W.J. Astore
A grim historical lesson taught by Thucydides, who wrote on the Peloponnesian War more than two millennia ago, is that the strong do what they will while the weak suffer what they must. Historically, the Jewish people have often been weak. Weak in the sense they had no homeland. They had no army. They were, in a word, vulnerable.
Compounding this vulnerability was prejudice. People who are vilified, who are dismissed as untrustworthy, who are defined as “other,” even as “human animals,” are especially vulnerable to the strong because the vilified rarely attract staunch champions or even sympathetic helpers.
Today, the Jewish people remember and commemorate those who helped them, who stood for justice, who were “righteous gentiles,” at places like Yad Vashem.
There’s a famous saying, the gist of which is that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. During the Holocaust, far too many people did nothing when confronted by the evils of Nazism, and millions died as a result.
Today, the Jewish people are no longer weak. In Israel they have a homeland protected by powerful armed forces. They have staunch allies, including the world’s premier “superpower,” along with nuclear weapons, perhaps 200 of them, enough to wipe out the nations and peoples in their immediate vicinity.
Again, Israel today is strong. Thus it faces the ethical dilemma of the strong: the ability to kill on a mass scale, an ability too easily justified in the name of “defense.” Will Israel illustrate Thucydides’ maxim of the strong doing what they will and the weak—in this case, the Palestinians—suffering as they must?
The hardline Israeli government appears to see mass violence, mass death, and mass expulsion as the only solution in Gaza.
History is replete with examples of the strong doing what they will while the weak suffer. Yet Israel is exercising overwhelming power against weak and vulnerable people in ways well known to Jews who’ve suffered greatly themselves in a long and tortured past.
Palestinians in Gaza are not collectively guilty of crimes committed by Hamas. They are an entrapped and desperate people. What is to become of them?
Israel knows the value of righteousness, of justice for all, of an abiding love for all life, as reflected in the moral exemplars honored at Yad Vashem.
What Israel needs now is moral heroism. What Gaza needs now is mercy.
Bracing Views 
Bibi is intent on eradicating Palestinians under the guise of the view that they are all Hamas that seems only related to his pride, hubris, and need for revenge.
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Thank you Bill for a perceptive and welcome comment.
As others have noted, the Israeli intention appears ultimately to drive out of Gaza those Palestinians that remain following what can only be called indiscriminate bombing.
Palestinians on the West Bank are already under increasing assualt.
The State of Israel was born out of mayhem, murder and the forcible removal of more than 700,000 of the original inhabitants of Palestine.
Who would have thought that 70+ years later, little has changed for the better.
In fact, as one commentator noted, the Warsaw Ghetto comes to mind in this context.
[ https://johnmenadue.com/the-razing-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-are-our-leaders-incapable-of-learning-from-history/ ]
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Hello W. J.,
As the son of a pair of “righteous gentiles” (my parents risked their lives to help Jews escape from Denmark to Sweden in 1944), I was deeply moved by your posting today. I have been struggling to reconcile my conflicting reactions to Hamas’s horrendous attack on Israel with my revulsion against the scale of that country’s revenge. While “Israel knows the value of righteousness”, or should, it seems determined to commit the very crimes against humanity which justified the establishment of the nation in the first place.
Your call for moral heroism on the part of Israel and mercy for Gaza is sorely needed.
Thank you,
Mads Bjerre
P O Box 7404
Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA 93921-7404
323-855-0776
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Thank you for your kind note.
I lived in the Monterey area from 2002-05; your message brought back memories of Carmel and spending time in Big Sur among the peaceful redwoods.
We need peace, not endless war.
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