You seem unaware of the literally thousands of Israeli civilians, men women and children, who have been deliberately targeted by Hamas and their ilk over many decades.
Israel has been seeking a peaceful solution since the beginning of the modern state -- we accepted the Partition Plan just so we could have peace and the Arabs rejected it and made war; we accepted the Oslo Accords so we could have peace and the Arabs, instead of focusing on building a state, used the opportunity to keep making war by means of terror attacks; we withdrew all Jews from Gaza to have peace and the Arabs used the opportunity to attack us with missiles, incendiary kites and finally by Oct 7th. I don't think a peaceful solution is on the horizon.
I completely disagree. The goal of Hamas is to kill. They killed Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouins, Thais, Tanzanians. They murdered the elderly and they murdered children. They are murderous barbarians whose stated intent was to launch an attack as far into Israel as they could. They are sociopathic savages who would rather their own families be murdered and their own villages laid to waste than to leave Israel alone and build their own functioning state.
This is interesting and I am enchanted by you thinking in colours. But you are suggesting external changes and not internal ones. Perhaps their blood should be dyed blue -- or their brains, or their hearts. But tell me -- what does blue represent for you? For me, it represents the sea.
You are absolutely correct. And after opposing giving them terrorists for hostages, I changed my mind and decided we need to get the hostages back asap and then do what we need to do to take control of Gaza. But I can also just as easily argue the opposite, my original viewpoint. That is what is driving me crazy about this.
What would be overcontextualizing in your opinion? DId I overcontextualize or are you merely warning against that? I have the feeling that you think I already did overcontextualize.
Yes. I think you are over contextualizing. And I think that it is succumbing to our enemies psychological terrorism. The train-switch is just another way of representing Sophie's Choice, which you and I both referenced in earlier posts. I believe that we must refuse to succumb to this torture. But I cannot be upset with you because, damn it all to hell, you gave a precise voice to the churning madness in all Israelis' heads. Refuse to succumb: easier said than done.
Refusing to succumb. I think the only way I can see doing that is if we just carpet-bombed Gaza either on Oct 8th or just before signing that horrendous so-called "deal." But then I saw the faces of the three women and their families ---- and I succumbed. OOF
I think that the first “deal” has been done when Israel has been attacking gaza with all its might, when all these shameful “world leaders” were still under impression of 7of October and so hamas was scared of what is coming. But shortly after that America and other western countries started to blackmail and threaten Israel. And to continue fighting Israel had to partly bend under their pressure and use only one hand instead of two. I am sure that everything would be different if only all these western countries cracked down on hamas, on all these despicable so called demonstrations and campuses Jew hatred and stood firmly for Israel.
Also I believe that all these demonstrations in Israel on Kaplan with their demands “deal for any price” added to this distress - my impression is that organisers of these protests have hostages blood on their hands! They gave gazans the cart blanch to keep hostages. These organisers used pain, horror and desperations of hostage’s relatives to manipulate them and with only one and one purpose - to get rid of Bibi and his government. It is sooo shameful and unforgivable!
I would exile all these activists from Israel!
I am very divided with this extortion now, my heart goes for hostages and their relatives and my heart goes for Israel in general. I cannot decide.
I agree with this totally. I did not want to get into why things changed after the first "deal" as that would have made an already long article even longer and clumsy.
I would not exile the activists from Israel, however, unless you mean the organizers and funders. But I would prefer to be able to expose them in a way that those falling under their spell would fall out of their spell.
Unless and until there is a sea change in the entire paradigm of rewarding terrorism, this wash rinse repeat cycle will continue.
We cannot influence a Jew hating or indifferent international community, but we can provide more appropriate incentives /disincentives for those who want nothing more than exterminate us all.
What can stop someone so indoctrinated into a death cult that both killing Jews and becoming a martyr is a win, and who cares nothing for his own people?
Some examples:
1) Every individual killed while committing a terror attack becomes an automatic organ/tissue donor (to the extent medically possible), so they know they risk saving more Jews than they kill.
2) Do Jews “love life” and adhere to the concept of pikuach nefesh? If so no more exchanging live terrorists (who will most certainly kill again) for the bodies of dead Israelis. Instead every terrorist killed in any operation should be held indefinitely for this purpose - preferably in a bag containing portions of forbidden pig.
3) The death penalty must be applied to any captured killer whose motive is purely terrorism, removing them from the equation and making abductions less attractive. Streamline the legal system and get it done asap.
4) Islamist fanatics care for nothing but killing Jews and becoming martyrs - unless it is the intensive reeducation of their children. Family members of upper echelon terrorists should be detained and videos broadcasted of them learning about liberal democratic values, civil/womens/gay rights, and peaceful coexistence.
5) The only other thing these fanatics care about is redeeming “Muslim land” from the clutches of the despised Jews. Israel should announce it is formally annexing a specified portion of “Palestinian” land for every hostage not returned by a certain date.
6) All funds withheld from the PA for their “pay for slay” should be dispersed to families of terror victims annually. The fear of “destabilizing“ the PA has only incentivized them to continue with this odious practice.
I’m sure the Start Up Nation can come up with other innovative ideas which do not involve capitulating to terrorists, a failed strategy which merely incentivizes them to continue their attacks. Publishing such articles might be psychologically cathartic to both write and read, as we unite as a nation in our grief, but do nothing to change this decades-long vicious cycle of exchanging so many for one.
I wish our government could get creative and use either some of these ideas or, as you suggest, come up with their own innovative ways to not capitulate to terrorists.
Anyone who was able to come up with the beeper operation can surely think up a truly appropriate response to hostage-takers.
Thank you Sheri. I changed my mind about the "very bad deal" the moment I saw the hostages meet their loved ones and then I read the words of one of the released hostages. She just wants "TO BE". Human life is infinitely and divinely precious. We need to save ONE life now and deal with "what is to come" when it happens (if it does happen). Saving a life NOW is imperative.
i think this is what most stuck for me in my own back and forth: "(2) our leaders turned a blind eye to them. Because our leaders are responsible for ignoring the threats, it is their responsibility to get back as many hostages as possible and to change their way of viewing our enemies and protecting us from them." There is blame to be had in the deliberate complacency in the refusal to accept the stated intentions of Hamas to destroy Israel, instead believing in the internationally popular belief that we are all one. So the leaders are required to do everything possible to "undo" by at least saving those who are still being held.
I remember the stories of the young women posted to the border sending repeated reports of Hamas encroaching, seeming to be practicing for an envasion, and being ignored.
Thanks Sheri for putting all this out there for us. It's a failure of leadership that created the Sophie's choice.
It seems to me that the real question is, how can Israel prevent this all happening again in the future? The taking of hostages and the moral imperative to save them has become Israel's Achiles Heel in light of Israel's willingness to exchange jailed terrorists for their release. If anti-Jewish terrorism was to become a capital offence in Israel punishable by death, that might conceivably change the equation and hostage taking itself might become a much less attractive proposition to the terrorist factions.
Perhaps if the captured and convicted terrorist was immediately executed, the impetus for hostage taking/negotiating would be drastically reduced. The goal is having only very low value prisoners.
I'm a long way away, but this hostage deal really makes me angry. If the terrorists offered me a body to exchange, a body would be returned, one for one. The terrorists are responsible for the deaths of the Israeli hostages, therefore responsible for a quid pro quo. Hopefully high value.
This is a comment on several of your essays and on Ehud Naor's post, which intersects with yours.
Thank you for a good example, which is good for students' philosophical exercises, and I believe that it contains a major catch for morality. Many in modern Western society have fallen for this trick and continue to blindly follow the broken model of morality.
In fact, the person on the switch no longer has a choice. He is pre-set in the conditions when murder will occur regardless of his actions, and regardless of his actions, the moral dilemma will not be resolved.
This is the illusion of choice.
The problem with society's morality is that they use this moral dilemma in real life. As soon as you return to real life, you will have a context and you will ask questions: How did people get on the tracks? Was it malicious intent, a deliberate mistake, or stupidity? How did it happen that the trolley moves without control? How did it happen that all the responsibility for what happens is shifted to a random passerby? Anyone who tries to solve this problem in reality falls into a trap used by terrorists, murderers, dictators and other maniacs and sociopaths. They do not give you a choice and shift responsibility and blame onto you. A terrorist kills a hostage and accuses the one who did not fulfill the terrorist's conditions of murder.
Modern society buys this model of morality and blames those whom the terrorists point to, and not the terrorists.
Therefore, when you decide whether to flip the switch, you do as the one who put you in this situation wants.
Instead of stopping the trolley, removing people from the path and preventing the situation when the trolley moves out of control, you are engaged in a senseless solution to a moral dilemma that has no solution from the beginning.
Unfortunately, Israeli society has also adopted this model. People blame the government, those who think differently, the army, other people, shifting the blame from the real culprits to them. At the same time, they themselves become accomplices in this transfer of blame. Israeli society was preoccupied with who flips the switch, so the Shalit deal happened, which led to the 2014 war, when it was already clear that Gaza was digging tunnels and preparing to take hostages. With each round of violence from Gaza, the one on the switch was to blame. That's why we are here today.
I have only looked at the moral side. There is also contextualization. And it is very important.
I think turning these issues into a trolley problem can be an interesting exercise, but I think fundamentally it is a bit flawed. To me it represents the question : “in this situation, what is the moral thing for the person on the lever to do”. But I do not think that a state or a government should make decisions in such a paradigm. Its decisions need to be made on principals, not on a utilitarian calculation. The state has a responsibility to return the hostages. There is a duty to protect the citizens in most urgent need as there will be a duty to protect citizens as vehemently as possible from future terror attacks. But the first duty can’t be abandoned for the sake of making the latter easier.
Yes. So you get the point of this article entirely. Your conclusion is a legitimate opinion but I am torn by the situation -- I am happy for each hostage who comes out of that purgatory but still against the deal. There are moral issues on both sides. And utilitarian issues on both sides. It's a lose-lose for us.
You seem unaware of the literally thousands of Israeli civilians, men women and children, who have been deliberately targeted by Hamas and their ilk over many decades.
Israel has been seeking a peaceful solution since the beginning of the modern state -- we accepted the Partition Plan just so we could have peace and the Arabs rejected it and made war; we accepted the Oslo Accords so we could have peace and the Arabs, instead of focusing on building a state, used the opportunity to keep making war by means of terror attacks; we withdrew all Jews from Gaza to have peace and the Arabs used the opportunity to attack us with missiles, incendiary kites and finally by Oct 7th. I don't think a peaceful solution is on the horizon.
That's fine. But when you reply that you want a peaceful solution on an article that I wrote, I respond.
I liked what you wrote about colour. It was you, wasn't it?
I completely disagree. The goal of Hamas is to kill. They killed Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouins, Thais, Tanzanians. They murdered the elderly and they murdered children. They are murderous barbarians whose stated intent was to launch an attack as far into Israel as they could. They are sociopathic savages who would rather their own families be murdered and their own villages laid to waste than to leave Israel alone and build their own functioning state.
This is interesting and I am enchanted by you thinking in colours. But you are suggesting external changes and not internal ones. Perhaps their blood should be dyed blue -- or their brains, or their hearts. But tell me -- what does blue represent for you? For me, it represents the sea.
You are absolutely correct. And after opposing giving them terrorists for hostages, I changed my mind and decided we need to get the hostages back asap and then do what we need to do to take control of Gaza. But I can also just as easily argue the opposite, my original viewpoint. That is what is driving me crazy about this.
Yes, it’s crazy-making. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around.
"But we need to pay attention to how we contexualize this." And to make sure we do not over-contextualize.
What would be overcontextualizing in your opinion? DId I overcontextualize or are you merely warning against that? I have the feeling that you think I already did overcontextualize.
Yes. I think you are over contextualizing. And I think that it is succumbing to our enemies psychological terrorism. The train-switch is just another way of representing Sophie's Choice, which you and I both referenced in earlier posts. I believe that we must refuse to succumb to this torture. But I cannot be upset with you because, damn it all to hell, you gave a precise voice to the churning madness in all Israelis' heads. Refuse to succumb: easier said than done.
You are so kind.
Refusing to succumb. I think the only way I can see doing that is if we just carpet-bombed Gaza either on Oct 8th or just before signing that horrendous so-called "deal." But then I saw the faces of the three women and their families ---- and I succumbed. OOF
Yeah, seeing the girls.
I think that the first “deal” has been done when Israel has been attacking gaza with all its might, when all these shameful “world leaders” were still under impression of 7of October and so hamas was scared of what is coming. But shortly after that America and other western countries started to blackmail and threaten Israel. And to continue fighting Israel had to partly bend under their pressure and use only one hand instead of two. I am sure that everything would be different if only all these western countries cracked down on hamas, on all these despicable so called demonstrations and campuses Jew hatred and stood firmly for Israel.
Also I believe that all these demonstrations in Israel on Kaplan with their demands “deal for any price” added to this distress - my impression is that organisers of these protests have hostages blood on their hands! They gave gazans the cart blanch to keep hostages. These organisers used pain, horror and desperations of hostage’s relatives to manipulate them and with only one and one purpose - to get rid of Bibi and his government. It is sooo shameful and unforgivable!
I would exile all these activists from Israel!
I am very divided with this extortion now, my heart goes for hostages and their relatives and my heart goes for Israel in general. I cannot decide.
I agree with this totally. I did not want to get into why things changed after the first "deal" as that would have made an already long article even longer and clumsy.
I would not exile the activists from Israel, however, unless you mean the organizers and funders. But I would prefer to be able to expose them in a way that those falling under their spell would fall out of their spell.
I meant organisers and financiers. Under the current legal system it is very difficult to expose them.
Unless and until there is a sea change in the entire paradigm of rewarding terrorism, this wash rinse repeat cycle will continue.
We cannot influence a Jew hating or indifferent international community, but we can provide more appropriate incentives /disincentives for those who want nothing more than exterminate us all.
What can stop someone so indoctrinated into a death cult that both killing Jews and becoming a martyr is a win, and who cares nothing for his own people?
Some examples:
1) Every individual killed while committing a terror attack becomes an automatic organ/tissue donor (to the extent medically possible), so they know they risk saving more Jews than they kill.
2) Do Jews “love life” and adhere to the concept of pikuach nefesh? If so no more exchanging live terrorists (who will most certainly kill again) for the bodies of dead Israelis. Instead every terrorist killed in any operation should be held indefinitely for this purpose - preferably in a bag containing portions of forbidden pig.
3) The death penalty must be applied to any captured killer whose motive is purely terrorism, removing them from the equation and making abductions less attractive. Streamline the legal system and get it done asap.
4) Islamist fanatics care for nothing but killing Jews and becoming martyrs - unless it is the intensive reeducation of their children. Family members of upper echelon terrorists should be detained and videos broadcasted of them learning about liberal democratic values, civil/womens/gay rights, and peaceful coexistence.
5) The only other thing these fanatics care about is redeeming “Muslim land” from the clutches of the despised Jews. Israel should announce it is formally annexing a specified portion of “Palestinian” land for every hostage not returned by a certain date.
6) All funds withheld from the PA for their “pay for slay” should be dispersed to families of terror victims annually. The fear of “destabilizing“ the PA has only incentivized them to continue with this odious practice.
I’m sure the Start Up Nation can come up with other innovative ideas which do not involve capitulating to terrorists, a failed strategy which merely incentivizes them to continue their attacks. Publishing such articles might be psychologically cathartic to both write and read, as we unite as a nation in our grief, but do nothing to change this decades-long vicious cycle of exchanging so many for one.
I have read about your point 5 before and completely agree with this. Just wondering why the Israeli Government does not do it.
I wish our government could get creative and use either some of these ideas or, as you suggest, come up with their own innovative ways to not capitulate to terrorists.
Anyone who was able to come up with the beeper operation can surely think up a truly appropriate response to hostage-takers.
Exactly…. And it’s been literally decades.
We are all helpless pawns of our failed leadership.
Thank you Sheri. I changed my mind about the "very bad deal" the moment I saw the hostages meet their loved ones and then I read the words of one of the released hostages. She just wants "TO BE". Human life is infinitely and divinely precious. We need to save ONE life now and deal with "what is to come" when it happens (if it does happen). Saving a life NOW is imperative.
i think this is what most stuck for me in my own back and forth: "(2) our leaders turned a blind eye to them. Because our leaders are responsible for ignoring the threats, it is their responsibility to get back as many hostages as possible and to change their way of viewing our enemies and protecting us from them." There is blame to be had in the deliberate complacency in the refusal to accept the stated intentions of Hamas to destroy Israel, instead believing in the internationally popular belief that we are all one. So the leaders are required to do everything possible to "undo" by at least saving those who are still being held.
I remember the stories of the young women posted to the border sending repeated reports of Hamas encroaching, seeming to be practicing for an envasion, and being ignored.
Thanks Sheri for putting all this out there for us. It's a failure of leadership that created the Sophie's choice.
It seems to me that the real question is, how can Israel prevent this all happening again in the future? The taking of hostages and the moral imperative to save them has become Israel's Achiles Heel in light of Israel's willingness to exchange jailed terrorists for their release. If anti-Jewish terrorism was to become a capital offence in Israel punishable by death, that might conceivably change the equation and hostage taking itself might become a much less attractive proposition to the terrorist factions.
The jihadist want to die because it makes him/her a hero and martyr. That puts us in quite the bind.
Perhaps if the captured and convicted terrorist was immediately executed, the impetus for hostage taking/negotiating would be drastically reduced. The goal is having only very low value prisoners.
I'm a long way away, but this hostage deal really makes me angry. If the terrorists offered me a body to exchange, a body would be returned, one for one. The terrorists are responsible for the deaths of the Israeli hostages, therefore responsible for a quid pro quo. Hopefully high value.
This is a comment on several of your essays and on Ehud Naor's post, which intersects with yours.
Thank you for a good example, which is good for students' philosophical exercises, and I believe that it contains a major catch for morality. Many in modern Western society have fallen for this trick and continue to blindly follow the broken model of morality.
In fact, the person on the switch no longer has a choice. He is pre-set in the conditions when murder will occur regardless of his actions, and regardless of his actions, the moral dilemma will not be resolved.
This is the illusion of choice.
The problem with society's morality is that they use this moral dilemma in real life. As soon as you return to real life, you will have a context and you will ask questions: How did people get on the tracks? Was it malicious intent, a deliberate mistake, or stupidity? How did it happen that the trolley moves without control? How did it happen that all the responsibility for what happens is shifted to a random passerby? Anyone who tries to solve this problem in reality falls into a trap used by terrorists, murderers, dictators and other maniacs and sociopaths. They do not give you a choice and shift responsibility and blame onto you. A terrorist kills a hostage and accuses the one who did not fulfill the terrorist's conditions of murder.
Modern society buys this model of morality and blames those whom the terrorists point to, and not the terrorists.
Therefore, when you decide whether to flip the switch, you do as the one who put you in this situation wants.
Instead of stopping the trolley, removing people from the path and preventing the situation when the trolley moves out of control, you are engaged in a senseless solution to a moral dilemma that has no solution from the beginning.
Unfortunately, Israeli society has also adopted this model. People blame the government, those who think differently, the army, other people, shifting the blame from the real culprits to them. At the same time, they themselves become accomplices in this transfer of blame. Israeli society was preoccupied with who flips the switch, so the Shalit deal happened, which led to the 2014 war, when it was already clear that Gaza was digging tunnels and preparing to take hostages. With each round of violence from Gaza, the one on the switch was to blame. That's why we are here today.
I have only looked at the moral side. There is also contextualization. And it is very important.
what a wonderful response. In my article, I had talked about context but had not taken it as far as you did. Thank you.
I think turning these issues into a trolley problem can be an interesting exercise, but I think fundamentally it is a bit flawed. To me it represents the question : “in this situation, what is the moral thing for the person on the lever to do”. But I do not think that a state or a government should make decisions in such a paradigm. Its decisions need to be made on principals, not on a utilitarian calculation. The state has a responsibility to return the hostages. There is a duty to protect the citizens in most urgent need as there will be a duty to protect citizens as vehemently as possible from future terror attacks. But the first duty can’t be abandoned for the sake of making the latter easier.
Yes. So you get the point of this article entirely. Your conclusion is a legitimate opinion but I am torn by the situation -- I am happy for each hostage who comes out of that purgatory but still against the deal. There are moral issues on both sides. And utilitarian issues on both sides. It's a lose-lose for us.