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MATOT MAASEY 5784
How Should We Respond to Evil?
Last Shabbos I mentioned how exhausted we all were from all the rapidly changing events. We needed to catch our breath. This week it only seemed to get worse!
We ended Shabbat last week only to hear that 12 Israeli Druze children were killed by a Hezbollah rocket.
On Tuesday Fuad Shukr—Senior Hezbollah commander who managed Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel, including those 12 Israeli Druze children—was killed by an airstrike in Beirut. He also played a major role in the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine compound in Beirut that killed 241 Marines and wounded 128 others.
On Wednesday Ismail Haniyeh—head of Hamas—was killed by a bomb in Iran placed there 2 months ago.
And on Thursday it was revealed that Muhammad Deif—commander of Hamas’s military wing and one of the architects of Oct. 7—was killed on July 13 by an airstrike.
The goal of the life of these 3 monsters—Shukr, Haniyeh and Deif—was to kill as many Jews as possible!
There was also a good side to this week. On Thursday morning it was announced that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich along with former marine Paul Whelan were released by Russia in a prisoner exchange. Gershkovich has been held more than a year on false charges of spying and Whelan had been held for more than 5 years.
Yes, we’re even more exhausted this week—especially when Iran now announced it will soon meet with its allies to plan a revenge attack on Israel. And within hours of that announcement, all airlines except El Al cancelled all flights to Israel.
Condemnation of Israel expectedly came from Arab states, Turkey, Russia and China. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Thursday urged: all parties (code for Israel) to stop “escalatory actions” and achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. Blinken warned that the Middle East was on a path “toward more conflict, more violence, more suffering … Resolution starts with a ceasefire that we’ve been working on. And to get there, it also 1st requires all parties (Israel) to … stop taking any escalatory actions.
Blinken has so much diplomatic experience and is privy to so much secret intelligence. Shouldn’t Israel listen to him? Shouldn’t we say the 80,000 people in the north of Isael that had to abandon their homes because of Hezbollah rockets, and the thousands who left their homes near Gaza after Oct. 7th should not return to their homes? After all, it will stop the killings and we can get on with our lives.
I’m convinced Blinken’s thinking just doesn’t work. However frustrated Washington is with the attacks, how can it condemn Israel for eliminating 3 of the top targets on its list of global terrorists—especially Shukr who killed 241 Marines in Lebanon?
Will these attacks make the hostage negotiations more difficult? As Naomi Regan notes in her blog: after the first release of hostages, there never was any intention on the part of Hamas to release our hostages unless Israel capitulated, withdrew, and allowed them to rebuild and attack again … If anything … these attacks will actually speed up the release of the hostages.
Why would these attacks speed up the release of the hostages? Because Hamas never responds to anything but strength. Why did Hamas agree to the 1st ceasefire and release of hostages then? Because they were becoming decimated by Israel’s strength and needed time to regroup. Later, all the calls for Israeli restraint—and to not go into Rafa—proved wrongheaded. Contrary to popular opinion, Israel was able to evacuate most of Rafa in short order and then go after Hamas with very few civilian casualties. Calls for Israeli restraint only embolden Hamas and there hasn’t been a ceasefire or release of hostages since these calls were made!
But won’t these attacks only lead to a broader war? Truth be told, appeasement never works. As Winston Churchill famously said: “An appeaser is one who feeds an allegator hoping it will eat him last!”
Now in the wake of these attacks Hamas and Hezbollah don’t know what to do. They don’t want a war, because it’s doubtful they can win—especially since so many senior officers are now dead and, at the moment, there are no replacements. The attacks have severely weakened them.
What about the morality of these assassinations? Are they morally correct, are they just? In our weekday Amidah following the blessing for justice, we have a prayer called Vlamalshinim that asks Gd: “for righteousness and justice to flourish.” How? It tells us: “We must eradicate evil and sometimes its perpetrators.” And so this blessing calls upon Gd’s enemies to be: “uprooted, broken, cast down and humbled speedily in our day.” In other words, justice demands that evil never be tolerated.
Why? Shouldn’t we turn the other cheek to evil? Perhaps then the evil doers will leave us alone. The answer is that if you repay evil with mercy it will only bite you in the end and become stronger. This is most clearly seen at the dawn of mankind, in the story of Cain and Abel in the Midrash (Bereshit Rabba 22:8). The Midrash asks the question: Who was stronger—Cain or Able? It was Cain who killed Abel, so it obviously seems that Cain was the stronger one.
Not so, says Rabbi Yochanan. He quotes the verse in the Torah (Gen. 4:8): “Cain spoke with his brother Abel; and it happened that when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.” 2 questions on this verse bothered our Sages: What did Cain say to his brother and from where did he rise up to kill him?
Rabbi Yochanan explains that Cain started the fight with Abel. Abel was stronger and got on top of Cain pinning him to the ground. Then, the Torah tells us, “Cain spoke unto Abel his brother saying.” What did he say?
Rabbi Yochanan tells us: “We are the only sons in the world. What will you tell father if you kill me?” Then Rabbi Yochanan adds: “Abel was filled with compassion and released his hold, whereupon Cain rose up and killed him.” And from this our sages warn: “Don’t be kind to an evil person lest he repay you with evil.”
And in our parsha (Num. 31:2), Gd commands Moses to, “take vengeance against the Midianites” who tried to destroy the Jewish people. However, in last week’s parsha (Num. 25:17) Gd had already commanded Moses: “Harass the Midianites and smite them.” The question is, why did Gd have to repeat the command to destroy the Midianites? It has been suggested (Chizkuni) that Moses had a soft spot for the Midianites. After all, when he fled Egypt after Pharoah sought to kill him, his father-in-law Yitro—priest of Midian—took him in. He lived with the Midianites for many years—some suggest it was 60 years. But soft spot or no soft spot, evil must be eliminated, and so when Moses delayed doing this command Gd reminded him.
You see, it can be painful to eradicate evil. There’s a part of us that wants to rationalize evil away and not accept that it actually exists. We give it political reasoning or economic rationalizations. Even Moses tried to avoid it. But in life we can never ignore evil.
The Torah calls upon us to create civilized, moral societies—something we’re not doing so well at these days. But that will only happen if we work to rid the world from evil. So, no Anthony Blinken, Israel will not restrain itself, but stand up to evil with the assurance that Gd will have its back even if Blinken won’t. And as Walter Russel Mead wrote in yesterday’s Wall St. Journal: The risks of an expanding Middle East war are real. But the strikes in Beirut and Tehran have likely had a healthy deterrent effect. We can hope that, as has happened so often in the past, Hezbollah and Iran will limit their responses to Israel’s attacks out of respect for Israel’s power.
My friends, we Jews have been victims of the worst evil for thousands of years and it continues till this very day. Remember at the Seder we recited the v’hishi-amda song? It’s one of the main themes of the Seder: that “In every generation they stand up to destroy us, but the Holy One Blessed be He saves us from their hands.” May it happen speedily in our day. Amen!
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