Operation Entebbe: 50 Years Ago
10 min read
GOOD MORNING! Last month, following the New York Knicks’ first NBA Championship victory in 53 years, New York City held a massive parade along the “Canyon of Heroes.” To celebrate the occasion, the NYC Department of Sanitation installed limited-edition, custom-painted, blue-and-orange Knicks-themed trash cans across Manhattan.
Durring the celebrations, a woman – later identified as Angie Báez – decided that she needed one of these trash cans for her home. She was caught on video picking up a commemorative bin filled to the brim, dumping the garbage onto the sidewalk, and calmly walking away with the can. Subsequent viral footage showed her casually riding the subway back home, holding the stolen city trash can as a souvenir, and smilingly posing for pictures. Of course, the backlash on social media was immediate, with users criticizing her blatant antisocial behavior and the extra labor it forced upon city sanitation workers.
Internet sleuths quickly identified Báez as a high-earning corporate executive. She had previously served as the Diversity and Inclusion Program Lead at SquareSpace and then the Executive Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) for a restaurant review platform, which JPMorgan Chase acquired in 2021. At the time she stole the garbage can she was the Executive Director of Community and Industry Engagement for commerce at JPMorgan Chase (another name for DEI initiatives; a term that has become quite unpopular in the current political climate).
She was summarily fired. Within days of the footage going viral, JPMorgan Chase reviewed the incident and confirmed that Báez was “no longer with the company.” Faced with public embarrassment and fines ($75 for littering and $100 for impeding sanitation operations), Báez ultimately returned the trash can to the Sanitation Commissioner’s office. (Interestingly enough, the fact that she stole something simply because she wanted it never seemed to be part of the criticism.)
The moral hypocrisy of her behavior is simply appalling. Báez lived her professional life as someone who cared about lifting others up and building community. Aside from the thievery, dumping a load of garbage onto the sidewalk and then walking away – making a nuisance for pedestrians and a mess for others to clean up – highlights the disconnect between the ethical assertions of DEI figures and their real-world actions.
This also gives credence to the issue of moral posturing: when individuals hold a socially praised title and their daily job involves championing equity, public welfare, and systemic fairness, they may internalize an unshakeable belief in their own moral superiority. In other words, their delusional, self-righteous perception of themselves subconsciously gives them a “license” to act immorally or selfishly in other aspects of life. (Sadly, we sometimes see the same unacceptable and hypocritical behavior in religious leaders.)
But self-delusion is not merely the domain of people like Angie Báez; it’s part of the human condition. We simply believe what we want to believe. Stephen Hawking, the famous theoretical physicist, spent a majority of his life dealing with the practical impossibility of life developing through an accident of nature. His long-time collaborator, the famous Roger Penrose, calculated that the probability of the universe’s extraordinarily low-entropy initial state arising by chance is roughly 1 in 10^ (10^123). He called this figure “utterly tiny beyond comprehension.”
A trillion used to be hyperbole. Nowadays – with Elon Musk well on his way to becoming the world’s first trillionaire – we throw around the number trillion without having any real comprehension of how big a number it is. Research shows that people perceive a million to be on one end of the scale and a trillion on the other end, with a billion roughly somewhere in the middle. This is not even close to correct. Allow me to put it into perspective: a million seconds ago was roughly two weeks ago, a billion seconds ago was back in 1995, and a trillion seconds ago puts you back in the Ice Age. Yes, Elon Musk’s net worth is basically unfathomable.
Let’s now look at Penrose’s probability calculation of the universe’s initial state of entropy as an accident. A trillion is the number 1 followed by 9 zeros. A googol (yes, Google was initially a misspelling of googol – proving the need for both math and English on the SAT’s) is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Penrose’s calculation is the number 1 followed by 123 zeros; essentially the probability is a null number – effectively zero chance.
So how do these physicists deal with this mathematical reality? They don’t consider the likelihood of God and intelligent design; instead, they created the fiction of the multiverse! Essentially, that there is an infinite possibility of other universes, and we somehow got the lucky lottery chance of ending up in the one universe that could sustain life. They rationalize this with the mind-bending concept that the proof of the accidental development of the universe is the fact that we exist. The very definition of circular logic.
This is also known as the Anthropic Principle – a term coined in 1973 by the Australian physicist Brandon Carter – which states that the universe has to be compatible with the ones observing it because otherwise we wouldn’t be here to observe it. (He called it anthropic from the Greek word anthrōpos – human being; because neither your dog nor your cat contemplates the beginning of the universe.)
Towards the end of his life Hawking became very dissatisfied with this and kept asking, “How is it possible that everything in this universe was so perfectly aligned so as to sustain life?” Because accepting the argument above violates one of the key tenets of physics; a theory must have predictive power. Saying that we are “lucky” to have ended up here has no predictive power whatsoever. He died without resolving the issue that the universe is too fine tuned to have happened accidentally.
In truth, this essential question informs everything in life. If everything in existence is simply a happy accident, then nothing in existence has an inalienable “right” to exist – and of course there are no other rights either; no freedom of liberty, religion, speech, racial or gender equality, press, etc. Moreover, we would also have no more right to exist than anything in the animal kingdom, and we would be hard pressed to say that we should morally be allowed to kill animals simply for our benefit. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should: might does not make right.
We tend to think that right or wrong is mandated by laws. But that’s obviously a fallacy; history is replete with immoral laws: Nuremberg Laws, Jim Crow laws, Apartheid laws, laws allowing for slavery, etc. The Torah view, and the true basis of individual rights, is that each person has intrinsic worth that transcends the state. That worth can only be grounded “under God,” because only God can confer an absolute right.
The moral foundation of a free society (clearly outlined in America’s Declaration of Independence) is that man is granted inalienable rights by God. By contrast, a totalitarian state treats the individual as having no intrinsic rights; he simply exists for the benefit of government or the state. Little wonder then that communist societies did their best to wipe out all religious activities.
But there is also a much deeper lesson here. The Almighty gifted man with the ability to build a relationship with Him by making choices that draw one nearer to God by fulfilling His will. Thus, human beings alone possess free will and the capacity to earn eternal existence through moral choices. This is how we differ from the animal kingdom. Because man alone can choose, grow, and attain eternity, man alone possesses an intrinsic right to life.
“You shall not flatter the land in which you are, for blood defiles the land, and the land cannot be atoned for the blood spilled in it except through the blood of the one who spilled it.”
The Hebrew phrase is “velo sachanifu es ha’aretz.” The Hebrew word chanifah means flattery or insincere praise. But in this verse, that meaning seems out of place.
Rashi explains the verse as meaning that one should not bring wickedness or guilt upon the land. But even with Rashi’s explanation, the wording remains cryptic. The Torah is discussing serious legal matters – murder, punishment, and atonement – yet it expresses the law through strange language about blood, land, guilt, and flattery; what’s going on here?
The Torah is referencing the first murder that ever took place. In Genesis (4:1-15) we find Cain killing Abel and God’s discussion with Cain. In the Talmud’s reading of that story (Sanhedrin 37b) God also curses the land for swallowing Abel’s blood and leaving no trace (see Tosfos ad loc). Man has an intrinsic right to live, and the earth completely absorbing his blood (and obliterating evidence of his existence) is a violation of this principle. This sin of the earth is what the Torah is referencing here.
When we kill someone, even if it is somewhat unintentionally, we are taking away his intrinsic right to existence and committing the same sin as the earth. The message of this is that when human life is taken, even unintentionally through negligence, the blood cries out. The world must not swallow that cry. Society must hear it, respond to it, and vindicate it.
Thus, the laws of Parshat Masei are not intended as primitive vengeance, but as a profound statement about the sanctity of human life. A human being has a divine right to live because he has free will, moral responsibility, and the capacity for eternity. Just as God designed.
Mattos includes the laws of making and annulling vows, the surprise attack on Midian (the 1967 War wasn’t the Jewish people’s first surprise attack!) in retribution for the devastation the Midianites wreaked upon the Jewish people, the purification after the war of people and vessels, dedicating a portion of the spoils to the communal good (perhaps the first Federation campaign), the request of the tribes of Reuben and Gad for their portion of land to be east of the Jordan river (yes, Trans-Jordan/Jordan is also part of the Biblical Land of Israel). Moses objects to the request because he thinks the tribes will not take part in the conquering of the Land of Israel; the tribes clarify that they will be the advance troops in the attack and thus receive permission.
Masei includes the complete list of journeys in the desert (the name of each stop hints at a deeper meaning and a lesson learned there). God commands the Jewish people to drive out the land’s inhabitants, to destroy their idols, and to divide the land by a lottery system. God establishes the borders of the Land of Israel. New leadership is appointed, Levite cities and Cities of Refuge (where an accidental murderer may seek asylum) are designated. Lastly, the laws are set forth regarding accidental and willful murder as well as inheritance laws only for that generation regarding property of a couple where each came from a different tribe.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
- Neil Degrasse Tyson
