Great, line, as often, broad historical perspective is enlightening:
"This is the 21st century, where the horrors of war are televised worldwide. The political fallout, and the resultant economic and military consequences, would quite simply mean the end of Israel. Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t thought it through, and/or is as delusional as the Jewish zealots of 2000 years ago who thought they could hole themselves up in Jerusalem and defeat the Roman Empire."
The Syrian rebels took Syria in 2 weeks (where the horrors of war are televised worldwide). They keep committing atrocities and the leader keeps getting invited to meeting with world leaders.
Like it or not Israel is judged worldwide on a far higher moral plane than Syrian or other Arab armed forces and we implicitly accept that higher standard.
That's interesting i remember an essay from 1983 where the author whined that South Africa was being held to an unfair high standard despite all the African despotism elsewhere. You're not understanding the issue. Syria and Egypt don't compete in EUROVISION. I have been forced to be complicit in Israel's genocide, I have a lot less to do with HTS and Jolani. But with the Gaza genocide, my daily habits of life make me feel dirty. It's on me. Syria is not on me.
Once we were discussing how the Hasmonean revolt differed from Bar Kochba's revolt. In both instances, the Jews are outnumbered. Nonetheless, the Hasmoneans achieved independence for almost two centuries, while Bar Kochba had independence for around three years, until Rome used a scorched earth policy and crushed his rebellion.
I understand that the Hasmonean rebellion had more favorable conditions for the Jews. The Greek Empire broke up into 4 parts, and the other parts were hoping to weaken the Syrian Greek part by assisting the Hasmoneans.
You make many good points about Gazans. Reminds me of when my kids were young and we would be driving to Indiana to visit the grandparents. My kids, all under age 6, would chime in, "Daddy, drive 'limit speed," you aren't driving 'limit speed' and everybody is passing us." I would tell them everybody is not passing us, it just seems that way because you can't see all the cars that are not passing us.
Because Shmuel HaNavi and Medrash Kohelet said it all. You must have been influenced by Pope Leo’s speech. You’re on the same page. And I subscribe because sometimes you have interesting and intelligent things to say.
A debate over the right to enact genocide could never resolve to a factual debate. It will ultimately come down to a debate of common human interests against those who believe that one special people may abuse us non-peoples. Reasoned debate can never bridge the gap between class interests. You tried to present the fact - such extermination would end Israel - they don't care. They think it is worth the risk, and they can take on the world, and they'd rather blow it all up if they can't have the whole board. If democracy is an issue then take down democracy. And they have the nukes, they have the power. They will not listen to reason. They can only be brought to heel by superior and opposing force.
If there are innocents in Azza then why are they not giving voice to their concerns.
Don't tell me it's because they are afraid. There are many many many examples of people who were afraid but still stood up against evil. Point in question Warsaw uprising. They new that they would probably not survive and yet still they stood up for truth, fought and ultimately died.
If there are "innocents" in Azza let them stand up and be counted.
This is absolutely true. Everyone likes to enjoy the fantasy that THEY would be the ones to stand up to evil tyranny. In reality, people start compromising their values long in advance of outright tyranny as they sense where their own path to survival will lie. You can see something like this in the US with Trump. Republicans who would never in a million years would want this guy very quickly sense that this is the guy with the power and realize they better "get on board", and it's so easy to dismiss your principles anyway. Who's checking? Principles don't pay the bills.
If you're living in a dictatorship, and your life and your family's lives are riding on what you do and say in public and in private, going along is the only option for most people. And because of cognitive dissonance, most people will not in fact think "I'm going along with evil to save myself." They will adjust their beliefs so that the evil is not so evil after all, or that they are not really going along with it.
I think this is part of what people often miss in Neimoller's "First they came" poem: To preserve your own well-being, you will rationalize away the assault on other people's well-being. That means you will find reasons why innocent people are not "actually" so innocent, and deserve what they get. And you see the same thing with innocent civilians in Gaza. How many times have we heard from Jewish sources, "well, they're not so innocent," and somehow the idea that a 5 year-old is not innocent is accepted uncritically.
As far as the Warsaw ghetto, those people were brave beyond belief, but if you know you are probably going to die one way or the other, that's a different calculation. They were prisoners fighting for a slim chance at their own survival, they were not making a moral stand "for truth" against the tyranny of their own government. I don't really see the comparison you are making.
If most people don't have the strength to stand against evil, then why should it matter whether or not there are innocents in Gaza? Not that they should all be killed, God forbid, but why should anyone who can't resist Hamas be allowed to stay in Gaza as long as Hamas is still a going concern?
If the unity of the Palestinian people collapsed, Netanyahu has been very clear, they will all be driven from the land. Sorry, what's next, "why don't these people bend over and pull open their juicy asshole for me?"
Ok, but in order to be credible you need to provide a REAL alternative (sending special forces to kill only Hamas and 'save the princess is not one of them).
So, what's your plan to win the war? How many soldiers are you willing to lose? Are you willing to fight for 10 years?
Thank you, Natan. Regarding innocents in Gaza, I just want to add that even if someone cheered for Hamas, as ugly as that is I still don't believe it would be acceptable to starve them.
The alternative to letting humanitarian aid into Gaza doesn't have to be "let's starve them".
The problem until now has been that the humanitarian aid is seized by Hamas, and, instead of being distributed to the populace for free, Hamas sells it to the Gazans (I don't know how they have any money at this point with which to buy provisions, if the Gazans aren't already on the Hamas payroll). So, the humanitarian aid ends up benefiting Hamas.
Ideally (and I believe Israel is trying to do this), the IDF should set up distribution stations in the major Gazan cities to distribute humanitarian aid, while ensuring that it doesn't fall into the hands of Hamas. That unfortunately leaves our soldiers as sitting ducks to terrorist attacks.
Israel is trying military pressure and taking territory away from Hamas control, which can be used as leverage to force Hamas to release the hostages. But I saw one headline that quoted an Israeli military expert who expects two more years of fighting to totally defeat Hamas in Gaza. I don't think Israelis have that much patience.
If, as you write, Hamas has stockpiled months' or years' worth of supplies, the how can you possibly say that it's Israel who's starving the Palestinians by withholding aid?
“Israel is actually going beyond what international law requires in terms of protecting civilians (and what concerns them is that Israel is still losing dramatically in the court of public opinion, which does not bode well for any future US large-scale war involving far greater numbers of civilian casualties)”
I honestly think the US would not have to deal with the same level of prejudice.
I feel like Russia isn’t judged as harshly in its war against Ukraine as Israel is attempting to dismantle a terrorist group and rescue hostages, despite the documented mass rape and massacre at Bucha in Ukraine by Russian troops.
The question then becomes, what’s the missing ingredient?
G‑d forbid the entire world turns anti-Semitic—something not too far off from the current state of about 90% of the UN—Israel can still survive! They have what we call the A-bomb, and enough of them to cause serious damage to half the world. That alone should give the world pause. That is, in a sense our ultimate guarantee. It can be the fallback plan.
It's not rational to think it would actually come to pass where "everyone" in the world hates us. However, if it did, we would have the opportunity to pull a Shimshon HaGibor—"Let my soul die with the Philistines." That’s still a better option than Auschwitz.
I just wish you had more confidence in what we've built up in Israel! We are here to stay!
I'm disappointed that you can't see the suicidal insanity in your comment.
You can't survive with a just an A-bomb. You also need a military and food and a million other things for a country to survive, especially against hostile enemies. And you want to squander all those and then threaten to nuke the world and take everyone out with us?!
Maybe a better option is simply to try NOT to turn the entire world against us? Like, is that an option that perhaps should be considered?
I am in complete agreement with you, that we must work with the rest of the world. We even must try to "appease" them as best as we could.
What I was referring to, is what the great Herzl wanted - Israel would be a country that can defend itself, even in a far fetched scenarios, like "everyone" hating us.
Well, to quote Mao, nuke us bitch, you can't kill us all. Why should it give anyone pause? This is all keyboard warrior nonsense, it's punching in the clouds, you don't actually have the cards. We aren't going to be the ones that end you. It's going to collapse upon its internal divisions and its economic isolation, a quest you serve well. America has never been more opposed to Israel. Thank you! Israel has never been more divided between itself and American jews. Thank you! Israel has never been more divided within itself. Thank you! What are you going to do about that? Nuke yourself? Nuke America? Get real.
What’s your view on the Mahara”l (and others) who say that during wartime there are no innocents amongst the enemy - certainly not once they’ve been offered the opportunity to leave the battle area.
The Maharal wasn’t as far as I know ever an actual soldier. If you placed a sword in his hands and told him to actually kill children he might have changed his opinion.
"We asked you to leave uwu" "I guess u stayed rawr XD now we have a pretext to killy willy u :3 lolxlxol" very normal comment yes sure if the Palestinians refuse ethnic cleansing then I guess its free game to exterminate them. Genocide, genocide, genocide. We won't forget this now that you have exposed your face.
Hi Rabbi Slifkin, I’m a big fan of yours. In general, I love your posts. Even when I disagree, I understand your point. However, I don’t get this. As someone who lives in Israel, I have one uncomfortable truth to admit. The Hamas animals and their civilian supporters have taken some of my humanity. How? Because now I don’t care. And I suspect there are millions out there just like me. I didn’t always feel this way but I don’t care how many of them in Gaza (and Judea and Samaria) suffer and or die. No matter what distorted version of history they believe, nothing will change the fact that:
They started it!
They started it with riots and pogroms from mufti of Jerusalem, BEFORE we even had a state. They started it with the Hebron massacre. They started it with every Arab country surrounding us committed to our destruction in 1948 and attempting to eradicate us by driving us into to sea. They started it from 1950-1966 by repeated terror attacks against our citizens, BEFORE we reclaimed Judea and Samaria. They started it in 1967 when they surrounded us and boasted for weeks how they would kill us all. They started it in 1973 when they surprise attacked us on Yom Kippur.
They started it in the early 80’s when the PLO launched terrorist attacks against us from Lebanon.
They started it in the late 1980’s with the first intifada. They couldn’t just try to live lime normal human beings and try to improve their lives. No, they had to riot. Even though they had it better than most of their Arab brethren in neighboring countries.
They started it again with the second intifada AFTER we agreed to give them some autonomy as a pathway to statehood. All of us targeted and hundreds of us murdered in bombings and shootings all over the country in the early 2000’s , as we tried to give them some independence.
They started it with constant random terror attacks over the next 20 years culminating in October 7. I don’t care about the minority of innocent civilians because: A. The minority of innocents are so small it has no affect on their majority of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. and B. it’s quite clear from their statements and actions that it’s either us or them. They really believe we swooped in from Europe and stole their land and drove them out. IT’S NOT TRUE!! But they believe the lie and this lie is the basic education of all of them.
So I’m done caring and wringing my hands for “innocent Palestinians” while our soldiers die on the battlefield and terrorists continue to murder our citizens. I’m too busy grieving and thinking about my own people that I have no emotional reservoir of feelings for my enemies. I simply don’t care. I’ll scroll past any story about “innocent” deaths in Gaza because I’ll tell myself all of the arguments you mentioned earlier. “There’s no one innocent there” I’ll say. “They will all grow up to be supportive of killing us” I’ll say. Are these statements 100% unequivocally true? No, but whoever is innocent has no power or influence and will be killed , imprisoned or frightened into silence by the majority in Gaza.
What this means is that we are in a war. ONE THAT WE DID NOT START!!! And we need to do what we can to win while minimizing our casualties and maximizing their losses. That’s how you win a war. Caring about your enemy, that’s how you lose a war. Unfortunately I can see that some of my humanity has been taken because I believe that caring for others is an essential feature of being a good person. Call it another casualty of war.
Thanks for this post. As you probably know, in the US Orthodox community it is essentially forbidden to express any reservations about Israel's conduct of the war. I don't think I've seen a single letter or column in the local Jewish paper suggesting that the destruction of Palestinian civilian life and property could be at all morally problematic. Basically everyone has turned off their moral sensors. Ten-thousand dead, fifty-thousand dead, who cares? Whatever Israel does it right, nothing else matters.
In a war against 40,000 terrorists embedded among civilians due to their strategy of maximizing civilian deaths on their own side in order to politically harm Israel, I would expect around 200,000 deaths in order to secure victory.
I see two aspects to this, and will leave aside the Israeli government's complicity in allowing Hamas to develop such strength and it's failure to protect its citizens, both of which I think would have demanded (even now!) the resignation of that government. In law, a juror has an obligation to recuse themselves if they have prior involvement or conflict of interest that might bias their judgment in the proceeding. In this case, the failure of the government in the run-up to Oct 7 is clearly such a biasing factor with regard to its future actions. So put that aside.
1) External: You can argue whether the death of so many civilians is militarily unavoidable, or that the civilian to combatant ratio is "actually quite good," as I've seen many people put it. It doesn't matter. All that anyone around the world will remember for generations is that the Israelis wiped out tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Now I know there are those who will say, "Well, all those people around the world hated us anyway," but I think this untrue and rather nihilistic. For all those who over many years saw Palestinian activists chanting about genocide and ethnic cleansing, and thought "well, that's a little extreme, it's a complicated situation," the Gaza offensive has removed all their doubts. All those Palestinian slogans have been proven absolutely true in the eyes of the world. It used to be easy to argue that Israel has no desire to exterminate the Palestinians. Now it's an insurmountable mountain to climb.
2) Internal: The Orthodox community has completely sacrificed its internal moral sense on the idea that Israel can do no wrong. Several times I have heard "Just kill them all already" from Orthodox Jews. The deaths of tens of thousands of civilians by the Israeli military is dismissed casually as "too bad, so sad," and it's apparent that contrary to how we like to flatter ourselves about being more concerned for the Palestinian lives than Hamas is, we actually don't care at all. We'll kill as many civilians as we want to get to our goals. And while we are not "targeting" civilians for death as terrorists do, Israel is clearly using civilian death and hunger to pressure Hamas, so now the moral position that civilians should be off-limits has been completely eroded. We have ceded all the moral high ground, and I don't think it was worth it. Feel free to disagree, as I'm sure everyone will.
You know those 200k people have families and those families have opinions about allowing themselves to live under the thumb of some acceptable degree of extermination. And we're probably past or approaching 200k, counting indirect casualties, as the current 50 only includes
direct kills - shrapnel, bombs, etc. Not starvation, disease, drop in life expectancy, and so on.
Because as Israel is conducting the war, it is not, and everyone has already reached that conclusion. Ever hear of WWII? A couple million German civilians dead. Lesson: don't start a war by committing atrocities, then refuse to surrender. That tends to end badly.
Unfortunately, there are always those who mostly learned that the majority of decision makers will accept almost any compromises in order to avoid war. When no one can stand up to these people, we become their prey, most especially the weakest among us.
The international community, this very powerful thing who has done so much to reign in the war. And Netanyahu, this reasonable man who has done so much to reign in Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
The right way to do this is to hire non-hamas palestinians and let them distribute the food. Let them drive the trucks and give them weapons to fend off the hamas vultures
Great, line, as often, broad historical perspective is enlightening:
"This is the 21st century, where the horrors of war are televised worldwide. The political fallout, and the resultant economic and military consequences, would quite simply mean the end of Israel. Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t thought it through, and/or is as delusional as the Jewish zealots of 2000 years ago who thought they could hole themselves up in Jerusalem and defeat the Roman Empire."
So you can't win wars anymore?
The Syrian rebels took Syria in 2 weeks (where the horrors of war are televised worldwide). They keep committing atrocities and the leader keeps getting invited to meeting with world leaders.
Like it or not Israel is judged worldwide on a far higher moral plane than Syrian or other Arab armed forces and we implicitly accept that higher standard.
So we cannot win wars anymore?
That's interesting i remember an essay from 1983 where the author whined that South Africa was being held to an unfair high standard despite all the African despotism elsewhere. You're not understanding the issue. Syria and Egypt don't compete in EUROVISION. I have been forced to be complicit in Israel's genocide, I have a lot less to do with HTS and Jolani. But with the Gaza genocide, my daily habits of life make me feel dirty. It's on me. Syria is not on me.
Once we were discussing how the Hasmonean revolt differed from Bar Kochba's revolt. In both instances, the Jews are outnumbered. Nonetheless, the Hasmoneans achieved independence for almost two centuries, while Bar Kochba had independence for around three years, until Rome used a scorched earth policy and crushed his rebellion.
I understand that the Hasmonean rebellion had more favorable conditions for the Jews. The Greek Empire broke up into 4 parts, and the other parts were hoping to weaken the Syrian Greek part by assisting the Hasmoneans.
You make many good points about Gazans. Reminds me of when my kids were young and we would be driving to Indiana to visit the grandparents. My kids, all under age 6, would chime in, "Daddy, drive 'limit speed," you aren't driving 'limit speed' and everybody is passing us." I would tell them everybody is not passing us, it just seems that way because you can't see all the cars that are not passing us.
No mercy. Free the hostages or starve.
Why do you bother subscribing if you're not going to address the arguments that I bring?
Because Shmuel HaNavi and Medrash Kohelet said it all. You must have been influenced by Pope Leo’s speech. You’re on the same page. And I subscribe because sometimes you have interesting and intelligent things to say.
Well, if you're not going to address the arguments I presented, I don't want your comments.
Great. Refund my subscription
A debate over the right to enact genocide could never resolve to a factual debate. It will ultimately come down to a debate of common human interests against those who believe that one special people may abuse us non-peoples. Reasoned debate can never bridge the gap between class interests. You tried to present the fact - such extermination would end Israel - they don't care. They think it is worth the risk, and they can take on the world, and they'd rather blow it all up if they can't have the whole board. If democracy is an issue then take down democracy. And they have the nukes, they have the power. They will not listen to reason. They can only be brought to heel by superior and opposing force.
If there are innocents in Azza then why are they not giving voice to their concerns.
Don't tell me it's because they are afraid. There are many many many examples of people who were afraid but still stood up against evil. Point in question Warsaw uprising. They new that they would probably not survive and yet still they stood up for truth, fought and ultimately died.
If there are "innocents" in Azza let them stand up and be counted.
Another logical error. *Some* people have the strength to stand up against evil. Most people don't.
This is absolutely true. Everyone likes to enjoy the fantasy that THEY would be the ones to stand up to evil tyranny. In reality, people start compromising their values long in advance of outright tyranny as they sense where their own path to survival will lie. You can see something like this in the US with Trump. Republicans who would never in a million years would want this guy very quickly sense that this is the guy with the power and realize they better "get on board", and it's so easy to dismiss your principles anyway. Who's checking? Principles don't pay the bills.
If you're living in a dictatorship, and your life and your family's lives are riding on what you do and say in public and in private, going along is the only option for most people. And because of cognitive dissonance, most people will not in fact think "I'm going along with evil to save myself." They will adjust their beliefs so that the evil is not so evil after all, or that they are not really going along with it.
I think this is part of what people often miss in Neimoller's "First they came" poem: To preserve your own well-being, you will rationalize away the assault on other people's well-being. That means you will find reasons why innocent people are not "actually" so innocent, and deserve what they get. And you see the same thing with innocent civilians in Gaza. How many times have we heard from Jewish sources, "well, they're not so innocent," and somehow the idea that a 5 year-old is not innocent is accepted uncritically.
As far as the Warsaw ghetto, those people were brave beyond belief, but if you know you are probably going to die one way or the other, that's a different calculation. They were prisoners fighting for a slim chance at their own survival, they were not making a moral stand "for truth" against the tyranny of their own government. I don't really see the comparison you are making.
If most people don't have the strength to stand against evil, then why should it matter whether or not there are innocents in Gaza? Not that they should all be killed, God forbid, but why should anyone who can't resist Hamas be allowed to stay in Gaza as long as Hamas is still a going concern?
If the unity of the Palestinian people collapsed, Netanyahu has been very clear, they will all be driven from the land. Sorry, what's next, "why don't these people bend over and pull open their juicy asshole for me?"
🤜🍑🤛 hmm wonder why
Ok, but in order to be credible you need to provide a REAL alternative (sending special forces to kill only Hamas and 'save the princess is not one of them).
So, what's your plan to win the war? How many soldiers are you willing to lose? Are you willing to fight for 10 years?
Thank you, Natan. Regarding innocents in Gaza, I just want to add that even if someone cheered for Hamas, as ugly as that is I still don't believe it would be acceptable to starve them.
The alternative to letting humanitarian aid into Gaza doesn't have to be "let's starve them".
The problem until now has been that the humanitarian aid is seized by Hamas, and, instead of being distributed to the populace for free, Hamas sells it to the Gazans (I don't know how they have any money at this point with which to buy provisions, if the Gazans aren't already on the Hamas payroll). So, the humanitarian aid ends up benefiting Hamas.
Ideally (and I believe Israel is trying to do this), the IDF should set up distribution stations in the major Gazan cities to distribute humanitarian aid, while ensuring that it doesn't fall into the hands of Hamas. That unfortunately leaves our soldiers as sitting ducks to terrorist attacks.
Right, but that's not what Ben Gvir and others are arguing.
But what moral alternatives does Israel have?
Israel is trying military pressure and taking territory away from Hamas control, which can be used as leverage to force Hamas to release the hostages. But I saw one headline that quoted an Israeli military expert who expects two more years of fighting to totally defeat Hamas in Gaza. I don't think Israelis have that much patience.
"Israeli military experts" told us that Hamas was contained.
But "Contained" does not mean defeated.
Indeed not.
Exactly
If, as you write, Hamas has stockpiled months' or years' worth of supplies, the how can you possibly say that it's Israel who's starving the Palestinians by withholding aid?
I believe that's why the typeface was altered - to show the author isn't saying that but that that is what's being said by 'the world' ..
“Israel is actually going beyond what international law requires in terms of protecting civilians (and what concerns them is that Israel is still losing dramatically in the court of public opinion, which does not bode well for any future US large-scale war involving far greater numbers of civilian casualties)”
I honestly think the US would not have to deal with the same level of prejudice.
I feel like Russia isn’t judged as harshly in its war against Ukraine as Israel is attempting to dismantle a terrorist group and rescue hostages, despite the documented mass rape and massacre at Bucha in Ukraine by Russian troops.
The question then becomes, what’s the missing ingredient?
I think differently about Israel than you do.
G‑d forbid the entire world turns anti-Semitic—something not too far off from the current state of about 90% of the UN—Israel can still survive! They have what we call the A-bomb, and enough of them to cause serious damage to half the world. That alone should give the world pause. That is, in a sense our ultimate guarantee. It can be the fallback plan.
It's not rational to think it would actually come to pass where "everyone" in the world hates us. However, if it did, we would have the opportunity to pull a Shimshon HaGibor—"Let my soul die with the Philistines." That’s still a better option than Auschwitz.
I just wish you had more confidence in what we've built up in Israel! We are here to stay!
I'm disappointed that you can't see the suicidal insanity in your comment.
You can't survive with a just an A-bomb. You also need a military and food and a million other things for a country to survive, especially against hostile enemies. And you want to squander all those and then threaten to nuke the world and take everyone out with us?!
Maybe a better option is simply to try NOT to turn the entire world against us? Like, is that an option that perhaps should be considered?
I am in complete agreement with you, that we must work with the rest of the world. We even must try to "appease" them as best as we could.
What I was referring to, is what the great Herzl wanted - Israel would be a country that can defend itself, even in a far fetched scenarios, like "everyone" hating us.
Ok, but for that you need more soldiers (and civilians in terrorist attacks) to die. How many are you willing to sacrifice before it's too much?
Well, to quote Mao, nuke us bitch, you can't kill us all. Why should it give anyone pause? This is all keyboard warrior nonsense, it's punching in the clouds, you don't actually have the cards. We aren't going to be the ones that end you. It's going to collapse upon its internal divisions and its economic isolation, a quest you serve well. America has never been more opposed to Israel. Thank you! Israel has never been more divided between itself and American jews. Thank you! Israel has never been more divided within itself. Thank you! What are you going to do about that? Nuke yourself? Nuke America? Get real.
What’s your view on the Mahara”l (and others) who say that during wartime there are no innocents amongst the enemy - certainly not once they’ve been offered the opportunity to leave the battle area.
They don't have the opportunity to leave the area - Egypt has sealed its border,
Why has Israel not pushed Egypt to accept Gazans? There could be leverage through the ICJ, US, and UN.
It's not that easy. Even Trump couldn't do it.
Why can’t Israel send boats to pick people up instead of sending trucks for Hamas to steal the food?
Because no one cares what Egypt does because they're not Israel.
.. or what Egypt *has* done .. because they're not Israel.
The Maharal wasn’t as far as I know ever an actual soldier. If you placed a sword in his hands and told him to actually kill children he might have changed his opinion.
"We asked you to leave uwu" "I guess u stayed rawr XD now we have a pretext to killy willy u :3 lolxlxol" very normal comment yes sure if the Palestinians refuse ethnic cleansing then I guess its free game to exterminate them. Genocide, genocide, genocide. We won't forget this now that you have exposed your face.
Hi Rabbi Slifkin, I’m a big fan of yours. In general, I love your posts. Even when I disagree, I understand your point. However, I don’t get this. As someone who lives in Israel, I have one uncomfortable truth to admit. The Hamas animals and their civilian supporters have taken some of my humanity. How? Because now I don’t care. And I suspect there are millions out there just like me. I didn’t always feel this way but I don’t care how many of them in Gaza (and Judea and Samaria) suffer and or die. No matter what distorted version of history they believe, nothing will change the fact that:
They started it!
They started it with riots and pogroms from mufti of Jerusalem, BEFORE we even had a state. They started it with the Hebron massacre. They started it with every Arab country surrounding us committed to our destruction in 1948 and attempting to eradicate us by driving us into to sea. They started it from 1950-1966 by repeated terror attacks against our citizens, BEFORE we reclaimed Judea and Samaria. They started it in 1967 when they surrounded us and boasted for weeks how they would kill us all. They started it in 1973 when they surprise attacked us on Yom Kippur.
They started it in the early 80’s when the PLO launched terrorist attacks against us from Lebanon.
They started it in the late 1980’s with the first intifada. They couldn’t just try to live lime normal human beings and try to improve their lives. No, they had to riot. Even though they had it better than most of their Arab brethren in neighboring countries.
They started it again with the second intifada AFTER we agreed to give them some autonomy as a pathway to statehood. All of us targeted and hundreds of us murdered in bombings and shootings all over the country in the early 2000’s , as we tried to give them some independence.
They started it with constant random terror attacks over the next 20 years culminating in October 7. I don’t care about the minority of innocent civilians because: A. The minority of innocents are so small it has no affect on their majority of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. and B. it’s quite clear from their statements and actions that it’s either us or them. They really believe we swooped in from Europe and stole their land and drove them out. IT’S NOT TRUE!! But they believe the lie and this lie is the basic education of all of them.
So I’m done caring and wringing my hands for “innocent Palestinians” while our soldiers die on the battlefield and terrorists continue to murder our citizens. I’m too busy grieving and thinking about my own people that I have no emotional reservoir of feelings for my enemies. I simply don’t care. I’ll scroll past any story about “innocent” deaths in Gaza because I’ll tell myself all of the arguments you mentioned earlier. “There’s no one innocent there” I’ll say. “They will all grow up to be supportive of killing us” I’ll say. Are these statements 100% unequivocally true? No, but whoever is innocent has no power or influence and will be killed , imprisoned or frightened into silence by the majority in Gaza.
What this means is that we are in a war. ONE THAT WE DID NOT START!!! And we need to do what we can to win while minimizing our casualties and maximizing their losses. That’s how you win a war. Caring about your enemy, that’s how you lose a war. Unfortunately I can see that some of my humanity has been taken because I believe that caring for others is an essential feature of being a good person. Call it another casualty of war.
Thanks for this post. As you probably know, in the US Orthodox community it is essentially forbidden to express any reservations about Israel's conduct of the war. I don't think I've seen a single letter or column in the local Jewish paper suggesting that the destruction of Palestinian civilian life and property could be at all morally problematic. Basically everyone has turned off their moral sensors. Ten-thousand dead, fifty-thousand dead, who cares? Whatever Israel does it right, nothing else matters.
In a war against 40,000 terrorists embedded among civilians due to their strategy of maximizing civilian deaths on their own side in order to politically harm Israel, I would expect around 200,000 deaths in order to secure victory.
I see two aspects to this, and will leave aside the Israeli government's complicity in allowing Hamas to develop such strength and it's failure to protect its citizens, both of which I think would have demanded (even now!) the resignation of that government. In law, a juror has an obligation to recuse themselves if they have prior involvement or conflict of interest that might bias their judgment in the proceeding. In this case, the failure of the government in the run-up to Oct 7 is clearly such a biasing factor with regard to its future actions. So put that aside.
1) External: You can argue whether the death of so many civilians is militarily unavoidable, or that the civilian to combatant ratio is "actually quite good," as I've seen many people put it. It doesn't matter. All that anyone around the world will remember for generations is that the Israelis wiped out tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Now I know there are those who will say, "Well, all those people around the world hated us anyway," but I think this untrue and rather nihilistic. For all those who over many years saw Palestinian activists chanting about genocide and ethnic cleansing, and thought "well, that's a little extreme, it's a complicated situation," the Gaza offensive has removed all their doubts. All those Palestinian slogans have been proven absolutely true in the eyes of the world. It used to be easy to argue that Israel has no desire to exterminate the Palestinians. Now it's an insurmountable mountain to climb.
2) Internal: The Orthodox community has completely sacrificed its internal moral sense on the idea that Israel can do no wrong. Several times I have heard "Just kill them all already" from Orthodox Jews. The deaths of tens of thousands of civilians by the Israeli military is dismissed casually as "too bad, so sad," and it's apparent that contrary to how we like to flatter ourselves about being more concerned for the Palestinian lives than Hamas is, we actually don't care at all. We'll kill as many civilians as we want to get to our goals. And while we are not "targeting" civilians for death as terrorists do, Israel is clearly using civilian death and hunger to pressure Hamas, so now the moral position that civilians should be off-limits has been completely eroded. We have ceded all the moral high ground, and I don't think it was worth it. Feel free to disagree, as I'm sure everyone will.
You know those 200k people have families and those families have opinions about allowing themselves to live under the thumb of some acceptable degree of extermination. And we're probably past or approaching 200k, counting indirect casualties, as the current 50 only includes
direct kills - shrapnel, bombs, etc. Not starvation, disease, drop in life expectancy, and so on.
Because as Israel is conducting the war, it is not, and everyone has already reached that conclusion. Ever hear of WWII? A couple million German civilians dead. Lesson: don't start a war by committing atrocities, then refuse to surrender. That tends to end badly.
70 million deaths in WWII. It ended badly for almost everyone. Maybe that's the lesson.
Unfortunately, there are always those who mostly learned that the majority of decision makers will accept almost any compromises in order to avoid war. When no one can stand up to these people, we become their prey, most especially the weakest among us.
But it's a good thing we fought it, right? ; )
Yes.
"They are mistaken, for the reasons that I discussed,"
I'm not sure you realize what this sounds like.
"Bibi has enough sense not to starve two million people and the international community would never allow it to happen anyway."
Let's hope the former turns out to be true. I don't think you fully grasp what the latter implies.
The international community, this very powerful thing who has done so much to reign in the war. And Netanyahu, this reasonable man who has done so much to reign in Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
Thank you once again for your cogent analysis.
The right way to do this is to hire non-hamas palestinians and let them distribute the food. Let them drive the trucks and give them weapons to fend off the hamas vultures