And the earth was full of violence…

וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ חָמָֽס׃

The Kabbalist Abraham Askenazi has pointed out to me that the October 7 massacre in Israel occurred exactly in the week in which the parsha (portion) Noah is read, located in the book of Bereshit (Genesis), 6:11: “And the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was full of violence (hamas)”

The line in Hebrew says exactly: וַתִּמָּלֵ֥א הָאָ֖רֶץ חָמָֽס׃ (wat·tim·mā·lê hā·’ā·reṣ ḥā·mās) “And the land was full of violence…” (of hamas: חָמָֽס׃)

As we know, for Kabbalah there are no coincidences, but rather causalities that we must discover, to access the deep mechanisms that move the universe. And the basic tool of our knowledge is the Torah, the Bible, where the plan of Creation is encrypted, and the history of the universe, from genesis and the Big-Bang, to its final beat. So that non-chance coincidence of the words in the portion and the name of the group that spread terror and murdered on October 7, has been a motif of reflection for our study circles.

Not from simple amazement at the synchronicity, but from deep reflection about the parallel meaning of the portion and what was happening in Israel.

Degeneration is what in Kabbalah is called the worlds of chaos. God created the world, and sent light to its creatures, too much light, more than they could bear, and the vessels for receiving that light, the souls, broke. They were a single unified soul, like the blue beings from Avatar, but that original soul was broken into 660,000 pieces of disconnected, selfish souls. From there evil was born, because those broken souls lost the ability to connect with each other, and to be One with the Creator, with the other souls and with creation. They began to be afraid, to doubt that they would receive all the goods of Creation, and that is why they began to appropriate everything they could, without thinking about their neighbors. In Kabbalah, the great duality is not good versus evil, but love versus fear. When they are afraid, men behave perversely, as if the light had been placed in the wrong place.

The solution (if read linearly and literally) is to end these worlds of chaos, send a flood that destroys the earth, and for Noah (the only righteous man at that time) to preserve two specimens of each species, along with his own family, to repopulate the earth and create a new world. This profound archetype can serve to unleash violent revolutions: since violence (hamas) prevails in the world, it must be eradicated with total destruction that will be followed by a new time of reconstruction, peace and return to Eden.

The problem (persistent for millennia) is determining which soul is righteous, and which soul belongs to the worlds of chaos, who must be eradicated, and who must persevere to create the seed of a new world. Which side is just and which side is evil is an old and twisted problem of ethics, political theory and perhaps theology, which could take us many years just in its prolegomena. But the underlying kabbalistic question would be: Why do we stop being One? Why do we stop being unified? And most importantly: how to achieve reunification? With a ceasefire as Putin asks? Assuming we are responsible for the murders as Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, has suggested?

Neither political realism nor Kabbalah go that route. The flood, or the Steel Sword, if you prefer, has already been unleashed, and violence, evil (hamas), is going to be exterminated. The State of Israel’s life depends on it. As Golda Meir clearly said, you cannot negotiate with someone who is coming to kill you.

President Joe Biden has said that Israel has the right to respond for the attacks, and this is not a matter of revenge: if Israel does not respond, the attacks from Gaza will continue, and its great promoter, Iran, will believe that they can continue acting with impunity, and that even – if they achieve nuclear weapons – they will be able to use them against Jerusalem, since Israel may not dare to respond with its atomic arsenal. That is why it is better to stop them now with conventional weapons than to respond to a nuclear attack, that is what foolish leftists like Antonio Guterres will never understand.

Also, I think Samuel Huntington dotted the i’s a long time ago: this is a clash of civilizations, of West against East (Kabbalah calls it The War of Gog and Magog), and if you don’t stop it now, all the benefits and achievements that the Judeo-Christian West civilization has achieved until now, are going to be destroyed, and yes, there are moments in history when we must take a position firmly and clearly, and this is one of those moments. And whoever doesn’t like it should go live in Iran, because they have brought terror and death even to the countries that have welcomed them, like France.

The army of Israel is the most ethical in the world: it warns civilians to evacuate the sites that are going to be bombed, it treats wounded enemy combatants who fall into its hands as real prisoners of war, it gives them medicine, food, and does not use them as human shields, nor do they negotiate with their corpses.

If you ask me how this ethical behavior can be extended to the imminent invasion of Gaza, I would tell you: the Prime Minister and the Israeli government are right, we must put an end to Hamas. And warrant that when the Israeli troops go cleaning, behind them the innocent civilians, the Palestinians, find the support that the terrorists have never given them and that they have also prevented them from receiving from outside: hospitals, water, food, shelter, human reconstruction behind the flood, behind the Steel Sword, of course led by Israel, and with the support of the only sensible nation that supports us to the last consequences: the United States. That would guarantee peace in the area, strengthen the ties of coexistence and is, in real life, (in the kingdom of Malchut, as Kabbalah says) a way to mend broken souls, to try to unify them in some common human objectives of hope, to achieve the coexistence that we all long for.

Reconstruction, without Hamas (or Hezbollah), to see if the Palestinians can one day govern themselves in peace, without being condemned to being a failed state, which is what their “friends” in the region have forced them to do, together with their incapable rulers and themselves.