Q&A: Several Questions
Several Questions
Question
(I’m opening a separate question because these questions relate to things you’ve written in several places on the site.)
A. If the only way to prevent another massacre from taking place is to intentionally harm innocent people, do you think that is moral? I emphasize that I’m asking from the moral perspective, not the practical one. And does the number of casualties matter in such a case?
B. What exactly is the difference between your wife’s proposal and the disengagement? We left Gaza while announcing that if something happened we would go in against the Gazans, and now, here we are, carrying it out?
C. Aside from attacking the existing proposals, do you have a proposal for solving the current situation?
Answer
A. As you noted at the outset, I’ve written this several times on the site. Yes. The number does matter (proportionality), although I don’t have a clear-cut criterion.
B. The disengagement was not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve written more than once that I refused to answer the question of what I thought about the disengagement (before it took place), because it’s impossible to answer without knowing what policy would accompany it and follow it. If a different policy had been adopted, it could have turned out to be a correct and sensible step. By the way, that really is my view. The same applies to my wife’s proposal. But I didn’t raise that proposal on its own merits; I raised it to illustrate why we act from the gut (because there isn’t even a willingness to consider it).
C. No. I don’t have the relevant information. And I’m not attacking any proposal. I’m attacking the absence of proposals (the absence of policy, and acting from the gut in order to buy time). I do have a proposal on the general principled level: I wrote in the past that no one supports the carrot-and-stick approach—the left is carrot and the right is stick—so that is my basic proposal. But a very sweet carrot and a very strong stick. See Column 149.