OPINION:
The Jewish festival of Passover celebrates a triumph of good over evil for all time (“Passover and the eternal struggle of good and evil,” web, April 20). But this year, that eternal story intertwined with the specific evil of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,200 people (and the kidnapping of 253 more) in Israel.
The story of Passover begins with Egypt’s brutal oppression of the Israelites, including the massacring of infants. Similarly, on Oct. 7 Hamas terrorists butchered, bound and burned alive Israeli babies in kibbutzim, tossed grenades into bomb shelters where Israeli families had taken refuge, raped, beheaded and sexually mutilated Israeli women, girls and men, and slaughtered hundreds of young Israelis at an outdoor music festival celebrating peace on Simhat Torah.
During the Passover Seder, Jews recall Moses telling Pharaoh three millenniums ago: “Let my people go!” With the hostages enduring unimaginable horrors and in imminent peril, those words resonate anew.
The Passover story culminates with the exodus from Egypt and the Israelites passing from slavery into freedom. Today, seven months after their abduction, 129 hostages (including many killed in captivity) remain prisoners of Hamas in Gaza. They include six American citizens, among them Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, who lost an arm to a Hamas grenade on Oct. 7. (Hamas attacked the shelter where Mr. Goldberg-Polin and others had taken refuge; his best friend, Aner Shapira, 22, heroically threw seven Hamas grenades back out of the shelter before losing his life to the eighth.)
The hostages also include Israeli women and children such as Noa Argamani, 26, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa and Agam Berger, all 19, Liri Albag, 18, and Kfir and Ariel Bibas, ages 9 months and 4 years, respectively, when kidnapped.
These innocent captives still await their own exodus into freedom.
STEPHEN A. SILVER
San Francisco
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