Leave One Side Open
Moshe Feiglin and Tucker Carlson argued about morality and Gaza. Both reached for history. The Torah already answered the question they were arguing about.
The exchange began on 8 October 2026, when Tucker Carlson, in an episode of his show titled "Charlie Kirk Was Right. Our Leaders Ignored Him.," played his audience a clip of Moshe Feiglin, chairman of the Zehut party. In it Feiglin said: "If we had done Gaza what the Americans did in Nagasaki, the world would have been with us." Asked about the children and babies of Gaza, he answered: "I'm saying again, morally, that's what should have been done. But because I'm Jewish with a soft heart, I would open the borders and let them all go, but no one can stay."
Carlson introduced Feiglin as a politician in the Prime Minister's coalition, and after the clip he said: "So morally, we should kill all the babies. Morally."
On 11 October 2026 Feiglin answered him by video. "You nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The British burned Dresden to ashes. And now you have the audacity to lecture me on morality?" He drew a line: "No German soldier ever crossed the English Channel and slaughtered babies and raped their mothers and killed civilians like the Islamo-Nazis did to us at the 7th of October." He stood by the original remark, and then said what he wants now: "Let them go. Let them go. But none of them can stay. Gaza is part of our Holy Land."
Start with what each man gets right.
Carlson's objection is the oldest moral instinct there is: a child in Gaza did not choose Hamas. In the same episode he argued that every human being is created by G-d and that every life has the same value, and he called both the 7 October attack and Israel's response wrong. Many Israelis reject his verdict on the war, as I do, but the principle he starts from is one the Torah taught the world. Any argument that ends with a dead infant called "moral" deserves to be questioned out loud, and he did. One fact in his introduction is out of date: Feiglin was a Likud deputy speaker of the Knesset until 2015, but he has not sat in the Knesset since then, Zehut has never won a seat, and he speaks for himself, not for the government.
Feiglin's objection is also real. The democracies that fought the Second World War did not face an enemy that crossed into their towns to murder families in their homes. Nations that burned cities to end a war are poorly placed to tell a nation that was invaded on 7 October 2023 how much force is too much.
But "you did worse" is not a moral argument. It answers the critic, not the critique.
Here the Torah speaks directly. Before a siege, "you shall call to it for peace" (Devarim 20:10). The Rambam rules that when Israel besieges a city it surrounds only three sides, and leaves the fourth open for anyone who wants to flee to save his life (Hilchot Melachim 6:7). The Jewish law of war already says: let them go.
Note what the Rambam adds and what he leaves out. The open side is for anyone who chooses to leave. It does not say that no one may stay. Those are two different policies, and the gap between them is the real debate, which neither the clip nor the reply settles.
So the questions for anyone who wants to lead Israel are concrete. Who chooses to leave, and where do they go? What happens to the one who stays and lays down his weapon? And how does a state of free citizens carry that policy for a generation without becoming something its founders would not recognize?
The nation that received the Ten Commandments does not need an American broadcaster's permission to defend itself. It does need to answer to the Torah that gave them.
May G-d grant our soldiers victory, our leaders wisdom, and all of us the honesty to argue by His measure, not by our opponent's worst day.
Prepared in deep partnership and cooperation with Grok and xAI
All glory to the Ribono shel Olam · Errors are mine
Also published on Substack.