Morality by Numbers
Monday, 19 January 2009
The Israeli daily Ha’aretz has two reporters – Amira Hass and Gideon Levy – who write almost exclusively from the perspective of the Palestinians. Its openness to the other side makes it a world-class quality newspaper. Needless to say, it incurs the wrath of the country’s political right. However, of late some moderate readers have also come to believe that the reporters have gone too far in their unbalanced comments.
One of them is the celebrated Israeli writer A.B. Yehoshua. Last Friday Yehoshua published an open letter to Levy in which he gave vent to his concerns, despite his friendship and admiration. (The full text can be found on www.haaretz.com.) I’d only like to comment on the passage that questions Levy’s condemnation of Israel on the grounds that, in the Gaza war, many more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis:
When you asked how it can be that they killed three of our children and we cause the killing of a hundred and fifty, the inference one can draw is that if they were to kill a hundred of our children (for example, by the Qassam rockets that struck schools and kindergartens in Israel that happened to be empty), we would be justified in also killing a hundred of their children. In other words, it is not the killing itself that troubles you but the number.
The criticism is applicable to Israel’s countless detractors around the world when they accuse it of having responded “disproportionately” to Hamas attacks. Hamas is sort-of justified because it hasn’t been successful in killing civilians on the scale intended (what other purpose could there be in firing rockets into populated areas?) and because Israel’s military casualties have been very much lower. Had more Israelis been killed, it seems that the world would probably not condemn it in the way it’s now doing. If that’s true, then the oft-cited reflection may be justified that, in the eyes of too many, the only good Jew is a dead Jew.
The Israeli public is greatly troubled by the deaths and injuries of Palestinian bystanders. Indeed, a number of their casualties are now being treated in Israeli hospitals. Nobody here needs to be persuaded that the army can make tragic mistakes. After all, even some of the dead and injured Israeli soldiers were hit by “friendly fire.”
But neither does anybody here believe that, for example, Palestinian children are deliberately targeted. Some Israelis perceive such accusations as updated versions of the traditional blood libel about Jews killing Christian children for ritual purposes. We know that in our time Muslims have taken on Christian canards for their own purposes. It seems that much of the world, whether or not still Christian, nods in agreement.
Therefore, instead of “morality by numbers” by which Israel is often being judged at present, Yehoshua recommends this formula: “It would be best for us all – we and the Palestinians and the rest of the world – to follow the simple moral imperative of Kantian philosophy: ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will [want] that it should be a universal law.’” In other words, women and men with integrity should only condemn Israel for actions they wouldn’t perform themselves under similar circumstances.
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