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We Must See Through the Disguise of Evil
Anti-Israel demonstrators release smoke in the colors of the Palestinian flag as they protest to condemn the Israeli forces’ interception of some of the vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla aiming to reach Gaza and break Israel’s naval blockade, in Barcelona, Spain, Oct. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nacho Doce
Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the most respected theologians of the 20th century, often warned that moral certainty can be as dangerous as moral blindness.
Niebuhr understood that evil rarely shows up wearing horns and carrying a pitchfork. Instead, it dresses itself in virtue, marches under banners of justice, and speaks in the name of compassion. As Niebuhr put it: “Evil loves to disguise itself as good.”
This past week, Greta Thunberg — who first emerged as a precocious teenage climate activist, but has since become one of the most recognizable faces of the “Free Palestine” movement — proved Niebuhr’s point in vivid color.
In a grotesque distortion of reality, Thunberg gave an interview claiming she was “beaten, kicked, and threatened with gassing” by Israelis during her brief time in Israel after being removed from the flotilla.
Her tale of “drones dropping gas bombs” on the flotilla, of being dragged to the ground by armed men on arrival in Israel, and then being locked in a cage while taunted and kicked, reads like a fever dream — the kind of deranged fantasy that would embarrass a third-rate propagandist.
Yet in today’s moral circus, absurdity is no barrier to belief when the villain is Israel and the storyteller is a sainted activist.
Here was a young woman, once seen as the face of idealism, invoking the imagery of Holocaust atrocities and scenes of grotesque torture to demonize Jews, descendants of those who endured those horrors.
Her interview is a concoction of lurid, self-serving fantasy — the innocent, virtuous fighter for goodness cast as a victim of unspeakable cruelty — a pantomime of righteousness that is, in truth, nothing more than repugnant evil. Not only because it is false, but because she cloaked her invented suffering in the language of moral purity.
And she is hardly alone. The same moral theater has been performed by the legions of “Free Palestine” advocates who filled streets and campuses for two years demanding a ceasefire — only to fall utterly silent once that ceasefire arrived and Jewish hostages were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners at the staggering ratio of one hundred to one.
For all their talk of peace and humanity, these activists’ compassion evaporated the moment the fighting paused. Because their outrage was never about saving lives – it was about condemning Israel. That is why it is evil. These self-styled champions of justice were never rooting for peace — they were rooting for Israel’s destruction: the elimination of the Jewish State and, if history is any guide, the elimination of Jews.
But none of this is new. From the dawn of creation, evil has triumphed not by being ugly, but by masquerading as beauty. Its most dangerous form is not open malice, but moral disguise.
The very first story in the Book of Books — the Torah — exposes this truth from the outset, warning us that what appears good is often the worst evil imaginable. Shortly after the creation of Adam and Eve, humanity’s prototype couple, they encounter the serpent — the world’s first embodiment of evil.
But the serpent doesn’t hiss threats or declare itself God’s enemy. On the contrary, it speaks the language of progress, self-empowerment, and enlightenment (Gen. 3:5): “For God knows that when you eat of [the Tree of Knowledge], your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.“
Who wouldn’t want to be like God, the ultimate good? In that moment, sin wasn’t presented as rebellion — it was presented as moral advancement. The serpent doesn’t promise wickedness; it promises virtue.
The Midrash Tanchuma captures this deception perfectly: “The serpent approached her with words of friendship.” It spoke softly. It offered companionship. It offered her a path to becoming a better version of herself.
The Midrash’s phrase “words of friendship” is brilliant. Because evil’s first disguise is not as an enemy, but as a friend. How perfectly that describes so many moral crusaders of our own time. They come bearing empathy, waving the flag of justice, speaking of freedom and compassion — but beneath that promise of goodness lies malice and deceit.
The Ramban adds another dimension. He notes that the serpent’s words were not entirely false. In fact, the deception lay in their half-truth. Eating from the tree would open the human mind to greater awareness.
As Ramban explains, evil never triumphs by denying goodness outright. It triumphs by redefining it. That is why he calls the Biblical serpent “the most cunning of creatures.” By cunning, he does not mean intelligent – he means manipulative. Evil never approaches us as evil. It comes dressed as the finest form of good. And that is what makes it so dangerous.
The Meshech Chochma takes this one step further. He observes that Eve’s reasoning was layered with justification: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” Each motive sounds noble.
Eve wasn’t chasing pleasure or greed — she needed food, she appreciated beauty, and she was yearning for wisdom. But that is precisely what made it all so dangerous. The evil was rationalized in the language of good.
And every moral failure in human history has followed the same pattern. People do not commit evil while calling it evil – they convince themselves they are doing good. Every ideological movement that has unleashed destruction on the world has begun with the same refrain: “We are fighting for justice.”
And so it is today. The woke left has perfected the art of moral inversion — the cloaking of malice in virtue. They proclaim themselves champions of the oppressed, but their selective compassion exposes their true motives. They weep for aggressors and scorn their victims. They champion “human rights,” but only when those who are suffering aren’t Jews. They tell themselves — and the world — that they are building a better society.
In truth, they are constructing a world where facts are negotiable, morality is political, and good people are the ones you decide are good. In that world, lying is not a sin – it’s a strategy. These do-gooders are the spiritual heirs of the Biblical serpent — fluent in the language of compassion, but devoted to the cause of destruction.
And that, in a sense, is what the Torah story foresaw. Evil does not announce, “I will destroy the world.” It declares, “I will perfect it.” It does not preach hatred — it preaches justice. But in the end, it is evil, pure and simple.
The Greta Thunberg story is absurd, but it is also deeply symbolic. She represents countless others like her who have mistaken emotion for ethics and outrage for morality. Like Eve gazing at the fruit, they see what is “good for food” and “delightful to the eyes,” but never stop to ask whether it is right.
Niebuhr was correct: evil loves to disguise itself as good. It does so because it knows that goodness is our deepest desire — and therefore our easiest weakness. Like the serpent in Eden, every false prophet of virtue since has used the same tactic.
Darkness is easy to recognize, but evil is not. Darkness is the absence of light. Evil bends the light, until lies look like truth and hatred feels like compassion. And when that happens, our only defense is the one the Torah prescribes — clarity, humility, and the courage to see through the disguise.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.