Answering Yishmael’s Challenge

But in truth, these phenomena are merely distractions. The baser elements are acting as they always have and always will, until the arrival of Mashiach. The earnest oved Hashem wants to penetrate beneath the surface to apprehend the spiritual nature of the enemy and how we should respond.

The animalistic depravity of Hamas arguably exceeds even the barbarism of the Nazis. While the scope of Nazi genocide is unsurpassed, they at least attempted to maintain a facade of culture, drowning out their victims’ cries with the music of Mozart and Wagner, while they distanced themselves from the dirty work of their delegates.

Not so the Nukhba terrorists, who reveled in their most monstrous acts and brazenly disseminated them to the world via livestream.

This unique feature of the present foe is discernible in the Torah itself. As Rabbeinu Bechaye explains, there are two expressions for Yisrael’s enemies, sonei and oyev. The former describes Eisav, and the latter describes Yishmael. He elaborates that oyev, from the root avoy, meaning woe, connotes the greater cruelty characterized by Yishmael.