Six months after her son Itay was murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7, Israeli midwife Galit Nachmias faced a test she never expected. She walked into a delivery room at Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva and immediately recognized the woman in labor. The patient was the niece of Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader. For a moment Galit could not breathe. She stepped outside the room because, as she later described it, her vision went black. The weight of grief, anger and shock all collided at once.
Galit had every reason to refuse the case. Her son died fighting the terrorists who stormed their community. She had stood over his body in the aftermath. She had buried him in the soil he loved. And now she was being asked to help bring a member of a terrorist’s family safely into the world.
She could have asked another midwife to switch. Instead, after a moment outside the room, she made a deliberate decision to return.
She said, “If I switch, then Haniyeh wins. This is my home. This is my work. She came to my home, so I must give her the best care and deliver her baby.” And she did exactly that. She prayed the baby would be a girl and not a boy who might grow up to be a terrorist. When the child was born, Galit felt the presence of her son. “I felt Itay with me, saying, ‘You can do it.’”
Her choice was not softness. It was strength. And it leads us to a Biblical law so ordinary that many readers might miss its moral power.
The Bible commands:
A second law echoes this in Deuteronomy, this time about a friend rather than an enemy.
The rabbis noticed the difference. When the animal belongs to an enemy, the Torah adds a phrase. Do not pass by. It names the instinct directly. The Torah knows that when someone has wronged us or harmed us, our first impulse is to walk away. But the law is clear. If another human being is in distress, action is required even when the heart resists it.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks highlighted an ancient Aramaic translation of this verse. The Targum Yonatan (the name of the commentator) reads the command as not only relieving the physical burden but releasing the emotional one. It adds the idea that one must let go of the hatred sitting in the heart. The Torah is not commanding warm feelings. It is teaching disciplined moral behavior that prevents hatred from taking root and spreading.
There is another detail. The verse says to help imo, which means with him. From this single word the sages taught that the obligation applies only if the enemy participates in the work. If he refuses, the passerby is exempt. The Torah does not ask a person to repair the world for someone who refuses responsibility for himself. It asks the individual to act correctly, not to carry someone else’s moral obligations for them.
This combination of realism and responsibility is exactly what Galit embodied. She did not deny what happened to her family. She did not erase the pain of losing her son. She simply refused to let hatred define her actions. The woman in front of her was in labor. There was a life to deliver. And Galit stepped toward that obligation because that is who she chose to be.
Her story is a living example of the Bible’s command. It is the moment when the instinct to pass by is strong, but the choice to act is stronger. It is a reminder that morality is built not in dramatic declarations but in the steady decisions to refuse hatred its victory.
