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 isciplined
and constructive analysis must now replace the pointless replaying
of Tuesday's horrors. President Bush is planning the nation's response.
As an Orthodox rabbi I turn for guidance to the pages of that very
Book from which our nation's 17th- and 18th-century founders were
most comfortable seeking wisdom and solace.
In the book
of Exodus we find an apt Biblical model for the situation at hand.
I refer to the Amalekite attack on the ancient Israelites shortly
after their hurried departure from Egypt. For this, God commanded
the Jews to make unceasing war on the Amalekites — but not
only that. Jewish tradition points out that the stated location
of the attack, Rephidim, is to be read not as the geographical name
of any place but instead as a Hebrew word, a plural noun, alluding
to the moral turpitude of the Children of Israel at the time shortly
prior to the attack. God suggested that Amalek's attack was to be
analyzed as a call to self-examination.
From the Amalek
story we may extract two lessons. First of all is the obligation
to root out evil of the kind that sends airliners smashing into
the World Trade Center. Second, not every victimized nation or group
is perfectly virtuous.
I realize this
may sound outrageously insensitive, for many Americans are committed
to the view that being a victim, as America was victimized this
week, should immediately grant you immunity from all criticism.
Thus the equation of victimhood with virtue has led some observers
of turmoil in the Middle East to blame Israel for the fact that
more than twice as many Palestinians have died in the present conflict
as have Israelis. The conclusion for the morally untutored is simple:
because Palestinians are dying in greater numbers, they must be
the morally justified party in the conflict. But it is simply wrong
to grant moral prestige on the basis of suffering. It is a core
Jewish value, when confronted with catastrophe, to probe broadly
and arrive at a detailed moral balance sheet.
I advise that
we Americans do the same thing. I can't speak to the strategic question
of how best to identify and destroy our nation's enemies. But we
have been guilty of three dreadful mistakes during the past few
decades, and they need to be addressed as surely as our assailants
need to be punished.
The first mistake
we made was to forget, amid peace and prosperity, what the face
of sheer evil looks like. This forgetting has been easy for us.
We are taught it in the schools, where children are instructed that
there is no such thing as evil, only differences in point of view.
You see, to admit the existence of evil means we would have to define
evil according to someone's morality and we all know that in a multi-cultural
society this would be wrong.
Knowing that
there is evil carries with it many practical advantages. For instance,
captains of commercial airplanes used to carry side arms, but politicians
who didn't believe in evil long ago disarmed them. Armed pilots
could have made quite a difference for the good on Tuesday.
A second mistake
was to emasculate the CIA. In recent years, international sanctimoniousness
about human rights trumped considerations of American security.
The entire CIA structure was methodically undermined and demoralized
by penalizing all operatives who might have violated the human rights
of their targets.
Third, we Americans
have ignored the real-life lessons that many of us learned in our
fourth-grade schoolyard. The class bully was always encouraged by
passivity. Sooner or later, you realized, you would have to bloody
his nose. The longer you took to do the inevitable, the more demoralized
you became.
Or, do you
remember the unpleasant rich kid? He used to try to buy friendship
with money. Did he ever win a most-popular-kid-in-the-class award?
Of course not. He won only contempt and resentment. That, I'm afraid,
is what America gets for its foreign aid. We should tell Mr. Arafat,
Your people laughing and celebrating in the street at our agony
has just ended your stipend.
When confronted
with tragedy, the Jewish way is, then, to assess one's own moral
condition. But — and here is the tricky part — while the
victim gauges his faults he is also commanded to strike back in
devastating force. In short, the strategy is counterattack accompanied
by an equally remorseless attempt to identify the flaws that made
the attack possible in the first place. Let us pray that something
positive may come out of our suffering. If we Americans contemplate
the lessons of Amalek, I believe it will.
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