On Moral Atrocity

Let there be no equivocation.

The incursion by Hamas into Israel is a disgusting act of terror. The intentional targeting of civilians, even infants and the elderly, represents a moral atrocity. Whatever we may say about the justification of violence—and there are many positions one might reasonably hold—indiscriminate killing and the slaughter of the helpless is evil. Let there be no equivocation on this matter.

Before you ask, yes, I am aware of the suffering of Palestinians. I am aware that Israel has implemented policies at times that have been intentionally cruel. I have spent time in the West Bank. I have seen Palestinian refugee camps. I have heard the stories of Palestinians and the hardships they have endured year after year. These experiences left me heartsick and hoping for change. I wholeheartedly affirm the right of Israel to exist as a nation and to defend itself, but I do not affirm all of its policies toward the Palestinians.

Nevertheless it would be wrong to think of these two matters in terms of moral equivalence. What Hamas has done, backed by Iran, merits universal, unequivocal condemnation. It is, moreover, an attempt to destroy an international order in the Mideast that was moving toward a more stable future. In other words, it was in part an attempt to destroy the potential of a future peace.

The Holocaust is not even a century in the past. The Nazi effort to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth weighs heavily upon the collective memory of the Western world—as it should. One-third of all the Jews in Europe were murdered. The Holocaust didn’t appear out of thin air, but was the climax of centuries of European antisemitism.

Today Israel faces an enemy in Iran, and in its proxy, Hamas, that wishes to finish what the Nazis started. We must not turn a blind eye as we did in the 1930s. In the United States, we see politicians on both the right and the left attempting to argue either that (a) this is not our problem in the U.S., or (b) the Hamas attack was somehow justified. But this is our problem. It is the world’s problem, and it will affect all of us. The attack was, moreover, by any reasonable moral standard, unjustifiable, and we must name it as such.

Let there be no equivocation.