"Disagreement among Jews about when the war against Hamas in Gaza should have ended has been a fascinating study in Jewish ethics and conscience. Some felt it should have ended a year ago, especially given the international pressure Israel was under, while others (like me) thought it should continue until Hamas has been destroyed."
It is quite clear today that international pressure on Israel to stop the war a year ago actually came from within. The aim was political not ethical, to prove that Netanyahu was unable to defeat Hamas ISIS.
You then wrote:
"The first Jewish king was also the first Jewish warrior. David united the Hebrew tribes."
David was the second King of Israel. The first King was Saul from the tribe of Benjamin.
You wrote: "Power is necessary for survival, yet somehow morally disqualifying."
Really? In our neighborhood without power, you're a dead duck. That has been true since the days of Abraham, Moses and Joshua.
The consequences:
"For two millennia, Jewish life survived in submission."
Never again is never again!
"Jewish ethics turned inward with survival through faith and endurance through restraint."
The price: expulsion, slaughter, rape, pogroms, slavery, inquisition and the Holocaust.
"People in Israel allergic to domination, including from their own, which helps explain why the debate in Israel about judicial reform has become so heated."
There was no debate. The Left refused debate, even though they knew and know that Judicial-reform is essential.
They created total anarchy, refusal to serve, incitement, chaos and lawlessness which brought on our country the 7th of October 2023.
"The political feeling and backlash against Netanyahu."
If that's the case, how do you explain that Netanyahu is the longest elected PM of Israel?
The political backlash by the Left is their will to cling to power which they have lost in Democratic elections so they are clawing with their remaining powers to the judicial system and key figures in control. They are losing it. Their shame was exposed with the fall of several leading positions.
I won't get into the issue of the IDF not to expose here, online, its follies.
"No army fighting for its survival should have to apologize for existing, yet Israel’s army does so daily."
Big strategic mistake, especially with the global anti-Zionist atmosphere.
I won't go i to further debate but I would recommend all readers to read the following book:
Following Heraclitus ("War is the father of everything"), Milstein developed a philosophical theory according to which the "principle of survival" is a cornerstone in the operation of all beings that exist in the world.
In the book "General Security Theory - The Survival Principle" Milstein states that according to the human survival principle all human bodies strive to survive, and that it is a drive that is greater than all other drives, and is present in all other drives as a basic component. It is a desperate attempt to overcome the certain end or at least postpone it, which stems from the primal fear of death. Therefore, security is the ontological foundation of existence wherever it is. Every human body invests survival energy to perpetuate its existence, neutralizing the natural tendency towards entropy. The main task of human beings is the accumulation of survival energy, and every human body strives to accumulate as much of it as possible for the lean days. Survival energy includes means that humans use to survive, such as intelligence, territory, property, motivation, and physical efforts. So humans are mainly busy accumulating residual energy, which is also, among other things, the main motive behind all economic activity and capitalist capital accumulation. Sometimes an excessive attempt to accumulate survival energy may endanger the existence of the accumulated body or reduce its survivability, such as the strengthening of the Soviet army after World War II, or the strengthening of the IDF after the Six Day War, or the strengthening of the Iraqi army and its invasion of Kuwait.
Every human body is made up of many parts. Each part has its own existence, and each part has entropy processes. The interest of the survival of each part is stronger than the interest of the part in the existence of the whole body. The strongest and most serious threat to anybody is not the external threat but rather the internal one, the contradictions between the different parts of the whole, between themselves, and between them and the whole. Every body in the universe contradicts and threatens another body because it occupies a chunk of matter or energy that might be available to another body. The myth of security greatly empowers external enemies and ignores internal enemies that are more common and more dangerous to the survival of any system.
The intelligence, which is the unique ability of Homo sapiens to learn how to improve its survival abilities, developed in an evolutionary process due to its high survival value. The more a person invests in intelligence, the greater his chance of survival.
A necessary condition for the empowerment of intelligence is communication at a high level. And regular and egalitarian social life is a necessary condition for the existence of intelligent verbal communication, therefore a political entity that maintains a continuity of social life and acts by force against its enemies, is a necessary condition for the existence of intelligent beings. And democratic government is the optimal form of government from an intelligent point of view, because it has intelligent verbal communication between the decision-makers, the implementers and those affected by them, and there are no people immune to criticism. Milstein concludes that the fundamental anthropological model for understanding human behavior is the battle, in which each side strives to neutralize the other side to the point of destruction. This is the case in the financial field, in relation to spouses, in the jealousy of writers, and more.
The actions of the state are determined by the leaders who strive to survive happily and feel threatened when their political survival is threatened. Because they worry about their survival, sometimes a contradiction arises between the concern for themselves and the stratum they came from and the survival of all citizens. The state has a survival interest in fostering in its residents a sense of mutual dependence, and therefore, it fosters the institutions of family, religion, and national sentiment. The concept of political sovereignty includes the unlimited legitimate ability of the state to impose its will on all citizens, therefore the decision-makers direct the laws, culture, social values and ideologies to suit their desire to preserve their legitimate and unlimited ability to coerce. But for the most part, they do not exercise the power of coercion because they fear the loss of national approval. For the leaders, the survival of the country is a supreme value, which will justify the use of any means. Placing the survival of the state at the top of all interests is affected and will affect the human race more than any other factor.
In order to maintain their survival, the countries established security systems whose main components are police, army, and secret agencies. The security system is the main survival energy of political systems. The security systems have a dual character, they are designed to ensure the existence of the state, but they have an interest in ensuring their own existence, which can sometimes pose a threat to the survival of the state as in the case of the Soviet Army. All war is organized human violence designed to threaten or protect a political system. Every war, internal and external, is for or against a new order. Military systems because they are closed and undemocratic hierarchical systems, the level of intelligent communication in them is low, and it is difficult to reach the truth in them, therefore in these systems there is no process of intelligent learning of lessons, but rather a process of "Darwinian learning of lessons" of natural selection.
“The secular West has no answer. It no longer believes in holiness, only in legality (and it cannot define that meaningfully). It has turned international law into a weapon to wield against Israel. Legality without sanctity produces cynicism and Israel, like Judaism itself, was not built to be cynical, but life-affirming.
For Jews, power is not a license; it is part of the covenant. It is permission bound by purpose and sovereignty tethered to self-restraint. It is the paradox of a people commanded to be both a light unto nations and a shield unto itself.”
Now I understand how vile the charges of war crimes, genocide and other charges of immorality are and how they affect the IDF, the country they defend, and why the charges are loudly repeated. These are intentionally aimed weapons to wound the Israeli soul. Makes me hurt.
The conflict of being commanded to be holy and also forced to fight reminds me of another relevant seemingly conflicting reality. Israel is commanded to be a separate, unique light unto the nations and yet Zionism strove justly for a normalisation of the Jewish People's status amongst the nations.
Normal includes all forms of human behaviour. In Israel there are rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers, murderers, traitors, and criminals of all sorts. Those crimes had not been normal for the people in the diaspora.
I remember a debate at Cambridge University in 2010 where the motion was " Israel is a rogue state". Gabriel Latner, 19, supporting the motion, explained that if normal was being like the Arab states and others, then Israel, being anomalous, was indeed " rogue " by comparison. But that, which won the debate, was a genius stunt asserting what we already know: that Israel is different. That's its blessing and its curse.
As for being a light unto the nations, reconciling that cherished and veritable notion with the pitfalls of Zionism's dreamed normalcy is still a challenge. Israel is indeed a light. In all that it undertakes, science, medicine, creativity, research, but all those successes and Nobel prizes elicit envy and hatred, the opposite reaction to their benefits to the public good.
At the end, when we hit our heads against the wall trying to understand any of this, asking why would destiny not allow Israel finally to live in peace, why the Muslims are still of such murderous intent and why the West, itself in danger of civilisational collapse, cooperates with that genocidal intent, we might abandon reason and logic and imagine that perhaps Israel is God's laboratory, put through such extremes, dangers and demands, of inner and outward refinement, by fire. A fantastic creature , still a work in progress.
"Normal includes all forms of human behavior. In Israel there are rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers, murderers, traitors, and criminals of all sorts. Those crimes had not been normal for the people in the diaspora."
That's a joke right?
Ever heard of Murder, Inc in the United States. It was a business run by Jews and Italians (The Mafia) in the US that was a murder for hire business and wow, was it successful. No other business like it in American history.
Pay a few $1,000 and we will murder anybody for you.
It was led by Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Louie Buchalter. It's number one murderer: Louis Strauss who murdered 100 people in cold blood. It was run out of a business in the Lower East Side in NYC. I was born in NYC in the 1940's and my father, born in 1904, had a Jewish business associate in that neighborhood in a different business entirely. Totally legit. Neither was involved in Murder Inc but I grew up knowing all about it, so spare us the "those crimes had not been normal for the people of the diaspora.
Murder Inc existed before the modern state of Israel.
I went to school in Newport Ri where America's oldest synagogue is located - Touro. It was built by Sephardic Jews in the 18th century. Where did they get their money for it? They were the owner's of ships that brought slaves to America - the African Slave Trade.
Both Christianity and Judaism have strong moral codes, but we both have a lot of bad actors and they have been with us for a long time.
All the old Empires had bloody records too. Check King Henry VIII here in the UK. From him, Military Empires as Businesses. And the conquest of South Eastern Europe and the slave armies by the Muslim Turks before even then.
You have vastly misunderstood. A leap of mystical faith for the heck of it , a most Jewish tradition, is as far from your extreme and political scenarios as reason is from conspiracy theories. Beware of generalities and confusion of categories.
This question can never be completely answered, because War and Peace are opposites. Remember what Christ, who was Jewish, said on the subject: ‘The meek inherit the earth’. Why? Because the Belligerent kill themselves off in fighting. Beware: post-world war Two, the Nazis in The State have attempted to surround us with War. (They did the same to Russia in 2014) They will do so again, we have just monitored. We monitored in 2014 here in London that Hamas was a front for Nazis in Europe. And all Jewish children are attacked subliminally by Nazis using military kit, as I was. We have proved this. We may be surrounded by Nazis, but our hearts are at peace. Teach this, and we will survive and win this too.
Hello Mr. Kaplan
You write:
"Disagreement among Jews about when the war against Hamas in Gaza should have ended has been a fascinating study in Jewish ethics and conscience. Some felt it should have ended a year ago, especially given the international pressure Israel was under, while others (like me) thought it should continue until Hamas has been destroyed."
It is quite clear today that international pressure on Israel to stop the war a year ago actually came from within. The aim was political not ethical, to prove that Netanyahu was unable to defeat Hamas ISIS.
You then wrote:
"The first Jewish king was also the first Jewish warrior. David united the Hebrew tribes."
David was the second King of Israel. The first King was Saul from the tribe of Benjamin.
You wrote: "Power is necessary for survival, yet somehow morally disqualifying."
Really? In our neighborhood without power, you're a dead duck. That has been true since the days of Abraham, Moses and Joshua.
The consequences:
"For two millennia, Jewish life survived in submission."
Never again is never again!
"Jewish ethics turned inward with survival through faith and endurance through restraint."
The price: expulsion, slaughter, rape, pogroms, slavery, inquisition and the Holocaust.
"People in Israel allergic to domination, including from their own, which helps explain why the debate in Israel about judicial reform has become so heated."
There was no debate. The Left refused debate, even though they knew and know that Judicial-reform is essential.
They created total anarchy, refusal to serve, incitement, chaos and lawlessness which brought on our country the 7th of October 2023.
"The political feeling and backlash against Netanyahu."
If that's the case, how do you explain that Netanyahu is the longest elected PM of Israel?
The political backlash by the Left is their will to cling to power which they have lost in Democratic elections so they are clawing with their remaining powers to the judicial system and key figures in control. They are losing it. Their shame was exposed with the fall of several leading positions.
I won't get into the issue of the IDF not to expose here, online, its follies.
"No army fighting for its survival should have to apologize for existing, yet Israel’s army does so daily."
Big strategic mistake, especially with the global anti-Zionist atmosphere.
I won't go i to further debate but I would recommend all readers to read the following book:
The principle of survival by Dr. Uri Milstein
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Milstein
Following Heraclitus ("War is the father of everything"), Milstein developed a philosophical theory according to which the "principle of survival" is a cornerstone in the operation of all beings that exist in the world.
In the book "General Security Theory - The Survival Principle" Milstein states that according to the human survival principle all human bodies strive to survive, and that it is a drive that is greater than all other drives, and is present in all other drives as a basic component. It is a desperate attempt to overcome the certain end or at least postpone it, which stems from the primal fear of death. Therefore, security is the ontological foundation of existence wherever it is. Every human body invests survival energy to perpetuate its existence, neutralizing the natural tendency towards entropy. The main task of human beings is the accumulation of survival energy, and every human body strives to accumulate as much of it as possible for the lean days. Survival energy includes means that humans use to survive, such as intelligence, territory, property, motivation, and physical efforts. So humans are mainly busy accumulating residual energy, which is also, among other things, the main motive behind all economic activity and capitalist capital accumulation. Sometimes an excessive attempt to accumulate survival energy may endanger the existence of the accumulated body or reduce its survivability, such as the strengthening of the Soviet army after World War II, or the strengthening of the IDF after the Six Day War, or the strengthening of the Iraqi army and its invasion of Kuwait.
Every human body is made up of many parts. Each part has its own existence, and each part has entropy processes. The interest of the survival of each part is stronger than the interest of the part in the existence of the whole body. The strongest and most serious threat to anybody is not the external threat but rather the internal one, the contradictions between the different parts of the whole, between themselves, and between them and the whole. Every body in the universe contradicts and threatens another body because it occupies a chunk of matter or energy that might be available to another body. The myth of security greatly empowers external enemies and ignores internal enemies that are more common and more dangerous to the survival of any system.
The intelligence, which is the unique ability of Homo sapiens to learn how to improve its survival abilities, developed in an evolutionary process due to its high survival value. The more a person invests in intelligence, the greater his chance of survival.
A necessary condition for the empowerment of intelligence is communication at a high level. And regular and egalitarian social life is a necessary condition for the existence of intelligent verbal communication, therefore a political entity that maintains a continuity of social life and acts by force against its enemies, is a necessary condition for the existence of intelligent beings. And democratic government is the optimal form of government from an intelligent point of view, because it has intelligent verbal communication between the decision-makers, the implementers and those affected by them, and there are no people immune to criticism. Milstein concludes that the fundamental anthropological model for understanding human behavior is the battle, in which each side strives to neutralize the other side to the point of destruction. This is the case in the financial field, in relation to spouses, in the jealousy of writers, and more.
The actions of the state are determined by the leaders who strive to survive happily and feel threatened when their political survival is threatened. Because they worry about their survival, sometimes a contradiction arises between the concern for themselves and the stratum they came from and the survival of all citizens. The state has a survival interest in fostering in its residents a sense of mutual dependence, and therefore, it fosters the institutions of family, religion, and national sentiment. The concept of political sovereignty includes the unlimited legitimate ability of the state to impose its will on all citizens, therefore the decision-makers direct the laws, culture, social values and ideologies to suit their desire to preserve their legitimate and unlimited ability to coerce. But for the most part, they do not exercise the power of coercion because they fear the loss of national approval. For the leaders, the survival of the country is a supreme value, which will justify the use of any means. Placing the survival of the state at the top of all interests is affected and will affect the human race more than any other factor.
In order to maintain their survival, the countries established security systems whose main components are police, army, and secret agencies. The security system is the main survival energy of political systems. The security systems have a dual character, they are designed to ensure the existence of the state, but they have an interest in ensuring their own existence, which can sometimes pose a threat to the survival of the state as in the case of the Soviet Army. All war is organized human violence designed to threaten or protect a political system. Every war, internal and external, is for or against a new order. Military systems because they are closed and undemocratic hierarchical systems, the level of intelligent communication in them is low, and it is difficult to reach the truth in them, therefore in these systems there is no process of intelligent learning of lessons, but rather a process of "Darwinian learning of lessons" of natural selection.
“The secular West has no answer. It no longer believes in holiness, only in legality (and it cannot define that meaningfully). It has turned international law into a weapon to wield against Israel. Legality without sanctity produces cynicism and Israel, like Judaism itself, was not built to be cynical, but life-affirming.
For Jews, power is not a license; it is part of the covenant. It is permission bound by purpose and sovereignty tethered to self-restraint. It is the paradox of a people commanded to be both a light unto nations and a shield unto itself.”
Excellent essay!
Now I understand how vile the charges of war crimes, genocide and other charges of immorality are and how they affect the IDF, the country they defend, and why the charges are loudly repeated. These are intentionally aimed weapons to wound the Israeli soul. Makes me hurt.
Beautiful. Just beautiful. Thanks, Nachum.
The conflict of being commanded to be holy and also forced to fight reminds me of another relevant seemingly conflicting reality. Israel is commanded to be a separate, unique light unto the nations and yet Zionism strove justly for a normalisation of the Jewish People's status amongst the nations.
Normal includes all forms of human behaviour. In Israel there are rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers, murderers, traitors, and criminals of all sorts. Those crimes had not been normal for the people in the diaspora.
I remember a debate at Cambridge University in 2010 where the motion was " Israel is a rogue state". Gabriel Latner, 19, supporting the motion, explained that if normal was being like the Arab states and others, then Israel, being anomalous, was indeed " rogue " by comparison. But that, which won the debate, was a genius stunt asserting what we already know: that Israel is different. That's its blessing and its curse.
As for being a light unto the nations, reconciling that cherished and veritable notion with the pitfalls of Zionism's dreamed normalcy is still a challenge. Israel is indeed a light. In all that it undertakes, science, medicine, creativity, research, but all those successes and Nobel prizes elicit envy and hatred, the opposite reaction to their benefits to the public good.
At the end, when we hit our heads against the wall trying to understand any of this, asking why would destiny not allow Israel finally to live in peace, why the Muslims are still of such murderous intent and why the West, itself in danger of civilisational collapse, cooperates with that genocidal intent, we might abandon reason and logic and imagine that perhaps Israel is God's laboratory, put through such extremes, dangers and demands, of inner and outward refinement, by fire. A fantastic creature , still a work in progress.
"Normal includes all forms of human behavior. In Israel there are rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers, murderers, traitors, and criminals of all sorts. Those crimes had not been normal for the people in the diaspora."
That's a joke right?
Ever heard of Murder, Inc in the United States. It was a business run by Jews and Italians (The Mafia) in the US that was a murder for hire business and wow, was it successful. No other business like it in American history.
Pay a few $1,000 and we will murder anybody for you.
It was led by Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Louie Buchalter. It's number one murderer: Louis Strauss who murdered 100 people in cold blood. It was run out of a business in the Lower East Side in NYC. I was born in NYC in the 1940's and my father, born in 1904, had a Jewish business associate in that neighborhood in a different business entirely. Totally legit. Neither was involved in Murder Inc but I grew up knowing all about it, so spare us the "those crimes had not been normal for the people of the diaspora.
Murder Inc existed before the modern state of Israel.
I went to school in Newport Ri where America's oldest synagogue is located - Touro. It was built by Sephardic Jews in the 18th century. Where did they get their money for it? They were the owner's of ships that brought slaves to America - the African Slave Trade.
Both Christianity and Judaism have strong moral codes, but we both have a lot of bad actors and they have been with us for a long time.
Great article by the way.
All the old Empires had bloody records too. Check King Henry VIII here in the UK. From him, Military Empires as Businesses. And the conquest of South Eastern Europe and the slave armies by the Muslim Turks before even then.
NEVER ABANDON REASON. (G-d’s laboratory or not!) Both Religious and Nazi Extremism abandoned reason. This is why they have lost.
You have vastly misunderstood. A leap of mystical faith for the heck of it , a most Jewish tradition, is as far from your extreme and political scenarios as reason is from conspiracy theories. Beware of generalities and confusion of categories.
This question can never be completely answered, because War and Peace are opposites. Remember what Christ, who was Jewish, said on the subject: ‘The meek inherit the earth’. Why? Because the Belligerent kill themselves off in fighting. Beware: post-world war Two, the Nazis in The State have attempted to surround us with War. (They did the same to Russia in 2014) They will do so again, we have just monitored. We monitored in 2014 here in London that Hamas was a front for Nazis in Europe. And all Jewish children are attacked subliminally by Nazis using military kit, as I was. We have proved this. We may be surrounded by Nazis, but our hearts are at peace. Teach this, and we will survive and win this too.