Much has been made of the fact—and appropriately so—that the New York Times dedicated over half its front page to a photo of a genetically sick child framed in such a way to make it appear it was a victim of the alleged Israel-created famine while effectively ignoring the videos Hamas proudly released showing starved Israeli hostages, one of whom was being forced to dig own grave. I want to focus on something a little different, though, which is the fundamental nature of the two cultures currently at war.
I wrote yesterday about the archaeological discovery of what may be the Tabernacle that housed the Ark at Shiloh for over three hundred years (sometime between the 15th and 11th centuries B.C.). I ended my post by saying “Am Israel Chai!”
A friend wrote to ask me what that phrase means. It means “the people of Israel live.” That sounds kind of obvious. I mean, the people of America live, as do the people of every other country who aren’t already moldering in their graves.
However, the phrase “the people of Israel live” has a very different connotation in Israel. It speaks to the roughly 4,000 years of history that have never, not once, torn the Jews from their land. Imperial conquerors have come and gone, but the people have remained and, more than that, they’ve kept their core culture intact. They speak the same language and are organized around the same faith. No other nation in the world has that. The people of Israel live.
Israel’s thriving is also the ultimate victory over the Nazis. And no, the world didn’t give the Jews a nation as a consolation prize for the Holocaust. The notion of reconstituting the ancient nation of Israel arose in the late 19th century. At the time, it was a malarial backwater of the rotting Ottoman Empire. Jews bought the land and, when Britain gained sovereignty over it as one of the spoils of WWI, it committed to giving the land back to the Jews. Since then, Jews have held the land by the ancient right of war.
The Nazis slaughtered six million Jews, but Israel’s 7.2 million Jews are the ultimate reminder that, despite the Holocaust, the people of Israel live. Incidentally, of the remaining 2.2 million people in Israel, 2 million of them are Arabs. The surrounding Arab nations, as well as the lands occupied by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, are completely or almost completely Jüdenrein (Jew free).
The preeminence of living is a mandate from God:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19.)
If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to visit Israel, people have indeed chosen life, living it with gusto. They celebrate their culture, their community, the beautiful nature around them, the pleasures of life, food, travel, etc. One of the most popular Israeli songs of the 1970s was utterly focused on a peaceful future.
This vigor and joy aren’t simply because Israelis, through endless hard work, created a thriving, affluent community out of a land both arid and swampy. Instead, it’s an affirmative choice. Just as individuals can choose happiness, so can nations.
Israel wages war with an eye to life, too. Contrary to the propaganda, Israel does everything it can to preserve civilian life during war. No other nation in the world gives up its military advantage to provide advance warning of bombing strikes, so that civilians can flee an area. And no other nation in the history of the world has provided millions of tons of food to its enemy during a hot war.
This isn’t random; it’s policy. The Israeli military abides by a Code of Ethics called “Purity of Arms”:
The IDF servicemen and women will use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.
It's a certainty that, during a hot war, Israeli troops, in the heat of battle, will occasionally deliberately or accidentally violate this code. However, it is a life-affirming standard to which Israel aspires even during times of war. No wonder Col. Richard Kemp called the IDF the most moral army the world has ever known.
And then there is the enemy, which is committed to death over life. Beginning in pre-school, its children are raised to dream of slaughtering Jews and themselves becoming martyrs. (See, e.g., here, here, and here.) As Hezbollah’s one-time leader Hassan Nasrallah said, “The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death.”
When Hamas, along with thousands of Gaza civilians, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, this was not a business-like, military affair. It was a death cult orgy, in which the marauders gleefully filmed themselves torturing and slaughtering men, women, and children, right down to infants in their cribs. One excited man interrupted his religious rapture to call his parents and boast about the slaughter.
As with the Jews’ embrace of life, the enemy’s death cult is part of their scripture. Mohammed, a warlord, repeatedly told his followers that it was a religious imperative to slaughter people, with special attention paid to slaughtering Jews. In addition, the Koran views women’s rape and sexual enslavement as a good tactic and a perk of being Muslim.
The number of people who have died thanks to Islam’s approach to holiness is incalculable. I’m going to guess that it comes close to a billion. Muslims also ran the African slave trade, as well as enslaving an estimated 1.25 million Europeans.
So, keep in mind that, as the world accuses Israel of genocide based upon carefully curated information straight from Hamas itself (there is no famine), it’s Hamas that boasts about how it tortures the handful of Jews who still survive in the cages and caves that honeycomb the land under Gaza civilians’ homes, schools, and hospitals:
This is how Gazans are starving the hostages. Watch it. Really, watch it. It’s what real starvation looks like. pic.twitter.com/4ebmjlP4rW
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) July 31, 2025
How psychopathic is Hamas?
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) August 2, 2025
It forced starving hostage Evyatar David to DIG HIS OWN GRAVE for the cameras. pic.twitter.com/iMa404St4s
Two videos side by side:
— Hamas Atrocities (@HamasAtrocities) August 2, 2025
On the left we see Hamas terrorists in a tunnel, feasting on abundant food, including aid parcels meant for the civilian population.
On the right is Evyatar David. A starving Israeli hostage in the tunnels for now 666 dayspic.twitter.com/VJLiNuQf5q
So, there you have it: Two cultures, one dedicated to life and one to death. It says something profound, in a truly awful way, that socialists at home and abroad have chosen to ally themselves with the death cult. That is their value: They choose death, and the next death they choose might be yours.