The Evil and the Good.

My thoughts on the terrorist attack on Israel and the coming war against Hamas.

Let me tell you a story.

It is the oldest story in the world.

It is the story of Good vs Evil.

We saw the face of Evil this past weekend when the terrorist organization Hamas, and its supporters, orchestrated a surprise attack on Israel.

It is the story of what we all witnessed and which is still happening even as I write this. Innocent men, women, and children are being slaughtered by evil men. By terrorists who today call themselves Hamas, who yesterday called themselves Nazis, and who, in Biblical times, were the forces of Amalek. As I said, this is an old story.

I am Jewish. I was raised religious but reformed, meaning I took a more casual approach to my Judaism. However, since the birth of my first daughter nine years ago, I have been steadily steering myself toward a more orthodox, deeply religious practice of my faith. A big part of that is tied to my role as a father and a husband. This entails trying to explain to my three children what it means to be Jewish. While I tell them stories from the Torah and try to teach them our values, I have not had to talk to them about the fact that people across the world hate us for the terrible crime of being Jewish. That changed this weekend.  The impact of my explanation to my children of what was going on Israel along with the videos and news reports they saw is as apparent as it is frightening. It saddens me that they now know that part of the beautiful lives they will lead as Jewish girls and boys involves understanding, accepting and living with in a world where people hate them simply because they are Jewish.

Yes. Because they are Jewish.

Not because they are Israeli—which we are not. Not because they are Zionists. People will hate them because they are Jewish.

Growing up, kids in my generation—and our parents as well—had the Holocaust as a clarion alarm reminding us that evil exists in the world. During the 1930s and 1940s, we saw the face of evil in every single person who wore a Nazi uniform. As children, the tattooed numbers on the arms of our grandparents may have faded, but they remained as evidence, etched in the flesh, of the evil in the world. In the beginning, people didn't want to believe that the Germans were indeed exterminating Jews (and many other groups of people as well). They didn't want to believe in evil. Then, when the camps were liberated and the world saw what the Nazis had done, people understood and believed.

We saw the face of that same evil again this past weekend when the terrorist organization Hamas, and its supporters, orchestrated a surprise attack on Israel. Let’s be clear, Israel is the Jewish homeland, the biblical location of the Jewish Kingdom, and the modern-day Jewish state—as well as the one true democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a symbol against the kind of evil the Nazis perpetrated that “Never Again” will this kind of thing be allowed to happen.

We saw evil in the sadistic murderers paragliding into a desert rave where they proceeded to slaughter hundreds of innocent young men and women.
We saw evil in the masked faces of the terrorists killing entire families, raping, and kidnapping women, dragging them back to Gaza.
We saw evil in the faces of the people who put Israeli babies in cages. In the bowed faces of the business-suited members of the Iranian parliament who thanked Allah for the murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping of innocent women, children, and the elderly. If you pray to a god in celebration of these things, that is not God you are worshipping.

For three days now, we have witnessed one horrific video after another depicting the torture, abduction, rape, and murder of Israeli citizens. We have seen videos of crowds of people in Times Square, New York, in London, and in places like Turkey and, of course, Iran, cheering on this barbarism. Cheering for terrorists. There is evil in the faces of the people who encourage and support evil.

Make no mistake, there is no two sides to this story, or seeing it from another perspective. There is no moral equivalence between the Israeli citizens—both Jews and non-Jews—and the malevolent, murdering members of Hamas, who have so far massacred over 800 Israelis.

This malevolent carnage and death was not limited to only Jews. Nine Americans are dead as of this writing. German citizens are dead. A Thai man was beheaded by these savages. These are not monsters; they are people. Subhuman pieces of garbage. Animals, but not monsters. People.

On Saturday, beginning at dawn local time, thousands of missiles were launched from Gaza, overwhelming Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. By 7:40 a.m., Hamas terrorists were breaking through Israel's border and attacking Israeli bases and kibbutz settlements during the Sabbath and Simchat Torah—a holiday where Jews celebrate finishing reading the Torah (the Old Testament) and immediately begin again with Genesis and the creation of the world by God. 

We then witnessed members of Hamas taking to the roads, firing indiscriminately at passing cars.

We watched as these terrorist scum went house to house, mutilating, raping, and murdering innocent Israelis. 

For those who have been captured and brought back to Gaza, the nightmare is only beginning.

In stories, there is no doubt about Good vs Evil. We know that the goal of the forces of Good is to defeat the forces of Evil. In Star Wars, it is the purpose of the Rebel Alliance to eliminate the Evil Galactic Empire completely. In Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship's ultimate purpose is to renew the bonds between the forces for Good in Middle Earth and the Dark Forces of Sauron. In the Torah, it is the story of Moses facing Pharaoh; it is the story of the Israelites being attacked by the Amalekites, of Queen Esther confronting King Ahasuerus, of the last stand of Masada against the Romans, of the Maccabees, of the United States and our allies confronting the Nazis, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and now, Hamas.

To fail to acknowledge evil in the world, and worse, to fail to confront it—if not by picking up a gun and going into battle, then by calling it out and waging a war against it wherever we see it in the world—is to allow that evil to spread like a cancer which inevitably leads to more lives being destroyed. There is no negotiating with Evil. There is bargaining with it. You can’t persuade cancer not to kill you. There is only one choice. To eliminate it. Completely. Totally. Failing to do so means that, like a cancer, the evil may come back.

The only thing that can defeat Evil is Good.

However, when confronting Evil as sinister as we saw in Israel this weekend, the force of Good cannot be benevolent in its retribution. It must be a fiery avenging force, powerful enough to eradicate every last vestige of the evil that attacked unprovoked.

Hamas has unleashed hell.

My hope and prayers are with all Israeli citizens. They are with the brave men and women of the IDF marching into battle. They are with all Jews around the world, as well as with all the people in every country who are truly the Forces of Good. I pray you hold your family and loved ones close today and are grateful for their love and their lives. I pray for our bravery to accept the reality of evil in the world and to do what is necessary by confronting it. And I pray for our strength in doing so, to be able to wipe the evil we saw this weekend from Hamas and their supporters, from the face of the Earth.