Posted on 08/01/2002 7:02:06 PM PDT by Alouette
Nothing so ennobles a human being as his capacity for empathy, particularly with those very different from himself. Without the ability to see the world from the vantage point of another, no deep human relationship is possible. Great literature enriches the reader by teaching him the multiple perspectives that different people bring to the same events, and one of the tragic consequences of the decline in the reading of serious fiction is the reduced capacity for imagining another's inner universe.
Empathy for the suffering of the Palestinians has long been a hallmark of Israeli life. More than 20 years ago, novelist Cynthia Ozick observed that one can go into any coffee house in Israel and hear earnest discussions about the plight of the Palestinians. Yet one could travel the length and breadth of the Arab world without hearing a sympathetic discussion of the tragedy of Jewish history, or meeting an intellectual interested in understanding the importance of a tiny sliver of land to a people who has suffered so greatly at the hands of the nations.
Nothing has changed today.
Few, if any, Israelis rejoiced last week at the news of 14 Palestinian civilians, including nine children, killed together with arch-terrorist Salah Shehadeh in Gaza. There may have been those who felt that the elimination of Shehadeh was worth it, even in retrospect, given the magnitude of the attacks he was planning. But even they were saddened by the loss of life. (I hesitate to use the word "innocent" when referring to those who likely viewed Shehadeh as a hero.)
Not one Jew rushed out into the street to pass out candies, shoot off machine guns, or ululate in celebration of Palestinian deaths. Even upon the death of our most bitter enemies, Jews are instructed not to rejoice (see Proverbs 24:17), and we all grew up removing 10 drops from our wine cups at the Pessah Seder in memory of the Egyptians drowned in the sea.
No medals were awarded in a festive public ceremony to the pilot who dropped the bomb on Shehadeh's house, like the public ceremonies organized by the Palestinian Authority on July 18 to honor the families of suicide bombers and subsequently broadcast on PA TV.
There comes a point, however, where empathy for others becomes something else entirely. When the empathy for one's enemies is stronger than for one's brothers, it becomes unnatural, inhuman. Much of the Israeli breast-beating last week falls into this category.
David Forman of Rabbis for Human Rights accused Israel in these pages of having adopted "the tactics of our enemies ... [and having] thrown all moral caution to the wind."
Nir Baram in Ma'ariv found no distinction between us and Hamas: "Just as we were about to kill the enemy, our Shehadeh, we suddenly realized how much we resemble him... [W]hen we killed him, we killed one of our own."
Even the normally sensible Ari Shavit termed the killing of Shehadeh a "terrorist attack" perpetuated by Israel.
Bar-Ilan University professor Menachem Klein, on sabbatical at Oxford, delighted the British press by charging that "the existence of Palestinian civilians and their right to life has been deleted from the screen of Israelis."
These statements and many more like them lack moral seriousness because they elide the distinctions that form the basis of all moral reasoning. The elimination of Shehadeh was not designed to spread terror among Palestinian civilian population but to prevent the murder of Israeli civilians. Sowing terror is the purpose of suicide bombings.
Far from being insensitive to Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel has often been oversensitive. There are 13 bereaved Jewish families today because of the hypersensitivity shown by the IDF in Jenin to civilian casualties. Shehadeh himself lived to plan several terrorist attacks because the IDF repeatedly passed up opportunities to kill him due to concern about likely civilian casualties.
The equation of Jews and Palestinians is nothing short of obscene. No Israeli has placed a 10-month-old baby in his rifle sites and blown off her head as she lay in her mother's arms, or shot between the eyes a five-year-old surrounded by her dolls, or looked for a crowd of mothers pushing baby carriages among which to blow himself up.
I doubt there are a more than a couple of hundred Israelis who advocate retaliating against Palestinian civilians, and no more than a few dozen actually capable of doing so. Poll after poll, however, has shown that more than a million Palestinians, not to mention tens of millions of their Arab brothers, fully support suicide bombings, and the waiting lists to carry out such bombings number in the thousands.
JUDAISM DOES not view human life according to some utilitarian calculus. If an enemy surrounded a city and demanded that the inhabitants turn over 10 people for execution or the whole city would be put to the sword, it would be forbidden to turn over the 10. It is therefore inadequate to say that the number of Palestinians who died together with Shehadeh was less than the number of Israelis who would likely have died if he had been left alive.
But we are at war, and in war no nation treats the lives of its citizens or soldiers as of equal value to those of its enemy. When UN peacekeepers in Somalia found themselves surrounded and under fire, they did not hesitate to mow down hundreds of civilians together with their attackers. That does not mean that a nation may wantonly kill enemy civilians, but neither Halacha nor the law of warfare affords civilians absolute protection. Moreover, the law of war places the onus for civilian deaths on legitimate military targets who use those civilians as shields.
Many of the nations so quick to condemn Israel last week have themselves shown little concern with potential civilian casualties when eliminating "enemies" posing a far less immediate threat to their citizens than Shehadeh posed to Israel.
Does anyone imagine, for instance, that had the United States traced Osama bin Laden to a cave in Tora Bora it would have tarried a minute to ascertain how many family members were with him before unleashing its full firepower?
European Mideast envoy Javier Solana, who last week condemned Israel's "extrajudicial killing operation, which targeted a densely populated area," ordered cluster bombs dropped on Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's bunker in a densely populated area when he was NATO secretary-general. Milosevic had not yet been tried by any court nor did he pose a threat to any NATO country.
No sane rule of law permits Hamas to target Israeli citizens but forbids Israel from responding. What, then, can Ha'aretz's Gideon Levy mean when he argues that Israel may only intercept suicide bombers on their way to carry out attacks, but not kill those planning the attacks? Are only lowly privates legitimate military targets, but not the generals who direct them?
So much, too, for Yossi Beilin's claim that Shehadeh was not a ticking time bomb and that his elimination constituted the imposition of an extrajudicial death penalty. Shehadeh was not killed as retribution for the hundreds of Jewish lives he had already claimed, but to prevent him from taking more. As the mastermind of impending attacks, about which there was apparently very good intelligence information, he was the obvious target - the head of the snake.
Empathy - yes; moral sensitivity - by all means. But not at the cost of more Jewish lives.
Excellent piece Alouette. The people of Israel have shown great personal and National restraint. At some point that will end
You are the platoon leader of an undermanned platoon when you learn that your battalion is making a strategic withdrawal ahead of superior advancing enemy forces. The battalion is retreating through a narrow mountain pass, which is the only way out of the vally where you are located. You receive orders to remain behind the battalion, hiding yourselves in the pass, and when the enemy approaches, to do everything in your power to impede or even halt the enemy advance.The first morning after the battalion has withdrawn, leaving you and your men in the mountain pass, you wake up to see a rag-tag group of civilian refugees approaching your position. These civilians, old men, women and children, number from between 500 and 600 people. Right behind this motley group of civilian refugees are the advance columns of the enemy. It is obvious that the enemy is using the refugees as cover, and in fact, has forced them to lead the way into the pass, rightly fearing your waiting ambush. There is no way you can engage the enemy forces with your available firepower without shooting through the refugees.
Remember your orders. You are to impede or stop the advance of the enemy. It has also been drummed into you throughout your short military career that you should take every step possible to avoid turning innocent civilian non-combatants into casualties.
Given the foregoing information, the question for you today is simply: What do you do? You have three hours to complete your examination.
One man, an Army lieutenant colonel recently returned from the fields of Viet Nam and a member of the ethics class, read the question, wrote his answer in less than a minute and handed in his paper. He was the only person in the class to be awarded an 'A'.
His full and complete answer? "Grease 'em."
Think about it.
It is quite possible, perhaps ennobling as well, to empathize with your enemy as he lays prostrate before you.
Better him than me.
I know, but the question was written by a college professor, and I was trying to reproduce it as faithfully as memory allowed. What can I say? Considering the fact that it was (and is) a very liberal college, I'm amazed the LTC got an 'A' instead of being kicked out of the class. :)
Just kidding, not a criticism. Didn't want anyone reading it to think we can direct fire "into" but between the people.
I fear many IDF officers would have flunked that part of the exam (at least if I was grading), though that's a testament to their humanity. I want to see Americans continue to pass it, IDF people too.
Before the latest intifada, which is going on two years now, I used to wonder that myself. In the beginning I could not accept that all of the people around Arafat were evil to the core. I thought they were trapped in that horror. I felt sorry for the children and blamed the leaders. For quite a long while into it, I tried desperately not to hate or to let hate interfere with my common sense....
After a while, and with a lot of help from quite a few people here after 9/11, I learned how to hate. I learned that even the children are not innocent in Wahabi Islam and terror cults are death cults that are so barbarous that if you don't eradicate it from the planet, it grows like kudzu.
Beautifully stated, lady.
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