1.
It's difficult to accept and it's cruel, but the truth has to be told. Some of our soldiers were killed because we were trying to be moral, or to be more precise, to present a moral façade of the sort we allowed ourselves up until October 7. The pressure on the IDF from both within and without because of collateral damage to the civilian population is reflected in the softening of preparatory bombardments before ground forces go in. The pressure on Israel is increasing, especially because Hamas publishes graphic photos of dead and wounded Palestinian civilians, which, even if some are staged and false, have a strong impact on global sentiment. Our soldiers find themselves in great danger because we avoid certain actions before the infantry forces enter the fray.
Morality was once the product of deep considerations – which sometimes requires deciding between terrible options and applying broad-based considerations that take into account prevention and deterrence, saving lives and what our priorities should be – to a superficial subject in which emotional activation is supposed to validate pseudo-moral arguments.
2.
Rabbi Akiva (2nd century AC), the greatest of the Mishnaic sages, taught us in the footsteps of Hillel the Elder before him that "Love your neighbor as yourself is the greatest principle in the Torah." Nevertheless, the Talmud raises a hypothetical dilemma that could enlighten us in this context: "Two people are traveling along the way, and in the hand of one of them is a flask of water. If both of them drink, they will both die, but if one of them drinks all the water, that person will reach civilization and live" (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Bava Kamma 62a). What would you do? Would you share the water with your partner knowing that it would not suffice for both of you and by the time you reach water you will both die, or would you save yourself?
The Talmud presents both sides of the dilemma through a dispute: "Ben Petora taught: It is preferable that both of them drink and die and let neither one of them see the death of the other." This is absolute, uncompromising morality. It is preferable not to see the death of a friend even if it means that both will die. If the cost of saving our life is to harm innocents, then we should rather risk death and expose our children to constant threat that is destined to end in a repeat of October 7. In historical terms, if we do not accept the price of violence that we must practice as a State, we should have stayed in exile in the role of the eternal victim.
The Talmud continues: "Until Rabbi Akiva came and taught that: 'And your brother shall live with you (Leviticus 25:36),' indicating that your life takes precedence over the life of the other."
There was a time when the Midrash accepted Ben Petora's position, and it is for this purpose that Rabbi Akiva was required to come and present a different position, which would become accepted as the Halacha. He took a verse out of context from the laws governing the prohibition of usury ("And your brother shall live with you" – let him live and do not exploit him) and used it to explain the answer to the existential question posed by the Talmud: It is true that your brother must live and you must not stand by but save him when possible, but all this only on condition that it is "with you" and that you remain alive. If his existence contradicts your existence or, moreover, comes at the expense of your existence – your life comes first.
3.
If we return to the principle set by Rabbi Akiva, then love of the other has no moral basis if it is not preceded by recognition of self-value and prioritizing one's own life. "Love your neighbor as yourself" Note that the verse reads "as yourself"! (We can find a comparable way of thinking in Ahad Ha'am's fascinating discussion in his article "On Two Branches"). The meaning of this is that for example, one cannot endanger soldiers' lives to retrieve the bodies of dead soldiers. Moreover, we learn that on the question of the hostages, we cannot engage in individual considerations but we must look at the good of the collective and at protecting the lives of our soldiers and it is in light of these considerations that we must examine whether a particular operation justifies the risk to life.
The aforementioned Talmudic debate takes place concerning two friends, yet it sill says that we must put our life first. All the more so in times of war when the dilemma is between the lives of our soldiers and the lives of our enemies who use civilians as human shields. It is a situation whereby we must protect our daughters against an enemy that points a weapon against them with the intention of killing them, while they hide behind innocents (assuming that they are innocent). The meaning of the corrupt expectation on the part of those who use the code name "innocents" to prevent us from acting, is abandoning our daughters to their deaths, God forbid, so that we do not harm innocent people. And who are our enemies? We are not dealing with an ordinary entity, but with a Nazi entity whose people raped our daughters, beheaded our sons and burned our children alive with their parents – and were proud of doing so. The October 7 massacre contained all the characteristics of genocide. If they could, they would do it to all of us.
4.
The same applies to the humiliation of the enemy. Until recently, Hamas terrorists and their supporters (many of them in the Palestinian Authority) celebrated the horrific images of the massacre. The humiliation of the Jews gave them the motivation to pursue further "success" and kill more Jews. The pictures of Hamas terrorists surrendering in their underwear are not intended to satisfy a desire for revenge, but to make clear to the enemy how wretched it is. Such images sow despair among the new Nazis and bring the end of the war closer.
While the Western world speaks a rational language, the language of "logos," the Middle East speaks the language of myth. Here there are ancient institutions such as vendetta (blood revenge), stoning, burning alive of non-believers, rape of prisoners of war and beheadings. The idea that our enemies prefer their lives and economic well-being over killing Jews and harming Israel is a failure to understand the language of the region. We see how Hamas exploited humanitarian gestures to improve their positions vis-à-vis the IDF. Most of the food that entered Gaza was forcefully taken by the terrorists and did not reach the population. Most of the fuel reached Hamas and helped ventilate their terror tunnels and provide electricity to the metalworking machines that produce more weapons to be used against us.
5.
Time and time again we are told that the Palestinian Authority is the sane alternative to replace Hamas, but this too is a rational and moral failure that endangers us. The Palestinian Authority pays murderers of Jews with salaries dependent on the number of people they murdered! The attempt to understand this phenomenon by saying "that's just the way they are" is tantamount to extending an invitation to commit the next massacre. A comparison of the Hamas and Fatah charters shows us that there is no real material difference between them. They both share the goal of destroying Israel and the Jewish people in one way or another. Article 20 of the Fatah charter (Palestinian National Covenant) which has not been changed since Oslo is a genocidal clause as it erases the Jewish people from the family of nations and in practice does not recognize our people's right to self-determination and a state of our own in our historic homeland.
That is why we cannot accept a nominal comparison of the dead on both sides. The Palestinians have fired tens of thousands of rockets at Israel that could have killed thousands of people. The fact that we managed to block them does not change the goal of those who fired them: murder of Jewish people in their homeland. We must behave as if those rockets had hit their targets, God forbid. For all the naifs who have yet to sober up and comprehend our reality, the October 7 massacre was a display of intent.
In this war, our victory must be clearly seen and understood by the enemy, in its language, in no uncertain terms or subject to interpretation. We must not succumb to external pressures that are not committed to the rebirth of the Jewish people in its homeland. When it comes to the dilemma between our lives and the lives of our enemy, our answer must be clear and resounding: Our lives come first.
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