Q&A: Responsibility / Guilt
Responsibility / Guilt
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Do you think the government is responsible for the October 7 massacre? That is, do you think it might have been possible to prevent the disaster (partly or fully) if there had been a different government that functioned better, or if there had been a different prime minister over the past 20 years, so that Israel's policy would have been different and somehow this disaster would not have happened? And do you agree with the claim that the “left-wing” approach (Oslo, etc.) is what brought the October 7 disaster upon us (or at least was the dominant factor behind it)?
Answer
Definitely yes. But responsibility is not necessarily guilt, and certainly not full guilt. You can search here on the site about the relationship between responsibility and guilt. I’ve written about it more than once.
The government is also guilty of what happened, but that doesn’t mean another government would have prevented it. I don’t think that would have happened. The conception affected most of our leadership, and perhaps most of the public as well, and certainly the army too. I have almost no doubt that this would have happened under any of the governments currently on the table. And still, that does not mean there is no guilt on the government’s part. And of course the army is no less guilty than the government, and perhaps more so. The army is directly responsible for what happened. The government’s role is mainly ministerial responsibility, and also somewhat substantive.
I really do not agree with the claim that Oslo brought this disaster upon us, regardless of whether Oslo was right or not. The October 7 massacre was the result of a blunder in conduct. If the government and the army had conducted themselves properly, it would not have happened, with or without Oslo.
It is true that Oslo may have helped Hamas; that is, without Oslo this might not have happened even if we had blundered. In halakhic terminology, such a situation is called “it begins with negligence and ends with circumstances beyond one’s control.” Search here on the site for a discussion of that. Such a case is one of responsibility without guilt. But because in our case the outcome occurred due to the positive guilt of someone else, in my opinion here there is not even responsibility on the part of the “negligent one,” and certainly not guilt.
Discussion on Answer
Yes. Very, very plausible. How did I miss that logical explanation? Thanks for drawing my attention to it.
What in the reality around us in recent years, when, for example, the person who was almost appointed IDF Chief of Staff declares that Israel slaughters Arab children as a hobby, or a former prime minister accuses Israel of war crimes, or a former Chief of Staff and Defense Minister accuses Israel of genocide — and these are small examples — leads you to mock this possibility?
To Moshe,
What in the reality around us in recent years, when, for example,
there is an explicit commandment in the Torah for religious people to be crazy
(factually, Deuteronomy 28:34 explicitly says, ‘And you shall be driven mad’)
and Hitler was actually Jewish
(factually, his sister worked before the Holocaust in a Jewish orphanage and functioned excellently)
and today it has been established factually beyond any doubt that the world is flat
(factually, some of the sages and scholars in the past — possibly even some of the Sages of the Talmud, and later as well, and crazy people even today — thought or think that the world is flat)
— and these are small examples — leads you to mock this possibility?
It seems to me that you took “and you shall be driven mad” a bit too seriously.
If you want to dismantle the discussion and conduct it on the satirical level, I also know a thing or two.
Which of the facts I mentioned resembles the caricature you made of my words?
The possibility that there was a conspiracy here by the security chiefs to create a bit of chaos that would bring down Netanyahu, and in the end it spun out of control, doesn’t appear in your analysis.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of many, that’s the most plausible possibility.