Hamas, Hezbollah, Helpers, Hutzpah

Hamas, Hezbollah and their helpers are masters of hutzpah. Militarily, the IDF has all but destroyed Hamas’ fighting capabilities and gutted Hezbollah’s military capacity. But the terrorists’ campaign to delegitimize Israel and make Zionism a toxic term has made significant gains worldwide. The secret of their success is their hutzpah, and the way it has been accepted worldwide.

What is hutzpah? The iconic definition of hutzpah is the story of the man who murdered his father and mother, then pleaded for mercy before the court on the grounds that he was an orphan.

The iconic definition of hutzpah is the story of the man who murdered his father and mother, then pleaded for mercy before the court on the grounds that he was an orphan. Hamas outdid him.

Hamas outdid him. First, they embedded their fighters in the civilian population. They placed fighting groups and command and control centers in hospitals, schools and mosques. Then they launched their all-out attack in the Gaza envelope, killing 1200 Israelis (overwhelmingly civilians) and abducting 250 more. When Israel struck back to neutralize Hamas and prevent it from repeating the massacre, Hamas responded: You cannot attack us! You are killing civilians!

On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah opened fire on Israel, in solidarity with Hamas and its October 7 massacre. They shot tens of thousands of rockets on Israel, forcing the evacuation of over 125,000 people in Northern Israel. When Israel shifted from matching salvos and launched a ground invasion to remove Hezbollah troops from the border, Hezbollah denounced this as a wanton and unprovoked aggression against Lebanon. The French government echoed this blaming of Israel. In like fashion, Hezbollah boasted of its ability to shoot rockets all over Israel. On July 27 of this year, it issued its daily boast of a barrage of rockets. But when a rocket exploded on a soccer field in Majdal Shams and killed 12 Druze children, it announced that it had nothing to do with that explosion. When Israel invaded south Lebanon, and uncovered thousands of Hezbollah military positions in villages and civilian sites, Hezbollah (backed by Lebanese government officials and France) denounced this as a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.

Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s helpers have even more hutzpah. Hamas proudly filmed their atrocities and put them on media. When they saw the negative reaction to their actions, they pulled the videos. But their allies abroad — far from distancing themselves from such barbaric actions — celebrated the massacre and even the rapes. The helpers hailed the pogrom as “resistance.” They portrayed killing parents in front of children and children in front of their parents or burning people alive as heroic actions, as legitimate fighting against injustice “by any means necessary.”

The justification of these vicious behaviors was that Israel is a colonialist settler state, so Israeli lives are forfeit and any tactics used against Israel are legitimate. In fact, the Israeli Jews are the original, indigenous people of the land.

It takes real hutzpah to deny the almost two thousand years of Jewish history in the land — even before Christianity and, later, Islam were born. Likewise, as leader of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat denied there ever was a Holy Temple in Jerusalem — to cover up the fact that al-Aqsa Mosque was established on the Temple site more than 1200 years after the First Temple was destroyed.

Equally brazen is the “woke” claim that the Palestinians are people of color and thereby in the oppressed class, whereas the Israelis are white and, by definition, oppressors. Among the many problems with this argument, it fails to recognize that fifty percent plus of Israelis are children of Jews from Arab lands (who were expelled or evacuated to Israel due to hostile Arab nationalism) and are indistinguishable in skin color from their Arab neighbors.

The acme of hutzpah is the Palestinian supporters twisting Holocaust terminology and using it against Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are the ones who openly state their desire to obliterate the Jewish state, and its millions of Jewish citizens. The people who want to finish what the Nazis failed to achieve use the worldwide moral disgust at Nazism to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself. All decent people are repelled by the record of the Final Solution. The terrorists’ allies smear the Israelis, to enable a repetition of those crimes against Jews.

The ultimate outrageousness of hutzpah is not just its brazenness. It is that it takes the suffering of the victims and uses it to help the abuser escape punishment and deterrence. In the past year, the suffering of the Palestinians has been employed to the hilt to enable Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to get away with murder. Respectable media like the New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, CNN, BBC cannot openly endorse terrorism and attempted genocide. Instead, they present Palestinian suffering from a hundred different angles to emotionally paint Israel’s war of self-defense as excessive and beyond the pale. Thus the victims’ suffering is coopted to get the victimizers off scot-free.

In the past year, the suffering of the Palestinians has been employed to the hilt to enable Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran to get away with murder.

Palestinian civilians are suffering despite Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties. But the primary responsibility is Hamas’ for stationing their fighters — repeatedly — among the civilian population and civilian institutions. Yet the media, and most public political commentary by the nations engaged in the Middle East, obscure or omit the terrorists’ responsibility. Example: They accept Hamas’ lumping of the fighter and civilian casualties together in one number. This makes it seem like all the Palestinian casualties are the outcome of Israel’s out-of-control attacks on the Palestinians. They also uncritically accept Gazan death counts—although Hamas includes normal deaths as war victims and falsely claims that women and children make up the majority of Palestinian dead.

Hamas is guilty of spending the money given for reconstruction on military tunnels instead of air raid shelters and safe rooms. Hamas seizes humanitarian aid for its own fighters’ benefit while shutting out or exploiting the intended civilian recipients. The media coverage puts the blame on Israel for the shortage of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

The ultimate expression of hutzpah is Hamas’ use of the hostages it seized on October 7. Kidnapping people for the purpose of extortion is a gross violation of international law. Hamas demands that in order to get the hostages back, Israel must stop its war in Gaza permanently — and allow Hamas to regain control. This is equivalent to the murderous son taking his parents hostage, then demanding a guarantee that he will not be punished for killing his parents — or else he will kill his parents.

The truth is that hutzpah should not work. Responsible authorities should tell the murderer that killing parents turns a vile criminal act into another vile criminal act, under aggravated circumstances. Qatar and Turkey should have responded by withdrawing their hospitality and support for Hamas and Egypt should have refused to deal with Hamas until it returned the hostages. Instead, the UN Security Council refused to pass a resolution condemning the October 7 massacre and hostage taking. Even the United States joined in pressuring Israel to meet Hamas’ demands and commit to a permanent ceasefire, thus rewarding the kidnappers.

The Netanyahu government should be criticized for torpedoing possible prisoner exchanges during the past year. Still, the public political and media coverage made it look like the Israeli government was solely at fault for extending the hostages’ suffering — not the Hamas extortionists who actually kidnapped and then tortured their hostages.

The bystanders — the United Nations, the Arab governments, the media, the human rights organizations — aided the would-be genociders by legitimating their hutzpah and blaming the victims. Thus the Jewish value of unlimited respect for the life of the individual and the Israeli sense of obligation to solidarize with every citizen has been successfully exploited to get away with murder. As needed as it is — and as much as I support it — the looming agreement for hostage return will help Hamas escape punishment. The deal will free imprisoned murderers. Thanks to the collaboration of the bystander nations. The deal will leave the reputation of the victim nation in tatters and its international standing and security damaged.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke: The only thing necessary for evil hutzpah to triumph is for good and evil nations and men to stand by — or aid and abet.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg serves as the President of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life (JJGI) and as Senior Scholar in Residence at Hadar.