by Rabbi Alan J Yuter
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
Rabbi Yuter applies biblical theology to parse a contemporary problem that has affected many Jews.
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Modernity confronts its denizens with the fact of pluralism, an ideology that maintains there is no absolute truth in the social reality that human beings find themselves. Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and The Promise examine the challenges and changes to the purportedly inerrant, eternal, God-given Orthodox Jewish “old time religion” wrought by modernity’s inescapable relativism. His The Book of Lights explores the theologically challenging fact that there are social, religious, and philosophical alternative human constructions of reality that know nothing of Judaism in any of its varieties, yet appear to be no less profound, unique, or compelling than the Orthodox Judaism that Potok describes as the religion of his youth. In The Book of Lights, Potok denies the Orthodox Jewish claim that its Torah is the inerrant word of God, with all other religions being dismissed as false, theologically flawed paganisms, in Hebrew “’avodah zarah,” the foreign, unauthorized service of God. With The Chosen and The Promise, Potok rejects ultra-Orthodoxy; in The Book of Lights, Potok, the public Jewish intellectual, junks the Orthodox religious perspective altogether because he can no longer accept the absolutist claims made by any “orthodox” assertion of true doctrine.[1]
Potok’s article, “The Naturalism of Sidney Hook,”[2] articulates the metaphysics that Potok ultimately adopted in his lifelong quest for Bildung, the lifetime quest for self-discovery. Hook is a “Naturalist,” a pragmatic thinker who believes that if a phenomenon cannot be quantified in Nature, it is not real. This doctrine was also advanced by Hook’s own Ph.D. mentor, John Dewey, in his The Quest for Certainty, whose ideological Naturalism entered into modern Jewish discourse in the thought of Mordecai M. Kaplan. According to this world view, this quest for certainty is a fool’s errand, the pursuit of any “Absolute” is doomed to failure, and any Orthodox claim to the contrary is at best misguided. In England, A. J. Ayer formulated an elegant empiricism that limits epistemically acceptable truth claims to logical deductions and empirical demonstrations, reflecting a similar secular perspective. On the political Right, Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism” also reduces reality to what is real according to human perception. While Rand’s radical individualism contrasts sharply with the collectivist socialism shared by many intellectuals on the Left, her position is no less strident. These thinkers all propose a reality in which there is neither ultimate Judge nor judgment nor moral right and wrong. In the absence of an “objective” referee, this perspective yields an ideology of might making right, justifying the survival of the most fit.
This observation explains why so many adherents of the globalist knowledge class side with Hamas in its war against Israel regarding which side is in the right regarding the October 7, 2023 war. Since there are no absolutes for these ideological secularists, their pluralism of perspectives enables mythologies, ideological narratives, and peer pressure to distort the factual, historical record.
The October 7th massacre that Hamas wrecked upon Israel and the Jewish people is an instance of absolute evil. Toward the end of World War II, the rapidly disintegrating Nazi regime tried to conceal the unspeakable evidence of its demonic attempt to carry out the “final solution”[3] to its “Jewish problem.” The Nazi elite, as evil it was, realized that what it had done to European Jewry would be understood by humanity to be barbaric acts that should not have been done. The Hamas terrorists initially took pride in their efforts not only to murder, but to destroy, violate, torture, humiliate, and shame its helpless, innocent victims. The Nazis wanted to kill the Jews as efficiently as possible; Hamas’ malevolent conduct reveals that it intended to dispose of the Jews, and not only Israelis, as grotesquely, cruelly, and painfully as possible.
THE EXTREMIST ISLAMIC IDEOLOGY
Hamas proclaims that it exemplifies Orthodox Islam. But its absolutist version of Islam, a military term meaning “surrender,” officially to Allah but in practice the believer is obliged to surrender to the flesh and blood human rasul, Allah’s self-appointed messenger. Allah’s messenger also speaks in God’s voice, giving the impression that he is also speaking in God’s place and with God’s approval. Hamas’ leadership imposes its will upon its Palestinian subjects through fear, intimidation, and violence. In 2007, Hamas expelled the more secular Fatah party from Gaza and imposed its own one-party autocracy upon the Gazans. Hamas also declared a war of total extermination against the Jewish state, which had recently and unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, ending the Israeli “occupation” of that territory.[4]
According to Orthodox Islam, there are two polar opposing theological-political, contending realms. Dar al-Islam refers to those societies who have surrendered their souls to Allah by submitting to His human messenger, Muhammed, and Dar al-Harb, which refers to those who are to be put to the sword for the perfidy of not surrendering to Allah’s will. While Islam provides an exemption from this fate for the Scriptural or “book” religions, the ahl al-kitab, which “official religion” Islam applies only to Judaism and Christianity, in practice this policy has been applied inconsistently. These religions’ adherents may be tolerated as second-class wards of Islamic rule called dhimmi, but they may not be accepted as full participants in an Islamic society. This institution, dhimmihood, has been applied inconsistently to accept pagan Zoroastrianism, on one hand, but is now denied by Hamas to the Jews who “occupy” any part of Palestine. The rage and hostility simmering at post-October 7th international pro-Hamas rallies now targets worldwide Jewry as well. Although Orthodox Islam does permit the taking of hostages in war, there is no license for taking children, women, or elderly hostages.[5] When a leader believes that the holder of high office is empowered to read God’s mind intuitively, inconvenient restraints may be discarded in the heat of battle.
Dictators do not and need not rule consistently because challenging their decrees or shedding light on dark, self-serving inconsistencies is dangerous. Political dissent is as unacceptable as theological blasphemy and is punished accordingly. Those who allow themselves to speak in a prophetic or divine voice often confuse their personal intuitions with God’s will, which often leads to tragic results.[6]
Once under the Dar al-Islam, one may not backslide into becoming a kafr, an unbeliever. After a person or religious community confesses the Islamic faith, returning to what Islam regards to be a lower grade religion is both unthinkable and intolerable. Allowing Jews to govern a land once possessed by those who had confessed and testified that “there is no God but Allah” is an affront to Islam. Unlike the more secular—and notoriously more corrupt—Fatah, which will talk to, occasionally cooperate with, and even take money from the Jews, Hamas refuses to recognize, negotiate, compromise, or even to directly communicate with Israel. The land upon which Israelis reside is, for Hamas, occupied Islamic territory. Hamas neither demands nor accepts a “two state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it demands that Israel must cease to exist for Palestine to fulfill its Quranic destiny.
THE GAZA WAR – EXTREMISM UNLEASHED
In order to end the Israeli occupation of what Hamas maintains is Islamic land, raping pregnant women, beheading and baking helpless babies, and abusing whoever may be vulnerable and available are all legitimate and justifiable candidates for nihilation. There are reports that several female hostages were raped or otherwise abused,[7] yet we do not hear Feminist intellectuals protesting Hamas’ conduct.[8] According to Hamas, all “Palestine” is Islamic land, which the Jews living on that land violate by their very presence. The notorious chant, “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, Palestine will be free,” reveals that Hamas’ ultimate goal is to erase all Jewish presence on the territory located between “the river and the sea,” because this presence is an illegitimate, colonial occupation. The fact that the United Nations, representing the nations of the world, and even some Arab countries have recognized Israel’s political legitimacy is, at least for Hamas, unambiguously irrelevant. Hamas fiercely opposed Fatah’s formal, even if insincere,[9] recognizing Israel’s political legitimacy or entertaining the possibility of a two-state solution. According to Hamas,
Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion.[10]
Theological wrongs do not generate political rights, and those who are by self-definition theologically incorrect may never be considered to be morally upright. Hamas does not tolerate dissent, public assessment of its policies, or political competition.[11] Absolutist Hamas regards political dissent to be the moral equivalent of theological heresy.[12] Hamas appears on the historical stage as a militant ideological sect poised for and committed to aggression and does not appear to be an aggrieved, oppressed, helpless victim:
[T]he policies of the far-right Israeli government enabling settler violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem led to a sense of desperation among Palestinians and growing demands for a reaction. At the same time, the rising tensions in the West Bank caused by these policies necessitated a shift of Israeli forces away from the south and into the north to guard the settlements. This gave Hamas both a justification and an opportunity to attack…. the Hamas leadership felt compelled to act due to the acceleration of Arab-Israeli normalization. In recent years, this process further diminished the significance of the Palestinian issue for Arab leaders who became less keen on pressuring Israel on this matter. If a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal had been concluded, it would have been a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which may have eliminated the already weak chances of a two state solution. This was also part of Hamas’ calculations.[13]
The gullible reader is led to believe that the Hamas massacre was an appropriate response to aggressive, Right Wing Israeli initiatives. The normalization of relations between several Arab states and Israel is a bogus excuse because it assumes the possibility of a two-state solution, which Hamas would, as noted above, never consider. Apparently, Aljazeera believes the casual reader will not notice the differences between the apologia crafted for public consumption and for religious conscience. Unlike the Hebrew Scriptures, which regards truth telling to be a divinely ordained moral imperative,[14] Islam’s concept of hudna is a far more flexible doctrine, which allows for misleading one’s adversary. It refers to a truce or a pause in hostilities, and is not a peace treaty, which if cosigned with Israel, would violate Islamic doctrine:
Hudna is a partial solution and a temporary agreement. It is not a final peace agreement. As long as the refugee issue remains unresolved, Hamas cannot recognize Israel, as Hamas leaders do not regard themselves as having the legitimacy to decide on that issue on behalf of the refugees…. The hudna is a means to a goal, rather than a goal in itself. Nevertheless, the hudna represents something more than simply a tactic. In Arab and Islamic tradition, a hudna constitutes a phase within a larger process: first the ceasefire, hudna, then the sulh, reconciliation. The most common outcome of the hudna phase is a final peace agreement. Ideally, the purpose of a hudna is to resolve a conflict by forcing the parties to use the ascribed period to seek a nonviolent resolution to their differences.[15]
Since the Hamas version of Islam considers a sovereign Israel to be theologically illegitimate, Israel has no right to its land, independence, sovereignty, or self-defense. And since Israel has no right to exist, its self-defense is morally indefensible, its military successes are criminal, and there are no limits or restraints to the means, modes, or methods that may be applied by Hamas in order to resist and destroy what it is derisively dismissed as the “Zionist entity.”
HAMAS’ STATECRAFT
Hamas treated its Palestinian “constituency” as pawns or expendable objects, whose welfare, wellbeing, and very lives were contingent upon the ideological policies and strategic needs of its theologically correct, totalitarian Hamas elite. Gaza’s populace was inhumanely forced to become human shields. When Israel advised northern Gaza’s residents to move from northern to southern Gaza to escape the line of fire and becoming unintended collateral damage, Hamas’ imams forbade that relocation and the Hamas’ leadership ordered that those refugees attempting escape be shot.[16] Though unwilling to relocate and absorb Palestinian refugees within their own sovereign borders, many Arab states as well as other nations have supplied Gaza’s population with food, fuel, medicine, and education. But much of this funding has been “appropriated” by Gaza’s Hamas elite in service of its own militant, terrorist agenda. Hamas could have spent this financial aid by building bomb shelters for the population it governed and taxed. Instead, this money was diverted to build a web of underground tunnels to protect Hamas’ own local elite and military that is fighting against the Jewish infidel. Hamas’ ultimate elite was safely and conveniently tucked away in the opulent luxury of Qatarian security.[17] In stark contrast, Israel’s national building code requires that shelters be built in every domicile and public building. While Hamas treated its Gazan population as weapons of war whose deaths might be exploited for its propaganda advantage, Israel took great pains not only to protect its own citizenry, but also to try to spare Gazan non-combatants, as noted above. The fact is that Israel was more protective of Palestinian life than were the Hamas elite that ruled Gaza until they were forced by the IDF to withdraw into the underground cave network they built for their own safety.
When a Gazan missile aimed at Israel’s civilian population fell errantly upon al-Ahli hospital’s parking lot, Hamas immediately accused Israel of mass murder, a synonym for genocide, which ironically is precisely the outrage that Hamas had committed against Israel and which rhetorically justifies Hamas’ genocide of the Jews. For Hamas, “truth” is not what is factually correct; it is the political myth or ideological foundation narrative that Hamas’ elite claims to be the politically correct, “true” social construction of reality, which is both theologically binding and politically enforceable.
Shortly after Israel’s initial retaliation after the October 7th massacre, Hamas called for an immediate cease fire. The previous cease fire had just been violated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, when it opened hostilities with its barbaric surprise attack on non-military targets. The alleged provocation for the massacre was the growing acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy in the Arab world. Hamas’ mistake was its assessment that it had more to win than to lose by initiating hostilities.
THE ACCOUNTABILITY DOUBLE STANDARD
While Israel is held to a very rigorous reading of the Geneva Convention, Hamas intentionally targeted and murdered civilians, raped captive women, beheaded kidnapped babies, and exploited both its own population as well as its kidnapped hostages by placing them as human shields, further violating the international consensus of human rights due to its victims. And Hamas did not permit the Red Cross to visit and to report on the condition of the hostages it had taken and, based upon the testimony of already released hostages, treated badly.[18] Hamas gave less regard for those whom it governed than its Israeli adversary.
How does Hamas happen? What created this political—theological monster? Echoing Aristotle, who defined humans as political beings,[19] Maimonides viewed humanity as social beings.[20] To understand the character of an individual or a nation, we look to whom they choose for friends and allies. Hamas is allied with Russia, Iran, and mainland Communist China. Like Iran, Hamas claims to be an Islamic theocracy which it governs despotically. Russia’s Orthodox Church is a self-ruled expression of Eastern, or Orthodox Christianity, related to but independent of the Greek Orthodox Church, overseen by the See of Constantinople. The Russian Orthodox Church takes pains not to offend the Russian state, over which Vladimir Putin currently presides as an absolute ruler. From the time of Peter the Great to the fall of the Romanoff dynasty, the Russian Church was a virtual arm of and controlled by the Russian State. Iran is a theocracy that finances, and to a significant extent, controls Hamas as a proxy in its declared mission to annihilate Israel and the United States. Russia’s current Orthodox Christian religious identity is apparently not an obstacle to a shared set of interests for Iran and Hamas. The fact that “Christian” Russia is located in Dar al-Harb, the domain of the sword that awaits those who have yet not embraced Islam, is conveniently if not shamelessly unaddressed. China tolerates religions that do not have ideologies or theologies that may challenge the Chinese State or the totalitarian Communist party that is in power. China will not tolerate any politically aggressive religion.[21] There is little worldwide Islamic protest regarding the plight of the Uighurs, an ethnic Turkish Moslem minority who claim that the same China that allies with Hamas is still committing genocide against Palestinian’s Chinese Moslem cousins![22] Hamas’ superpower allies are hardly weak, oppressed underdogs; they are all-powerful, iron-fisted totalitarian dictatorships with no tolerance for dissent, disapproval, or the enshrining of individual human rights, which are seen as seditious.[23] These totalitarian regimes are often far more intolerant, hierarchical, and divided on who, how, and why one enters their societies’ privileged, ruling elite. Once the revolting proletariat overthrows the current exploitive elite, be that elite secular, like the former Soviet Union and mainland China, or formally “religious,” like Putin’s Russia or the Islamic Republic of Iran, its populations remain subjects who are not free citizens with human rights. For these societies, theologies and ideologies are instruments of social control, that cleverly but malignantly misstate reality to legitimate autocratic rule.
Hamas’ Islamic ideology is also a strategic tool but not an ultimate concern. Hamas allies itself with Russian Orthodox Christianity and Chinese Communist atheism, neither of which are world views compatible with any iteration of Islamic Orthodoxy. The common motivator for all of these totalitarian tyrants is the leaderships’ unbridled quest for power; theologies, mythologies and narratives are contrived instruments that justify whatever the elite decides to do.
Hamas purposefully treats its Palestinian population as objects to be exploited and not as human persons worthy of moral concern. For Hamas, the reason for Palestinian Gazans’ very being is to advance the cause of Hamas’ version Islam. Shortly after the October 7th massacre, Hamas called for a new cease fire to replace the one it just broke so blatantly by initiating the hostilities with its barbaric surprise attack on non-military targets. By calling for a cease fire immediately after its sneak attack with its accompanying atrocities,[24] Hamas suggests that its aggression need not be condemned, because it [wrongly] presents itself as the righteous victim in this conflict.
Hamas also misjudged Israel’s internal social and political unrest to be instances of irresolvable political dissent, which for the totalitarian mindset is evidence of acute social impotence and moral decay. It was also assumed that President Joe Biden would not come to Israel’s aid because his Democratic party is divided regarding American support of Israel. Biden has a distaste for military confrontation and feared that a too staunchly pro-Israel foreign policy would alienate Michigan’s swing vote Muslim population. Since Israel was at that moment thought to be vulnerable to a well-planned sneak attack, the moment for a successful operation seemed to be opportune.
After the massacre and poised to retaliate, Israel alone is held by the community of nations to a hyper rigorous understanding of the Geneva Convention standards of ethical warfare. Hamas initiates hostilities and atrocities with a surprise attack, breaking a previous cease fire, and petitions for a cease fire in an attempt to have the community of nations coerce Israel not to retaliate.
Israel has agreed to permit transferring energy, food, and medical supplies to Gaza, to agree to a cease fire in a war it did not start, and to avoid as much as possible the harming the human shields that were put in place by Hamas.
ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE MARXIST MYTH
United National Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in responding to criticism that he expressed anti-Semitic sentiments regarding the Hamas-Israel conflict, offered this rejoinder:
I am shocked by the misinterpretations by some of my statement yesterday in the Security Council – as if I was justifying acts of terror by Hamas. This is false. It was the opposite.
In the beginning of my intervention yesterday, I clearly stated – and I quote: ‘I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel. Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians – or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.’
Indeed, I spoke of the grievances of the Palestinian people and in doing so, I also clearly stated, and I quote: ‘But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.’ And then I went on with my intervention referring to all my positions on all aspects of the Middle East crisis.”[25]
Guterres does condemn the Hamas massacre, but does not dwell upon Hamas’ other moral failures, like preventing the Red Cross from visiting the hostages, abusing its hostages, and stealing humanitarian relief intended for the Gazan population. He protests that Israel’s counter offensive is disproportionate defies logic. Israel is fighting against a foe with the declared intent upon its destruction. If Hamas would rather die than allow Israel to live in peace it will be responsible for its own demise. Guterres fails to explain what response would be proportionate when dealing with such a determined mortal enemy.
Guterres’ actual words reveal his commitment to what may be called the Marxist myth, according to which the world is divided between the powerful oppressor, in this instance, Israel, and the oppressed, weak victims, in this case, the Gazan Palestinians.
Guterres bemoans the “appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories,”[26] which describes the very real non-combatant Gazan population’s anguish. Although his semantic diction is precisely, delicately, and consciously even-handedly balanced, the message conveyed by his words is that Israel is so intensely focused on avenging the October 7th massacre that it is blithely and criminally unconcerned with the immensity of the death, devastation, and destruction has wreaked upon the innocent Gazan population. Guterres’ framing of the issues is particularly insidious. By referring to “occupied Palestinian territories,” Guterres ignores three facts that contradict the Hamas application of the Marxist myth:
The Hamas leadership built its wealth mainly through the booming tunnel industry, with Hamas officials imposing taxes, generally 20%, on all goods smuggled through the tunnels…. Today, more than half of the residents of Gaza live in severe poverty, but already in 2012, there were reports of some 600 millionaires living in Gaza, who made their fortunes thanks to the hundreds of underground tunnels along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.[32]
As noted above, Hamas abused and misused the Gazan Palestinians by forcing them to be involuntary human shields, and shot at those Gazan’s who fled from north to south Gaza. Yet Israel’s humanitarian policy of announcing its targets in order to spare Palestinian lives[33] goes unnoticed. Hamas targets non-combatants and is not condemned, while Israel is denounced for not being more precise with its bombing. Israel is morally within its rights to destroy its would be destroyers.[34] It is Hamas’ policy and conduct of intentionally embedding its military and civilian resources together that caused the tragic, horrific, and totally unjustified non-combatant deaths. The villain here is Hamas, not Israel. Guterres’ diction’s subtleties reveal his ideological bias:
Speaking in Beijing just hours after the bombing of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, Guterres said that Hamas “attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.[35]
While Israel’s air war over Gaza was indeed punishing in the sense that it did inflict excruciating and widespread pain, the bombing was not a collective punishment on Israel’s part. It was Hamas’ calculated, intentional exposure of Gazan residents to danger that defies justification.
Guterres defines the Gazan tragedy appropriately: “a far greater number of children have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza than the total number of children killed during any year, by any party to a conflict since I have been secretary-general.”[36] While Guterres’ statement is factually true, he misidentifies the source of culpability. Since Gaza was bombed by Israeli bombs, and the destruction Israel’s bombing caused was so immense, the narrative record required “rewriting,” a political euphemism for “falsifying,” in order that the politically correct Marxist myth conclusions be reached, so that Hamas’ heinous atrocities be overlooked and excused. By reporting that “a far greater number of children have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza than the total number of children killed during any year,” Guterres clearly and outrageously implies but does not explicitly state that Israel is committing genocide,[37] ironically the victim of which Jewry was fated to undergo in the 20th Century. And by accusing Israel of genocide, one is in effect arguing that the Jewish state has forfeited its right to exist.[38] which justifies Hamas’ massacre to the satisfaction those who share Hamas’ political ideology.
While concurring with Guterres’ assessment that the October 7th massacre in no way justifies “the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” the IDF did not engage in the collective punishment of Palestinians; it only targeted those responsible for the massacre or the Hamas military. Hamas tried to make a propaganda gain by blaming the collateral damage Gazan deaths to Israel’s devastating assault.
According to Scripture, “[t]he fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”[39] Blame is a legal, moral, and religious category, not a political category. People who intentionally hurt others are guilty of wrongdoing. Those Palestinians who were placed in the line of fire to shield their leaders are the innocent victims of their leaders’ malevolent decisions. Furthermore, guilt and innocence are not two opposing binary cosmic forces engaging in a mythical, cosmic battle; people should be judged based upon their actual, factual deeds, not by political narratives grounded in ideology rather than in reality, if true justice is our aspiration. However, Jonathan Kuttab writes:
Israeli announcements and actions since the beginning of the war have not made distinctions between combatants and non-combatants. Israeli leaders have declared that their goal is the total destruction and annihilation of Hamas. On its face, such a declaration fails to make the necessary distinction between noncombatant members and structures of the Hamas administration, and its armed fighters. Furthermore, it makes it easier to slide into a posture that treats all Palestinian civilians, and not just Hamas members, as targets.[40]
Since Hamas has pledged itself to commit a Jewish genocide, Israel has the right to destroy Hamas. Kuttab gives the false impression that Israel has targeted the entire Gazan population for annihilation, which is an ironic projection of Hamas’ intentions regarding Israel. Hamas alone is responsible for the Palestinian bloodbath by forcing its public to stay in place of danger as human shields, an inconvenient fact uncited by Kuttab. Israel tries as best it can to minimalize collateral damage and deaths among both Israelis and Palestinians. Kuttab continues:
In addition to cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity, Israel has heavily and intentionally targeted a number of clearly civilian institutions and structures, including schools, mosques, churches, clinics, and hospitals. The bombing of the Ahli Hospital attracted much media attention due to the killing of a large number of civilians in one strike and because Israel denied responsibility and claimed that the cause of the explosion was in fact an errant missile fired by Islamic Jihad. While there is no conclusive evidence yet, this one incident does not change the fact that Israeli constant and indiscriminate bombardment of other hospitals and civilian structures has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.[41]
Kuttab’s accusation that Israel intentionally targeted civilian Gazan institutions is an invention of his own ideological narrative, and not on verified evidence. The Hamas elite intentionally embedded itself into the Gazan “schools, mosques, churches, clinics, and hospitals.”[42] Kuttab first assumes that the IDF bombed the Ahli hospital, then concedes that there is no conclusive evidence that Israel did the bombing. Israel is still guilty of genocide. And even if the Israeli account of the incident were factually accurate, Kuttab would have the reader believe that “Israeli constant and indiscriminate bombardment of other hospitals and civilian structures” is a matter of undisputed fact. Kuttab accuses but fails to demonstrate Israel’s malevolent intentionality yet knowingly affirms that Israel’s bombing is “indiscriminate,” a morally charged term expressing Hamas’ unhappy response to bombings that are [1] extensive, [2] devastating, [3] effective, and [4] painful. Kuttab invites the innocent reader to adopt and to be duped by his ideological narrative, which assumes rather proves its conclusion, that since Israel is guilty by mythic definition, Israel must be guilty in empirical fact.
According to International Law, Israel does enjoy the rights to exist, defend itself, and return fire when fired upon by terrorists hiding behind human shields. Responsibility for those unfortunate human shields attaches to those who cynically put them in harm’s way.
Both Guterres and Kuttab confidently declare but fail to demonstrate that the high number of child mortalities must be due to Israel’s blood lust, and Israel’s malign intentions are readable and decodable by the Hamas elite. It taking non-combatant hostages for ransom did not move the imams, the Islamic clergy, to object to Hamas’ atrocities,[43] official religion Islamic law notwithstanding.[44] Neither did the Hamas refusal to allow the Red Cross to visit Hamas’ hostages. Although Hamas professes Islamic “orthodoxy,” its approach to war and politics seem to be both unorthodox and unethical in the extreme.
The Intellectual Left has portrayed the Gazan Palestinian population as innocent victims. How and why did this happen? Since the Hamas version of Islam posits that Israel is theologically illegitimate, having no right to any land, life, independence, or sovereignty whatsoever, all Israel becomes “occupied” territory, stolen and occupied by European colonizers from the Dar al-Harb. Since to this view, Israel has no right to exist, its self-defense is indefensible, its military successes are criminal, and as a consequence there are no limits to the means, modes, and methods that may be applied by Hamas in order to the illegitimate usurpers.
The Korah narrative sheds light on Hamas’ rhetorical/political gambit:
And they [Korah, Datan, and Aviram] gathered themselves together on [= upon, above, over] Moses and against Aaron, and said to them, you take too much upon your selves, as all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: why do you raise yourselves on [=upon above, over] the congregation of the Lord?[45]
The Biblical Hebrew text literally reads that Korah, Datan, and Aviram willfully gathered themselves on, above, over, or upon both Moses and Aaron, thereby choreographing without putting into words their quest for hierarchical leadership power, a leadership of the charismatic person who, is “high” and the population is low, not a public law before which all are equal. The reflexive/passive nif’al conjugation form for “gather together,” va-yiqqahalu, intertextually alluding to the Golden Calf incident.[46] The Narrator reports that the “people” [Hebrew, ‘am],” not “Israel” [Yisrael], are behaving like a directionless mob, taking the unauthorized initiative to rise over, on, or above Aaron. The mob orders him to produce a golden calf idol, which represents the ancient Canaanite Ba’al cult, which is first attested at Ugarit. The Ba’al epic[47] describes its gods as having superhuman strength, a very petty human passion regarding their standing among their peers, and a sense of entitlement to sexual access and excess. This epic provides a window into the pagan pantheon that Biblical religion opposes and supersedes. The Baal cult is about the power to satisfy will and desire; Biblical religion is about “doing what is righty and good.”[48] The cult of power, will, and desire did not die at Ugarit. It even resurrects in monotheist forms.
Korah’s “religion” legitimates the ruling elite.[49] Moses ultimately restores order by renewing the qahal, the sacred community that is Torah compliant. The verb va-yaqhel, here in the causative hifhil conjugation, indicates that Moses motivated Israel to reaccept God’s covenant, thereby renewing the sacred community [= qahal] to the Torah covenant, now no longer an idol worshipping mob. Korah’s revolt has both political and theological implications. By rebelling against Moses, whom God had indeed appointed, Korah also rebels against God, in Whom Korah and his crowd do not believe. Korah, advocates a hierarchical, pagan power arrangement with himself on the top of the hierarchal polity, inadvertently reveals his intent when he rhetorically but disingenuously challenges Moses and Aaron, “why do you raise yourselves over the congregation of the Lord?”[50] Ever the astute but malignant manipulator of words, people, and truth, Korah distorts Israelite reality by depicting Moses and Aaron as outsider usurpers rather than as the legitimate leaders of the sacred community that in fact they were.[51] In order to degrade Israel the covenanted nation led by God as a non-hierarchical, horizontal society under the public, accessible Torah law,[52] Korah must turn Israel, the politically free horizontal society, in which all Israel is equal before an eternal, immutable Law, into a leaderless mob. Korah and his “congregation,” in Hebrew ‘adato, hope to replace Moses and Aaron once the leadership offices of Israel become vacant. By referring to Korah’s crowd as “his congregation,” the Narrator reporting Moses’ speech injects a deliciously subversive ridicule of Korah into the narrative. An authentic congregation should have a legitimate convener. By pointing to “Korah and his congregation,” the divine narrational voice mockingly concedes that Korah indeed plays the “religious leader” role as a virtuoso. But Korah is in fact not God’s nominated convener or God’s designated appointee. Korah is a thick culture virtuoso who knows the nuances, insider idioms, and socially appropriate gestures of the community. Korah’s problem was that he was not the duly designated leader of the LORD’s congregation that he wrongly tried to become. The Torah alone is “the word of the LORD,”[53] and one disregards this word at one’s peril. A hyper-zealous intuition moved Nadav and Avihu to offer a divinely unauthorized human fire, which precipitated their deaths.[54] Moses challenged Korah’s crowd to a duel, whereby the legitimate leaders’ status would be confirmed. Moses merely manipulated Korah the unbeliever to do what Nadav and Avihu had done—invent an unauthorized cult of which the LORD did not approve.
THE MARXIST MYTH AND THE HAMAS FALSE NARRATIVE
Hamas unapologetically maintains that it is entitled to kill Jews, wipe the State of Israel from the map, murder non-combatant children, rape women, and abuse its elderly captives. These atrocities are legitimate means of resisting the illegitimate occupation of land to which it believes it is Quranically entitled.[55] Applying and appealing to the Marxist myth, Hamas assumes the role of the innocent, oppressed, underdog, leaving Israel to be portrayed as the wicked oppressor and criminal occupier.[56] Unlike Quranic Islam, the Marxist myth resonates with the Western, secular, intellectual, administrative class. Appealing to the facts may be a historically more correct gambit, but myths and foundation document narratives are politically and therefore socially correct because they provide coherence, meaning and identity to a community.
There are reports that several female hostages were raped or otherwise abused,[57] yet we do not hear Feminist intellectuals protesting Hamas’ horrific behavior.[58] Attention is diverted to the deaths of innocent Palestinian children,[59] whose blood is really on the hands of the Hamas elite that intentionally exposed those innocent, non-combatants to IDF firepower.
The responses to Hamas’ sexual atrocities reveal what is at stake in the media’s war of words that accompany the war on the Gazan battleground. Marita Maloney of the BBC, a media company not known for pro-Israel sympathies, reports that
Hamas had a premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war, an Israeli women’s rights campaigner and lawyer has said. Prof Ruth Halperin-Kaddari said she saw footage of women in several locations whose condition left her in ‘no doubt’ that they had been raped. There has been anger over the delay of some UN bodies to acknowledge claims of Hamas’ sexual atrocities on 7 October. Israel has been exploring evidence of sexual crimes during the attacks. Israeli police say they have so far gathered more than 1,500 testimonies from witnesses and medics. Hamas has denied the group carried out sexual violence during the 7 October attacks. Pictures and live footage streamed by the militants pointed to the gruesome nature of the attacks at the Supernova festival. A range of violence from gang rape to the sexual mutilation of murdered victims are being investigated by police.[60]
The documented sexual abuse committed by Hamas,[61] including the rape and dismemberment of Jewish females of all ages, is both praised and denied by Hamas,[62] ignored by most Left leaning Feminist politicians,[63] and dismissed by popular entertainers,[64] whose charisma and communication skills attract people to their point of view.
The ground’s swallowing Korah and his crowd[65] alludes to the memory of Mot, the Ugaritic god of Death, who swallowed his prey.[66] By swallowing and thereby conquering Death,[67] the God of Israel supersedes the Ugaritc Baal/Yamm/Mot cult. The Hebrew word for “swallow,” bill’a, is best transliterated with two lamed’s, orchestrating a sense of intensity and power by augmenting the phonetic force of the phoneme. By swallowing the swallower, the God of Israel conquers death. The Korah narrative’s moral message is that an assault upon God’s appointees is an assault upon omnipotent God. For Ugarit and Korah, religion is about legitimating the will to power.
Consider:
Al-Azhar is a veteran Islamic establishment founded in Cairo in 998 as an academy for the study of Islam. It was nationalized by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1961 and put under the authority of the Egyptian government. Since then, it has become a tool for granting religious legitimacy to the policies of the changing regimes in Egypt and for disseminating their messages both internally and externally, including on the subject of relations with Israel.[68]
In modern Egypt as in ancient Ugarit, religion, in this case Islam, legitimates the State, which in turn is the patron of Islam. However, though Egypt and Israel maintain a cool peace, al-Azhar takes a more strident stance regarding Egypt’s political choices:
[The] initial response published by al-Azhar on the day of the October 7 attack, which saw the cold blooded murder of 1,400 innocent civilians and soldiers, Israelis and foreign nationals, and Jews and Arabs, as well as the rape of women and the abduction of elderly people, men, women, and children from their homes, stated that it “salutes with absolute pride the resistance efforts of the Palestinian people.” The al-Azhar position does not stem from ignorance of the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis, atrocities that were strongly condemned all over the world…on October 18 al-Azhar issued a fatwa stating that “Zionist civilians on occupied land are not [at all] worthy of the description of ‘civilians,’ but they are occupiers of the land, usurpers of rights, deviants from the way of the prophets, who attack the historical holy places of Jerusalem.” The al-Azhar ruling that there are no “innocent” Israeli citizens in effect makes it permissible to kill them.[69]
Al-Azhar praises Hamas’ conduct of the Gazan massacre. Apparently, since this conflict is unlike most wars, it being waged for the glory of Islam, there is only one rule and that rule is to win, no matter how. Normally, Islam forbids targeting non-combatants when waging war. But because Israel has stolen what is believed to be sacred Islamic territory, a total, genocidal war must be waged against the enemy. Like al-Azhar, Hamas is somehow self-authorized to ignore Islamic restrictions when they conflict with its will. Scholastic rhetoric is invoked to justify as right whatever the elite in power will decree.
Like Korah, who played with language deceitfully in aiming to undermine the authority of Moses and Aaron, al-Azhar invents a false narrative in order to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the humanity of the Jewish people. The October 7th attackers were not resisters, but rapists. Raping women, beheading babies, and brutalizing the elderly and infirmed are not acts of courageous resistance by innocent victims, they are vile, inhumane, and gratuitously cruel acts of subhuman beasts. These acts were intended to express hate by inflicting pain, not to advance the cause of Islam. By mispresenting itself as the victim, Hamas is able to appeal to the Marxist myth that is in vogue among the secular, Western Left. Both Hamas and the world-wide pro-Palestine protestors deport themselves aggressively,[70] demanding that their narrative be adopted without challenge.
Korah’s self-serving, untruthful misstatement anticipates Hamas’ making its case by referencing the Marxist myth, whereby Hamas is the righteous victim and Israel is the evil oppressor. Facts that conflict with the Marxist myth are either ignored, denied, or suppressed. The Islamic vision of world conquest would not resonate well with non-Muslims not interested in converting to Islam. Hamas presents itself to the public as a virtuous, liberation movement struggling to recover its criminally occupied homeland. The uninformed observer is guided to regard the battered Gazan population in Marxian terms, as underdog victims, with Israel cast as the powerful, pitiless aggressor.
Anticipating Hamas’ example of self-serving, manipulative language, Scripture reports that the usurper Korah and his allies accuse Moses and Aaron of raising themselves to leadership positions.[71] Korah and his crowd projecting upon Moses and Aaron their own malevolent intentions. The omniscient Narrator reports Korah’s exact words, thereby inviting the careful reader to realize the enormity Korah’s egotistic treachery. Both Hamas and Korah exploit strategic falsehoods to advance their cause. Hamas ignores its atrocious exploitation of Gazan human shields and Korah claimed that Moses and Aaron appointed themselves to lead the Israelites when they were in fact appointed by the LORD.
The Biblical Amaleqites provide another precedent for Hamas’ conduct. The Amaleqites are depraved despoilers,[72] who do not hold human life in high regard. Scripture teaches that
[a] “one who sheds the
[b] blood [=murder as opposed to accidental homicide] of a
[c] human being,
[c] by a human being
[b]must that person’s blood
[a] be shed,
because God made the human being in His image.”[73] This chiastic envelope highlights the sublime proportionality implicit in the halakhic norm to sanctify human life. Every human carries God’s image, by dint that person’s humanity, which according to R. David Qimhi is the power of reason.[74] This legal norm’s moral message is that by murdering a human being who carries God’s image, the murderer denies and thereby forfeits her/his own divine image.[75] From a Scriptural perspective, Hamas’ conduct on October 7, 2023, which included murdering, raping, mutilating, and gratuitously violating innocent non-combatants, is the reason that Hamas forfeited its humanity.[76] Denying the Marxist myth is for some intellectuals the secular equivalent of rejecting the Orthodox Jewish doctrine of the Torah’s divinity. The Marxist myth is so compelling that it may be winnowed, selected, or ignored. Since the Marxist myth has become a secular catechism, its denial may put one’s intellectual reputation at risk.[77] For those who hold fast to it, it is a meta-truth so essential that inconsistent facts and alternative narratives must be suppressed.
WHY AND HOW THE SECULAR INTELLECTUAL ELITE WAS DUPED BY HAMAS
The secular philosophers cited above, Dewey, Hook, and Ayer, are among the leading intellectual opinion makers of the Left for whom there are no absolutes, God, or transcendent reality. If an event cannot be quantified, it is an imagined, primitive fantasy but is not empirically real. Ethics are out maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Humankind is conceived to be divided between the righteous, oppressed, victimized underdog proletariat, and the greedy, oppressing, victimizing, privileged, patrician elite. The “enlightened” intellectual elite identifies almost by reflex with the righteous underdog; the winners have power and are therefore evil by the narrative’s definition, which for its adherents is very real.[78] For the intellectual for whom there are no absolutes, judges and judgments have no moral benchmark other than the Marxist myth narrative which is not subject to review or vote.
How did the Jew become the villain and oppressor in our post-Christian, secular, Globalist world? Jewry’s Diasporan migrations compelled Jewish communities to develop the human capital of social solidarity, business acumen, cultural literacy, and a strong work ethic in order to survive. By advancing economically and socially more rapidly than the indigenous locals with less human capital, Diasporan Jewry also earned the envy, resentment, hate, and on occasion, violence on the part of envious, indigenous locals.
Similarly, by growing in power in order to survive in an unfriendly neighborhood, and by prevailing in recurring defensive wars, Israel has emerged as a formidable military power, if only out of existential necessity. And by investing in what has become a “start-up nation,” Israel’s growing college educated, middle class has become a population that while not affluent, is financially comfortable. This growing middle class is absent in every other Middle East society. The socialist political parties and governments in the West who filter their reality through the Marxist myth, only embrace those Jews who have shed their Jewishness.
By creating a society that creates wealth, Israel’s economy rewards those who possess and successfully apply their human capital. But this skill-set acquisition also elicits the envy, jealousy, and hatred of those whose cultures do not nurture these human capital skills. Modern Israel was founded mostly by secular, Caucasian, Eastern European Jews who, by dint of culturally acquired human capital and survival skills, established a Westernized society with which the Arab locals could not successfully compete. To their view, Israel’s Jews settling on any territory “from the river to the sea” is illegally, immorally, and illegitimately “occupied” by European, colonialist robbers. Since Israel is believably—if not factually—portrayed as the rich, powerful, oppressor of the downtrodden Gazan Palestinians, Israel is by definition the villain and the Palestinians are the conflict’s aggrieved, righteous victims,[79] according to the Marxist myth.
Yehudah Mirsky reports that
The magisterial historian Gershom Scholem remarked that one of Zionism’s consequences is that the Jews will no longer have to play the symbol in other people’s myths. Great a scholar as he was, he was wrong.[80]
Laura E. Adkins has noted the non-reporting of sexual abuse. She reports the conflicting claims regarding who is the malign aggressor and who is the innocent victim. She also interprets the Hamas—Israeli conflict through the prism of the Marxist myth:
As of December 2022, 84% of both Palestinians and Israelis reported that they see themselves as ‘an exclusive victim’ in this conflict. And if either side is seen as the ultimate victim, then almost any campaign of revenge or violence can be justified. That is one explanation for the horrifying Harvard/Harris poll, conducted Dec. 13-14, in which a majority of Americans aged 18-24 said they considered the attacks of Oct. 7 both “genocidal in nature” and also “justified by the grievances of Palestinians.”[81]
Hamas is able to point to the visible devastation caused by Israeli bombs, which is far more noticeable than the human shields put in place by Hamas. Its victimhood status serves as a strategic tool in the struggle for support, thereby justifying its genocidal behavior. Instead, the Jewish State as well as the Jewish people are declared to be the victimizers.
The report indicates that though most 18-24 respondents regarded the October 7th massacre to be genocidal, the atrocities that took place are nevertheless “justified” by the grievances of Palestinians.”[82] This “justification” also explains—but does not justify—Dr. Claudine Gay’s testimony before the House Education and Workforce Committee. Rep. Elise Stephanik asked the Presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT:
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?[83]
Each university president, including Dr. Gay, answered that “it depends on the context.”[84] The context is that “Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity,”[85] a Progressive, Socialist doctrinal matrix of desirable social policies, requires that all peoples are deemed to be worthy of inclusion with the curious exception of the Jews.[86] Dr. Gay’s biography typifies the ideological paradigm projected by the Marxist myth.[87] She is a well-educated, exquisitely articulate, Afro-American social scientist. Her mission at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences [FAS] was to
expand student access and opportunity, spur excellence and innovation in teaching and research, enhance aspects of the FAS’s academic culture, and bring new emphasis and energy to areas such as quantum science and engineering; climate change; ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration; and the humanities. She successfully led the FAS through the COVID pandemic, consistently and effectively prioritizing the dual goals of safeguarding community health and sustaining academic continuity and progress. She also launched and led an ambitious, inclusive, and faculty-driven strategic planning process, intended to take a fresh look at fundamental aspects of the FAS’s academic structures, resources, and operations and to advance academic excellence.[88]
The italicized words reflect the mindset of a passionate social scientist with a pronounced penchant for the agenda and policies of the political hard Left. After several anti-Semitic harassment incidents had taken place, some Jewish Harvard students petitioned Dr. Gay for protection from aggressively militant, pro-Palestinian protestors. The requested protection was not forthcoming, apparently because the Jews are not considered to be a minority worthy of protection or inclusion. “The Jews” have become too affluent and powerful to plead for equity, and according to the Marxist myth, the Jewishly engaged Jews, those who are religiously observant and/or Zionists, are so utterly bourgeoise that they do not deserve the protection of inclusion.
Dr. Gay’s $ 900,000 annual salary clearly reflects bourgeoise compensation expectations, hardly the wage of an exploited, victimized laborer. The charges of Gay’s plagiarism[89] call her competence and integrity into question. As noted above, Gay’s initial appointment may likely be based upon the diversity, equity, and inclusion model and not by the free-market benchmark called “meritocracy.” Gay’s letter of resignation reveals what is at stake in this culture war:
[I]t has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.[90]
How Gay knows that the criticisms of her work product are “personal attacks” and “threats” that are “fueled by racial animus,” goes unstated,[91] but her own remarks portray her as an [1] Afro-American, [2] female, [3] social justice advocate, who was challenged by Bill Ackman, a [1] Caucasian, [2] male [3] Jewish, capitalist billionaire.[92] who took strong exception to the statement by 31 Harvard affiliated association, holding the “Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”[93]
Ackman and Gay embody the two contending wings of the Democratic Party; they also personify the opposing ideologies of the Marxist myth, which pits the intellectual, Afro-American, female victim against the powerful, capitalist bully, who also happens to be Jewish. Were Gay to have condemned Hamas more harshly than Israel, she would be violating her progressive identity. The Marxist myth’s ideological truth is, for those who accept it, far more “true” than the factual truth of the historical record.
As noted above, in the contrasting Biblical tradition, there is only a predilection to favor the oppressed. While Ecclesiastes posits that “God seeks out the one [who is] pursued,”[94] reflecting a Biblical bias favoring the pursued underdog, the poor are not innocent by definition or in the right just because they are poor. One’s siding with the underdog uncritically and indiscriminately expresses a misplaced narcissism by openly identifying with the morally enlightened elite. A potential victim must be protected if she or he is unable to defend him/herself, but no one is granted immunity from judgement unconditionally based upon their wealth, power, or pedigree. Scripture teaches that it is improper to favor anyone in a court of law, neither rich nor poor.[95] Courts of law dispense justice; charity is distributed in other, non- adversarial community settings. It is ultimately justice and not the interests of “just us” that must be pursued.[96]
While this archetypal Jewish stereotype is portrayed negatively by the Marxist myth,[97] the actual, Jews who were attacked on October 7, 2023 were either middle class or members of collectivist, socialist communities, which provided employment to Gazan workers seeking a higher wage than that available in Gaza. It appears that some of these workers provided Hamas with layout intelligence of the Jewish communities adjacent to the Gaza border, making the October 7th massacre even more deadly. Since these facts conflict with the Marxist myth, their historicity is suppressed because the mythic truth, even if counterfactual, is too essential to the intellectual’s identity to be questioned.
The Jew of the Marxist myth provides Hamas with a convenient and usable villain, whose mythic malevolence is so potent that Hamas’ sexual atrocities become, at least for Hamas, justifiable.
Both Hebrew and Christian Scripture express a preference for the underdog. The oppressed do lack the power to oppress others. God seeks out the one who is chased, not the aggressor who is presumably guilty because he/she is doing the chasing.[98]
There is a critical difference between tsedeq, or justice, and tsedaqqah, or charity; Biblical law actually forbids favoring the poor when doing judgment.[99] Legal cases are decided by applying legal norms, which are “ought to do” statements, to empirical facts, and not to narrative myth.
Pro-Hamas rallies ignore the real-life facts that [1] Gaza is territory from which Israel withdrew unilaterally, [2] Hamas initiated hostilities in every confrontation it had with Israel, [3] Hamas proudly asserted that it intends to continue its struggle against Israel until Israel is destroyed, and [4] there is no justification whatsoever the brutal atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th. The Western intellectual not only identifies with the underdog; she or he is also a passionate advocate for LGBTQ rights, women’s right to vote, education, to have an abortion, and the freedoms of speech, religion, conscience, and press. The three world powers with which Hamas affiliates, Russia, Iran, and China, are all illiberal, autocratic dictatorships, while Israel, is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. While Israel boasts a strong peacetime economy, its extensive social safety net still reflects the country’s socialist founders’ utopian vision. As noted above, once successful, the “Jew” of the Marxist myth is not a weak, vulnerable underdog. By undergoing Emancipation, Jewry has abandoned the exploited masses to join the class of rich, greedy exploiters.
It has been reported that “Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister has told his American counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, that his country rejects the targeting of unarmed civilians ‘in any way.’”[100] Israel is accused of genocidally targeting civilians, which it goes to great lengths not to do, while Hamas intentionally shot at Gazans who followed the IDF advisory to flee southward away from the impending hostilities. Hamas the so-called underdog is given a pass for its behavior that, if done by a nation state, would be roundly condemned.
Myths are ideological narratives that shape the social reality of the communities and polities that adopt them. While the Marxist myth speaks of the liberation of the deserving lowly from the exploiting mighty, Marxist societies are administrative states with managing elites ruling impoverished, docile masses. The Marxist myth is an ideology applied to legitimate entitled elites and to condemn those recalcitrant adversaries who refuse to tread their way on the road to serfdom.
The response to the Marxist myth is the truth. The fact is Hamas is not an aggrieved victim and Israel is not the omnipotent tyrant.
An honest application of the Marxist myth would make Hamas and its worldwide pro-Palestinian protesting surrogates violently proclaim that Israel must be annihilated because their version of Islam believes in world conquest, by sword if necessary.[101] The October 7th massacre committed by Hamas was not a response to Israeli misdeeds; it was occasioned by the Islamic call to conquer the world. Israel withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, ending its “occupation.” The massacre was a response to Israel’s existence, not its politics. Hamas actually abuses and exploits the population it rules. It proudly takes credit for and then denies participation in now documented atrocities, indicating its disdain for human life, moral responsibly, and telling the truth. Hamas falsely presents itself as the oppressed victim of the Marxist myth, but this image conflicts with reality. Decent people do not justify their conduct with falsehoods. Hamas regularly targeted civilian non-combatants, but accuses Israel of intentionally killing Gazan innocents. It used Palestinian funds to build underground tunnels to protect its militia, which were not made available to the Gazan population. Above we documented Jonathan Kuttab’s duplicity in blaming Israel for bombing a hospital when an errant Arab missile fell in the hospital’s parking lot.
How then do we identify pure evil? When the collective conscience of an entire community is so consumed by hate and rage that that myth and narrative determine what may be accepted as truth and reality. When the bully assumes the role of victim and imposes upon the oppressed the role of oppressor, it may justify all sorts unspeakable atrocities. Hamas professes to be a liberation movement that seeks justice for the people it controls, but inhumanely appropriates the humanitarian aid designated for the Gazans people. It also exposed its population to mortal danger by making them human shields, and fired upon those human shields who fled the bombarding. The October 7th massacre revealed how depraved this “liberation army” really is. Unable to shed their malevolency, Hamas and its pro-Palestinian international protesting surrogates are moved by hate and rage. They impose their two narratives, the Marxist myth and militant Islam, when and where they are able, with intimidation but without conversation. Their elites live in luxury while their masses are pauperized. Russia, mainland China, and Iran are, as noted above, totalitarian states that subjugate their charges by replacing truth with narrative, facts with myth, and conversation with coercion. Hamas’ version of “liberation” is in fact oppressively autocratic. The truth is the most powerful weapon with which to resist the false narrative that justifies oppression. When the ideals that move Hamas and its patrons are exposed by the facts and the truth, the evil that opposed righteousness will implode. It is reported that
[a] Gaza resident, who bravely expressed his opinions on the radio, voiced his message to Yahya Sinwar and his accomplices. The interviewee, journalist Muhammad Mansour, boldly stated, ‘’Allah curse you, Hamas leadership. Sinwar, you are the offspring of a despicable creature. Allah will avenge the destruction you have inflicted upon us.’[102]
According to Jewish tradition, God’s seal is truth,[103] because “the Eternal of Israel does not lie.”[104]
[1] For full disclosure, Potok taught me Exodus at the
supplemental Hebrew high school of Philadelphia’s Conservative Har Zion Temple in 1962-3. He was a suburb teacher. My second encounter with Exodus took place in Jerusalem in 1966-7 with Dr. Nehamah Leibowitz, who taught, among many things, that close readings of Biblical dialogues yield significant theological insights. This paper applies Leibowitz’s insight to discover the values that are encoded in the Biblical narrative.
[2] Chaim Potok, “The Naturalism of Sidney Hook,” Conservative Judaism, 18:2 (Winter, 1964).
[3] See Alan Dershowitz at https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20126/hamas-nazis for the similarities shared by the Nazis and Hamas.
[4] “Unlike some other Palestinian factions, Hamas refuses to engage with Israel. In 1993, it opposed the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that saw the PLO give up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Accords also established the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.” https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/09/middleeast/hamas-attack-strategy-israel-mime-intl/index.html.
[5] https://fiqh.islamonline.net/en/taking-hostages-permissible.
[7] https://edition .cnn.com/2024/01/04/middleeast/sexual-assault-october-7-israel-witness-int/index.html,
https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-experts-demand-accountability-for-sexual-torture-during-hamas-onslaught/, and https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html.
[8] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/feminists-hamas-rapes/ and https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231204-metoo-for-israeli-victims-too-gaza-war-drives-wedge-between-french-feminists.
[9] Benny Morris reports that “[a]ccording to [Ehud] Barak, [Bill] Clinton said: ‘What the hell is this? Why is she turning the mistakes we [i.e., the US and Israel] made into the essence? The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict the American president put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism. Arafat didn’t negotiate – he just kept saying no.’” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/23/israel3.
[10] Hamas Charter, Article 13.
[11] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/who-are-the-houthis-and-why-are-we-at-war-with-them/. The Houthis are Shi’ite and Hamas are Sunnis. What they share is their self-righteous militancy.
[12] On Hamas’s religious language and ideology, see Alan M. Dershowitz, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20096/blood-libel-israel-gaza-hospital. I find biblical narratives often provide responses to pagan political policies and doctrines and will reference those narratives when appropriate.
[13] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/10/11/analysis-why-did-hamas-attack-now-and-what-is-next explains that the Houthis of Yemen are followers of Zayd ibn Ali, Muhammed’s son-in-law, who was martyred in a revolt against the worldly, permissive Umayyad dynasty in 740 CE. When the United States military invaded Iraq in 2003, the now radicalized Houthis adopted the slogan, “God is great, death to the U.S., death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory for Islam.” Like the Houthis, Hamas presents itself as theologically devout, appropriately militant, and ethically incorruptible. They are both Iranian proxies, sharing an extreme animosity toward Israel.
[14] Exodus 23:7 not only forbids telling untruths, but requires that one distance oneself from falsehood, that misleading even without lying is improper; Leviticus 19:36 demands honest weights and measurements, because the God who redeemed Israel from Egypt and entered the Torah contract with Israel issued this apodictic command; and Exodus 18:21 finds “men of truth [’emet]” parallel to and hence a synonym for the “one who reveres God,” which should be taken to mean “who takes God very seriously.” Deuteronomy 13:15 and 17:4 employ the expression “emet nakhon,” rendered by the old Jewish Publication Society translation as “if it be truth, and the thing certain.” The Biblical Hebrew word “nakhon” carries the semantic force of the Arabic verb “to be,” “yakun,” and means that the reported “fact” is indeed true.
[15] https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/cf1699b6-9e6e-4cff-9c68-467c58d0968f/The%20Hudna%20-%20PRIO%20Policy%20Brief%2009-2010.pdf?inline=true.
[16] https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20062/hamas-kidnapped-israelis-human-shields.
[17] “Three top leaders of Hamas alone have a staggering fortune of $11 billion, according to a report by New York Post. Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaleed Mashal have been maintaining their luxury lifestyle in Qatar, a relatively small yet powerful emirate in the Middle East, whichprovided a safe haven for them.” https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/hamas-top-brass-is-worth-11-billion-its-goal-is-not-to-bring-water-electricity-to-gaza-101699508169872.html.
[18] “Returning all of the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza is a primary Israeli objective of the war. Much pressure has been placed on the Jewish state for a ceasefire, but much less has been applied to Hamas to release every one of the hostages. The quickest way to end this war is for Hamas to return the hostages to their families and unconditionally surrender.” — Enia Krivine, Senior Director of FDD’s Israel Program and National Security Network at https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/11/23/hamas-continues-to-deny-red-cross-access-to-hostages-proof-of-life/ and https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-red-cross-has-no-right-to-exist-if-it-cant-help-hostages-in-gaza/. Imagine the international reaction were Israel to condition the delivery of humanitarian aid to the dislocated Gazan populace, which could be appropriated by Hamas for its war efforts, on the granting the Red Cross access to the hostages illegally taken by Hamas.
[19] Literally, “man is a polis animal. See https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/aristotle-insists-that-man-is-either-a-political-animal-the-natural-state-or-an-outcast-like-a-bird-which-flies-alone-4thc-bc.
[21] “The Catholic Church in China is being ‘murdered’ while the Roman Catholic Church stands idly by, wrote Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired Bishop of Hong Kong. ‘A totalitarian regime doesn’t compromise,’ he said. ‘They want complete surrender.’”https://twitter.com/GatestoneInst/status/1241648585025994752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Escreen-name%3AGatestoneInst%7Ctwcon%5Es1. On the other hand, Pope Francis, an advocate of Marxist “Liberation Theology,” speaks of the “terrorism of war,” suggesting that the terror of the Hamas massacre and Israel’s retaliation are morally equivalent events. The Bishop of Rome also claimed “unarmed civilians are the targets of bombings and gunfire.” The context implies that the IDF is to blame when in fact Hamas did shoot at Gazans fleeing the anticipated IDF operation. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2023-12/pope-francis-holy-family-parish-gaza-appeal-civilians.html. Note well that Hamas is not criticized for the gratuitous atrocities it committed, its obdurate refusal to accept a peace that would allow Israel to exist, or for the oppressive reign that Hamas imposes upon the Gazan population.
[22] https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/dawa-and-the-islamist-revival-in-the-west for a study of dawa, which is the Islamic obligation to convert non-Muslims to Islam.
[23] While Hamas presents itself as a liberation movement, it has exploited the Gazan Palestinians whom it rules. It has no interest in a politically free Palestine; its goal is the total destruction of Israel. See Alan M. Dershowitz, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20261/who-supports-hamas.
[24] See the Oxfam petition, which stresses the damage done by Israel while ignoring Hamas’ policy of using human shields. https://www.oxfam.org/en/open-call-immediate-ceasefire-occupied-palestinian-t.rritory.
[25] https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/secretary-generals-remarks-press-encounter-situation-middle-east and https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/hamas-attacks-cannot-justify-collective-punishment-of-palestinians-un-chief/3031284.
[26] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/7/un-secretary-general-invokes-article-99-on-gaza and https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/guterres-urges-security-council-act-over-israel-palestine-crisis-threat-international-peace-and-security.
[27] Herodotus, The Histories 3.5 and 3.91.
[28] https://luwianstudies.org/the-philistines-in-canaan-and-palestine/#:~:text=The%20origin%20of%20the%20Philistines,islands%20or%20the%20Greek%20mainland.
[29] https://www.etymonline.com/word/Philistine.
[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement.
[31] “Gaza suffers from an unemployment rate of over 60%. In a 2022 World Bank report, GDP per capita in Gaza was estimated at $1,257, approximately one-fourth the estimated $4,458 GDP per capita in the West Bank.” https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-poor-gaza-rich-hamas-100.1461154. See also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbtpkty8i-s.
[32] Ibid.
[33] I do not recall the World War II Allies providing such warnings to their targeted victims before devastating Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Berlin. And the October 7 attack took place without warning.
[34] bSanhedrin 72a legislates that an intruding robber may be killed if and only if that robber, while in the act of robbing, presents a clear and present danger to life and limb. Numbers Rabbah 21:4 supplies the aphorism that defines the concept, “when one approaches with intent to kill you, you must preemptively kill the assailant first.”
[35] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/18/un-chief-guterres-condemns-collective-punishment-of-palestinians.
[36] https://www.voanews.com/a/un-chief-we-must-not-look-away-from-gaza-catastrophe/7377680.html.
[37] The accusation of Israel committing genocide has been explicitly articulated by Jonathan Kuttab at https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/the-case-for-prosecuting-israel-for-genocide-in-gaza/.
[38] Yehudah Mirsky, “The performance at the Hague bodes ill for international law,” at https://unherd.com/2024/01/the-flaws-in-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel/ : “That Israel’s allegedly genocidal war is a response to a religious terror movement’s gleeful, forthrightly genocidal marauding was largely unmentioned by Israel’s accusers at the Hague. That the terrorists retreated, hostages in hand, to a painstakingly prepared and boobytrapped subterranean city below mosques, hospitals and schools, mentioned even less. Amid these gaping omissions, one can’t but wearily conclude that Israel was bound to be accused of genocide, no matter what it did following October 7, short of bowing its head in surrender.”
[40] Kuttab, supra.
[41] Ibid. My italics.
[42] Ibid.
[43] “The al-Azhar position does not stem from ignorance of the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis, atrocities that were strongly condemned all over the world, including by a long list of Arab Muslim intellectuals. The opposite is the case: on October 18 al-Azhar issued a fatwa stating that ’Zionist civilians on occupied land are not [at all] worthy of the description of ‘civilians,’ but they are occupiers of the land, usurpers of rights, deviants from the way of the prophets, who attack the historical holy places of Jerusalem.’ The al-Azhar ruling that there are no ‘innocent’ Israeli citizens in effect makes it permissible to kill them.” https://www.inss.org.il/publication/al-azhar/.
[44] https://fiqh.islamonline.net/en/taking-hostages-permissible.
[45] Numbers 16:1-3. Obviously my own italics.
[47] See Marc S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle: Volume 1. Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU 1.1-1.2 (Vetus Testamentum Supplements series, volume 55; Leiden: Brill, 1994).
[49] In both Golden Calf and Korah narratives, when Israel sins, by reflexively gathering themselves without authorization, the Hebrews become a directionless, chaotic mob, an ‘am, an aggregate with whom people are “with.” Only when the people repent, they are again called “Israel,” “’edah” [congregation], and “qahal” [sacred community]. Korah consciously employs religious language, albeit for a secular, selfish, and unworthy end, his quest for power. Numbers 16:5-6 refers to “Korah and his congregation,” as opposed to the “Congregation of the LORD.” Korah is a non-believer who speaks in religious idioms fluently yet deceptively.
[51] See Amos 7:10-14, “10 Then Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying: ‘Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. 11 For thus Amos saith: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive out of his land.’ 12 Also Amaziah said unto Amos: ‘O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and prophesy there; 13 but prophesy not again any more at Beth-el, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a royal house.’ 14 Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah: ‘I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore-trees.’” Amaziah accused Amos of treason for predicting the fall of the Northern Kingdom and the violent death of King Jeroboam II. The dialogue between the true prophet and the counterfeit priest reveals differences that could not be made more starkly. Amaziah orders Amos to stop speaking at Beth El, a royal chapel the mission of which is to legitimate the reigning monarch and his policies. In contrast, Amos’s conscience is not for sale—or hire. He earns his livelihood as a cowboy and as a pruner. The prophetic narrator reports Amos’s denying that he is a prophet or a prophet’s son, i.e. a professional prophet, that unlike the paid professional prophet, Amos only speaks in God’s name. Amos understands religion to be about obeying God. The prophet’s mission is to be God’s spokesperson on earth. On one hand, Amaziah commands Amos to be silent; not lost on an antique reader is the fact that the Hebrew word for prophet, navi/nabi, is related to an Akkadian word for speaking, nabum, an exquisite instance of Biblical irony. See Exodus 7:1 and 4:16.
[52] See Jose Faur, The Horizontal Society: Understanding the Covenant and Alphabetic Judaism (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008), p. vii. In this two volume monograph, Prof. Faur argues that by creating only one human being, all humanity has the same ancestor and the same image of the one God. This arrangement yields a horizontal society that is alphabetic, that is able to read, and be ruled by Torah law. In contrast, hierarchical societies are led by people defined by their power, where might defines what is right and those who control the narrative control the minds and the masses as well.
[54] Leviticus 10:1-3. I suspect that Nadav and Avihu reasoned that the ritual is designed to impress the assembled with fireworks. Missing the point that the Hebrew kavod, like the Akkadian melammu, is a light of a different order and quality than natural fire. The cloud accompanying ancient Israel in the wilderness has within it a vertical, free-standing pole that is perceived by the human eye as fire [Exodus 13:22]. This observation also applies to the burning bush [Exodus 3:2] and God’s refusal to reveal God’s “face,” in the sense of divine totality or Presence, explaining that according to the divine physics, “[mortal] you may not experience [the Divine] Me and remain alive” [Exodus 33:20]. Mixing the finite fire with the infinite fire-like kavod is lethal.
[55] https://www.reuters.com/world/un-chief-says-false-accuse-him-justifying-hamas-attacks-2023-10-25/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJOC4UIDUto/.
[56] “Marxism posits that the struggle between social classes—specifically between the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, and the proletariat, or workers—defines economic relations in a capitalist economy and will lead inevitably to a communist revolution….Moreover, the wages paid to workers are lower than the economic value that their work creates for the capitalist. This is the source of capitalists’ profits and it is at the root of the inherent class struggle between labor and capital.” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marxism.asp.
[57] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/04/middleeast/sexual-assault-october-7-israel-witness-int/index.html,
https://www.timesofisrael.com/un-experts-demand-accountability-for-sexual-torture-during-hamas-onslaught/, and https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html
[58] https://www.thenation.com/article/world/feminists-hamas-rapes/ and https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20231204-metoo-for-israeli-victims-too-gaza-war-drives-wedge-between-french-feminists.
[59] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/4/for-feminists-silence-on-gaza-is-no-longer-an-option.
[60] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67613153. Bold type is the original to the authors.
[61] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/israel-hamas-sexual-violence-1.7050237, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ten-hamas-fighters-were-raping-the-woman-she-begged-for-death-6ldlmh8sp, and https://www.timesofisrael.com/graphic-report-details-new-evidence-of-rape-sexual-violence-during-october-7-rampage/.
[62] https://apnews.com/article/sexual-assault-hamas-oct-7-attack-rape-bb06b950bb6794affb8d468cd283bc51and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48opYBCWjDM, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/05/un-hears-accounts-of-sexual-violence-during-7-october-attacks-by-hamas,
[63] Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are welcome exceptions. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/05/hillary-clinton-opposition-antisemitism/ and https://www.foxnews.com/media/ex-bernie-sanders-aide-slammed-saying-accounts-israeli-women-raped-hamas-zionist-propaganda. While neither Clinton nor Sanders can be accused of harboring a Conservative political bias, their breaking with the Marxist myth narrative reveals both courage and conscience, because justice requires discovering what in fact really did happen, not what a political myth would claim what should or must happen. For her efforts, Clinton was heckled by pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University. [https://unitedwithisrael.org/you-will-burn-pro-hamas-demonstrators-heckle-hillary-clinton-at-columbia-university-event/]
[64] Consider Bill Maher at https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/bill-maher-politics-show-youtube-b2055825.html and https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/bill-maher-politics-show-youtube-b2055825.html.
[65] Numbers 16:32.
[66]https://ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/1300039#:~:text=Baal%20enters%20his%20maw%2C%20and,gullet%2C%20and%20swallows%20him%20down.
[68] https://www.inss.org.il/publication/al-azhar/.
[69]Ibid. My italics.
[70] See for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/31/biden-pro-palestine-protest-israel, https://aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/13/pro-palestine-demonstrations-around-the-world-as-gaza-war-nears-100-days, https://www.timesofisrael.com/hundreds-of-thousands-of-pro-palestinian-protesters-march-in-london-day-of-action/, https://www.timesofisrael.com/not-the-life-i-wish-for-us-in-berlin-afraid-to-be-visibly-jewish-or-talk-hebrew/ and https://www.timesofisrael.com/protesters-set-off-smoke-bombs-outside-aipac-heads-home-call-him-baby-killer/.
[71] Hebrew, “titnasse’u.” the Hebrew verb is reflexive.
[72] Exodus 17:8-16, I Samuel 15:1-9 and 30:1-18.
[75] See also Proverbs 17:5, “whoso mocks the poor blasphemes his Maker; and he that is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished.”
[76] See Irving Greenberg, “The Battle Cry of Terror,” at https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/367489/the-battle-cry-of-terror/.
[77] At Harvard, ideas that do not affirm the woke orthodoxy are efficiently suppressed. “Harvard is consistently ranked one of the best universities in the United States. But FIRE frequently finds itself in the odd position of giving this all-star academic school failing grades. Simply put, Harvard has never performed well in FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings, finishing below 75% of the schools surveyed in each of the past four years. In 2020, Harvard ranked 46 out of 55 schools. In 2021, it ranked 130 out of 154 schools. Last year, it ranked 170 out of 203 schools. And this year, Harvard completed its downward spiral in dramatic fashion, coming in dead last with the worst score ever: 0.00 out of a possible 100.00. This earns it the notorious distinction of being the only school ranked this year with an ‘abysmal’ speech climate.” https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-fires-college-free-speech-rankings.
[78] See https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/columnist/editors-note/366856/harvard-president-claudine-gays-resignation-letter-shows-she-hasnt-learned-anything/
[79] The idiom is borrowed from Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (Vintage. 2001). See his position on Muslim anti-Semitism at https://quillette.com/2023/11/07/muslim-antisemitism-and-the-western-left/.
[80] Mirsky, Supra.
[81] https://forward.com/opinion/574844/hamas-sexual-violence-oct-7
[82] Ibid.
[83] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67662871.
[84] Ibid.
[85] See “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has become ubiquitous in public and academic discourse. This is despite ongoing contests over definitions and the lack of a clear consensus about the relative importance (and even the appropriate order) of each component. For our purposes, diversity refers broadly to real or perceived physical or socio-cultural differences attributed to people and the representation of these differences in research, market spaces, and organizations. Equity refers to fairness in the treatment of people in terms of both opportunity and outcome. Inclusion refers to creating a culture that fosters belonging and incorporation of diverse groups and is usually operationalized as opposition to exclusion or marginalization. Taken together, DEI is typically accompanied by an axiological orientation toward procedural and distributive justice in organizations and institutions.” . https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article/48/5/920/6371980?login=false My italics.
[86] There are 31 pro-Hamas Harvard affiliated organizations that blamed Israel for the conflict, “[t]he apartheid regime that is the only one to blame,” which rendered Gaza “an open air prison,” and there are no air raid shelters in Gaza. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12609405/31-Harvard-organizations-including-colleges-Amnesty-International-affiliate-blame-Israel-Hamas-brutal-terror-attack-killed-700-people-deeply-deeply-wrong-acadIemia.html]. Israel is the least apartheid country in the Middle East, where Islamic Republics are not known for their “pluralism.” The reason that Gaza is an “open-air prison, or under blockade, is that once Israeli occupation ended, Hamas’s first free choice was to declare a permanent jihad, or holy war or struggle, against the “Zionist entity.” And the claim that there are no air raid shelters in Gaza is blatantly false. There is a vast underground tunnel network made and paid for by the Palestinian locals for the safety of the Hamas terrorist elite, which was not made available to the local Gazans during the aerial bombing. What occurred in Gaza was pure evil. The Marxist myth blames the Jews; the historical record places the blame at Hamas’ doorstep.
[87] Gay’s ouster emboldened a set of optimists who desperately want to believe that elite institutions can reform themselves, ditching progressive illiberalism and its totalizing “oppressor-oppressed” framework. They see corporations slashing DEI budgets, a consumer backlash against the likes of Target, Disney and Bud Light, a drop in cancellations of professors for wrong speak, editorials in mainstream Left outlets such as the New York Times and CNN, and bipartisan disgust at the antics of pro-Palestinian campus activists. Eric Kaufman, “The Harvard DEI complex is stronger than ever, https://unherd.com/thepost/the-harvard-dei-complex-is-stronger-than-ever/.
[88] https://www.harvard.edu/president/biography/. My italics.
[89] https://apnews.com/article/harvard-president-plagiarism-claudine-gay-3b048da1f2ee17b5edec3680b5828e8f, which argues that the plagiarism charge ia bogus. For a conservative perspective, see https://apnews.com/article/ron-desantis-new-college-florida-woke-15d61ab52724dc447ba6d03238f7719e. Gay did report that she suffered being called the “N-word. https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1144865-former-harvard-head-said-she-was-called-n-word-got-death-threats.
[91] Conservative Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was accused of plagiarism at https://www.newsweek.com/neil-gorsuch-plagiarism-allegations-senate-vote-579728. Nero Oxman, wife of Billionaire bill Ackman, who aggressively opposed remaining in office, was also charged with plagiarism at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/jan/06/neri-oxman-bill-ackman-plagiarism-accusations.
[92] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ackman.
[93] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12609405/31-Harvard-organizations-including-colleges-Amnesty-International-affiliate-blame-Israel-Hamas-brutal-terror-attack-killed-700-people-deeply-deeply-wrong-acadIemia.html.
[95] Exodus 23:3 and 7.
[97] For example, see “Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/Kick me, kike me, don’t you black or white me,” from Michael Jackson‘s track “They Don’t Care About Us,” reported at https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-06-25-9506250129-story.html.
[98] Ecclesiastes 3:15. See also Matthew 20:16, which proclaims “the first will be last and the last will be first” at the end time. This reordering of the social order is God’s doing. See Psalms 113:7-9.
[100] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/7/israel-palestine-escalation-live-news-barrage-of.-rockets-fired-from-gaza.
[102] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-777031/. My italics.
[104] I Samuel 15:29. https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/gaza-news/article-777031/. My italics.
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Educated and first ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Rabbi Alan J. Yuter earned additional ordinations from Yeshiva University, supervised by Rav Moshe D. Tendler, and the Israeli Chief Rav Mordecai Eliahu. He further received Yadin Yadin from Rav David Weiss Halivni and earned a PhD in modern Hebrew Literature from New York University.
A founding member of the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter served as a faculty member at the UTJ’s rabbinical school and has held multiple pulpits, including extended stints in Springfield, NJ, and Baltimore, MD.
Rabbi Yuter is a prolific writer on ritual and philosophical issues, underpinnings of halakha, Biblical criticism, and much more. His essays can be found on UTJ’s Viewpoints . He is also a frequent contributor for The Institute of Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
In addition to his activities with the UTJ, Rabbi Yuter teaches at Torat Reva in Jerusalem and is associated with the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding, affiliated with Ohr Torah Stone in Efrat.
Rabbi Yuter and his wife Linda reside in Israel.