509th Composite Group aircraft immediately before their bombing mission of Hiroshima. Photo: Wikipedia

In the late 1980s, when I was a student at Ner Yisrael Yeshiva in Baltimore, I had a close friend who took night classes at Johns Hopkins University. One evening, he came back visibly shaken. That night’s guest speaker had been Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the Enola Gay and dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

My friend told me that Tibbets spoke calmly and deliberately, with the controlled precision of a career military officer. He made no attempt to dramatize what he had done, nor did he flinch from its consequences. Dropping the bomb, he said, was the correct military decision, adding bluntly, “I would do it again.”

His point was straightforward: the atomic bomb ended the war quickly and spared the world a catastrophic invasion of Japan that could have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives and untold numbers of Japanese lives as well.

Tibbets did not deny the human suffering the bomb caused, but he rejected the idea that this suffering made the mission wrong. He expressed no regret about carrying it out. In his view, it saved lives precisely because it brought the war to an immediate end.

At the time, I filed it away as an unusual but interesting historical tidbit. This week, as I walked through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the memory of hearing about Tibbets’ talk at Johns Hopkins came roaring back.

The museum is harrowing in ways that are hard to describe. Photographs of survivors, their burned skin hanging from their bodies. Metal objects fused together or melted almost beyond recognition by the heat of the blast. A hauntingly scorched child’s tricycle. A watch frozen at the exact moment the bomb detonated. Photos of victims bearing massive keloid growths years after the war, their bodies grotesquely reshaped by the long reach of that terrible day.

The suffering is overwhelming, graphic, and impossible to ignore. Tens of thousands were killed instantly. Tens of thousands more died from horrific burns in the days that followed, while others from radiation sickness and cancer years later. Most were civilians.

And yet, what struck me almost as powerfully as the horror of what was there was what wasn’t there. There is almost no context. No mention of Japan’s stubborn refusal to surrender. No discussion of the horrific war crimes committed by the Japanese across Asia. No reference to Pearl Harbor, the deadly attack on America launched by Japan in December 1941 without a declaration of war.

In fact, the Americans barely appear at all. It almost feels as if the bomb descended from the heavens – an act of cosmic cruelty, unconnected to history, agency, or responsibility.

To be clear: none of this diminishes the suffering. Nothing could. But the absence of context matters. Because without it, war becomes a morality play with only one role assigned – that of the victim – and no serious questions are asked about how wars actually end, or how they begin in the first place.

And that question is unavoidable in the 21st century: how do we reconcile our horror at the impact of war with the reality that wars sometimes must be ended decisively – because not ending them can be the worse of two evils?

Public attitudes toward the atomic bombings of Japan reveal just how uneasy we have become with that question. In 1945, immediately after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Gallup poll found that 85 percent of Americans approved of the decision, with only a small minority disapproving.

By 1990, approval had fallen to 53 percent – but it largely held steady through the early 2000s. A 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center found a clear majority of Americans still saying the bombings were justified.

But over the past decade, something has shifted. A Pew study published last August, marking the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima, shows a public deeply conflicted. Only 35 percent now say the bombings were justified. A full third are unsure. Nearly 70 percent believe nuclear weapons have made the world less safe.

To be fair, that discomfort is understandable. It is also historically naïve.

It is no coincidence that I found myself wrestling with this question in the same week we read Parshat Bo – the Torah portion that confronts this moral dilemma head-on.

The 10th plague to strike ancient Egypt, Makat Bechorot, is unlike anything that comes before it. Until that point, Egypt has endured economic collapse, environmental devastation, disease, and widespread suffering. Pharaoh has been warned, pleaded with, negotiated with. None of it works. He absorbs each blow and refuses to consider surrender.

And then, in a single night – in one devastating, irreversible moment – the war ends. Every firstborn son in Egypt dies. There is not a single home untouched by the plague. Pharaoh summons Moses in panic – he himself is a firstborn and fears for his own life – and in the dead of night the terms of redemption are agreed. By morning, the Israelites are on their way out of Egypt, free and unchallenged.

The Ramban makes an essential point that is often missed: the final plague was not merely punitive. It was decisive. The earlier plagues failed precisely because they were survivable. Pharaoh could absorb the damage, regroup, and convince himself that he could endure one more blow.

The death of the firstborn changed all that. The shock of this final plague was so absolute that Pharaoh could no longer entertain defiance.

Ramban is clear and unsentimental: gradualism is not merciful – it is ineffective. As long as Pharaoh believed Egypt could stagger on, Israel would remain enslaved. Ending the conflict required an act so overwhelming that the very idea of continued resistance collapsed.

The Maharal of Prague goes even further. He explains that Egypt was not merely an enemy nation – it was a corrupt moral system built on dehumanization and cruelty. Incremental punishment could never undo it. Only a shock powerful enough to reorder reality itself could break Egypt’s grip on history and end its cruelty. The 10th plague was not about vengeance. It was about ending Egypt’s capacity to perpetuate evil.

Seen through that lens, Hiroshima looks different – not less tragic, but more intelligible. By the summer of 1945, Japan had lost its navy, its air force, and much of its urban infrastructure. Still, it refused to surrender.

US military planners warned that a ground invasion would lead to catastrophic casualties on both sides, with civilians trapped in the middle for months or even years. The atomic bomb ended the war almost immediately. Like Makat Bechorot, it was horrifying – and precisely for that reason, it worked.

This is not an argument for cruelty. It is an argument against moral theater – against pretending that drawn-out wars fought “humanely” are somehow kinder simply because their brutality is dispersed over time and geography. There is a difference between loving peace and being unwilling to confront the cost of ending war.

The Torah never asks us to celebrate Egyptian suffering. On the contrary, our Seder night rituals deliberately acknowledge it. But the Torah also refuses to sanitize redemption. Freedom did not come through endless diplomacy or moral posturing. It came through decisive, devastating force – after every other avenue had failed.

Standing in Hiroshima, surrounded by reminders of the unimaginable pain caused by the atomic bomb, I felt the full weight of that tension. But on reflection, Paul Tibbets understood something we in the 21st century have grown uncomfortable admitting: grief and justification can coexist. Mourning and moral clarity are not opposites.

Parshat Bo teaches us that sometimes, when evil refuses to let go, we are forced into terrible choices – not because we want to make them, but because there is no other way forward. It is a lesson worth remembering in an age that fears consequences more than it fears the endurance of evil.

Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), speaks at the opening of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

The UN nuclear watchdog must clarify its stance on US and Israeli attacks on Iran‘s nuclear sites last June before inspectors are allowed to visit those facilities, Iranian media on Friday quoted the country’s atomic chief as saying.

Mohammad Eslami said the inspections so far had been limited to undamaged sites and he criticized the watchdog for letting Israeli and US pressure influence its actions.

Eslami made his comments in response to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, who said on Tuesday that the standoff over inspections “cannot go on forever.”

Grossi has not explicitly condemned or criticized the attacks nor has he formally outlined a protocol for inspecting the damaged facilities.

Access to sites that were attacked needs “a specific protocol,” Eslami said, adding: “When a military strike occurs and there are environmental risks, it must be defined and a guideline must be designed.”

“The agency has to clarify its position regarding the military attacks on the nuclear facilities that have been registered by the agency and are under its supervision so we can understand what role they play,” state TV quoted Eslami as having told reporters in Tehran on Thursday.

He said Tehran had submitted a statement at the IAEA‘s General Conference last September demanding that attacks on nuclear sites be prohibited. But it was not placed on the agenda and was ignored, he said.

“It is unrealistic, unprofessional, and unfair that, because of pressure from Israel and the US, he [Grossi] is putting pressure on us,” Eslami said.

Grossi told Reuters on Tuesday that the IAEA had inspected all 13 declared nuclear facilities in Iran that were not targeted last June but had been unable to inspect any of the three key sites that were bombed – Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan.

Syrian security forces stand guard outside al-Aqtan prison, where some Islamic State detainees are held, in Raqqa, Syria, Jan. 23, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Karam al-Masri

Syria’s government took over a prison in the north on Friday after the negotiated exit of Kurdish fighters from the facility in what a senior official said was a positive sign that a truce between the two forces could hold.

Government troops have seized swathes of northern and eastern territory in the last two weeks from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in a rapid turn of events that has consolidated President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s rule.

Sharaa’s forces were amassing around a last cluster of Kurdish-held cities in the northeast earlier this week when he abruptly announced a ceasefire, giving the SDF until Saturday night to come up with a plan to integrate with Syria’s army.

The deadline is aimed at pushing through a sweeping deal agreed on Jan. 18 that would see the semi-autonomous institutions run by Kurdish forces in the northeast over the last decade join the central state, something the SDF had resisted over the last year.

The agreement also stipulates that the government would take control of a string of SDF-run prisons and detention camps holding fighters and civilians linked to Islamic State, the ultra-conservative Sunni Islamist group that the SDF fought for years with US backing.

This week, one prison and one detention camp fell to the government after chaotic withdrawals by the SDF, in which some IS-linked individuals briefly escaped. Seeking to avoid a security breach, the government negotiated the pull-out of Kurdish fighters from the al-Aqtan prison in the northern province of Raqqa overnight.

A senior Syrian government official told Reuters on Friday the negotiations over al-Aqtan gave hope that Saturday’s deadline would yield a political solution instead of renewed fighting.

However, he said the government had not yet received a response from the SDF on its integration plan or its candidate for deputy defense minister, a post for which Sharaa had asked the SDF to nominate someone.

MILITARY PREPARATIONS UNDERWAY IN CASE TALKS FAIL

SDF sources said on Friday the deadline for their response could be extended, but the Syrian official said there was no discussion of an extension at this time.

Despite hope for a negotiated resolution, both sides have ramped up military preparations.

Syrian military officials say they are readying forces for a fight and Reuters reporters have seen army vehicles and buses of fighters arriving near the Kurdish-held city of Hasakeh, where Kurdish forces have also reinforced positions.

Senior officials from primary mediator the United States and France, which has also been coordinating ceasefire talks, have urged Sharaa not to send his troops into remaining Kurdish-held areas, diplomatic sources told Reuters.

“We are calling on the Syrian authorities to assume their full responsibility in protecting all civilians, including Kurdish civilians,” French foreign ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux said.

The US, which long backed the SDF but now sees Sharaa as its primary partner in Syria, has been helping transfer detained IS fighters from Syria to Iraq.

The SDF withdrew on Tuesday from al-Hol, which along with another camp, Roj, houses 28,000 civilians, mainly women and children who fled Islamic State’s strongholds as the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed. They include Syrians, Iraqis and 8,500 nationals of other countries.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR was able to access al-Hol camp on Friday with Syrian government officials and established contact with some camp residents, said deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq.

“Essential supplies have also resumed. Trucks carrying bread entered the camp today, facilitated by UNHCR following a three-day interruption caused by the volatile security situation inside the camp. In addition, water trucking services organized by UNICEF … were delivered yesterday, helping to partially restore access to basic services for the camp population,” Haq said.

The rapid loss of territory by the SDF in recent days is the most dramatic shift in Syria’s control map since Sharaa’s forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in late 2024.

Sharaa vowed to rule for all Syrians but minorities, including Kurds in the northeast, Druze in the south and Alawites in the west, remain deeply distrustful of him.

In a bid to improve ties, Sharaa issued a decree on Jan. 16 that designates Kurdish as a national language alongside Arabic.