Making Peace With Today’s Pharaohs

In December, I had the honor of attending and addressing the Limmud Conference in Birmingham, England. Over 1,700 Jews of all types and levels of observance, assembled as they do each year, in a conference center in order to study Judaism. Every hour slot has ten to fifteen different speaker options and you can join the discussion on anything from Jewish law, history and philosophy to Jewish art, literature, food, and comedy. Beyond my own five sessions, I had the opportunity to listen to many other fascinating speakers, but one session I enjoyed tremendously was that of an organization that calls itself “Rabbis for Human Rights.”

The session was attended by some fifty people and appealed to the more “Anti-Zionist” Jews at the conference. In previous years it would have attracted hundreds of attendees, but in the aftermath of October 7 thankfully the number of Jews prepared to “bash” Israel has been severely depleted.

The Rabbi for Human Rights presented his case: Israel was being torn apart by violent settlers in the “Occupied” West Bank. With an “extreme” right-wing government, where all the power is in the hands of Smotrich and Ben Gvir, the State of Israel will not last long. The solution? An immediate ceasefire and a two-state solution with our Palestinian neighbors.

After his twenty-minute monologue, I raised my hand and stood to address him and the room. I began:

“Firstly, may I congratulate you on your masterful analysis of the situation in Israel today. May I also suggest that you and I have a lot in common:

“You are a rabbi and I am a rabbi.

“You believe in human rights and I believe in human rights.

“You are a settler in the Occupied West Bank, and I am a settler in the Occupied West Bank.”

That last comparison made him uncomfortable. Didn’t I know that he lives in Tel Aviv – in “Israel proper?”

“Let me explain. Our enemies have made it very clear to the world since October 7 that they believe Palestine should extend ‘From the river to the sea.’ In fact, they attacked the Gaza Envelope, not Judea and Samaria. In other words, they consider every Jew who lives west of the Jordan River to be a settler, and all of our land is ‘occupied.’ So, we are both, at least in the minds of our enemies, settlers in the Occupied West Bank.”

I continued. “But there is one difference between you and me. You are a pessimist and I am a realist. You see the cup as half empty, and I have tremendous hope for the future. Our brave soldiers have performed miracles over the past year and a half, obliterating Hezbollah and Syria and crippling Hamas. In a few weeks’ time, Please G-d, we will see an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear program and hopefully the downfall of that regime. We have never been closer to shalom in the Middle East and the liberation of two hundred million Arabs, who currently live under tyrannical regimes that spend all their resources on weapons rather than healthcare and education. I have never been more hopeful for an improvement in human rights for our Arab neighbors who currently score amongst the lowest in the world on that index. I have never been more hopeful for shalom – long-lasting peace – with our neighbors.” With that I sat down.

Unexpectedly, around one third of the people in the room burst into spontaneous applause. Perhaps another third would have liked to but were too embarrassed to show their approval. I was happy to see that, at least in some debating chambers in the UK, people are still willing to listen to the other side.

So why do our enemies hate us? Why does Iran spend most of its budget building weapons to exterminate us, when we live over 2,000 kilometers from their border? Why do the most evil nations also have the worst human rights records in the treatment of their own people.

In this week’s parsha, Shemot, we are first introduced to the new Pharaoh. Very soon he is telling the Egyptian people (Shemot 1:9-10), “Look! The Israelite people are becoming more numerous and stronger than us. Let us deal cleverly with them lest they increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies.”

The new Pharaoh is not a caring leader. The previous Pharaoh, the one that appointed Joseph as his prime minister, was quite willing to impoverish his whole nation and nationalize all their land, and the Torah portrays him as a tzaddik compared to his successor. Some of the Egyptian people must still have remembered the “good old days” when Mum and Dad owned the farm and life was easier. There must have been some level of national unrest with this new dictator.

So, if this new Pharaoh has an image problem with his own people, why would he not focus on building schools and hospitals in Rameses, rather than extravagant pyramids for his family? Why would he not invest in infrastructure like canals to enable better irrigation? Or papyrus factories to get more school books published?

The Torah answers this for us. He is ultimately interested in filling his own pockets and doesn’t give a hoot about his people. However, in order to keep them oppressed and prevent an uprising, he creates a scapegoat. If he can scare the people about the dangers from those “crafty Jews,” he can distract them from their own suffering. Not only can he justify enslaving the people whose leader, Joseph, just collected the Nobel Prize for food security, but he can also keep his Egyptian nationals under control.

This has been a template for Arab dictators since the Exodus story: blame the Jews and keep your own people in abject poverty.

Having read this story every year for 3,500 years, the Jewish people have just woken up to the fact that we don’t need to stay in this loop forever. The current war has shown Israel to be far stronger than anyone imagined, including, and especially, ourselves. We no longer have to put up with Arab dictators spending their whole budget (and that of the UN and their Arab oil sponsors) on weapons of mass destruction against us.

As a rabbi for Human Rights, my wish is for the Pharaohs of the New Middle East to focus their funds on helping their own people climb out of poverty through education and technology. May we soon see them melting their missiles into ploughshares and their rocket launchers into desalination plants. May one Arab nation no longer lift swords against any non-Arab nation. Instead of learning war, may they learn respect for women’s rights and education, freedom of the press and tolerance of other religions. And may this happen before they totally destroy themselves. Amen.