A Look at Revenge: Mind and Heart (Column 596)

Thank you, Rabbi, and may the last one out turn off the light.

I don’t understand—are you sure the policymakers are driven by feelings of vengeance, while Netanyahu keeps saying that the goal is to topple Hamas rule? Not revenge, not killing Gazan civilians (who chose Hamas, unequivocally raised it up, and encouraged it), and not turning Gaza into rubble. All of those latter things are collateral damage that is currently within the consensus as acceptable damage, so long as Hamas does not surrender and hand itself over. They are not driven by revenge, only by the sober realization that only a disaster like this can bring it about. A disaster like this that can also open the eyes of the world.

I very much agree with the tone of the article and the demand to act coolly and not from the gut.
That said, your wife’s proposal regarding a surrender agreement (because a proposal not to continue fighting means surrender) comes from a lack of understanding of the Middle East. Such a Western understanding that apparently you haven’t read even one article by a Hamas thinker (the Muslim Brotherhood) about their goal. For if you understood that their goal does not stop at wanting “to achieve a victory image,” but rather to rule all of Israel and in fact the entire Arab region and even the whole world, you would conclude from that that it is impossible to stop fighting them at any point. Unfortunately, by the sword you shall live forever, but I hope that next time we will surprise them, and not they us.

Michi.
The central point of the article, about the mind controlling the heart as much as possible in order to reach conclusions, in my humble opinion misses a certain final point that you did not address, namely: it may be that an event—even though it is a completely emotional event, one that hurts in the area not of the intellect but of the heart, or the nerves—causes a person to draw an intellectual conclusion.

You can see lots of people on the left and center calling to flatten Gaza. Apparently because the massacre was carried out in a place that was not exactly a stronghold of the far right, but rather housed a very large population of moderate center and left people. Hypocrisy? One can see it that way. Speaking from the gut? One can see it that way. But there is something bigger here than both of those, in my humble opinion: the younger generation especially, and many people on the Israeli left and center, deluded themselves for years that the main problem with Palestinian terror—or much of it—was because of unjustified settlements, Palestinian and Arab rage over keeping people under military rule. And behold, in the kibbutz where the massacre took place, there are no settlers and no military regime over anyone. The massacre was committed at a party celebrating peace and love for all humanity—not at a victory party for Ben Gvir, nor at a memorial for Rabbi Meir Kahane, and not even on the anniversary of the passing of Hanan Porat of blessed memory, for example, who was one of the spokesmen of the settlement movement—and this can be seen as confirmation or an awakening for many on the center-left, that apparently the other side is not secular and humanistic and does not see the conflict only in the narrow way they see it, of occupiers versus occupied.

You see the same very cautious trend, by the way, among right-wing people today as well. Progressive madness, identity politics, the morality of the weak… all these things echo very strongly in their publications today—the presentation of the people of Israel as a weak, persecuted, hated people exactly as in the past, in need of the world’s compassion. It’s no accident that the expression “Auschwitz day” or “we went through a Holocaust here a few days ago” has come up so many times. The excitement over Israeli flags lit up on Berlin, Paris, and the United States. Biden as a righteous gentile, one of the nations of the world, the savior—you surely know very well with what mockery, hatred, and cynicism the Israeli right usually relates to this, both for religious reasons of “the kindness of the nations is sin” and the prohibition on receiving charity and help from gentiles (since any drawing-near and help of this kind indicate a dangerous drawing-near between value systems, Heaven forbid, that endangers our spiritual continued existence), and for reasons of physical and moral self-respect (what, are we still in the ghetto and need to beg the lord’s mercy?! We are lions who stand by our own right and by the right of the Holy One, blessed be He)—suddenly disappear as though they never existed. Suddenly it is very important to right-wing people—yes, even to the religious and the ultra-Orthodox among them—for approval from the enlightened Western world, that it should say that what is happening here is genocide, that it should say it shares with us the value of fighting terror. (And the scrupulous ones expand and say they need to support us because terror will reach them too, and we’re all in the same boat with them…)

Suddenly “loyal minorities” are “our brothers.” Lucy Aharish and Yoseph Haddad. Suddenly brothers in arms and blood, angels and heroes. (Thanks to a public-relations speech and thanks to the fact that Aharish’s husband went into battle.) Where is the condition that only an Arab who accepts the doctrine of the spiritual, moral, and civic superiority of the Jewish collective is permitted to live here as a subject? Where is suddenly the terrible danger that, Heaven forbid, their descendants will not defile our descendants?

And here too it does not seem to me that we are dealing with hypocrisy or gut-thinking on the part of the more moderate right, but with drawing logical conclusions from certain events. The terrible massacre—and perhaps precisely because it occurred also in regions that are not right-wing strongholds—intensifies in them the feeling that these are actual Nazis, who want to destroy and wipe out every Jew. And those among them whose attitude toward Western culture was always qualified but not entirely so are kind of putting it to the test right now, and saying to it that if they hold certain values that correspond to their values, in the sense that proper conduct precedes Torah and the seven Noahide commandments that also include the duty to settle the world in peace and oppose bloodshed—they ought to join. And in addition, out of what seems to them a great darkness, they discover things they perceive as heroism when certain minorities do indeed behave like human beings and are willing to share the burden with them and even risk their lives together with them—for if everyone there looks like human beasts, then a few who do something reasonable are already worthy of the title righteous among the nations, exalted saints, righteous people and angels.

Of course all this relates to the Israeli center; the Israeli extremes remained as they were, and radical leftists even now call Israel’s response war crimes. And the far-right extremes continue to speak as before about flattening all of Gaza down to the last survivor, even at the cost of a full regional war, because this is one of the signs of redemption, and in truth all strategic calculations do not matter because only the Holy One, blessed be He, determines and decides what the outcome will be—and if all the people of Israel repent because of these events, then the IDF will only need to provide some reinforcement, and tomorrow or the next day His kingship will already be revealed in the world, and in any case the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and so on.

A. In my opinion the government is doing exactly what the rabbi says, except that it knows what the public feels and wants, and it also knows that the public thinks from the gut, so it gives the people in the fields what they want, but in the inner rooms it calculates what is right for the country from every standpoint [see what Bibi said at Bar-Ilan about splitting Israel into two states, and whether he thought so even for a moment?]

B. What the rabbi brought in the name of the rebbetzin seems mistaken because Hamas is a fundamentalist religious organization and there is no dialogue with it at all, just as [with all due distinction] there is no normal dialogue with Haredim and other fundamentalists, and yielding to them is to turn the other cheek. See the words of your student https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsy-f70QGew&t=547s and examine it carefully.

C. Who said we shouldn’t have full control over Gaza? On the contrary, since we are moral and do not want to kill human beings, let us finish off the Hamas organization and take full control there, and Gaza will be an integral part of the State of Israel with everything that implies—budgets and so on—and then perhaps there will be some kind of peace.

“Rational, relatively” also wrote most of my own thoughts. Choosing the option of revenge is a considered choice. What’s more, it was always the correct one. As the lunatics of the right always said, “He who is merciful to the cruel will end up…” and insultingly enough, they were right…
The assumption is that sooner or later, if we do not choose the option of revenge, we will not be here. What has been renewed this time is two things: far more people than before will come to their senses and adopt it, and the second, more important thing is that Hamas’s phenomenal success gave an enormous boost to all our enemies abroad.
Eiland’s proposal is excellent from a moral standpoint (he too is not calling for kidnapping Palestinian children and executing them…). The question is whether it is practical. The answer to whether it is practical depends to a large extent on the shift in consciousness we are or are not willing to make.

Rabbi Zaini spoke explicitly about revenge for the sake of deterrence.

And see the words of Asa Kasher, who within his remarks also said something like you https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra13626138

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kw4Ykyw4dWkyAZYv-EBo3PYsWYZOyWZ7/view

What about the simple argument of deterrence?
There is a large target bank, thank God, so there is no need to bomb aimlessly without a target. So you send a lot of bombs and cause a lot of destruction—in the hope that it will lengthen the time until next time.
Not logical?

Sometimes it takes an event on this scale for people to wake up from an illusion. Until now people, including Bibi apparently, convinced themselves that it was possible to manage the conflict with Hamas. He knew what Hamas was, but it was convenient to think you could pet the dog with money from Qatar and it would only bite a little.

Now what happened happened, the illusion exploded, the international restraint was temporarily lifted, and Hamas can be treated as the murderous enemy it is. It’s true that there is also an element of revenge out of raw nerves, but I don’t think that is the main thing. The main thing is the illusion that existed and is no more.

By the way, one has to distinguish between a person who supports murder and does nothing about it, who is simply wicked, and a person who proactively supports murderers. A not insignificant part of the population in Gaza belongs to the second type.

From where does the rabbi know that the public in Gaza does not support Hamas???

1. There is justification for harming innocents. They also harmed innocents. Besides, they always had the option to flee. We did not have the option to flee voluntarily.
2. When the Allies defeated Germany, they did not ask themselves what regime would come in its place. That is their problem. If they don’t learn the lesson—we will strike them again. (Not gut, not gut..)
3. It’s true that from homiletic teachings you bring proof for something you already agree with (because that is basically the preacher’s personal opinion and in any case not binding), but is this also true regarding the plain meaning of Scripture? That the Holy One, blessed be He, struck the firstborn from the firstborn of the captive to the slave woman. Firstborn babies died too. (And if you push it off by saying that what is permitted to the Holy One, blessed be He, is forbidden to us, the answer is simple.) On the contrary, bring proof in the opposite direction from the plain meaning of Scripture that in war one must take harm to innocents into account. I’m waiting.
And you also wrote that you do agree to partial harm to innocents… so here too the sorites paradox arises: where is the line drawn?

What kind of justification is that? They also raped women and slaughtered babies—so there is justification for doing that? Do we learn morality from Hamas?

Maybe there are sometimes other justifications for harming innocents (for example, when there is no other way to eliminate the criminals). But the fact that Hamas does it is the last thing that could serve as a justification.

Revenge is a matter of perspective—wiping out a village because of one lone attacker looks like madness.
Wiping out half of Gaza because of a genocide organized by Hamas, which was elected to rule Gaza, could work.
When Smotrich proposes wiping out Huwara because of a relatively minor incident, he positions Israel as a fanatical state and paradoxically prevents Israel from taking revenge in Gaza.

Revenge is also a matter of timing—
If Bibi had burned half of Gaza on שבת while Hamas was carrying out genocide in the Gaza-envelope communities, it would have passed in the world, especially if it had been presented as a defensive action aimed at saving Israeli civilians from massacre.
Now, a week after the event, no one will accept that erasing neighborhoods in Gaza is a defensive action.

I don’t understand what stopped Bibi from deciding on the erasure of half of Gaza on שבת—was it that we were blessed with a faith-based government that waited until Shabbat was over in order to convene?
Was Bibi, like General Peckem in Catch-22, spending Shabbat planning a victory strategy against the real enemy (Gantz/Lapid/Liberman), and had no time for trifles like Gaza?

In any case, the combination of calls for revenge and the wiping out of villages because of a lone attacker, together with a government that struggles to make quick decisions, pretty much closed off the option of erasing parts of Gaza with artillery or fuel-air bombs.

The option that will remain after the target bank is exhausted is a ground entry that is going to cost an intolerable price in human lives.

I didn’t say if you want to shoot –
I said if you have to shoot –
Of course after all the give-and-take that is required.

I hope not, but I suspect yes. If this were a sober policy they should have done it earlier, and certainly not maintained Hamas as he did all along. Beyond that, the collapse of Hamas probably also will not happen and may come at the cost of the hostages’ lives.
And regarding what Netanyahu says, that has no meaning whatsoever. There is no connection between his words and the truth. The question is what he does, not what he says. We’ll wait and see.

I do not know the extent of your expertise in the Middle East, but it seems to me that both she and I know it like anyone who lives here. The question is not what their goal is, since that is known. The question is how an optimal achievement can be attained. Maybe you didn’t understand, but I did not mean to bring them to full repentance and enroll them in the Zionist Organization.

I disagree with you. But we’ll wait and see.

Good luck.

And despite that, I think I’m right. 🙂

Good luck.

We’ve tried that more than once. Beyond that, there are heavy costs here (hostages, etc.). But it is a legitimate argument. I only hope that it is in fact being done and that orderly judgment is being exercised on the way there.

I was talking about principled support for murder, not assistance to murder. Obviously that is something entirely different.
As for the rest of what you said, we’ll wait and see.

I didn’t write that.

Now go and strike Amalek, and devote to destruction all that is his. Spare him not, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

What is the difference?

1. Meaning, “they started.” Please take that to the kindergarten teacher.
2. And therefore? Were they necessarily right? Is our situation similar? If you think for one second you’ll see that it isn’t.
3. That is all the more true regarding the plain meaning of Scripture. Are you proposing to take every firstborn in Gaza and execute him? By the way, in the plain meaning of Scripture it also says “an eye for an eye,” and to execute a stubborn and rebellious son. Do you propose acting that way in practice?
And regarding the sorites paradox, you propose an interesting solution: kill everyone always, even if there is no reason. Otherwise where is the line?! Strange logic.

Is this a quote from Clint? 🙂

Indeed. I wrote this distinction in reply to the question. There is no full comparison here, but there is a similar consideration that raises thoughts about the consistency of the left.

Did you read my methodological introduction? If not, it would be worth reading. I didn’t write it for nothing.

They did it directly, we incidentally. No one is saying to kill babies with our own hands. They have the option to flee now; we did not.

Revenge is a currency that is used sparingly.
When Ben Gvir and Smotrich waste the entire revenge balance on marginal events, no revenge budget remains for critical events.

What is unique about the currency called revenge is that every call to use it causes enormous loss of value.

Therefore measured people save the revenge currency, do not threaten, do not sing songs of revenge, and certainly do not burn villages right and left.

And then when the moment of truth arrives, they have a warehouse full of revenges against the enemy.

It seems to me that you didn’t understand. You claim that one should learn from Scripture. You brought the killing of the babies by the Holy One, blessed be He, as a relevant source. I asked whether you really learn from there. And the answer is of course not.

Thank you very much; I wish Your Honor much success as well. I didn’t know the rabbi makes a practice of blessing commenters 😁😁😁

And by the way, as far as I heard Netanyahu did not say such a thing. He uses vague formulations that will allow him to deny and tailor his words to whatever happens. In the first speech he talked about military and governmental capabilities, also in vague terms. And afterward even that was not said.

I read it, and despite that, is the rabbi willing to answer the question?

First, thank you for the article, even though I disagree with some of it.
I read the introduction.
I was referring to this paragraph:
“Harming innocents is an injustice, and making them a target (as Rabbi Zaini or Rabbi Cherki write) is a moral outrage. Even a person who supports murder does not deserve the death penalty, and his baby certainly does not deserve it. And those in Gaza who do not support murder—and there are such people—certainly do not deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
That is, there are cases where this is the commandment, in the case of morally corrupt peoples, like Amalek and the seven nations.
I am speaking, of course, about the principle.

To the kindergarten teacher? Maybe to Moses our teacher? “If someone comes to kill you, rise early to kill him first.” So if he has already killed, isn’t there all the more reason? Or perhaps Your Honor wishes to expound “as he plotted” and not “as he did”???
Yes, “he started” is considered a defense argument in criminal law too. Not only among kindergarten teachers.

By the test of the result, they were right. If there is a distinction, please enlighten me.

No. I am only saying that if you already agree to partial killing of innocents, then you should agree to any number. If it is immoral to kill even one innocent, it is forbidden. If it is moral, even a million are permitted.

I didn’t understand the example of Gaza’s firstborn. I asked you for a source from the plain meaning of Scripture that forbids the killing of innocents.
From what you asked about an eye for an eye, etc., you already know the answer yourself; it is the question whether halakhah is moral, etc. (the Hazon Ish, Rabbi Kook, etc.)
Let’s say that if in Moses’ time someone gouged out an eye or killed a stubborn and rebellious son, the Holy One, blessed be He, would not have sent him to Gehenna. And that suffices. (And I’m not even sure about our generation either, but that is a separate discussion.)

And since you brought a source from Clint Eastwood, there is another source from Cobra, namely Stallone, who said that if we play with the criminals by our rules—we will lose.
Believe that there is wisdom among the nations.

The question focuses on one thing: if saving life overrides the whole Torah, does it not also override morality? (And this is according to your view, of course. According to my view, this is moral.)

A. Acting from the gut is not always bad. In the book “Rational Emotions” by Prof. Eyal Winter, it is explained that actions from the gut save us many times in ways that, had we acted from the intellect, we would not have been saved; so too, for example, instincts that in dangerous situations allow us to act in a way that skips many stages, but they were created as a survival need that is generally beneficial. In other words, in this case, acting from the gut and acting from the intellect lead to the same place. It is indeed proper to combine both, but not to abandon acting from the gut, which in this case is a survival act necessary for the situation (as you also wrote about the young soldiers who do not think in a measured way about the situation, and perhaps that is a good thing—certainly, especially in dangerous situations, it is good not to think about the situation only intellectually).

B. The consensus that has formed, that suddenly the left has “been erased,” really does not stem only from the gut; it is happening because those same people have seen in a crushing way that there is no one to talk to, and that they are human beasts. Thank God they have healthy eyes to see and understand that.

C. The proposal about the agreement is far more irrational than the statements about flattening Gaza. One can see it as an out-of-the-box proposal, but in my eyes it is simply detached from reality. Suggesting that we give them sweets with a note saying “let’s be friends” is also an out-of-the-box proposal. I’ll say briefly that this is limpness without equal, it sends a terrible message to Hamas, to our people, and to the whole world, and it contradicts the morality of common sense.

Not to bless. To wish. And note this well.

No.

And I answered you.

A. Acting from the gut is always bad. But Eyal Winter, like many others, mixes up two different things: acting from the gut (emotional) and acting without explicit reasoning (intuitive). The main difference between them is that if there are good reasons against that action, the first type will not listen to them and the second will.
B. I very much doubt it. But we’ll wait and see. If so, then they really are fools.
C. As stated, I won’t enter here into a debate about the proposal because that is not the subject. That is also why I did not raise it in the column, only referred to it. The discussion is how much people are prepared in principle to consider such proposals, even if they were correct. As for the matter itself, I do not agree at all with what you wrote, but as noted that is not the subject.

I don’t understand—how do you plan to prevent the next 1,300 dead in the next attack after releasing all the prisoners? What will stop them from carrying out the next attack? If your answer is the IDF, then you are simply refusing to learn from past mistakes.

B. I don’t understand—why, if so, are they really fools? They are changing their opinion following changes in reality. Beyond that, even if afterward many return to left-wing positions (I believe this will happen, though perhaps in a more moderate form), that does not show they acted from the gut; it shows that human nature and distance from the event cause horrors to be forgotten, and therefore people will return to their position.

1. It would not have been possible to do this without world public opinion and consensus. That is what I said: a disaster can open eyes.
2. He said it after Biden’s statement.

That is why he funded and maintained Hamas until now. There is no limit to blindness.

Because the last event taught us nothing new. There was no change in reality here at all.

They did not act from the gut because human nature is to act from the gut. That seems to me rather strange logic.

It did teach something new: every additional terror event reinforces the fact that they are evil and want to do evil. True, it could have been understood before, but the more such atrocities there are, the smaller the place for doubt—“maybe peace can still be reached” (or that they are miserable and should be pitied, which is an argument one can always still fall into). All the more so when this really is on a scale and in a manner that had not yet occurred.
To act from a place that sees and witnesses reality in its full force is not the same as acting from the gut… in many respects it allows one to see the picture more correctly and act more correctly.
Unrelatedly, I also think there are many people whose automatic emotional reaction is not to fight; it is much nicer and more pleasant to want peace, but then there is common sense that דווקא says this is what is right and needs to be done.

Don’t worry: the soldiers who were called up are sitting on the fence, the air force is bombing empty buildings, and Bibi brought Gantz in mainly so that Gantz would tie his hands on a ground entry. The sea is the same sea, Bibi is the same Bibi, and no revenge is expected in the offing.

I’ve exhausted this.

What is so hard to understand about the fact that a disaster can open one’s eyes?
In addition, what could he have done without broad agreement from the world? It is obvious to you, surely, that the fact there are no riots in Lod right now is because the global mood gives Israel a tailwind, and there will be zero tolerance for armed unrest.
The situation right now is delicate enough, and I דווקא fear Bibi’s impotence, not some intense feelings he supposedly harbors.
How much of a limit to blindness? We simply do not see reality in the same way. In my opinion you are wearing the glasses of position-taking, without understanding that they color what you see with fantasies of rage and revenge. We’ll live (?) and see.

Rabbi Michi, although I agree with everything you wrote in this column, I’ll just note that according to your approach I am counted among the fools: for me, a lot was renewed. I knew about the cruelty of the terrorists and of Hamas, but in my worst nightmares I did not believe they were capable of and wanted to carry out such a monstrous pogrom. The difference is not only quantitative (the number of murdered); in my eyes it is qualitative: the cold and calculated planning, the explicit leadership backing from the outset, the huge number of participants, the horrors that I do not want to detail that go far beyond murder—this is not something I believed would happen, and at least for me this is definitely a change in reality and a change in perception. So I’m okay with being considered a fool, it matters less to me what I’m called, but I did want to note that there are indeed people for whom something in reality was renewed בעקבות these horrors. What can you do—we learn.

For me, not even that was renewed. We have always known that they spare neither their own civilians and behave with insane cruelty (like throwing Fatah people, including civilians, off rooftops). I also do not see why the planning changes anything in this regard. It only says that their known cruelty is accompanied by a higher level of execution than we estimated. That says something mainly about us and not about them.
But even if the level of cruelty was renewed for you, I do not understand why that is relevant to the discussion. Until now you thought it was possible to reach an agreement with them and now you understood that it isn’t? If their cruelty were not planned and not at the present levels, then in your opinion it would be possible to reach an agreement with them? And now not? This new thing, even if it exists (and in my opinion it doesn’t), says nothing at all about left and right. Whoever did not understand this earlier really has a serious problem.

Regarding what you said here:
“The practical results of an action, success or failure, should not change anything in our attitude toward the one who carried it out. It matters only from the standpoint of the gut, not from the standpoint of the head.”

There is a responsum of yours in which you said something different:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%9E%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%A4%D7%9C%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%90

“In the theory of punishment, several rationales for punishment are offered. One is a sanction for the severity of the offense; another is revenge for the result (the state carries out controlled revenge in place of the victim or his family), atonement, deterrence, and so on.
From the standpoint of the severity of the offense, there seems to be no difference between playing with a cellphone that caused a person’s death and playing that did not cause death. Attempted murder is exactly as severe as murder. But from the standpoint of revenge for the result, of course there is a difference.”

As for the extent of my expertise, I read Arabic and studied for a degree in Middle Eastern studies.
As for the matter itself, do you mean surrendering in order to get the captives back into our hands, and then immediately attacking afterward (that is, violating the surrender agreement), since you understand that the presence of Hamas cannot be tolerated? If so, I tend to agree. It just sounded from your words as if one could surrender to them and simply continue life as usual after such a prisoner-exchange agreement. (An agreement that only Israel would honor, of course.)

And here the theological explanations have begun—blessed are the partitions and blessed is He:
https://mobile.srugim.co.il/article/851347

I am not writing for the site; I am writing to you, to awaken. I would even be happy if you did not answer here but only read this (and the point is easy to understand, and perhaps also the tav afterward). It is not so clear to me where the reference is to the honor of Heaven? The vengeance of God.
“Avenge the children of Israel on the Midianites; afterward you shall be gathered to your people.”
“And Moses spoke to the people, saying: Arm from among yourselves men for the army, and let them go against Midian to execute the vengeance of the Lord against Midian.”
The vengeance of Israel is not private vengeance; it is the vengeance of God. This is not moral proof from a verse but proof by definition. Many times I read your words and think, and each time the matter becomes sharper and sharper for me regarding the difference between philosophy and Kabbalah. Philosophy, in my humble opinion (and if I am not mistaken, so too the Radak and others, though that is not relevant right now), is the gateway to Kabbalah—to understand that truly, from the standpoint of reason, perhaps you are right, but what can we do that as religious people we do not stop at Western reason. There is something beyond. And the distinction between rabbis who follow philosophy closely and those who advanced (in my humble opinion this is an advance) also to Kabbalah, is the attitude to traditional Jews, to prayer, to the simple folk who feel part of the people of Israel even though there is ostensibly no rational logic in it, and so on.
And indeed I think your writing as it is is preferable, and note this carefully.

Regarding your opening, I think that upright people really can derive a moral ideology from the plain meaning of the verses. And even if they do not adopt it, they will at least understand that it has a place.
I can say about myself that I had a very hard time with concepts like revenge, etc., until I learned many chapters of Tanakh. And I would bring verses and stories, but I am not bringing them, and the point is easy to understand.

What was renewed for me mainly was the understanding that we are not dealing with calculated evil aimed at achieving goals. Terror has a rationale, even when it is cruel, and there are cases where it also achieves its goals—even if it could have achieved them better by peaceful means. But this attack was intended to achieve only death, for us and for them; no rational person would have imagined that this attack would help the Palestinians in any way. Until now I had assumed we were dealing with a cruel, wicked enemy, but still to some degree perhaps also rational, and that left me with hope. Now I know that is not the case.

Indeed, if one sees revenge as atonement and erasure of the result, there is a difference. But that itself is not correct and not proper. Even from the standpoint of catharsis there is a difference according to the results.

Why is that not correct and not proper? At least, why is it not proper for this to serve as an additional consideration when we decide on punitive measures (beyond the severity of the offense)?

If that is the conclusion that was renewed for you, I doubt it very much. True, I also do not really understand their rationale, but I am quite sure they have one. They thought that a victory image was important, and in the long run that may even be true. Moreover, even in their previous actions there was no logic at all from my standpoint, and therefore in my opinion this too was not renewed here.

It is not proper because you are taking revenge indiscriminately. As I explained, not all are guilty. You may harm those who need to be harmed in order to achieve objectives, but revenge is taken only on those who deserve it.
And it is also not correct if that revenge comes at the expense of other achievements (if it harms us in other respects).

I’m not talking right now about the indiscriminate manner of the revenge. I’m talking only about the aspect of revenge for the result as a supporting rationale for punishment. For this purpose, I can discuss someone driving while occupied with his phone. Ostensibly it seems that the result of the offense has significance, and not only the intention behind it.

I would have agreed with the rabbi on every word had I not, lately, been studying the Qur’an and getting to know Arabs and asking them to teach me their religion. It should be noted that I usually lean more left on the political map on this issue:
Giving land for peace, giving a place of honor to Israeli Arabs, etc.
But now, after I have studied,
I understand several things:

A. Almost no Arab agreed to condemn the massacre and abuse—not Israeli Arabs, and certainly not those from the West Bank and the wider world.

B. The Arab states and the Arab people are for the most part religious, or at the very least want to be religious.

C. Jihad is, according to a very learned Arab with high introspection who explained to me, “the most exalted thing among believers,” and therefore, according to him, “I do not know whether Hamas are martyrs or not.” I smell between his words agreement that with the technique of “taqiyya” they conceal what they think. He also said that many Arabs in this country celebrate and rejoice over the deed.

D. There is not one Arab state in which there were no pogroms against Jews. And not one of them has, to this day, retracted those deeds… especially since they do not condemn the massacre committed against us.

E. Muhammad behaved exactly, exactly like Hamas; he is the Muslim ideal.

In light of the above, I understand that every Muslim Arab is at the level of a ticking bomb—maybe not now and maybe not in ten years, but the risk is enormous.
And therefore there is an aspect of the law of the pursuer in this whole population, which contains a high percentage of violent extremists within it. I am not saying to kill among them. But transfer is the most sensible option right now. Because we will always be worried that tomorrow they will turn on us.
This is true of the Gazans; it is true of Egypt and Jordan, with whom nothing can be done at present.
The reason we would not deport Israeli Arabs is that right now there is no act on the ground, but the moment there is, that shows the thought being brought into behavior among them, and then there is no choice but to move them as well.

Revenge for an act is, of course, for an act. Still, I do not see any value in that. Revenge for wickedness is something else, and in that there is value. But wickedness does not depend on results.

I mean that when we come to punish someone, it is proper to give weight also to the results of his actions, and not only to his intention (as a supporting consideration).

Of course it matters whether you succeed or not. Just as if the pursuer can be stopped by injuring him, it is forbidden to kill the pursuer. If this were some puny organization of mule riders—then the response is one thing, even if the destruction of Israel is uppermost in their minds; whereas if they are Iran 2, then the response is something else. I do not understand how one can fail to distinguish between those who succeed and those who do not. I am also not going to go to war against the student organizations at Harvard—because they are simply a collection of impotent nobodies with big mouths, even though I have no doubt they are very great haters of Israel. But if they enlist in ISIS (or Hamas)—then they are an enemy that should be taken seriously and indeed have its head crushed. I do not understand where the logical failure is that prevents this simple understanding.

In my opinion, no. The responsibility to repair depends on the results, but not the punishment.

I hope you understood what you wrote. Because I didn’t. I can’t locate any connection at all between the words.

Okay, so if Hamas bears responsibility for the results of their actions (and not only for their intention), then there is logic to an intensified response when there are severe results, isn’t there?

In the large moral and strategic story, I definitely agree that nothing was renewed—there is no one with whom to make peace, and they deserve severe punishment for their deeds and their ideology exactly as before the murderous attack.

But the two of you are speaking in different languages. You are speaking morally and strategically, and she tactically. And tactically many things have indeed changed.

Tactical thinking is often characterized by a pragmatic view and cost-benefit thinking. During COVID this was expressed, for example, in Ayelet Shaked’s statement that we need to “contain the dead.” A lockdown has certain costs and benefits, whereas fully opening the economy yields other costs and benefits. One has to examine what is worth more. When the number of deaths rose, lockdowns were preferable overall, and when it dropped, the opposite.

And in this regard, the capabilities of Hamas—which I believe surprised even you (and the senior IDF brass)—matter. Someone can say: as long as they are firing missiles at me that kill relatively few, it is worth operating with a certain strategy (which in his eyes also has certain benefits alongside it), but from the moment the cost rose by dozens of times due to surprising capabilities and the number of dead skyrocketed, one should change to a strategy that will produce other benefits in the long term. Policy that is desirable in people’s eyes often works in this tactical way, and therefore the new capabilities do change the picture even in such thinking (which certainly has some rationale in it).

I did not understand the question. I wrote that, as far as I am concerned, one may destroy all the inhabitants of the Strip if this is necessary in order to solve the Hamas problem. But this is not punishment but prevention, and it does not depend on their successes but on their attempts.

I didn’t understand why you keep repeating that carrying something out that we already knew about is not significant;
there is a difference between things that happened in reality and things that did not happen.
If someone tried to murder and did not succeed, the punishment he gets is less than if he both tried and succeeded.
It is elementary school stuff.

I did not keep repeating it, because there is no need to. It is simply obvious as day. I referred to columns that explain it, for those who do not understand something so simple on their own. Indeed, only elementary school stuff could accept such nonsense.

More power to you,
It also seems to me that there can be an intellectual response that on the face of it also looks emotional. As long as they exploit the global momentum (which is of course waning, unfortunately), it seems possible to attack with the air force as much as possible (certainly not just civilian targets, God forbid), and gradually infiltrate and return military forces to the Strip (similar to Lebanon, only without the part of the withdrawal), and later even restore Israeli settlement maintained by the army and local defense squads, to restore the situation that existed before the disengagement, which was much better from a rational security standpoint (factually, in areas not hermetically sealed off you have more security control. What do Gaza, Nablus, Jenin, and Ramallah have in common? Area A territories with terror nests…) and not only because we very much want the white sands again…
May we merit good news, with God’s help 🙂

With the basic statement of the column (that one should act from reason and not from emotion) I agree, and I even said so before reading the column.
But I still have a few comments on the column.
A. Rabbi Cherki meant innocents whom Hamas cynically uses to protect itself. That is, hospitals located above Hamas headquarters and the like, where destroying Hamas justifies also the harm to the hospitals.
B. Why is toppling Hamas not practical? Right now the State of Israel has notified the residents of the Gaza Strip to evacuate the northern Strip. After that it will be possible to bomb with much greater freedom.
C. I assume this has already been written above, but I don’t think the Allies planned exactly what to do with Berlin after the war before they conquered it; of course that does not mean they should not have conquered it. The fact that one does not know what will be done with Gaza after the war does not mean the situation can be left as it is.
D. Although I did not change my opinion about revenge בעקבות the massacre Hamas carried out (unlike quite a few leftists who apparently never really bothered to think about revenge before), I definitely did change my opinion about Hamas. I thought it was possible to cope with the organization’s existence and to deter it. Your claim on this matter is that the only thing renewed in the massacre is that Hamas succeeded, and that basically we always knew it was trying to do such things. In my humble opinion, the cruelty of Hamas as revealed in this attack is at a level we had not known before. Therefore it became clear that this is an organization that cannot be allowed to exist in the world, because it is absolute evil. Besides that, the success itself taught us that this organization poses a total danger to us, and we cannot remain in a situation where it is deterred, but must destroy it. That is, in this case the success of the act caused us to understand the danger we face as a result of the organization’s existence. Therefore the success is very significant in this case.

Good evening. Two questions not so related to the above article, but I didn’t see another way to make contact. First—why do you use the title “Rabbi,” including in the title of this site? Does it not seem to you that the need for the title “Rabbi” has already passed from the world, and that continued use of it is superfluous and even ridiculous? If Hillel and Shemaya, Antigonus, Abaye, Rava, and Rabbah, all the prophets, and even Moses our teacher, greatest of them all, managed without titles like “Rabbi,” etc., why do you see fit to act otherwise?
Second—do you think that the security and economic condition, etc., of the people of Israel depends on the question of how faithful they are to the Torah and its commandments, or is there no connection between the things? Thanks in advance, especially for your willingness to answer such dubious questions in these turbulent days. Regards

I do not use that title; some other people do, including the editor and founder of the site. And I also do not understand why you think the need for it has passed from the world.

In my estimation, there is no connection.

Honorable Rabbi,
How would you suggest fighting the Nazis (the comparison was always apt)?
Is the difference that Hamas does not have the capability?
The education in Gaza and Judea and Samaria is that killing Jews is a commandment for which one should be killed—what can be done with such people?
Why, when it comes to war with another nation, does a person who supports my death but does not implement it deserve protection?

Thank you very much for the honest and quick answer.
With regard to your answer that, in your estimation, there is no connection between Torah and mitzvah observance and the success of the people of Israel, it comes out (if your estimate is correct) that most of the holy books, including Torah and Prophets, were edited in a way that seeks to plant blatantly false understandings in our minds and souls, solely in order to cause us to behave in a certain way.
Do you believe that this is a proper educational and leadership method—to use lies and manipulations to cause the masses to behave in a certain way? And if so, how is it that the manipulations do not work on intelligent people (like us, of course) but only on fools and ignoramuses?
And in general, if this is indeed the situation, why do you choose to be religious / observant, and not just religious but a “rabbi,” if in fact the whole basis on which you rely is full of a culture of lies and empty manipulations? How can you live in peace with the clear (and depressing) understanding that all the prophets / editors of the holy books basically fed us nonsense (subject, of course, to your answer to the first question)? Is there not a very serious logical failure here, at least outwardly, in behavior that takes upon itself the yoke of commandments?!

Thank you very much, you meant the opinion of the “greats”:

It is advisable to read a little before writing columns with false information.

The one who started, for example, with bringing Gazan workers into Israel was Naftali Bennett and Benny Gantz (the one you voted for in the last elections).

Bibi merely followed their lead.

So who really are “among the greatest strengtheners of Hamas”?

I am referring to this sentence you wrote:
“The practical results of an action, success or failure, should not change anything in our attitude toward the one who carried it out. It matters only from the standpoint of the gut, not from the standpoint of the head.”

About that I said that if Hamas bears responsibility for the results of their actions (and not only for their intention), then there is logic to an intensified response when there are severe results (success), isn’t there?

To the commenter—Gil:

You are wrong and misleading.
The entry of workers from Gaza was also Netanyahu’s policy throughout his years in power; this is by no means a Gantz-Bennett precedent.
In addition, Netanyahu’s strategy, which adopted a security conception of strengthening Hamas’s governance in the Strip at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, blew up in all our faces.

It is advisable to check data before responding to one column or another.

I assume you also read the rest of the column. There I already explained it, and here above as well. Nothing is supposed to change in our attitude toward the perpetrator of the action. The responsibility to repair the consequences of the act of course falls on him. That is not related to our attitude toward him.
But in our context all this is irrelevant because the action being taken now is not something we should do only because they succeeded. Nor does it repair the consequences that occurred; it prevents (I hope) future consequences. We should have done that earlier too. The result here neither adds nor subtracts in any way. Except perhaps for the world’s attitude. No connection to our own attitude.
We’re just repeating ourselves.

Hello Lidor.
A message such as this one from “Gil” is either the product of a brainwashed Bibist, or of a deeply foolish person, or of a bot (mechanized or human) operated by the Bibist poison machine. Therefore I do not usually respond to such things. Their stupidity is evident from its content. I did not censor it only because of the chance that this is merely an ordinary idiot, and this site is open to fools as well.
Beyond the factual lie, just think about the question of what the connection is between the issue of cultivating and funding Hamas and entry permits for workers from Gaza.
But since you already responded, here is a link I saw yesterday, with firsthand testimony (there are of course many more like this): https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/h1tzvqd11t

By the way, Bibi’s policy of cultivating and strengthening Hamas is a legitimate mistake. A person can err in his policy, and it is easiest to be wise after the fact. What is not legitimate is his pathological mendacity, shifting responsibility and filth onto others, and refusal to take responsibility. That is exactly what Daniel Friedman identified at the end of his post. Bibi will try to remain on his throne and not take responsibility for this policy of his. He is already doing so. About that, in my estimation, a civil war will still be fought after the current war.

Gil,
Bibi is a man of great merits, and a leader whose contribution to the State of Israel is on a historic scale. I voted for him several times, and even now I have not forgotten his enormous merits.

And with that: after the last soldier returns safely, everyone who was at the top of the security establishment in recent years needs to pack their things and leave public life permanently. Usually resignation is not taking responsibility, but throwing away responsibility. But one under whose watch such a great failure occurred, such a collapse of reason, cannot be the one to rebuild the IDF from the ruins. The terrible results are only a sign, not a cause.

And by the way, a leader whose excuse is “I merely followed their lead” is probably in the wrong profession.

I did not fully understand your distinction between the cellphone case and the Hamas case, so I am trying to ask more in order to sharpen the difference.

Regarding the cellphone case, you wrote that in the theory of punishment several rationales for punishment are offered. One is a sanction for the severity of the offense, another is revenge for the result (the state carries out controlled revenge in place of the victim or his family), atonement, deterrence, and so on.

From your words there it sounds as though the result has significance when we come to respond to some crime. So why, in the case of Hamas, do you claim that it has no significance?

To this you wrote that indeed, if one sees revenge as atonement and erasure of the result, there is a difference. But that itself is not correct and not proper, because you are taking revenge indiscriminately. As I explained, not all are guilty. You may harm those who need to be harmed in order to achieve objectives, but revenge is taken only on those who deserve it.
And it is also not correct if that revenge comes at the expense of other achievements (if it harms us in other respects).

That is, from your words here it sounds as if the results of the criminal action do indeed have significance, only one must ensure that revenge against Hamas is carried out not indiscriminately but specifically, and that it does not harm us in other respects. If so, I do not understand why you presented matters in the column as though the results have no significance at all.

A few things:

1. It really does not move me at all how I look in the eyes of the left, but also not in the eyes of the right. Thank God I am not a public figure.

2. The public appoints the heads of the system, not the functionaries at the middle levels. The new prime minister and defense minister will decide whether and which major generals or brigadier generals need to be fired. A leader who is incapable of straightening out his subordinates is like a carpenter who cannot saw boards—in other words, by definition he does not understand his role (or does not succeed in doing it). Such a person should go home even if what happened had not happened.

And let there be no mistake: people like Bennett, Gantz, and Eisenkot are among those who need to go home. I very much hope that in Likud a new generation of people will arise who understand where they are.

How can he bend everyone to his will? What power does he have? I’m telling you that they do not respect his voters and, in the depths of their hearts, they think there ought not to be elections at all. And that is how all the state officials think. The opportunity to oust them all was lost when Begin came to serve and not to inherit. As the Holy One, blessed be He, said: “And if you do not drive them out… they shall be barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides.”

No right-winger can be prime minister like that. So you are saying that because of this, basically no prime minister should be right-wing? Some democracy.

Corrected comment from errors:

It amazes me how stupid, Michi, you are capable of becoming. It surprises me every single time.

There are no innocents in Gaza. Gaza is an enemy state. It has collective responsibility for everything the government does. It is collectively criminal and should be punished with collective punishment for this crime. I do not care that the government in Gaza does not care about its citizens. That is how it is in every state ruled by terror. Did Saddam Hussein care about his citizens? Did we not have the right and the duty to launch missiles at Iraqi cities populated by civilians in response to the missile fire here, because of your nonsense about “morality”?

Did the Communist Party in the USSR care about the citizens of the USSR? Did the Americans not have the right to launch nuclear missiles at USSR cities in response to nuclear missiles being fired by the latter at U.S. cities?

I see an entire world of fools on the left and plain Israel-haters around the world clinging to an empty legal definition of the term “terror organization,” which is simply a government in every respect of an enemy state, and because of that hundreds of soldiers have died in Gaza since the 1990s and afterward also dozens and now thousands of civilians (which itself is a stupid and empty distinction).
There is no such thing as terror. There are only attacks. And attacks are fought with attacks. That is what the Irgun did before the establishment of the state, and afterward also the Haganah, which at first opposed retaliatory actions inside Arab villages, and when it absorbed attacks in its settlements it understood that there was no choice. That is why Unit 101 was established. Otherwise it is like fighting a sword with a rifle.

Missiles are fought with a hundred times more missiles (because only that will hurt them). Anything else is like fighting a knife with a machine gun.

And if the world will not allow us to do that (in its hypocrisy and stupidity), then the state should be dismantled and the Western countries should let us emigrate to their territory and give us homes, and in return they will receive the assets of the state and the homes here. There is no point in the existence of a state that is incapable of defending its citizens the way every other state in the world would do.

And this is still a corrected comment. 🙂

Well, I’ve learned: there are people who live in a conspiracy.

Hello Michi. It seems to me that what has become clear now is not something qualitative about Hamas itself, but about our ways of dealing with them.
There are several conceptions here that have been proven (finally) false. Starting from the conception of returning territories, through the conception of managing the conflict / strengthening Hamas, and the hopes of conducting with them some sort of unofficial dialogue. The events that happened proved that it is impossible to continue with these conceptions, because their price is intolerable, and in order to prevent this from happening again and again in the future, one must change direction and strive to eliminate the Hamas threat once and for all, and not continue in the paths we have tried until now in managing this conflict.

Therefore responses in the style of “topple Hamas” or “eliminate the threat” are not necessarily emotional responses, certainly when they come from experienced and level-headed experts such as Giora Eiland or Yoram Cohen, but rather a rational recognition that we must change course and strive for a solution that will permanently remove this threat. I would be glad if you answered me (without sarcasm if possible. Thanks)

Note: when I say final solution, I mean the elimination of Hamas’s military capabilities. Not massive bombing of Gaza and so forth. Another note: not only Bibi but the entire security establishment over the years shared in the conceptions that collapsed. In my opinion it is naive to think that if there had been a different prime minister now, or even over the last ten years, things would have looked different. When the entire security establishment comes from the same line of thinking, there is no chance of going against them.

The only thing that was renewed concerns us. That there are insane failures in the army and in the government. That says nothing new about them or about policy toward them.
I hope that people in operational positions really do act from the head. Unfortunately, that is not at all certain.