Fighting for Peace in Gaza

As a follow-up to the previous post, I hope it is obvious to my readers that there is a profound distinction between pursuing justice/revenge and self-defense. Israel’s actions in Gaza are defensible to the extent that they make it less likely that an attack like October 7 will ever happen again. If it were not possible to eliminate Hamas as a military force (distinct from a political ideology) or at least degrade them as a fighting force so that it would take them years to rebuild then fighting this war would be immoral. Obviously, one cannot justify killing Palestinian civilians simply in retaliation for Hamas’ actions. (As opposed to accepting their deaths as tragic collateral damage brought about by Hamas’ decision to use their own people as human shields.) But even the death of Hamas leaders by themselves could not be justified if it were simply a matter of giving them what they deserve.

If Yahya Sinwar would release the hostages and decide to live in peace with Israel, then Israel should accept a ceasefire with Hamas. Granted, I have a hard time imagining what Sinwar could say at this point that could convince me that he was serious about peace. He may deserve death many times over but that is not our job. I do not care about giving members of Hamas what they deserve. All that matters is protecting the lives of the people living in Israel.

The Oslo Accords made sense in theory. If Yassir Arafat was willing to live in peace with Israel, then the right thing to do was to give him control over the West Bank and Gaza. It was not that Arafat suddenly became a good person whose terrorism should be forgiven. In truth, Israel was relying on his lack of virtue, to be willing to sell out his principles in exchange for political power and respectability. It turned out in the end that Arafat had no intention of pursuing peace and Israel paid the price for trusting him. Similarly, I supported Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 on the logic that, even if it would not lead to peace, it would place Israeli soldiers out of immediate harm’s way as well as grant Israel the moral credibility on the international stage to respond to Palestinian terrorism.

My fundamental mistake regarding the peace process was that I assumed that there was a significant element of the opposition to Israel, at least in the West, that was rational and moral and could, therefore, be satisfied with good faith efforts on the part of Israel to compromise and demonstrate that it took what its critics said to heart. Furthermore, I assumed that the threat of alienating the “decent” opponents of Israel would keep the radicals in line. For example, one would have imagined that Hamas would tell its fighters not to murder children because if pictures of dead Israeli babies showed up on TV that would undermine support for the Palestinian cause among American college students. I was wrong in these assumptions. As such, more than feeling betrayed by the Palestinians for turning down every chance they had for a State of their own, I feel betrayed by the Western Left and no longer trust them to make any pretense of living up to their own stated values when it comes to Israel.

Under the present circumstances, the foundation of my approach to Israel is that I do not see how there can be any concessions on the part of Israel that would not lead directly to dead Israelis and likely even dead Jews around the world. As such, there are no concessions that Israel can make in good faith. Even the concessions that Israel offers the United States, such as allowing aid to Gaza that will go straight to Hamas, should be seen as making a Faustian bargain of sacrificing Israeli lives in exchange for weapons and a veto at the United Nations. Perhaps, it is necessary but certainly not something that I can ever be comfortable with.         

Avenging Noam: Why Oppression Does Not Create Terrorists

 

It is commonly argued that oppression leads to violence. This argument can take the form of outright apologetics for terrorism. It is “understandable” that Hamas launched the attacks of October 7th as they are responding to 75 years of oppression. There is a more subtle version of this argument that grants that what Hamas did was wrong but suggests that Israel’s response is only going to create more terrorists. Every Palestinian killed in Gaza is going to cause their relatives to become terrorists. This argument seems contrary to practical experience. Everyone is oppressed to some degree. Most people do not turn to violence unless pushed by some propaganda effort.

My middle name comes from my half-second cousin, Noam Yehuda. (His grandmother, Sarah Wachtfogel, was my grandmother’s older half-sister from their father’s first marriage.) Noam was killed in Lebanon the year before I was born. As I understand it, he was hit by the shrapnel of an exploding tank caused by a Syrian missile. Presumably, the Syrian soldier who fired that missile is still alive somewhere. How would I respond if given his name and address? Would I seek “justice” for Noam and kill this Syrian? One thinks of the scene in the show Gotham where the young Bruce Wayne confronts his parents' killer.

 

I was not raised to kill people. For that matter, I was not raised to pursue justice, but rather peace. As such, I would introduce myself to the soldier and explain how we are connected through this person Noam. I would assure him that I mean him no harm, recognizing that he was a soldier who did his duty just as Noam was a soldier doing his duty. Perhaps I would invite him to join me at Noam’s grave to pray. Is this what Noam’s killer deserves? I am not trying to achieve justice. The best way to honor Noam is to bring peace and that means shaking hands with murderers (assuming that they are not using the peace treaty as cover to plan more attacks) and letting them live their lives without getting the justice they deserve. Noam's killer needs to make his own peace with God. It is not my job to hasten that appointment or to help him atone through his death.  

If I were to shoot this man and claim that I was avenging Noam, perhaps you might believe me that I was pursuing justice, however misguided my actions might be. If I were to torture the man before proceeding to murder his family and then shoot up a Syrian kindergarten, it would be obvious that, whatever my claims for striking back against oppression, I was doing this because I was a murderous psychopath using idealistic rhetoric as a moral fig leaf. What if I were aided in my killing spree by several thousand American Orthodox Jews? If such an atrocity were possible, it would show that the American Orthodox educational system was not just raising kids with a giant oppression complex but was brainwashing kids and raising a generation of killers.

Note that this is a distinct issue from whether such actions could be justified. Even if defensible, such an atrocity could only be carried out by moral monsters. Decent people the world over would, therefore, be justified in protecting themselves against this menace and would not have to worry about creating more "Jewish terrorists." The terrorists are being created no matter what anyone does. All that is left is to eliminate those terrorists in the short run. In the long run, it will be necessary to go after the larger system that manufactures these terrorists. This would mean taking out political leaders who arm and finance these “justice warriors” as well as the “educators,” who gave them the idea that they had any business pursuing justice through violence. 

One can believe that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is unjust and that Palestinians have the right to violently resist. But, even if Israel was the moral equivalent of Nazi Germany, that would not explain what happened on October 7th. The Hamas fighters would not have raped women and murdered babies, even if those women and babies deserved to be raped and murdered, unless they were raised within a system that actively encouraged them to do so. We have no reason to assume that the Hamas propaganda machine would suddenly stop even if Israel agreed to a ceasefire or even surrendered. As such, Israel has no reason to worry about creating more terrorists. Those terrorists are being created no matter what Israel does so Israel can do nothing but try to kill as many terrorists as possible and prepare to do the same to the next generation.