Pharaoh, Hitler, Sinwar

The elimination of Yahya Sinwar days ago—over a year since October 7th—is the most recent in a series of high-profile killings of key figures in the so-called “Axis of Resistance”. The Islamic Republic’s 7-front war against Israel has inflicted death, sexual violence, displacement, and injury on hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians. The complex entanglement of Russia, Turkey, and the Arab States only enlarges what has proven to be the most engaging topic in global relations since the Iraq War. 

Fully understanding Israel’s action, spirit, and motivation in this war must start with understanding Jewish history. A long series of historical catastrophes form a canon of intergenerational stories that are passed through religious tradition and continual reminders of the past. The cultural blueprint of the Jewish understanding of hardship comes in the story of Exodus: Jews come in search of better lives, are tolerated, and can flourish and rise to achievement—before they are resented, attacked and enslaved. This story repeats itself in our memory of the Babylonian captivity, under the Roman yoke, and across the Pale of Settlement. We each carry these stories. We pass them to our children—contributing to a uniquely powerful cultural memory.

Oscar Kokoschka: Exodus (1967). Photo: National Gallery of Art

In Jewish memory, the most powerful stories center on singular antagonists who embody shared experiences of suffering and survival—figures who mark a history of resilience handed down through generations. These villains are not just enemies; they anchor a tradition that links individual and collective resolve. Each Haman, Tsar, and Eichmann forms part of an inherited knowledge and a tool for survival, turning past tragedy into the very fabric of the lived Jewish experience. This layering of memory hardens into a permanent, heritable culture. The mistakes that led to each villain's rise are remembered, alongside the successes that brought about their eventual fall. With this body of applicable oral history, the Jewish people have continued to survive.

Pharoah is the archetype. Passover stories, passed from elder to younger for thousands of years, are etched into memory as the original oppression. They present a people with a history of survival—of lessons shaped through suffering and carried forward into a dark wilderness. His is the model of tyranny from which a deeply ingrained vigilance arose: a refusal to surrender identity, dignity, or hope, even under bondage, even for hundreds of years. The ancient exodus from Egypt was not merely a liberation but the inception of a body of knowledge that would resurface across centuries. Each retelling strengthens this foundation, instilling in every generation the understanding of what it takes to survive. After Pharoah, the Jewish people promised to Never Again be slaves, as they had been slaves in Egypt.

Murray Zimiles: To the ovens (1985). Photo: National Gallery of Art

Hitler came the closest, among a host of historical villains, to annihilating the Israelites. The holocaust was the logical conclusion of European antisemitism, in its waxing and waning faux-tolerance and street beatings. Where the pogroms of old Poland and Russia were mostly spontaneous, popular, and manic expressions of antisemitic hysteria, the Nazis had learned to mechanize, industrialize, and stimulate the nearly-endless European appetite for murdering Jews. In flames, rape, and gunfire Hitler’s men whipped a continent onto the march to total war. Contrary to popular sympathies, these men largely fought for the promise of ridding the world of Jews. But Hitler, too, was defeated. After five years, the Jews left alive were delivered at the hands of Soviet and American soldiers as an afterthought prize-of-war. No nation had offered to save Europe’s Jews—though many would go on to claim piecemeal credit.  After Hitler, the Jewish people promised to Never Again leave their lives in the hands of foreign soldiers and benevolent nations.

Safira Klein: Let My Children Go (2023). Photo: Safira Klein

Sinwar and his savages must represent a new lesson: Hamas’ October 7th was possible only through the complacency of the Jewish State. A decade of perceived military invincibility, combined with years of political unrest and a rapidly unwinding social fabric presented an opportunity to kill too good to pass up. For years, the army watched Gazan terrorists prepare for October 7th—running drills, building mock kibbutzim, and storming walls—and did nothing. For years, Israel’s perception of Hamas as a serious threat degraded into a condescending smugness that they would quietly fall, if not go out in a blaze of civil war against rival factions. Sinwar did not expect to succeed, of course. His plan was far crueler. From the beginning, the leaders of Hamas had planned to drag Israel into a years-long counter-insurgency in Gaza, combined with occupation politics and devastating international consequences. Pharoah had been a slaver defeated by the will of the Jews to just leave, and Hitler a mass-murderer defeated by their will to just survive. Sinwar is a butcher who was defeated by the Jewish will just to fight.

Sinwar’s death was not a carefully-orchestrated special operation. It had not been a targeted assassination, nor a precise airstrike or luckily placed bomb. Sinwar’s death was statistical. Sinwar died as all Hamas’ men will: killed by regular Israeli infantry, operating under standard doctrine, with that assistance which was spontaneously available. Perhaps the lesson of this antagonist has already begun to sink in. Perhaps, after Sinwar, the Jewish people will promise to Never Again underestimate their enemies.