Starvation in Gaza

While the word "chutzpah" often appears in popular Jewish jokes and anecdotes, in traditional Jewish thought it is far from humorous, it carries a loaded moral evaluation of human behavior.

The term “chutzpah” conveys more than mere audacity; it encapsulates a profound moral deficiency—behavior characterized by a bold disregard for others, marked by a lack of empathy, absence of remorse, and an egocentric, unrestrained disposition.

What other word could better describe the behavior of persons who torture and murder others and then claim to be victims in need of sympathy, help, and compensation for their atrocities?

The criminals—is there another word?—who crossed the country’s borders and broke into the homes of sleeping Israeli families on October 7, 2023, massacring children and women with indescribable savagery, while kidnapping other toddlers and young and elderly Israelis to be paraded through celebratory streets in Gaza before throwing them into dungeons deeply buried in tunnels, with meager allotments of food, today, urge the world to see them as victims.

Not my words. On August 2 Hamas Politburo member Ghazi Hamad—the same person who a few weeks after Oct. 7 said, “We will do this again and ”again”—put it as clear as it is possible: 

 “Chutzpah” is the only apt term to describe not only the brazen brutality of Hamas but also the willful ignorance and moral laziness of their global chorus of duped supporters—those who shamelessly blame Israel for the suffering in Gaza while turning a blind eye to the true source of the violence.

The leaders of France, Canada, and the United Kingdom have now become their supporters, demanding that Israel accept a cease-fire agreement, which they did, while Hamas rejected it. The bastions of democracy and justice now say they will reward Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, for their terrorism and their refusal to release the Israelis they have kidnapped.

This chutzpah is what emboldens Hamas’s determination to stop the Israeli government’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) from delivering aid by systematically stealing it and intimidating and killing those who approach the aid centers.

The facts are that, while Hamas, "the victims," refuse to accept a cease-fire, continue to rule over land, launch attacks, and hold captives, pledging to repeat atrocities as soon as they are able, Israel delivers to them fuel, food, medicine, and water.

As John Spencer of the Modern War Institute at West Point said, “There is no historical precedent for a military providing the level of direct aid to an enemy population that Israel has provided to Gaza.”

The only comparable effort in modern history is the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49, during which the Allies delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies to 2.5 million West Berliners over 15 months. Though then, the population was not an enemy committing the worst act of idolatry possible: sacrificing human beings claiming that their lives is not worth the value of possessing a grain of sand.

The bitter truth, COGAT said, is that Hamas is starving its own people. They steal the food, hoard the aid, and sell it at sky-high prices.” “The food is there. The aid is there. Hamas just keeps it from those who need it most.”

Why? Because “Hamas actually wants a famine in Gaza. Producing mass death from hunger is the group’s final play, its last hope for ending the war in a way that advances its goals to generate an international outcry and to worsen Israel’s global standing.

In pursuing this strategy, Hamas mirrors the Nazi response to the collapse of their criminal enterprise during World War II—a volatile blend of denial, rage, fatalism, and an ever-deeper plunge into delusion.

As Germany collapsed in early 1945, they refused to surrender, clung to fantasy scenarios of victory, and ultimately blamed everyone but themselves for the defeat.

Even as Soviet troops closed in on Berlin, the Nazis refused to accept reality. They imagined "last-minute turnarounds, or that the Allies would break apart and fight each other. 

They claimed that the German people had failed them and no longer deserved to survive.

In preferring destruction rather than surrendering, they chose suicide. They issued a “Nero Decree” they invited destruction of Germany’s infrastructure to deny it to the Allies. 

A prominent billboard on Times Square in New York City just projected a video furnished by Hamas, showing a 24-year-old, wasted Evyatar David, an Israeli kidnapped on October 7, 2023, forced to dig his own grave.

The only ones forced to starve in Gaza are the kidnapped Israelis and those Gazans who, like the Germans, the French, the Spaniards, and many others, had chosen to collaborate with the Nazis, supporting their genocidal aims.

Rabbi Pitchon can be contacted at: info@21stCenturyJudaism.com