Last Thursday thousands in Gaza celebrated that an 83 year old Israeli peace activist and two babies and their mother were being returned to Israel in coffins.   In Gaza, there was music and dancing, screams to the great God Allah thanking him while  the entirety of Israel went into mourning and I with them. 

No-one spoke of sin on Thursday because Jews don’t talk about sin very much..  They use the word  evil.  We Jews obey 613 commandments, and gluttony and sloth and envy, pride etc are not Jewish sins.  In the torah action, usually action, not thoughts or evil inclinations determine who you are.   You are not a sinner because of what you feel but what you do. 

For example, If I am envious of another’s wealth but I do not steal, kill,  bear false witness against  or slander them, my envy means little.  Evil inclinations and thoughts are considered as natural to the human condition.  We all have them.   As long as we don’t act on those inclinations, we are ok..and so is our world.   

But if I suffer wrath and break into a peaceful kibbutz and kill the dogs, the grandparents, most of the members. . . if I kidnap a father and a mother and their babies, then torture and kill them violently. The word sin hardly covers it.  This is evil.  It does not matter if I believe this is good, for my people, for Allah,  for the world. . .and I photograph myself smeared with blood because I am so proud of doing this good thing.  So joyful that I get an erection on camera and rape whoever I can . . .and then shoot up their gonads with my Kalashnikov.  The pride and the lust of Hamas, even the anger are not sins.   But raping and killing even an Israeli infidel that you named  a Colonizer to get the worlds approbation, that’s  evil.   It doesn’t matter if you feel you were wronged 75 years ago and stabbing a Jew feels so good today.   Shooting,  even better.  Then shooting pictures to send to Mom in Khan Yunis.  No matter how good you feel.   That’s evil. 

But let me suggest that as terrible as these primitive slaughterers are, so are the so-called civilized and educated citizens of  Western countries, children of democracies, who respect free speech and gender difference, who get their pronouns right, uphold  freedom and the Judao Christian ethos. Progressive thinkers who divide the world not into tribes with flags but into Victims and Victimizers,  Haves and Have-nots, and the Have-nots are always the Victims.  And good.  And the Haves are always the bad guys. 

As evil as the barbarians, I believe,  are the ones who consciously tore down the pictures of those kidnapped Jews—who came back to Israel in coffins this week.  On October 7,  250 were taken; by October 9, before any retaliation, before any Gazans died,  the Bibas family pictures on posters were being ripped up in major civilized cities of the Western world by educated people who said they had it coming.  Yes, a beautiful little nine-month-old and his three-year-old brother and their mother “had it coming.”

“Zionism.  That’s evil.  That’s what killed them.  Hamas is innocent” Really! Let me tell you flat out that I believe. . . Zionism has nothing to do with what happened on October 7.  Nor Colonialism, which left with the British. 

You’ve all read "Grapes of Wrath."  Did you know that Steinbeck’s grandparents  came to the Holy Land from Germany  about the same time that Nathaniel Hawthorne and Melville were writing their great works?  In fact, Melville visited them.  They came to farm, to live as devout Christians, and wait for the second coming of Christ.  They were not Zionists.

In 1858, Arab marauders screaming "Allah Akbar" murdered the brother of Steinbeck’s grandfather and raped his wife and her mother and her sister.