Question

Hello Rabbi,
How are you?
This column was a bit harsh for my taste.
In any case, I attached an old article, part of which discusses an identical idea.
“The central question facing the author throughout the book, then, is this: which sector gained benefits as a result of the military’s growing power and enjoyed the ‘escalation’ of the conflict?
The assumption is that the answer to this question will clarify the meaning of the broader transformations in the relationship between Israeli society and the IDF. This formulation is not very different from the advice that the writer Arthur Conan Doyle put into the mouth of Sherlock Holmes in one of his conversations with his friend Dr. Watson. Solving a murder, Holmes said, begins and ends with the question ?cui bono)who benefits?”). It may be that this method is indeed suitable for the detective’s work, but there is great doubt whether it is equally suitable for the historian. Narrowing the field of vision to a one-dimensional description of a single cause (especially when only group effects are involved) leading to a certain result may bring about excessive simplification in interpreting developments and ignoring whole layers of the human experience, which are also part of the process that led to that result. Even if this method does not distort history, it certainly does not do justice to its complexity. In this, in my opinion, Levy’s book sins. Besides its tendency to deny the individual his individuality, it also minimizes the historical importance of value-based motives, without which man’s advantage over the beast does not exist. According to his approach, for example, the explanation for the phenomenon of refusal to serve in the territories lies in the fact that, from the standpoint of the secular middle class, the material reward of the occupation does not outweigh its cost. Does this mean that no significance should be attributed to the philosophical-moral claim of the refusers themselves, who define the rule of one people over another as unjust and immoral?”