So Joseph says to the Pharaoh in the animated movie, Prince of Egypt.
Listening to Bill O'Reilly's "Killing the Rising Sun," which just described the fire-bombing of Tokyo, those words came to mind. In response to Pearl Harbor, America did far, far worse than Israel is doing to Gaza. And even after that napalm fire-bombing, something much worse was coming.
I can't say it was right. But that the nation of Japan had earned that judgement, as a collective whole (not the kids who got naped or nuked, of course!), is hard to deny. And the "hardening of Pharaoh's heart" was just as evident. They should have naped the Imperial Palace, instead. Hirohito had earned that act of wrath, is hard to deny.
"Hardening of the hearts" filters down, though. It takes terrible tragedy for a people with hardened hearts to see the evil they have done to others, for what it is.