told me he wanted to bomb three towers… and ordered me to evacuate the surrounding area."

Mahmoud's tower was not directly under threat - but he was suddenly responsible for evacuating hundreds of people. "I had the lives of people in my hands," he says.

He gathered his thoughts and told the man, who identified himself as Abu Khaled, not to hang up the phone.

As a 40-year-old dentist, Mahmoud says he has no idea why he was chosen for this task. But that day, he did everything he could to keep his community safe.

Directed by the voices of strangers, who always seemed to know how to reach him even when his battery ran out, he pleaded for the bombing to stop and screamed until his throat hurt for people to run away.

He led a mass evacuation of his neighbours - and then watched his neighbourhood explode in front of his eyes.

3. DEALS

EXCERPT FROM TIMES OF ISRAEL 'RELEASE OF 50 ABDUCTED WOMEN, CHILDREN, TO BEGIN 10AM,' PUB DATE NOV 22, 2023 (LINK)

As detailed by Israel’s cabinet, the deal set to unfold from Thursday would trade a total of 50 living Israeli hostages for a four-day lull in fighting and the release of up to 150 Palestinian female and underage prisoners. It would also enable an influx of fuel and humanitarian supplies to Gaza during the pause. If Hamas is able to locate additional hostages who are either minors or female non-combatants to release, the deal can be extended to up to 10 days, with one extra day’s pause in the fighting for every 10 hostages released. Three additional Palestinian prisoners would be released for each hostage freed.

EXCERPT FROM AXIOS 'HOW THE GAZA CEASEFIRE DEAL COLLAPSED' PUB DATE DEC 2, 2023 (LINK)

Driving the news: According to the ceasefire agreement, Hamas committed to releasing all the women and children it was holding hostage in exchange for a pause in fighting for up to nine days. More than 80 women and children were released over the last week as part of this process.

Yes, but: In the hours leading to the end of the pause, Hamas did not send a list of hostages it would release, the three Israeli officials said.

• Instead, Hamas sent messages through Qatari and Egyptian mediators proposing to start a discussion on what concessions Israel would be willing to give in return for the release of elderly men, the officials added.

Behind the scenes: The Israeli officials said Israel made it clear to the mediators that it knows Hamas still has several women in its custody and that it would not discuss future deals before all the women were released.

4. SELF SABOTAGE

Governments exist, in theory, to protect and serve and protect their people. Pharaoh doesn't do this, and neither does Hamas.

EXCERPT FROM THE WASHINGTON POST OPINION PIECE PUB DATE NOV 23, 2023 (LINK)

But Hamas does use civilians as shields, and it is crucial to understand that fact. As a Nov. 5 Post editorial observed, the group “has consciously exposed noncombatants to danger by provoking Israel militarily — while protecting its own leaders and fighters in tunnels.” In 2014, The Post reported that al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, now the site of Israeli-Hamas fighting, “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.”

This Hamas practice is not new, and neither are efforts to distract from it with spurious claims of racism. In 2014, a human rights lawyer on CNN said, “The idea that Palestinians use their children as human shields is racist and reprehensible.” To which host Jake Tapper responded: “We have video of the Hamas spokesman on television telling people to stay in their homes, that it’s an effective way to make sure to fight off the Israelis. That’s not racist. That’s just a fact.”

5. LET MY PEOPLE GO

Let the hostages go! This is one of the explicit stated operational goals of this war.

TAKEAWAYS

The Torah is timeless! Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it.

But also:

-The process of the redemption from Egypt was long and complex. But it happened. God willing we will redeem our hostages here, too.

-We too can rise to the occasion, like Moses and like Ami, no matter how unlikely a candidate we may seem.

-Gratitude is powerful and it is important to practice it- to prevent ourselves from becoming hard hearted.