A Look at the Current Debate on War Crimes in Gaza (Column 727)
Yesterday a brief discussion took place in one of the Third Path WhatsApp groups about the claim that we are committing war crimes in Gaza. In recent days, harsh criticism has arisen not only around the world but also within Israel regarding a policy of starvation and a policy of opening fire on civilians. I have also heard claims—purportedly based on field testimony—of orders to fire at civilians with the deliberate intent to kill them without military necessity.
At the outset I wish to say that I am very pleased and proud that such a discussion is taking place at all. It means that people feel responsibility and are not prepared to remain silent in the face of wrongs and crimes being committed here (in their view). At the same time, I am very suspicious of such reports for various reasons. I tend to attribute them to fakes, to hostility toward the government (the “Anyone But Bibi” camp) and the army, all of which lead to biased interpretations of events and reports and to their hasty adoption. Clear fake cases are also being published, which reinforces these feelings.
On the other hand, despite my initial tendency to reject these claims, I keep telling myself that they must not be dismissed out of hand. In my opinion it is indeed unlikely, but we must not close the door to such criticism—perhaps precisely because of its severity. I must be aware that it is very difficult for me to accept these claims, and precisely for that reason I should suspect myself and cause myself to lend them a receptive ear and weigh them seriously.
Examples
I will begin with a few examples. Take, for instance, this video (edited in a highly tendentious way, of course) that reached me yesterday. I warn in advance that it is very difficult to watch. Beyond the images, there are also problematic statements by political leaders and rabbis likening Gazans to Amalek, and by implication effectively issuing a halakhic instruction to wipe out every infant there. There are also articles containing field testimonies about highly problematic behavior by the IDF toward non-combatants. One example is this report. Additional testimonies can be found in this article, and of course there are many more (mainly abroad, on left-wing and pro-Palestinian sites). Needless to say, on the basic fact that there is currently real hunger in Gaza, there is a plethora of reports and stories, with images of children and adults stricken by hunger—truly “Muselmänner”—and I will not bring them here. There is no doubt that there is also quite a bit of fake material on this issue, such as this example that was published just these days, but it is highly unlikely that the whole issue is nothing but fake. The existence of fakes does not mean that the depiction of hunger in Gaza is mistaken and/or false.
The images and videos are truly shocking, and it is hard to remain indifferent to them. It is no wonder that reactions toward us around the world and within Israel are extremely harsh, as they arouse anger, frustration, and intense emotions. This is probably why the Israeli press tends not to publish such images. I myself have tried until now not to look at these materials, and only now, in the discussions of recent days, did I depart from this practice. There is heavy criticism of our press for censoring such images, since it would be appropriate not to block relevant information and to allow criticism of the army and the government to arise and be heard. This is not security censorship but political and moral, and such censorship is hard to justify. Another criticism concerns preventing journalists’ entry into Gaza, which supposedly indicates concealment, and on the other hand does not seem to help much, because the images that reach us now come only from locals—which does not create a better picture for us.
I must say that for some time I have been wondering about my own policy on the matter. Seemingly, I should review all the material in order to form a balanced and unbiased position. Especially as someone who opposes any censorship of any kind, certainly when it comes to heresy in the religious sense, but also against Nazi opinions and others, Holocaust denial, and so on. If so, here too it is expected of me to expose myself to all the opinions, reports, and images, and then form a balanced and well-founded position. This is true of our general situation, but in particular of myself.
On Emotion, Reason, Morality, and Censorship
One of the questions arising in the background of this discussion is the question of moral emotion. More than once I have argued that morality is tied not to emotion but to reason. Emotion sometimes expresses worthy moral tendencies, but we must not let emotion lead us and determine our moral positions. In my last column I noted that I oppose fundamentalism of any kind, and I wrote that in my view fundamentalism usually causes harm. There I defined fundamentalism as placing some principle(s), whatever they may be, above critical thinking: an unwillingness to consider them even when counterarguments arise. In a comment there I was asked what harm there could be in Mother-Teresa-style fundamentalism—i.e., in fanatical dogmatism about morality. Seemingly this creates a morally perfect person who will not deviate from moral principles even if their urges incite them to do so. I answered that I see harm in this every day, since moral fanaticism and dogmatism lead to unreasonable moral criticism of the IDF, the government, and Israel’s policy in this war. In my view, a considerable part of the left is driven by moral fundamentalism—that is, morality rooted in emotion—so they are unwilling to let reasonable considerations alter their emotional inclinations. Almost daily I encounter examples of this when I speak with people who have criticism and for whom I have no way even to present a counterargument. There is no chance they will be willing to consider it at all. This is a direct harm of moral fundamentalism, and perhaps here too one can say that the road to hell (and perhaps sooner, to the Mediterranean) is paved with good intentions.
This is the explanation I give myself for avoiding viewing the shocking images and videos coming out of Gaza. I know that this would affect me greatly and make it harder for me to form a balanced moral stance. Avoidance here actually prevents biases rather than creating them. At the same time, I oppose such top-down censorship. Each person should make their own judgment, but I am not willing for someone in the government or the army to decide for me what I will or will not see, and what I will or will not think. However, I think that within a newspaper’s editorial policy it is legitimate to refrain from publishing such images, so long as there is no governmental or legal prohibition.
The root of the problem is that many think emotional involvement contributes to the quality of moral decision-making, whereas I claim the opposite. Emotional involvement impairs correct moral decision-making. And yet, emotion has a legitimate role in such situations. Once I have formed a moral stance, images and videos can arouse in me the kind of emotion that will spur me to act and not remain passive and silent. In other words, emotion should not take part in forming the moral stance, but it definitely can—and should—play a part in spurring us to act in the direction we have decided upon with reason. This is an important distinction, and in my opinion many err here. They feel that morality is wholly emotion, and that emotion has an important role in moral conduct. The first is a mistake; the second is a confusion. Indeed, emotion has an important role in our moral conduct (see columns 493 and 709, where I discussed psychopathy and the role of empathy in our moral conduct), but this is only in spurring us to act, not in forming the stance itself.
A Priori Considerations
In that WhatsApp discussion I wrote that I regard such reports with great suspicion for several reasons. First, I know the society in which I live, and in particular the IDF, and it is hard for me to believe that orders are given there to commit war crimes (starvation, or deliberate and unnecessary fire on non-combatants). Of course local deviations may occur, but this is certainly not army policy. The fact that we have blabbering ministers who love boastful, harsh declarations—see Smotrich, Struck, Amichai Eliyahu, and others—does not mean they have any influence on army policy (though they might influence certain soldiers). Beyond this, in most cases these declarations are entirely legitimate in my view, and the fact that the media likes to latch onto them in a tendentious way does not impress me. It is true that in many cases it is foolish to say such things explicitly, but in many cases there is nothing wrong in the content itself. In any case, the army’s policy is not set by Ben-Gvir, Struck, or Smotrich, and the important question is what happens in the field, not what this or that minister blathers.
Beyond all this, it is clear that Israel’s interest is that there be as few uninvolved casualties as possible and that there be no hunger in Gaza—not only for moral reasons but also for reasons of interest. The State of Israel does not seek to invite more and more international and domestic pressure that will hinder us in fighting. And of course add to that the fact that it is very difficult to conceal these facts from the public and the press, certainly against the background of the public and political debate going on here. Therefore, a priori, it is not plausible to me that orders are being given to starve or to fire on non-combatants. Add to this the countervailing fact that Hamas and Israel’s opponents have a clear interest in showing that there are war crimes, starvation, and unjustified harm to non-combatants, and you will understand why, a priori, these arguments are suspect and the burden of proof lies with those making them.
Furthermore, anyone who suspects a deliberate policy of war crimes must be assuming that the entire military command and the various security services are cooperating with it. One cannot accuse Ben-Gvir and Bibi of a war-crimes policy without saying that all the heads of the army and security services who carry out these orders are criminals destined for The Hague. Almost no one says this, except for a narrow fringe somewhere on the left. And why? Because it is really implausible. Here it is not only Bibi and Ben-Gvir who are war criminals, but also Eyal Zamir and the entire General Staff, and all the IDF command who for two years have been carrying out war crimes without rising up, without refusing, without resigning. Are we all such pusillanimous nonentities?! Highly unlikely. This is another reason why, a priori, such criticisms are implausible, and therefore the burden of proof is on the critics.
A friend whom I greatly respect—both intellectually and morally—told me a few days ago, with deep inner conviction, that it is clear and known that pilots receive orders to kill civilians in a surgical manner. He even told me that he cannot explain to himself why he would prefer to leave his daughter with an Israeli pilot (several of his friends and relatives are pilots) rather than with a Nukhba operative (though I gathered that in practice he would still choose the former). Think how absurd this is. Beyond its implausibility for all the reasons I described, in the Air Force such orders could pass even less, since the composition of those serving there is known to lean strongly to the left (and in my opinion they are overly punctilious about morality, reaching a distorted morality—see above and below regarding moral fundamentalism). To say that there is a general policy there of killing civilians for the sake of killing is an outrageous disconnect from reality. Here a golden piece of evidence would be required for me even to consider such a claim.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the events of October 7 aroused terrible anger in the public and in the army—and rightly so. There is also no doubt that all the residents of Gaza bear responsibility for what happened, not only the terrorists (see columns 635 and 723 on the principle and its implications). There is no doubt that Gaza’s residents hinder our fight against Hamas, and many also supported and still support its actions (even if now some regret it). It is therefore easy to conclude that all of Gaza has the status of Amalek and that everyone must be destroyed. In column 635 I explained that in my view this is not such an outrageous conclusion at the conceptual level—though in the end it is not correct and certainly not applicable.
By the way, I am quite sure that none of those making such declarations really mean that we should exterminate all Gaza residents regardless of the war against Hamas and without military need. Consider the following question: whether to kill a Gazan infant in a closed room with no external consequences—how many Israelis would say they are in favor? In my estimation, very few; even among the Ben-Gvir crowd it is a small minority. And even fewer would carry it out in practice. In my estimation, statements that “this is Amalek” generally intend what I explained in those columns—namely, that pity for Gaza’s residents must not prevent us from achieving the war’s goals. I explained there that if the war’s objectives require it, there is justification to kill all non-combatants. I think that usually this is what was meant (see also my conversation with Jeremy Fogel and also here). Likewise regarding Minister Amichai Eliyahu’s much-maligned statement about dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza—anyone who listens to the interview immediately sees that there was much ado about nothing.
In any case, the anger that exists in all of us and the statements that follow from it arouse a significant concern that even if there is no deliberate policy of war crimes, the situation invites deviations by individuals, and it is indeed important to be aware of this and to deal firmly with any such deviation. Therefore I also oppose these statements, even though one can argue for their correctness in and of themselves. These speakers have no influence on army policy, but the statements themselves can influence a lone soldier or officer and lead to a local war crime. I am also not sure that the IDF really investigates and deals with every such case with the required severity (I am quite sure it does not). Therefore I am more ready to accept reports and criticism of such exceptional cases (as opposed to criticism of war crimes as a policy).
And after all this, even if a priori it is implausible to accept such criticisms, how can we explain the field reports and the various insiders repeatedly asserting that there is a policy of war crimes and that it is not a local, sporadic, exceptional matter?
How to Understand the Reports
In column 38 I discussed the law of small numbers and used it to explain the reports made by members of organizations like Breaking the Silence and the like. In brief: a soldier or officer who has seen the results of his own actions and those of his comrades in the field—a hungry child with protruding ribs, a mangled corpse of an old man or a woman, a severe rush of people toward food, and the like—undergoes a very deep shock. It is very easy to declare that what we have here are war crimes. Note the systematic confusion that recurs again and again in the discussion of alleged war crimes in Gaza, between the factual question of whether there is hunger and the question of whether we are committing war crimes. To reject the claim of war crimes, it is not necessary to reject the factual claim that there is hunger. There may be hunger, but it is not our fault, since we have no alternative. The fact that both the critics and the IDF/government are careful to conflate the two claims indicates conceptual confusion. The fact that there is hunger is probably correct. It is unlikely that it is all fake. The question of whether it is our fault and whether it is necessary and justified is a completely different question. In fact, Bibi is being accused right now of an extreme change of course: until two days ago there was supposedly no hunger in Gaza, but yesterday he already announced in the media that there is hunger and that we are stepping up efforts to address it with airdrops and increased entry of aid trucks and organizations. It seems that Bibi too linked the two claims, until he was forced to admit the factual claim while continuing to deny our culpability. He was forced to confront this fallacy.
This conflation shows that once we conclude there is hunger, it becomes very difficult for us to argue that it is not our fault and that there is still justification to continue the policy that created the hunger. Emotion biases us and prevents us from forming a balanced and reasonable moral stance. But as noted, this is a fallacy. The factual claim does not necessarily entail the normative-moral conclusion. Not at all. Personally, for example, I am fairly certain there is hunger, and at the same time I believe we are not to blame for it and we do not need to stop the war because of it.
Another reason for these reports is confirmation bias. If someone’s worldview is left-leaning and they tend to think that the war is unjustified, they will be inclined to interpret the situations they encounter in ways that fit their a priori views. Of course, this also applies to the other side. I think there is a strong, though not complete, correlation between the speakers’ worldviews (right or left—soldiers, politicians, or civilians) and their views about the war’s morality and about war crimes. In various past columns (see columns 5, 602, 607 – 608, 635, 666, and more) I explained that this correlation is not necessarily spurious, since the right sees the enemy as a collective and the left as a collection of individuals. Still, I am quite sure there are also biases in perception and interpretation. Add to this the phenomenon I described in column 38—highlighted by Daniel Kahneman—whereby we tend to take a few examples and treat them as a representative sample of a general phenomenon if we have a good story that explains it. Breaking the Silence has a good story explaining why this is Israel’s policy, so it is easy for them to view a few particular examples as a representative sample of a general situation. And again, this could be the case from the opposite side as well. These are possible explanations for the biases, and each person can decide where they think there are biases and where not (and I assume that in this very decision we are liable to succumb to the same fallacies and biases).
Note also that the correlation of the criticism with opposition to the government for other reasons is itself telling. Again and again I find that those who oppose the government interpret every fact accordingly, even when that interpretation has no advantage over alternatives. They generally do not listen to alternative proposals. For example, I brought there a report by the head of an American aid organization claiming that it is all Hamas fakery—no hunger, nothing. I have already read about him that he is a pro-Netanyahu, pro-Trump Evangelical pastor (heaven forfend), and therefore, due to his biases, there is no reason to listen to him. Perhaps that is true, but for some reason I did not find the same skepticism and suspicion of bias, due to agenda, in reports on the other side. The problem is that in every such debate both sides are convinced that the facts are clear and agreed upon, when in reality there is no agreement even on the facts. There is no source of information accepted by all sides, and what both sides share is that they doubt opposing sources and take as self-evident the sources that suit them—and of course they also interpret them in ways that suit them. Thus every thesis becomes unfalsifiable. There is no doubt that similar biases exist in the other direction as well, but I, who strongly oppose the government on various aspects, feel neutral in this debate—in which my conclusions just happen to align with it.
Faulty and Biased Interpretations
Take, for example, the shocking images of hunger that we see in the media. Let us assume for the sake of discussion that these are truthful reports of the situation in Gaza. Still, the moral conclusion depends greatly on where the photo was taken. As far as I understand, most of these images are coming from the northern Strip, where there are supposed to be no civilians. For months and years they have been called to leave that area for the humanitarian zone in the south, where supplies are provided. They chose to remain, so why should we supply them with food? Whoever remained there bears responsibility, and I see no reason in the world to bring in even a crumb of bread. This is precisely how war is conducted—occupying territory and fighting the enemy—while leaving civilians safe places with supplies. The fact that they collaborate with Hamas and do not obey our directives is their problem. I would not bring in supplies there even if there were no other problem. These civilians are physically obstructing the fighting and are practically like militants themselves.
Moreover, bringing in aid does not necessarily reach the hungry civilians. Hamas has a clear interest in creating hunger, so it seizes the aid and does not let its civilians access it. It is very happy about hunger and the deaths of non-combatant populations (it has such an interest—unlike us, whose interest is the opposite, as I explained above). It also makes money from the aid and uses it against us. This is not mere conjecture; there are clear reports that this is indeed occurring. So why does the fact that there is hunger mean that we are to blame? Does Hamas’s abuse of its own people impose responsibility on us? In my opinion, no (I am speaking morally; international law does not really interest me here in this discussion, and it is as clay in the potter’s hands). Are we supposed to bring in more and more aid so as to arm Hamas against us and help the non-combatants seize territory for Hamas in the northern Strip, with our own hands? That is absurd. Especially since the army and government assert emphatically that we are bringing in sufficient aid—so why bring in more just because Hamas is using it?! You can see how great the distance is between the factual question that appears in the images and the normative question. Even if there is hunger in Gaza, that does not necessarily mean there is a moral problem on our part.
One participant in that WhatsApp discussion raised several questions that he demanded I answer:
| * Why use artillery fire to disperse a crowd of hungry people who are coming, in accordance with IDF instructions, to seek food?
* Why concentrate aid at only three hubs where uncontrollable masses are bound to form? * Why do ministers in the government repeatedly declare a desire to starve or exterminate the Gazans? \*There is first-hand testimony from officers in the field: |
I will bring here my preface regarding the very report, and afterward address the three questions (only because they are highly representative of such debates):
| I did not see any field testimony here. One clear thing is indeed stated: there is no fire directed at non-combatants with the aim of killing or harming them. Everything else consists of very general statements, and I am not sure the writer is aware of the full set of surrounding considerations.
It is only natural that emotion regarding harm to Gazans has become dulled, and the reasons appear in his words. Indeed, there is room to make sure we do not reach unnecessary harm. I also assume there are local deviations that should be prevented. But setting an appropriate moral bar is not identical with criticism—and certainly not with the anti-Israeli propaganda that makes vile use of such matters: genocide, war crimes, and other ills. As I wrote above, tendentious interpretations of events are partly born of anti-Israel sentiment and partly of the understandable and even laudable shock at the images, which prevents people from taking the context into account. * Neither of us knows the context of the fire. It is obvious that Hamas is robbing the supplies and is also trying to harm our soldiers. Therefore I do not see what facts you are relying on. Even if it is factually clear that shots were fired at hungry people, that does not say much. The facts would have to show two things to justify such criticism: 1) that genuinely dangerous fire was directed at civilians (i.e., not merely warning fire, and not fire at militants suspected of mingling there) without justification; and 2) that those firing were aware of this—i.e., that it was not a mistake. I do not know the facts, and I very much doubt you know them better than I do. I remind again that a priori this claim is utterly implausible; therefore the burden of proof lies on the critics. * Here too, neither of us knows the facts. I can only surmise that it is very difficult to establish a sterile zone against Hamas, hence there is a limitation on the number and location of sites. Again, you have not met the burden of proof. * I addressed this explicitly above. I will only note that in most of the cases where I heard such criticism the statements were interpreted tendentiously and were not actually said. But indeed, the utterances of several ministers are sometimes foolish. That says nothing about how the army actually conducts itself—and that is what matters. |
It was evident that for him these were facts not in dispute, and the conclusions seemed self-evident. It did not bother him at all that these were highly implausible claims a priori and that they had no factual basis—or at least that the facts were open to many interpretations and much information was lacking. Very strange, especially given that he is a very capable person and I have no doubt he is good and moral (I think this is the phenomenon of moral fundamentalism mentioned above).
Conclusion
The conclusion is that this is a very important debate, and its very existence is most welcome. Yet the way it is conducted is very problematic. I explained why, a priori, criticisms of a deliberate policy of war crimes are highly implausible, and therefore the burden of proof lies with the critics. This is my starting point. But in my estimation that burden is not being met. The facts presented—even those that are not fake—are all highly interpretable and are subject to strong agenda-driven selection. I get the impression that people are not necessarily driven by moral concerns, but no less by the promotion of political agendas (sometimes unconsciously). The emotions are strong—and not for nothing, as we are indeed dealing with difficult situations and images. Still, it is important to let reason rule over emotion so as not to fall into the fallacy of moral fundamentalism.
As for specific cases, it is indeed important to investigate and deal with each one, and I am far from convinced that this is actually being done. Partly because, as is well known, the IDF is not the most efficient organization (caution: understatement!) in any area, and partly because there is an understandable desire to ease the burden on the fighters who are carrying this heavy load and to be considerate of them. That is in addition to the residue left in all of us from October 7 and from the entire war. Still, none of this justifies neglecting to address exceptional cases.
Discussion
Okay, that’s too crude. But that isn’t the topic here. See post 635 and my article in Tzohar 14 on Operation Defensive Shield, and much more.
Thank you!
People like to say, “And if it were the prime minister’s son who had been kidnapped, would he act the same way?” And I always said: if he changed his mind because it was his son, he should be removed from office for that alone…
And this is part of the problematic morality: they feel—whether genuinely or they’re pretending—a real closeness to the hostages, and that’s why the issue hurts them so much; but it’s clear to everyone that if the hostages belonged only to certain sectors, the overwhelming majority of the protesters would have no complaint at all (except perhaps for the sake of toppling the government, etc.). In other words, their claim is not purely moral…
So thank you very much for sharpening this point in the debate.
Why isn’t that the topic? If the only way (with emphasis on only) to subdue the enemy is by exerting enormous pressure on the entire population, isn’t that justified?
I just looked at that post, and it turns out that you wrote this too:
I have written more than once that in my opinion, in the case of Gaza there is justification for doing everything necessary to achieve the goals of the war, namely eliminating Hamas, returning the hostages, and ensuring security for the entire State of Israel. Whatever is required to achieve those goals is morally justified in my view, including starving children and the mass killing of uninvolved people (I am not entering here into considerations of criticism from the world, nor concerns about loss of international support and its consequences, which should not be underestimated). The explanation is that this is a collective pursuer. (These matters are explained in several places here on the site. See my article here, and posts 1, 5, 151, and others.) The Gazans (and perhaps all Palestinians) are engaged with us in a stubborn war as a collective and are unwilling to let up, and therefore not only those holding weapons constitute pursuers. All of them have the status of a pursuer. True, I explained there that despite this there is no justification for harming uninvolved people unless and when this is required for the sake of our self-defense; otherwise the rule applies that “one can save him by injuring one of his limbs.”
If so, I would be glad if you would clarify why in this post you proceed from the assumption that if Gazan civilians are indeed being intentionally harmed, this is a war crime.
Very true. But the distinction between involved and uninvolved is not artificial. The structure is much more subtle.
I completely agree. And I wrote this in one of the posts. Except there is no need to wait for his removal. If his son were there, he would have been forbidden to take part in decisions regarding the matter.
Hello Rabbi Michi.
In your post, you ultimately argue that there may indeed be hunger to some extent, but that this is not the responsibility of the IDF/the state, but rather Hamas’s responsibility. You might even agree to claim that it stems from our ineffectiveness (in protecting the aid from Hamas and for the benefit of the civilians), but not from policy.
That is definitely a claim I can live with in peace.
But even so, the common claim from the right whenever moral arguments are raised against them is: “It didn’t happen, and if it did happen, so what?” This happens with the hunger in Gaza, which is sometimes presented דווקא as a pressure policy on Hamas, and in the past with the affair of abuse of prisoners at Sde Teiman, with settler violence, and just recently with Milibitzki.
This is a claim that so characterizes people with no moral backbone: first they try to deny it, but not out of moral revulsion from the act, only in order to escape the fear of judgment—and at the same time they are already preparing the ground for the possibility that the denial will fail, by advancing the argument that there is no flaw in the act at all (and sometimes the opposite: it is itself the moral act). This internal contradiction is so ridiculous that I don’t understand how individuals and whole publics are not ashamed to parrot it. Therefore, a priori I find it hard to believe the facts they present, as well as their moral standards.
This is a failing that in my opinion the right falls into more than the left (even though you often argue for symmetry in the failings of the sides), and therefore the kings of the right manage to survive despite great and small moral sins (because for them it is “first of all it didn’t happen, and if it did happen, so what?”), whereas the left cuts off the heads of its leaders over the smallest or greatest thing (the well-known cancel culture of the far left is a symbol of this), both political heroes and cultural heroes. Self-criticism is, after all, an important foundation in the pursuit of truth and morality, and on the right it is lacking to the point of nonexistence.
All the best!
Ketura
I agree with the rabbi, but what I feel is missing from the post is a comparison to what happens in the world. When the United States fought ISIS in Iraq and Syria, no one counted civilian bodies or checked how many people remained hungry in order to accuse the Americans of war crimes. It was clear that a war against a terror organization hiding among civilians would cause severe humanitarian distress.
By contrast, Israel is required to meet a moral bar that no other army has met. Although the IDF allows aid to enter and takes measures that endanger its soldiers in order to avoid harming uninvolved people, the world rushes to accuse it of starvation and war crimes. This double standard prevents the fair and in-depth discussion that the rabbi is proposing.
Hello Ketura. First, I see no contradiction at all in that form of argument: there is no hunger, and even if there is, we are not to blame for it. My claim was that the existence of hunger does not mean that we are to blame.
As for the assessment of who is less honest and moral, I see no point in getting into it. Let’s agree that both sides have a serious problem on this issue.
The head-chopping on the left is really not connected to their moral sensitivity.
Let me just sharpen the point. I do not have solid and comprehensive information about what is happening in Gaza. Only an impression. In the post I presented my considerations for why the burden of proof is on the critics. The conclusion is not definitive, only that they have not met the burden of proof.
What does the sabbatical year have to do with an omelet? What relevance does the world’s hypocrisy have to the discussion I held here? Are you sure you invested even a second of thought before pouring out your frustrations with the world here?
Cases like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bombing of Dresden are the reasons international laws were enacted. These are grave war crimes that killed civilian populations indiscriminately. You cannot justify war crimes by means of other war crimes.
Mr. Haifa Resident, that is a historical distortion of anti-Western propaganda. What mainly led to the strengthening of international law was the horrors of the Holocaust, not Hiroshima and certainly not Dresden.
Naturally. The whole of World War II led to the rise of international law, which was written by Jews. The atomic bombs, the shelling of civilian populations, and above all the Holocaust.
In every war there are war crimes, few or many, from the Russian army to the United States, and it is not reasonable to assume that we have been free of them over the past two years.
Even if you do not want to exterminate all the Gazans down to the last one of them.
The very fact that the government and the army, as its contractor, wanted and succeeded in turning 70–80 percent of Gaza into an area unfit for habitation—the destruction of the economy, the culture, the infrastructure (hospitals, houses of worship, homes, government institutions, neighborhoods, cities, fields, businesses), the destruction of history, of identity, of the possibility of existing as a collective, of the social, family, and class fabric, of the landscape, of the vegetation, of the land—in a combination of deliberate intent by the political echelon and as a byproduct. And the failure to stop, investigate, and prevent acts of destruction and killing by junior officers and soldiers in the field (as in the cases of the killing of aid workers, the burial of their bodies, and giving false testimony to the IDF spokesperson). Creating the conditions for mass hunger, death from disease, premature births, the collapse of the health system, and the collapse of the human social order. Why work by negation? It would have been possible to flood the Strip with food and thereby avoid criticism, and Hamas too would have had no incentive to steal and sell the food.
The most important decision-makers want, and declare that they want, the mass expulsion of as many Gazans as possible.
Alongside repeated statements by those same decision-makers—not only by the public and the media—from the very beginning of the war: to wipe out the seed of Amalek, turn it into a parking lot, impose a total siege, cut off the water and electricity, prevent food, erase Gaza, destroy them all, there are no human beings there, a second Nakba, an atomic bomb, there are no innocents, there are no uninvolved people, every baby is a terrorist, conquest expulsion settlement, Jewish revenge, “We are erasing Gaza, it will be Jewish” — Minister Amichai Eliyahu. Incitement and genocidal rhetoric מצד rabbis and opinion-shapers whom many soldiers in Gaza listen to: Yinon Magal, Feiglin, Yosian, many Knesset members, in the press and in media channels.
The completion of a process of total dehumanization on the part of the Israeli public, and complete apathy regarding what is happening and the value of human life, use of brutal language, and adoption of a genocidal culture that historically characterizes societies before they carried out horrific acts.
And not only talk, but also implementation in practice: concentrating the population and imposing a siege—an undeclared implementation of the Generals’ Plan. A failure to understand that the IDF is currently an occupying force in the Strip and therefore, legally, is responsible for the welfare of the residents, alongside a constant effort by decision-makers to prevent food from entering Gaza and to allow only a small amount in solely because of the threat of global sanctions from the world. Using gunfire and shells as a means of dispersing residents at the few food-distribution points, killing dozens each time. Reports from soldiers about the use of Gazan human shields (shawishes) to search for mines in abandoned houses. Turning large parts of the Strip into killing zones with no warning at all for residents, and thus killing many residents.
Soldiers are now using the term “foreskins” to count their number of kills. So many video clips of soldiers celebrating the wiping out of the seed of Amalek, laughing and rejoicing as they blow up infrastructure and hospitals.
“In one incident,” the fighter recounted, “there was the accidental killing of a family in the Strip: ‘We were in a killing zone, we saw three figures entering the area and, according to instructions, we fired. Later it became clear—these were children aged 12–13 and their mother. We didn’t know. We acted according to orders.’”
Karmela Menashe, “We accidentally killed two children and their mother; we cannot process it,” Kan 11, 28.7.2024
The holding of ceremonies by decision-makers about renewing settlements in Gaza after expelling the residents. Preventing journalists from entering the territory of the Strip and blocking the possibility of broad coverage of what is happening and verification of data (and then claiming that the resulting data are unreliable and everything is Hamas lies).
Reports that so far between 60,000 and 100,000 people have died, most of them women and children.
“Absorbing” collateral damage of dozens and even hundreds killed in each round of shelling, unceasing bombardment from the air at ratios of 1:30 for every junior Hamas truck driver. Reports and testimonies about the existence of torture detention facilities at Sde Teiman and Megiddo, not only for Hamas members but also for random Gazan residents captured in the Strip; acts of torture, starvation, and amputations due to deliberate withholding of medical treatment, as well as deaths. The prisoners who were released due to lack of space and in previous deals looked, nearly all of them, like Muselmänner and people damaged in body and mind.
The official de jure goals of the war have become a cover for the de facto realization of a vision of conquest, expulsion, and settlement.
Not necessarily with malicious intent at the systemic level (although there are cases like Shuval Ben Natan and the officer Yehuda Vach, who indeed committed crimes intentionally), but with great apathy and numbness toward the deaths of many civilians.
In the end, the army carries out orders, and if it is ordered to distribute flowers in Gaza, it will distribute flowers in Gaza. The line between legitimate action and a manifestly illegal order can be blurred in situations of urban warfare. Numbness allows soldiers to commit disproportionate, unprofessional, and inhumane acts that will later cause them moral fractures. This is the result of cognitive dissonance between official directives and the creation of a hidden reality that undermines the official declarations and affects actions and reality in practice.
When an adult person beats small children, we do not say a fight took place. We say an adult abused and beat children.
It is hard to be surprised that people accuse us of the gravest crime that must not be named once you step outside the bubble of the Israeli media.
In everything you wrote here I did not see even a single war crime (!). You repeated the anti-Israel propaganda with all the fallacies I described. Very characteristic of the blindness and biases discussed in the post.
For me, Rabbi, emotionally it works the other way around. Even though the events of October 7 are perceived by me as a hard blow whose victims I identify with the progressive left, and as punishment for the infamous party involving the three grave sins, and as the fulfillment of my prayer a month before the events—“Thus impose Your fear upon all Your works, and Your dread upon all that You created”—really the exact opposite of your core teachings in every field; even with all that, the emotion and anger toward Hamas that has arisen in me since then is so strong it is indescribable, and when I see the images above it only makes me feel good. If it were in my power to press a button and destroy Gaza without anyone knowing, I would do it calmly and serenely while reading, say, one of your posts about growing lettuce in the territories, doing it as though it were the mitzvah of taking the four species and feeling moral elevation.
With permission, in my understanding there is here a significant and perhaps essential stage in the development of the ‘Jewish people and Judaism.’
Truths are something this current has dealt with from its very inception.
It is clear to me that there is a flooding of relationships within the group / the Jewish group.
The possibility of discussing things substantively has never been easy, certainly not with the emotional baggage that arises nowadays.
It seems to me that we have an opportunity to understand, learn, aim, and produce the next stage. I have no rabbit in a hat. I have a few thoughts.
As for the concrete issue, which for me is part of the above:
There is a process proposing to destroy us. Both from outside and from within.
The capacity to argue, justify, and above all to be the righteous one—rises to the surface in extremity.
We, the Jewish people / Judaism, are invited to be the scapegoat in Gaza.
The difficult beginning [7.10] told of the force that would come afterward. The capacity to divide versus the capacity to unite.
To my mind, as in the human body, the capacity to unite heals; the capacity to divide sickens.
Are there harsh actions in Gaza or aren’t there?! There are. Do Jews do this intentionally? No.
Are there forces confusing everyone? To me it is clear that there are.
The systems of pressure from so many directions on leadership and on citizens are almost impossible. Reactions under pressure are reactions that are almost always biased. It is hard to be substantive in such situations, and the feeling that I am expressing what will save the world is also very strong!! Self-righteousness, as we said?!
And with permission, the antisemitism absorbed over many generations rises to the surface. Of course, also among us. And as is known, the justification for antisemitism has many faces and is ‘correct.’
There are those who recognize that pressure can have an advantage. It can also produce impressive capacities for endurance, substance, and above all focused effectiveness (an important issue) over the long term. For me this is an essential part of the Jewish idea = comprehensive solutions for the medium and long term.
Emotion / intellect? In my many years and complex acquaintance with the human body, the systems are integrated in such a way that one cannot—I have checked this with many people—know where the boundaries are. Where it begins, ends, mixes, influences.
So here is the beginning of a substantive conversation in a concrete aspect, and perhaps from this a substantive conversation will become possible in the broader aspects, which for me are the main thing.
Thank you for the discussion.
Committing torture, starvation, and deliberately withholding medical treatment at Sde Teiman—is that not a war crime?
Using human shields to clear mines—is that not a war crime?
“Collateral damage” of women and children, which long ago surpassed the number of Hamas men killed—is that not suspicion of a war crime?
https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/yokra14378610
Burying the bodies in a mass grave in the sand of 15 aid workers who died from IDF fire, while the ambulances were lawfully marked and had their lights on, and then giving false testimony about it to the IDF spokesperson—is that not grave suspicion of a war crime?
And if there are claims here that these articles come from left-wing newspapers, then let the IDF kindly allow entry to foreign journalists of credibility. You can’t have it both ways. In any case, only these newspapers cover these actions; we certainly won’t see these claims in the Israeli mainstream media.
The IDF is currently an occupying force in the Strip; this is not a matter of “whatever I feel like,” and whether aid reaches Hamas or not. Once you are an occupying force, you are fully responsible for the welfare of the residents under your control, and not only to “allow” aid to pass through, but also to provide it under the law. There is no way at all to argue otherwise under international law.
It seems you didn’t read the post and are only using the platform for propaganda over and over again. It is evident that you are agitated, which is understandable in light of the situation, the images, and the reports. But I explained in the post that emotional agitation is not an argument.
I considered deleting this, but because of the importance of the discussion and the propaganda being conducted everywhere, I nevertheless decided to respond briefly.
General introduction.
First, I wrote that I am not dealing with international law. It doesn’t really bother me, for many reasons (it deals with wars, not terror. It is subject to interpretation and usually biased and unequal, etc.). My discussion is moral.
Second, general statements without context and without clarification of the facts do not help me. Especially when the evidence is supposed to establish both facts and intentions. The fact that someone reports and gives interpretations of events does not turn the matter into fact. I explained in the post why these interpretations are liable to be biased.
Third, you refer to the uninvolved there as if they were innocent civilians. They are not. First, many of them support Hamas’s actions and even voted for it. Second, they are responsible for its actions because they are the residents and it represents them (it is the ruler there). I have explained several times in the past that this does not justify killing them just like that, but it does justify killing them and harming them and their property when this is necessary in order to deal with Hamas. I see no problem with that at all. I referred you to my posts in which I explained this in detail.
Fourth, I wrote that local deviations are to be expected, and the question is whether there is a general policy of that kind and whether the deviations are dealt with. I wrote that in my opinion it is unlikely that such a policy exists, but I also get the impression that the treatment of deviations is deficient (and I also explained why).
Now, briefly, regarding your points.
Committing torture, starvation, and deliberately withholding medical treatment at Sde Teiman—is that not a war crime?
Definitely not. It depends on the purpose of the torture and starvation, if indeed this was done at all. If they needed to get information out of them, for example? As for the Nukhba terrorists, the right thing would have been simply to kill all the Nukhba terrorists. Providing them with medical treatment is a war crime. That is the morally required step.
Using human shields to clear mines—is that not a war crime?
Not at all. Better that they die than soldiers.
“Collateral damage” of women and children, which long ago surpassed the number of Hamas men killed—is that not suspicion of a war crime?
The numbers in this context are entirely meaningless. It is permissible to kill whatever number is necessary in order to deal with Hamas. By the way, parallel data for fighting terror in such areas indicate that our situation is better than previous events involving Americans and Britons, for example. Our insane degree of caution with warnings to the population before bombings and before physical entry, in a way that disrupts our ability to fight, is unreasonable in my opinion.
Burying the bodies in a mass grave in the sand of 15 aid workers who died from IDF fire, while the ambulances were lawfully marked and had their lights on, and then giving false testimony about it to the IDF spokesperson—is that not grave suspicion of a war crime?
If that is true, then indeed there is a problematic act here that requires investigation. And here too, note that the act itself depends on context (they use cars and fully marked medical personnel for their purposes, so I am not at all impressed by such general statements). The cover-up is indeed problematic, and it should be investigated who ordered it and punishment should be imposed. But a cover-up is not murder. Rather, it is a problem that is mainly disciplinary and tactical. In light of indiscriminate criticisms like yours, I can very much understand why they try to cover things up, although in my opinion that is not justified.
The IDF is currently an occupying force in the Strip; this is not a matter of “whatever I feel like,” and whether aid reaches Hamas or not. Once you are an occupying force, you are fully responsible for the welfare of the residents under your control, and not only to “allow” aid to pass through, but also to provide it under the law. There is no way at all to argue otherwise under international law.
I wrote that international law does not really interest me. What interests me is the elimination of Hamas, and I have no problem with harming uninvolved people insofar as this is required to achieve that goal. Certainly not to provide them with aid that is used against us and that is not given on our terms but in the places they chose to position themselves.
I’m referring to this paragraph of yours:
“This is the explanation I give myself for avoiding viewing the shocking images and videos coming out of Gaza. I know that it would affect me deeply and make it harder for me to formulate a balanced moral position. Avoidance here actually prevents bias rather than creating bias. At the same time, I oppose such censorship from above. Each person should make his own calculations, but I am not willing for someone in the government or the army to decide for me what I will or will not see, and what I will or will not think. But I think that even within a newspaper’s policy framework it is legitimate to refrain from publishing such images, as long as there is no governmental or legal prohibition of this kind.”
1. You are afraid to watch because it will morally blind you and force you to be misled by emotion, but this connection between watching and emotion—which is non-moral—is much weaker than you write. In order to understand and get a sense of what we are doing in Gaza, you need to see a bit with your own eyes and smell it up close, not just read about it in an air-conditioned room over a cup of coffee.
To understand what the killing of ‘tens of thousands of children and women’ means, one has to see and feel what it means—many, many, many dead children. There is a perceptual gap here, not only an emotional one.
2. Government or military censorship is certainly bad, and on that I agree with you, but you write that it is legitimate for a media outlet to refrain from such publications. Is it clear to you that what mainly drives all the mainstream channels and press in Israel (except perhaps Haaretz) to avoid conveying any sense of the scale of Gazan suffering is primarily a commercial economic consideration—the public does not want to hear about suffering in Gaza.
I am a realist. I understand that money is the main driver of almost every body in the world, but I would not call it legitimate for a media outlet to conceal the truth purely out of economic interests. In this respect we have trash media, like many media bodies in the world.
1. I disagree. Knowledge of what is happening is what is relevant. The shock of watching causes biases.
2. A media channel does whatever it wants, including its biases and interests. This is free media. It also broadcasts Big Brother and not series about science and philosophy. I am against dictating to media channels what to broadcast. If you’re not satisfied, don’t watch. I am definitely against censorship from above that imposes things on us and on the media.
I think it would be useful to clarify what in your view would count as “meeting the burden of proof”—what evidence would convince you that Israel is carrying out immoral acts in the Strip, not incidentally at the margins, but as part of its main actions.
For my part, I think your threshold is too high in two senses: a. morally—assigning too much importance to intentions, as opposed to outcomes, in determining whether something is moral or not; b. epistemologically, demanding too high a standard to prove “intent.”
In my opinion, the focus on intentions is very problematic, and not for nothing. War is an enormous event involving dozens of senior decision-makers, thousands of decisions, hundreds of thousands of implementers, and millions of actions. It is impossible to perform an effective intention analysis for such a complex system, and in any event it is not even clear how to aggregate it. So it is no wonder that the discussion boils down to the factual-causal question: a. Is there suffering in Gaza? b. Do Israel’s actions play a significant causal role in that suffering when compared to alternatives?
For the sake of argument, if the only way to completely remove the threat of Palestinian terror were to eliminate all the Palestinians down to the very last one, that would unequivocally not be a moral decision in my view, considering the damage caused (millions dead) versus the benefit obtained (saving hundreds or thousands of Israelis).
At the margins—this argument over whether Israel is responsible or Hamas is responsible is very strange. Clearly both sides may well be jointly responsible for Palestinian suffering. Responsibility is not a zero-sum game.
1. It’s not only about watching starving children. There is a lack of verbal and textual information among the Israeli public regarding the dimensions of Gazan suffering. Whether that is justified or not is a separate discussion, but there is indifference at best and a depreciation of the value of human life at worst.
2. Just so it is clear, I did not write that anyone should be forced to broadcast anything. I am a devotee of free speech. It’s simply that a media outlet that presents only half the picture just because it is afraid of a mass abandonment of viewers is simply trash media. I understand there are economic considerations and constraints and interests etc. etc., but it is not doing the basic thing a media body is supposed to do.
1. We are repeating ourselves. The question is whether one kind of bias or another is preferable.
2. Tell me something I didn't knowi
I do not know what answer you are expecting. Something that would convince me of this despite its extreme improbability.
The focus on intentions is necessary for moral judgment. A mistake is not a war crime.
Of course we have a causal part in the situation. Without us it would not exist. That is not the question. The question is whether because of that we should stop fighting. You are doing a comparison of outcomes. That is ridiculous. By that logic, they should have let the Nazis exterminate a few more million Jews and thereby spare many casualties among the Allies and the Germans and Japanese. You ignore the question of guilt, the asymmetry in a state’s obligations to its citizens and not to the enemy, questions of guilt and responsibility, and questions of eliminating terror and future deterrence. For you all this is measured by the question of how many will die on each side. I have written more than once that if eliminating Hamas requires killing all the residents of the Strip, that is what is morally permitted and required.
Would you have opposed the British bombing the civilians of Nazi Germany (as the Nazis did in London, killing tens of thousands) in order to subdue the Nazis?
I don’t think so.
This case is no different whatsoever. Especially after the disengagement and the Gazans’ choice of Hamas.
Enough of the sanctimonious stupidity. There is no such thing as war crimes. There are only crimes. If the war is justified, then there is no crime in anything bad done to the enemy, and if not, then the war itself is a crime.
To clarify your position, I would appreciate your addressing the following two points:
1. Suppose that before October 7 an Arab ate about 2,000 calories a day, and since then he has eaten on average only 700 a day. That is a kind of starvation. But the question is whether there is a moral problem here.
2. What is the proportionality according to which it is permissible to harm innocent people (people known to be completely innocent civilians) when eliminating one terrorist? A ratio of 1:1, 1:10, 1:100?
Is this addressed to me?
1. I explained everything. A stupid question, because it depends on countless parameters.
2. There is no numerical answer to that. In general, eliminating Hamas justifies killing whatever number of Gazans is required.
Fine. It’s a stupid law and does not bind anyone (there was no parliament of the world that enacted this law). And certainly anyone who signed the law is not bound toward a political entity like Gaza that is not bound by this law. I don’t know why one has to explain such trivialities. The left is completely deranged. Truly mindless.
The comparison is relevant because you cannot be moral in a world where nobody besides you is moral. Would this enemy himself save you by injuring one of your limbs if you came to destroy him? He would slaughter newborn babies. So obviously we too have no obligation to save him by injuring one of his limbs, and morally it is permissible to kill any Gazan currently in Gaza (babies should not be killed… but not because they are innocent and it is forbidden to kill them, but because there really is no point—though there is a point if it would cause their Gazan parents to stop trying to murder us; rather they can be handed over to other nations to raise). Gazan children aged 12 are certainly already bad children at that age.
You cannot kill an entire population and say, “But we didn’t really mean to, so it’s not genocide.” By what moral standards and set of values can that be justified?
Once we have descended to such logical depths, it is time to end the discussion.
My general impression from the post and the comments here is that there is a classic dispute between a modernist like Rabbi Michi and postmodernists like the people on the left.
For the modernist, there are values that determine what is just and what is not, and therefore once it is clear that Hamas is not right in this war, every citizen who chose it is to some degree responsible for its actions; and it is also clear that the State of Israel has the right to conquer the Strip, to enter hospitals if they are being used for terror, and so on.
For the postmodernist, there is no way to determine what is moral beyond the question of suffering, and therefore on October 8 Israel was in the right, but once it appears that the balance of suffering tilts in favor of the Gazans, immediately the moral balance tilts against Israel, simply because at the end of the day they are suffering more, and therefore we are the immoral ones.
At the official level, people on the left will not admit that this is their view. They will wrap it in talk about uninvolved persons and the like. But what underlies this is that their standard for determining what is moral is different from the outset. They have no distinction between a just side and an unjust side; they have no concepts of taking responsibility, such as: if you chose Hamas, you are party to its actions. They see civilians on both sides as people with completely equal rights, whereas it is clear that the immoral side is responsible for the condition of its civilians, while the moral side is permitted, as needed, to try to eliminate terrorists even at the cost of risks to the population.
Welcome to third grade.
Let us explain the difference: genocide is the murder of a people. If we destroy the entire population of Gaza as part of this war, then that is the killing of a people. An evil people that wants to kill our people, and one should rise early to kill it first.
Glad to help (though the fact that you don’t understand this on your own casts great doubt on whether what I wrote will help you understand).
The reason the left makes more use of images and emotional shock is directly related to the above issue.
If the measure of morality is suffering, then one must know who suffers more. If the measures are different, one must be careful about the initial emotional identification with the sufferer.
These things are well known and publicized. What is unclear is why Rabbi Michi continues to see these people on the left as brothers and as part of the people of Israel, when they do not believe in the existence of collectives at all (except for the collective to which they themselves belong—the collective of haters of the other collectives…). And he tries to be in the middle in a blind and obsessive way.
You do not have to watch shocking pictures and horrifying videos in order to form an informed opinion. People have worked hard to compile comprehensive and orderly documents about the situation in Gaza. For example, there is Professor Lee Mordechai’s meticulous report. There are also orderly publications by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which is considered a reliable and professional agency. From the post you wrote, it does not appear that you made an effort to read those documents or similar ones.
While you accuse others of irrational emotionalism, the views you present are not based on data or thoughtful analysis of facts, but on speculation and gut feelings.
I wish for you that you locate a UN document dealing with reading comprehension. Maybe you can improve, because right now the situation looks dire.
“A citizen who chose it is to some degree responsible for its actions”—what does “chose it” mean? Does this refer to the general elections that took place 20 years ago? Half the residents of the Strip are under 18; they could not have chosen it.
They are responsible for its actions? Maybe then the residents of Israel are also responsible for the fact that the government opened a war with Iran, and now Iran can shell population centers because we supported the war and voted for Bibi. Maybe it can also erase the neighborhoods around the Kirya base on the grounds that Israel “locates its headquarters within a population center.”
Maybe Iran can in general claim that Israeli civilians are legitimate targets because they all serve in regular service, the reserves, and work in munitions production at Rafael, and therefore there are no uninvolved people, and if they don’t bomb a soldier on his way to the mall, afterward he will attack Iran, so they must rise early to kill him.
“And it is also clear that the State of Israel has the right to conquer the Strip, to enter hospitals if they are being used for terror, and so on”—is that right infinite and unconditional, or does it depend on something, on proportionality? 70% of the infrastructure and buildings have been completely destroyed—why did Israel have the right to do that?
“They have no distinction between a just side and an unjust side; they have no concepts of taking responsibility, such as: if you chose Hamas, you are party to its actions.”
Only a donkey never changes his mind. When reality and the facts change, I change my mind and do not repeat myself again and again. Justice comes and justice goes; you can lose your justifications if your policy does not work and causes destruction.
This is not a matter of a balance of suffering. The government’s policy does not advance any alternative to Hamas, and the data seem to indicate that the intention is expulsion and not really victory over Hamas, but rather just “to mess up Gaza,” nothing more.
Gaza did not choose Hamas twenty years ago, and the only reason they remained in power for so long is that it was in Bibi’s interest in order to prevent a Palestinian state. For that aspiration he was willing to cooperate with a terror organization. They should have collapsed and been thwarted long ago.
If I may, Rabbi Abraham, let me suggest the following idea:
Your interpretation regarding okimtot in the Gemara could be an excellent tool for examining the issue. If I understood your general idea on the subject correctly, then we take a certain situation, filtered of all the surrounding background noise, and according to it examine the issue before us.
According to this method, let us imagine that we had had a state in the dark years of the Holocaust, and we had had military and operational ability to respond to the Nazis’ actions against the Jews (in a certain respect—and on this most opinions agree—the actions of Hamas are worse than the actions of the Nazis). How many of the questions being raised today would then have been raised (looking from today’s perspective)? Would the questions being raised today regarding our actions in the Gaza Strip not have seemed to us then like sheer lunacy? Would anyone have treated them seriously as a subject of moral hesitation?? Have we not drawn ourselves into a kind of intellectual chaos as a result of the need to attack one another? That is the picture as I see it.
I am not ignoring them; I factor questions of guilt, responsibility, asymmetry, etc. into the picture as well. What is not clear to me is how you factor them together with the question of outcomes, because it seems that for you, so long as Israel is trying to eliminate Hamas, the question of how many Gazans will be killed along the way is irrelevant, and that seems to me an absurd claim. I read your previous posts, and it was not convincing then either. At most you showed that it is permissible to kill innocent Gazans in order to defeat Hamas, but not that the number is of no importance.
I would note, by the way, that precisely in your analysis of the hostage struggle you repeatedly emphasize the issue of consequentialism, so I return again to the question—how do you weigh them?
By the way—according to your own view, it was moral and indeed necessary for the Allies to refrain from fighting the Nazis so long as they were only exterminating the Jews of Europe, since the Allies’ obligation to their own citizens required them not to endanger them merely to save Jews who were not their citizens.
“It does not seem likely to me that orders are being given to starve or to fire on uninvolved people”—that is basically your whole argument: that it does not seem likely.
To me too it does not seem likely. It sounds more like a “spirit of the commander”—the ministers and rabbis say “Amalek,” the soldiers who fired at uninvolved people are not investigated and certainly not punished, so it happens. Just like that. Because nobody stops it.
So it is permissible to stop genocide only after it has happened?
Exactly.
There is grave suspicion of war crimes, and the suspicion grows because people lie about it and do not investigate seriously.
You sound—or read—like a lawyer trying to justify a serial murderer and prevent a sentence of five electric chairs. The same technique of arguments that not only do not hold water, they do not even hold water vapor.
We are tired of refuting these arguments on their merits.
I do not know whether this is directed at me, but I will respond briefly anyway.
I definitely mean those elections, and also today’s support. The Gazan collective is guilty of this and therefore responsible for it, including the babies. I have explained this more than once, and I understand that we do not agree.
And indeed, the residents of Israel are also completely responsible for the wars that the government starts. Where did you see any claim here? That is indeed what I think. If the Iranians were threatened (and they are not), and if they had no other way to save themselves (and they do), they would have the right to kill all of us down to the last baby. That is so even without everyone serving in the army and at Rafael. Everything you are trying to present as an extreme is nothing but a banal and simple statement.
I explained here that there are no proportionality considerations with respect to eliminating Hamas. There can be such considerations when one comes to kill this or that terrorist. Israel can and should destroy all of Gaza if that is what is required in order to save itself from Hamas’s threats.
The donkeys in Gaza did not change their minds. They just got hit and do not want to bear the price of their actions. And even if the donkey changes his mind, that really does not matter as to whether he is guilty and/or responsible for the current situation.
As for government policy, I really do not agree, but that is a fruitless argument.
And here is the inevitable exaggeration of the anti-Bibi cult: Hamas would have fallen long ago if not for Bibi… utter nonsense, all is vanity. He has contributory blame, but to say that he is to blame for Hamas and that without him it would have fallen is not even a joke. Just superstition.
There is something to that.
I did not see that weighing. You compared numbers.
I truly do not weigh them in relation to the ultimate goal of the war. It justifies any number of casualties, so there is nothing to weigh. In specific cases, of course there is room for proportionality considerations.
I have no problem at all with consequentialist considerations, certainly when it comes to policy and security. Where did you learn otherwise?
Indeed, their obligation to their own citizens was greater than their obligation to others. So too a soldier’s obligation to his family is greater than his obligation to the state and to others, and yet he goes out to fight. That is the moral and security consideration that obligates us to pay prices, certainly when it is reciprocal (if I do not go to war or do not fight evil, the world will be worse, both for me and generally—the categorical imperative). But in the case of Gaza these comparisons are not relevant because they themselves are the evil. It is not some third party that is harmed when I go out to fight some enemy; rather the enemy itself is what is harmed (except that they are uninvolved. But they are part of the enemy). Therefore it is a baseless comparison. We return again and again to the same point: the comparisons being made here are unreasonable because the assumptions underlying them are unreasonable. They ignore the specific context under discussion.
I myself wrote that such cases may occur and should be dealt with, and I even added that it is unlikely they are being dealt with properly (for various reasons). That is not what the discussion is about. In general, when a claim is implausible, that does not mean it is untrue. It only places the burden of proof on the one making it.
I partially agree, and I even wrote that. But note that the reason things are not dealt with and are covered up (if indeed that is the case) is the unbalanced and unsubstantiated criticism that creates fear that nothing will help and we will always be accused. In my opinion, even if that is true (and certainly it is true), things still have to be investigated properly, but I think this is part of the explanation for what is happening.
??!!!
I just saw a video of a Gazan boy crying that he and his mother are alone in the south and that it is hard for them without his father, who is in the north of the Strip.
Everyone understands why his father is in the north! He didn’t go off to graze donkeys…
So to say that they are pitiable is cruelty! There are designated areas where they can be, and to the best of my understanding, if everything had been conducted normally they would have had more than enough…
A word set in stone…
Just to add that the concept of proportionality is a repetition of what I called above the balance of suffering.
Proportionality is weighing damage against damage or suffering against suffering without considering at all the question of how the suffering comes about [that is, who attacked and who defended. Who is confronting an existential threat and who is not. Who is right and who is not. Who is democratic and who is not.]
{And further: if we all agree that Hamas is not democratic, then in fact it is the first occupying body in the Strip and it has responsibility to its civilians long before Israel, and one cannot say that Israel is occupying the Strip when in fact it has come to liberate…}
Besides, if the entire issue is a few cases {even a hundred} of war crimes committed by soldiers, then there are no war crimes at the level of military conduct, and one cannot say that Israel is committing war crimes.
It is clear that there is no indication of systematic war crimes and not even close. Even the destruction of buildings in the Strip is in the course of combat and clearing the area; from there to war crimes is a very long way.
I do not understand why it is obvious to people that Hiroshima is a moral crime.
All in all, the bombing saved human lives. [A conquest of Japan would have cost about half a million dead American soldiers, and it is not clear how many Japanese {including an enormous number of civilians}, and the war would have dragged on for at least another half year.] Besides, the Japanese attacked the United States for no reason and simply forced it to join the war, so the consequences are their responsibility.
That is what he is telling you. It is not genocide but justified killing of a people.
It is also clear to you that there are war crimes and that they are not being dealt with properly.
As for the hunger, it is quite clear that there is hunger in Gaza (to one degree or another), and even if Hamas is to blame for the hunger, the IDF bears contributory blame for it. In my view, much more than the contributory blame of the children in the Strip.
As you yourself wrote in one of the comments regarding Iran: “Indeed, the residents of Israel are also completely responsible for the wars that the government starts. Where did you see any claim here? That is indeed what I think. If the Iranians were threatened (and they are not), and if they had no other way to save themselves (and they do), they would have the right to kill all of us down to the last baby.” Meaning, if we have “another” way to save ourselves, then we have no right to kill uninvolved people—and that is exactly the point: there is not a single person in Israel (except perhaps Bibi) who thinks the war is being conducted properly, whether these are Bibi supporters who blame the whole world (literally) and his wife, or those who think like Feiglin in terms of conquest, expulsion, and settlement, or whether they are leftists like you who say that the Gazans should be offered some sort of political horizon, or whether they are extreme leftists who think that on 8.10 we should have signed peace agreements. The common denominator is that no one thinks a war lasting 666 days is in any way in Israel’s interest.
And generally, you keep trying to portray whoever thinks the war should end as though he is some kind of fundamentalist (or church) who does not think rationally. There are very good arguments for ending the war, and they are usually even more rational than continuing it, because if there is one consensus across camps, it is that the current way the war in Gaza is being managed is a failure—so the obvious conclusion is to end it somehow (or at least try additional ways).
Ten-year-old Gazan children are not part of the enemy; they are victims of Hamas, in the same way that German Jews were not part of the Nazi enemy, but its victims.
Indeed, there are ideas so foolish (morally) that only intellectuals can hold them.
The greatest problem the article raises—
Quote:
A friend whom I esteem greatly, both in terms of intelligence and morally, told me … that he cannot explain to himself why he would prefer to leave his daughter with an Israeli pilot (several of his friends and relatives are pilots) rather than with a Nukhba terrorist.
Think how bizarre this is.
I trust Rabbi Michael Abraham’s assessment of his friend’s level of intelligence.
I also agree with his words about how bizarre this is.
Well then—the question is how a person of esteemed intelligence, and also moral—
comes to such delusions.
And he is probably not unique. In my opinion, that is our greatest problem.
Indeed a difficult problem. Not for nothing did I mention it. People are living in a bubble.
There are talentless people who wrap themselves in self-righteousness in order to be part of the “right” society. But when it was necessary to do Oslo, Arafat stopped being a war criminal and became an enemy with whom one makes peace….
In short, in my opinion there is no point in addressing such people.
Call it hatred and ego. There is hatred toward people who believe in collectives, including the knitted-kippah people, and especially the big kippahs. And when it turns out that you were wrong and these primitive fascists are right, the ego does not allow you to admit the mistake…
Ehud Barak had no problem justifying Palestinian attacks against Jewish civilians as a war of liberation, but today he accuses the IDF of war crimes…. And there are many more like him.
The IDF has no contributory blame for hunger in Gaza because not only is there no blame in it, it is what should be done.
I was talking about serious people, as Rabbi Michael Abraham testifies about them.
Ehud Barak and all the IDF officers may have a personal attitude toward Netanyahu (how is it that he occupies the place that rightfully belongs to us?).
Hello!
In general I very much agree with what was written in the post, but I want to ask for sharpening and clarification regarding the place of emotions in our decision-making mechanisms in the context of “the emptiness of the analytic.” Without entering into the whole discussion, I start from the premise that in a certain sense we all operate מתוך axioms or internal “dogmas”; one can formulate them as synthetic a priori propositions in Kant’s terms, or as initial axioms on top of which the analytic discussion is conducted and from which it begins. The question is where the boundary runs between “intuition,” “emotion,” “axiom,” or even “faith,” insofar as all of them stem from a strong internal a priori cognition.
It is clear to me that there are irrelevant emotional biases, but when I want to make that argument I feel that I need to sharpen what the point is at which even the basis for our most rational decisions lacks a rational explanation (since otherwise it is not the first axiom of the move), and what distinguishes it from strong but irrelevant internal emotions.
My question is: how can one distinguish between irrelevant emotional biases in the decision-making mechanism you spoke about, and non-rational “feelings” or “faith” / “axioms” that it is legitimate for us to be led by even as rational and consistent people?
If this can be demonstrated using our test case here—even better.
Thank you very much!
I devoted a post to the difference between emotion and intuition. See there.
Self-diagnosis of when this is emotion and when it is intuition is entrusted to each person regarding himself. I have no diagnostic tools.
But once one understands and internalizes that these are indeed two different tools, it becomes easier to distinguish between them.
Roy Shulman?
Are you a real person? Not a robot?
Do you really not understand the difference between the Jews of Germany and the children of Gaza? And if indeed the Jews of Germany continued to live in Germany and not flee from it the moment it started a war with Poland, then the Poles could justly harm the Jews of Germany (they certainly saw themselves as Germans in every respect). I would not cry over them in such a case.
I have a question regarding the involvement of emotion in moral decisions, and a thought that sometimes emotion can actually direct the intellect in the right direction.
A study was conducted in which two groups of people were asked the trolley problem. The first group was presented with the version in which you must pull a lever, divert the train from its track, and save five people at the expense of one; the second group was presented with the version in which you must push a fat man off a bridge so that he will stop the train, thereby saving five people at the expense of one.
The percentages who favored pulling the lever in the first group were much higher than the percentages who favored pushing the man off the bridge in the second group.
Rationally there is no reason for this difference, but I would argue that the difference stems from the emotion triggered in the second group by the thought of pushing an innocent man off a bridge.
In my opinion, this study points to a positive influence of emotion. In my opinion, the moral thing really is not to push the man off the bridge (and also not to pull the lever). I think this is an example where the very emotion triggered by the thought of pushing the man sends you to examine that emotion, and to understand that it stems from the fact that this really is not the moral thing to do (and thus to a correct judgment also regarding pulling the lever).
I think that sometimes (obviously not always) emotion can indeed be a good indication that there is a moral wrong here, inviting you to reanalyze the situation intellectually in a way that would not have been possible without that emotion. This is an argument in favor of exposure to difficult information (within certain limits), and of forming an opinion differently from merely reading about it.
I would be glad to hear your response on the matter.
Thank you
A strange argument logically. You say that emotion leads to the right conclusion, and therefore it has value. But how did you arrive at the conclusion that this is indeed the right answer? Through emotion? Then that is circular. Not through emotion? Then there you have it: the decision is not made through emotion.
Beyond that, you also assume that the difference between the cases is only emotional, but that is not at all necessary. We have moral intuitions, and sometimes people mistakenly call them emotion.
By the way, emotion can indeed provide moral indications. We have a trait such that when there is something immoral, our emotion cries out. My claim is that one must not let emotion make the decision. Taking our emotional indicators into account is perfectly fine.
That was exactly my intention—emotion as a moral indicator, whose validity must be examined by the intellect. Accordingly, exposure to information that may trigger emotion in us (such as difficult videos or pushing a person off a bridge) not only harms our intellectual analysis, but can also give us a moral indication about the situation (which must then be examined by the intellect).
It is very worthwhile to see Professor Danny Orbach’s study on the subject. Link: https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/213hebweb1.pdf
I recommend Professor Danny Orbach’s article. Link: https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/213hebweb1.pdf
Serious people have the biggest ego and the greatest hatred.
You too should look at documents like this one, which refutes the nonsense of Lee Mordechai: https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/213hebweb1.pdf
War is an action of a political entity, not of individuals, and therefore the response in war is also directed against the entire entity, not against private persons. The distinction between “combatants” and “civilians” is artificial: in war, the opposing side is treated as a collective.
A war is justified only when it is defensive—that is, when there is no alternative but to absorb a war. In such a situation, it is permissible to harm even civilians of the enemy state, if that harm is necessary to achieve victory, even intentionally (as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki).