Answer

Peace to you, Ayin.
First of all, congratulations to you and to the kibbutz. May you continue to thrive.
Second, that is an esoteric conception of Torah and Judaism. The accepted approach is that there definitely is room for conscience, but it comes after Jewish law.
Third, you are once again failing because your thinking is too one-sided. For some reason you assume that the most important thing to the Holy One, blessed be He, in His world is peace and avoiding destruction and conflict. But then how would you explain the obligation to execute Sabbath desecrators or adulterers? How would you explain the prohibition against eating pork, and most of Jewish law, which does not deal at all with preserving the world and what is in it? The Torah contains other values, and in the halakhic view preserving them justifies causing destruction and wars and conflicts (for example, conquering the Land of Israel, which is a commandment that justifies killing and risking lives).

And beyond all that, you are also assuming that if there had been no settlements, eternal peace would prevail between us and our neighbors. This is nonsense, of course (forgive me), since before 1967 and before 1948 there were no settlements, and as far as I know there was no peace then either. Meaning: beyond your normative and Torah assumptions (with which I do not agree), you also have factual assumptions (that not settling will bring peace) with which I do not agree. The settlers think that settlement will bring peace and security specifically.
If you ask my opinion, settlement will not bring peace, nor will refraining from it. There is no one to talk to.
And one last point regarding Joseph and cheating a gentile. You relate to the Arabs around us as if they were just ordinary gentiles, and so do your friends on the left. Therefore you tie our treatment of them to our treatment of any other gentile, and you criticize those who do not treat them properly (in your view) as racists. But that is a mistake. These are enemies, not just gentiles. Most of the discriminatory attitude toward Arabs, both justified and unjustified, has absolutely nothing to do with racism. It is an entirely natural attitude toward enemies who have been trying to destroy us for a hundred years.
Goodbye
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Questioner:
Hi Michi,
It turns out that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not naive, and therefore He understood that in order to create a chosen people out of a nation of slaves, He needed to forge it well. Since you cannot do that with “formations” and stretcher marches for an entire people, they put that people through countless drills in orderly behavior.
I pat myself on the shoulder because I understood this on my own, and afterward it turned out to me that I had arrived at the view of great authorities.
But as stated, the purpose of the ritual commandments is only to forge the people and accustom it to observing commandments that even if it does not understand what they are for—it must observe them!
You cannot command the people to conduct themselves and behave according to the environmental and social conditions that changed from pharaonic Egypt to the ancient Land of Israel and later to a long exile, during which the human species became dominant on planet Earth and completely changed the ecological balance.
But in the background stands the basic premise: God created everything.
Anyone who internalizes this and wants to deepen and broaden his understanding will realize that in the end what God expects from us is that we preserve what God created, even though this is not stated explicitly anywhere.
Because if we were commanded to love God with all our soul and all our might, then we must find a way to fulfill a commandment based on emotion, and it goes without saying that this is problematic.
As for the connection between settlement and the hostility between us and the Arabs:
Apparently, because you invested in studying Torah and the sciences, you did not have time to study the history of the conflict between us and the Arabs here.
You need to understand, Michi, that naturally we were told about every Jew who was killed by Arabs. We were not told about the Arabs of Zammarin [the village that preceded Zikhron Ya’akov] who took the settlers of Zikhron into their homes during the first winter. We were not told that when one of the farmers of Mazkeret Batya needed a large loan, he naturally turned to his close friend, who was the mukhtar of the village of Aqir, and he lent him the money. But meanwhile the War of Independence broke out, and the Arabs of Aqir fled to the Gaza Strip.
The first settlers of Tel Amal spent the night in Bedouin tents when they plowed the lands of the Beit She’an Valley, and the Bedouin taught them flood-irrigation techniques.
You relate to the war between us and the Arabs as a war between two peoples, whereas reality is much more complex.
Did you know that Geula Cohen [Lehi] was released from the Bethlehem prison by Arabs from Abu Ghosh?
You say that the settlers believe the settlements will bring peace—fine, let them explain how.
I can explain very well how, in a situation of two neighboring societies, where one maintains a relationship of domination over the other, peace is impossible.
And more than that: since I read Makor Rishon, I have already read several articles by settlers in which they express pain over phenomena of Palestinians being humiliated by settler youth!
So for now, have a pleasant day and all the best.
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Rabbi:

We are repeating ourselves again and again. I’ll say it again briefly.
Your interpretation of Jewish law is possible, like a thousand other interpretations are possible (for example, that the whole purpose of Jewish law is to create discipline so that when a blue-winged fairy comes and leads us to the Pacific Ocean, we will follow her). What exactly am I supposed to do with these speculations?
As for history, you are sinning with the fallacy of small numbers. There were also Nazis who helped Jews and saved them. The question is what the big picture is. And the big picture is that they refused to accept the Partition Plan and hoped (and still hope) to throw all of us into the sea. Indeed, there are exceptions—so what? What does that prove?
Regarding the law of small numbers (which appears in your case in many contexts), see what I wrote here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%97%D7%95%D7%A7-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%98%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94-%D7%95/
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Questioner:

Good morning to you, Michi.
It seems to me that the law of large numbers [thank you very much for the article you attached!] is not relevant to the issue of the friction created between Palestinian communities and settler communities. After all, the vast majority of settlers are imbued with a sense of mastery in relation to the Arabs, with all that implies.
You quoted Professor Kahneman, whom I had the privilege of studying Torah from during the year before the Six-Day War, and therefore I noticed that he was among the first prominent Israelis who signed a petition against annexing Judea and Samaria. And now I looked and found a bit more material on the subject of his opposition to the occupation of Judea and Samaria. What could be more natural than his criticism of the condition of the Palestinian population today?
And something from another angle: I feel that my Judaism is harmed when the settlers place it on the same plane as that of the Arabs. I aspire for the Arabs to say about Judaism:
Wow—this is a faith worth adhering to!
If I mention the Arabs, then I must raise the following issue:
There is a great difficulty regarding the commandment to love God—how can you command emotion?!
Luckily, we are not judged for not loving God. But Muslims are commanded to believe that Muhammad is the last of the prophets, and to believe in Paradise and the End of Days.
Whoever does not believe all this—his sentence is one thing only: hell until the end of days!
Do you think, Michi, that it is possible to command belief?
Do you share my view that the meaning of such a demand is to create a cognitive dissonance that will blow the fuses in the brains of thinking Muslims?!
I hope to remember next time to write to you through your responsa system website.
I’m already beginning to formulate in my feverish mind what I’ll write.
Happy Festival of Lights.

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Rabbi:

Your argument about the law of small numbers is completely unclear to me. The Arabs have been murdering us and refusing every step toward peace for a hundred years now. You bring a few isolated examples of different, better Arabs. I asked you: what do isolated examples prove? After all, even among the Nazis there were people who saved Jews (just yesterday I saw the film The Face of Humanity, where one Israeli woman tells of a Nazi officer who saved her and handed her over as his illegitimate daughter to a family to raise her). Does that mean the Nazis were righteous? That is exactly the law of small numbers.
Even if there is a sense of mastery, how can that be compared to systematic murderousness?
As for Kahneman’s views, this is an ad hominem example that doesn’t suit you. Why should I care what Kahneman thinks in the political or moral sphere? The fact that I quoted him in some scientific context means that everything he says is sacred?
I do not aspire for the Arabs to say anything. I conduct myself as I see fit, and my aspiration is that the Arabs stop murdering. They can keep their esteem to themselves; it does not particularly interest me (at least in the current situation). I certainly will not change anything in my behavior and values just so they will say this or that about me.
Regarding commanding emotion, see what I wrote here:
https://mikyab.net/%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%94%D7%91%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%A8%D7%92%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%9B%D7%9C-%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A8-22/
But the connection you make between emotion and belief is mistaken. You assume belief is an emotion, but that is not true. Belief is a factual claim (there is a God). The question of whether one can arrive at it empirically is unrelated to its being a factual claim.
And still, one cannot command belief—not because it is an emotion, but because it is an opinion. And a person is supposed to form his opinions for himself, not adopt them by force of command.

As for fundamentalism based on emotionality, I completely agree. My books Truth and Unstable are devoted to the question of fundamentalism and religious faith (that is the framing story. The book itself is a philosophical essay).
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Questioner:
Hi Michi
I have reservations about your definition of belief as a “factual claim”—I think belief should be classified in a separate category from both emotion and “factual claim.” But before that, it seems to me that sometimes one needs to distinguish between the believer and the belief. Let me illustrate: if the weather forecaster says that rain is expected tomorrow, I will believe the forecast on the basis of past experience. Would I be willing to sacrifice my life on the altar of this “belief”? Certainly not. Because this belief lacks any value dimension! Therefore I think belief should be defined as a system of values to which the believer is committed.
I asked for your response to my question about the psychological effect of the demand that a Muslim truly believe that Muhammad is the seal of prophecy and likewise believe in the End of Days (in the Muslim version), and if he does not believe these things, he will be sentenced to hell. How can such belief be commanded? What are the likely consequences for the soul of a person who finds it hard to accept this belief?!
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Rabbi:

You managed to confuse me. The classification of some claim as a factual claim does not depend on whether you would be willing to sacrifice your life for it. The claim “it is now dark outside” is a factual claim, since it says something (false or true) about a factual state of affairs in the world. That is unlike the claim that communism is good or bad (a value judgment), which states no fact but rather makes a value claim. The same applies to the question “what time is it?”, which is a question and not a factual claim. And so too with the command “bring me the cup,” which does not assert anything but commands.
Within factual claims, one can divide between true and false claims, and within true claims one can divide according to the degree of certainty I have in them (there are those in which I have a higher or lower degree of certainty. Absolute certainty I have in no factual claim).

Belief is a factual claim because it asserts that there is a God. This is a claim about the existence of something, and therefore a factual claim about the world. Now you can accept it (with some degree of certainty, never absolute in my view) or reject it (and be an atheist). It is still a factual claim. The argument is whether this factual claim is true or false. This claim has no value dimension whatsoever. You can then decide that if there is a God and He commanded you or expects something of you, you take upon yourself an obligation to do so. Here the value dimension enters. The fact that He exists is neutral like any other fact.

There is no such thing as a value dimension to a factual claim. You may see some value in something, but that has nothing whatever to do with facts. When the weather forecaster says it will rain tomorrow, I believe him based on past experience, and therefore in my eyes this is a true factual claim (though of course not certain). The reason I am not willing to sacrifice my life for it is simply that I am not required to sacrifice my life for it. Take as an example a military unit planning an operation: it consults a weather forecaster, and he tells them it will rain. They plan the operation according to his forecast, and in effect they are risking their lives on the belief in his words. There is not the slightest connection to any value dimension in what he said.

I am very far from an expert on Islam, but in Judaism too there are those who think certain beliefs are required of us and that people can be held accountable for holding incorrect beliefs. I am not in that camp. A person is supposed to decide his beliefs for himself. It is impossible to demand that a person believe something (at most one can try to persuade him of it), and there is certainly no place to judge him for his beliefs. If he is mistaken, then he is coerced by circumstance, unless he does not really disbelieve them and only his evil inclination drags him there (as with the ancient idol worshipers).