Should a nation turn the other cheek?

An answer from the Book of Genesis and Adam Smith

A destroyed building in Kibbutz Be’eri where 130 of the 1200 residents were murdered, including children who were found bound together and burned to death

What if Israel had done nothing in response to October 7th? By nothing, I mean nothing, militarily. What if we had buried our dead, mourned our losses and rather than invading Gaza, what if Israel had improved its surveillance techniques, built a buffer zone of 1 km on the Israeli side of the Israeli-Gazan border to provide a longer cushion of warning when the next attack comes, increased our overall vigilance, and negotiated the release of the hostages.

This argument was not popular on October 8th, but I have heard it advanced from the very beginning of the war by at least one Israeli and one American Jew both of whom I respect greatly. Their view, and it is a view worth taking seriously, is that this war—now over 60 days old—is a terrible mistake. Here is a summary of this view which I will call the pacifist view:

The war will not achieve its goals. Hamas cannot be eliminated. Hamas is an idea—the need for violent resistance against Israel and the resistance to the very idea of a Jewish state—and not only will military action fail to eliminate this idea, it will only enhance support for violent resistance in the Gazan population and in the West Bank and cause future attacks akin to October 7. For war to be worthwhile, future deaths must be less than the deaths of Israeli soldiers and innocent Palestinians civilians. The military response is immoral and not only ineffective but counterproductive. Given that the war was started, Israel should halt the war, declare a ceasefire and negotiate for the return of the hostages.

I understand the pacifist view but I think it is wrong for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that there is a great deal of uncertainty about how this war will end. While the idea of violent Palestinian resistance cannot be ended by a war, it may be possible to dismantle Hamas’s military and governmental infrastructure. Numerous commanders have already been killed. There is a chance that Sinwar and the Hamas leadership will be killed. Maybe something better for both Israel and the Palestinians people will emerge from this war.

What the pacifists are right about is that even trying to get to that endgame is incredibly costly in human lives and human suffering. I do not believe in collective guilt or responsibility. That many Palestinians voted for Hamas in 2005 has no relevance for the human toll today in Gaza, nineteen years later. The costs of the war are clear. The benefits highly uncertain. This reality favors the pacifist view. But other than the two friends I mentioned at the beginning of this essay, everyone else I have spoken to here in Israel disagrees with the pacifist view. Their answer is that we didn’t have a choice. But there’s always a choice. What is the case for the military response?

One argument is that while the pacifist view avoids enraging the Palestinians, it also does nothing to deter them in the future. Hamas spokespeople have said they hope to commit many future October 7th. So maybe they are already sufficiently hateful that there is little risk that military retaliation will make things worse. They seem to hate us plenty already. And by doing nothing, we only encourage Hamas, Hezbollah and other enemies of Israel to see us as weak and vulnerable. If this is correct, pacifism makes future attacks more likely.

I am also unconvinced of our ability to be more vigilant against future attacks as I argued here. It’s nice to say we’ll be more vigilant the next time. But this resolve tends to fade over time. Eternal vigilance just isn’t the strong suit of human beings. Vigilance failed on October 7. So I don’t believe that a better fence or better monitoring of the Gaza border is a viable strategy for preventing attacks in the future.

Most of the people who live near the Gazan border or the Lebanese border share these concerns. About 160,000 Israelis have left their homes either because those homes were destroyed by the attacks of October 7 or because of the rain of rockets that have fallen on October 7th and afterwards from Gaza and Lebanon. Iron Dome has caught most of those rockets.

But should that be the new normal for these people—to rely on Iron Dome going forward if there were to be no military response? Does anyone think that the pacifist response would lead to fewer rockets going from Gaza? Many Israelis would simply not choose to live near those borders any longer. That is a huge cost of the pacifist response. It essentially means—as my colleague Danny Gordis has pointed out—that Hamas has conquered that territory making it uninhabitable.

There is another aspect of the pacifist view I want to explore here and that’s what the pacifist response says to ourselves—how it affects our self-image and our culture, our ability to discriminate between right and wrong. And what it says to ourselves is best understand through the tragic story in the book of Genesis, chapter 34, the rape of Deena.

In this deeply disturbing episode, Jacob’s sons kill the rapist Shechem and wreak terrible violence on his village. Equally embarrassing to modern sensibilities is Jacob’s response to the violence. He is furious not at the disproportionate treatment of Shechem’s people who seem to be innocent civilians, but at the practical implications. Basically Jacob says: you’ve damaged our reputation—you’ve made us despicable in the eyes of other tribes and they might gang up on us and destroy us. Later, on his deathbed, Jacob does call out Simon and Levi for the immorality of their violent response. But in the moment, he gives an amoral utilitarian response.

Here is the brothers’ answer:

Should we treat our sister as a whore?

I’ve always found this response to be deeply troubling and seemingly inexplicable. Their response feels like something a tough guy would say without giving it much thought: “Hey, our sister’s not a whore. We did what we had to do.” Nothing else the brothers say is reported.

And their response seems to make no sense. They should have said “should we let our enemies treat our sister as a whore.” Instead, they’re talking about themselves. Why?

In the aftermath of October 7th, I think I understand the brothers’ response. Look at this picture:

That’s Naama Levy, nineteen years old. The seat of her sweatpants appears bloody. Her abductors pull her by the hair. They’ve slashed her achilles tendon to keep her from fleeing. She was not released in the exchanges of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. We don’t know if she is alive. We don’t know if Naama was raped on October 7 but we do know that many women were raped and that the most abominable mutilations and murders took place in the middle and aftermath of rape. Some captives of October 7th who might otherwise been killed were put aside for sex. I can barely write these words.

These are our daughters and our sisters.

When Jacobs’s sons say to their father—are we to treat our sister like a whore—they aren’t thinking about the calculus of deterrence. They’re not justifying their actions on utilitarian grounds.

They’re talking about themselves, not their enemies. They’re talking about how they will see themselves if they do not respond forcefully.

They are saying to their father: if we stand idly by when our sister is raped, we’re saying something about who we are. Deena’s not a whore. She’s a victim. To do nothing is to imply that she is not a victim but an accomplice. To do nothing is to accept what happened. To do nothing means that we are complicit with those who raped her: like the rapist, we are treating Deena as a whore. To do nothing is to tolerate injustice.

If someone rapes your daughter and rather than call the police, you get a better lock for the front door, a more reliable camera to monitor the house, and a bigger shotgun, what are you saying to your daughter and to her sister who is worried that the intruder will be back? When you sit with your daughter at breakfast and see the trauma of her nightmare on her face, is the right response to get her psychotherapy to help her process her pain but to do nothing more? Or does justice demand holding the perpetrator accountable? What does doing nothing to punish the perpetrator say about you?

One answer is that it shows you're prudent. Rather than try to bring the perpetrator to justice, you realize how hard that might be and the costs of doing so. The question is whether it changes who you are and what matters to you.

Adam Smith, in a remarkable passage in The Theory of Moral Sentiments writes:

When the guilty is about to suffer that just retaliation, which the natural indignation of mankind tells them is due to his crimes; when the insolence of his injustice is broken and humbled by the terror of his approaching punishment; when he ceases to be an object of fear, with the generous and humane he begins to be an object of pity.

Meaning: people who do wicked things often become human as they face their punishment, realizing that they deserve it. You might even begin to feel sorry for them. Smith continues:

The thought of what he [the criminal] is about to suffer extinguishes their [the other members of society] resentment for the sufferings of others to which he has given occasion. They are disposed to pardon and forgive him, and to save him from that punishment, which in all their cool hours they had considered as the retribution due to such crimes. Here, therefore, they have occasion to call to their assistance the consideration of the general interest of society.

Smith is saying that those who act cruelly to others deserve retribution even if our feelings toward them as fellow human beings softens our natural impulse to punish them. To fight our sympathy for the criminal, we should consider the “general interest of society,” meaning we should consider the implications of refusing to punish criminals. Smith continues:

They [the other members of society] counterbalance the impulse of this weak and partial humanity by the dictates of a humanity that is more generous and comprehensive.

Smith is saying that punishment is perhaps surprisingly, more generous than giving criminals a pass. It benefits society. Smith then gives us a crazy punchline:

They reflect that mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, and oppose to the emotions of compassion which they feel for a particular person, a more enlarged compassion which they feel for mankind.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. While there is something noble about pitying a criminal who has made a terrible mistake, it is better to show compassion for humankind at large and remember the consequences of indulging in pity for the criminal. There is a similar theme in Judaism.

Is this true? Is mercy to the guilty really cruelty to the innocent?

One way to interpret this claim is that it is a claim about punishment as a deterrent. I think punishment is a deterrent. But I think Smith’s observation is akin to what the brothers are saying when they respond to Jacob’s rebuke.

If you let wickedness slide, if you lose the ability to discriminate between right and wrong, your own moral sense will degrade. That is the ultimate cruelty because it will lead to a world of indifference to darkness. And ultimately that will mean less light. The innocent will suffer.

If you live in a hurricane or an earthquake zone, precaution is the order of the day. After a hurricane that breaches your seawall, you might build a higher one. After an earthquake, you might build better foundations. But those are acts of nature. There’s no one to punish. But when our children are kidnapped, our daughters raped, and the murder of our elderly are broadcast on social media, to merely build a higher fence is to ignore the human agency behind those atrocities.

What does it say about a people and a nation if our response to those atrocities is to allow the people of Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and Sderort—towns near the Gazan border— to shrink from the border and live elsewhere on the grounds that is dangerous and there is nothing to be done about it other than to build a better Iron Dome. That is akin to telling your daughter to give up her first floor bedroom because the bars on the windows are not strong enough and she will need to move upstairs. That is cruelty to the innocent.

What do we say about ourselves if we make no attempt to bring the perpetrators of unspeakable crimes to justice and ignore the agency of those who did evil, treating them no differently than we do an act of nature? If we let cruel people indulge their cruelty, there will be more of it. But more than that, we risk becoming indifferent to cruelty. The very foundations of what it means to distinguish between cruelty and kindness may falter. In such a world, the innocent will pay the price.

None of this gives Israel the free rein to do whatever it wants in Gaza oblivious to the suffering of innocents there. None of this justifies collective punishment. But the veneer of civilization is thin. If we refuse to punish cruelty, we dull our sense of right and wrong and put the innocent in harm’s way. When people say that Israel had no choice but to respond militarily to October 7, this is what I think they mean: who are we, what kind of nation and society are we, if we stand idly by when we come face to face with human cruelty?