Hatred as a National Project: From the Middle East to the Western World |
Anger, jealousy, revenge, obsession—these forces sit at the root of so many of our personal and national struggles. We often have only ourselves to blame. Each of us knows this on a personal level: a moment of ego, the wrong word said to a spouse or child, an argument that spirals, the emotional shock of losing a job. We tell ourselves we have emotional intelligence, and maybe we do, yet we still stumble. We regret, we dwell on the mistakes, we do teshuvah, and we pray to be better.
But what is true on the personal level is amplified a thousand times on the national stage. Add ego, pride, history, and grievance—and suddenly humanity repeats the same patterns. History is filled with individuals whose obsessions reshaped nations: Alexander, Caesar, Isabella of Spain, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and today, perhaps Putin. Yet focusing on the individuals misses the deeper point: these eruptions of hate emerge from societies that allow jealousy, resentment, and grievance to metastasise.
Learning From Our Parsha: Vayeshev
This dynamic is already visible in one of our foundational stories—the story of Joseph in Parashat Vayeshev. We know the multicolored coat from the musical, but the heart of the story is far darker and more human.
Jacob’s favoritism breeds jealousy. Joseph’s dreams intensify it. In Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ words, “Love unbalanced becomes a seed of hate.” The brothers’ jealousy festers until it becomes obsession; obsession becomes action. They conspire to kill him, throw him into a pit, and ultimately sell him as a slave.
The Torah does not sanitize the aftermath. Judah descends—morally and spiritually. The brothers live for decades under the unbearable weight of a lie to their father. “It tore the family apart,” writes Rabbi Sacks, “and the wound never fully healed.”
Their guilt remained. Their unity shattered. The schism echoes through Jewish history.
The Torah is teaching us something simple and profound:
When jealousy and resentment take root, destruction follows—first internally, then externally. Families fall apart. Nations fall apart. Civilizations fall apart.
From Morocco: A Painful Mirror
That same pattern of jealousy, obsession, and destructive fixation plays out on the global stage today.
Recently I watched a video of a Moroccan man speaking honestly, without fear or flourish:
“There is one thing that unites the 22 Arab states—hatred of Israel.”
“This hate,” he continued, “has cost us our progress. While other nations build, we obsess. While others innovate, we stagnate.”
It was raw, and it was true.
He explained that for decades, so much energy that could have gone into creating thriving societies—education, infrastructure, opportunity—was instead poured into sustaining an obsession: Israel. A few countries are beginning to shift their focus, but the legacy of this choice runs deep.
Some Arab states built temporary prosperity on oil. Others outsourced their worldview to toxic media networks like Al Jazeera or to ideologies like the Muslim Brotherhood. When hatred becomes a national purpose, self-destruction follows. You stop building your own world because you are too fixated on destroying someone else’s.........