Over night, Israel’s largest labor union called for nationwide strike to push for a hostage deal, threatening to shut down “the entire Israeli economy” Tel Aviv’s international airport announced that it would halt departures and arrivals of flights for two hours, and intense protests have broken out in response to Israel’s military recovering the bodies of six hostages killed in Gaza. The protesters say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not done enough to protect the hostages. To be blunt, the protesters are ethics dunces and morons….much like the American students, Democrats, pundits and the Biden administration trying to pressure Israel into a ruinous cease-fire with Hamas.
The head Ethics Dunce here is Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the lone dissenter in the Israel Cabinet, who accuses the Israeli government of prioritizing control of a key border area over a deal to free hostages (who may be dead already). Calling Netanyahu’s course a “moral disgrace” during a Cabinet meeting yesterday, Gallant warned his colleagues, “If we continue on this path, we won’t manage to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. If we want the hostages alive, we don’t have time. I was taught that we don’t leave the injured behind in the field.”
That’s odd: I was taught that if you bargain with terrorists for hostages, you ensure that more hostages will be taken, and validate hostage-taking as a tactic. That happens to be true. There is only one party at fault for the fate of any of the hostages, including those who may have been killed by Israel’s bombing raids as the hostage takers claim (and why wouldn’t you believe them, with their record of truthfulness and integrity?). Hamas is 100% responsible, and no one else. The terrorist leaders of Gaza took the hostages and placed them in peril.
Allowing the fate of hostages to have any effect on Israel’s efforts to purge the region of a deadly and ruthless terrorist organization that has pledged to cause Israel’s destruction is logically, historically and ethically indefensible, and yet that is what substantial numbers of emotion-driven Israelis are protesting for, and worse, what the current American government continues to try to force on Netanyahu.
Again: ethics dunces, fools and morons.
All of them.
Netanyahu may be corrupt, and he may need to be ejected from power eventually and even jailed, but in this instance he is correct.
Meanwhile, Israel’s highest court has declared the strike illegal and ordered that it cease. Good. Unfortunately, stupidity will never be illegal. The CNN headline current up on its site should be an embarrassment to protesters here and in Tel Aviv: “Israel Strikers and Protester Demand Gaza Deal After 6 Hostages Killed.”
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ADDED: I just saw this reaction from my friend John Podhoretz:
“Had the Biden administration’s will not been bent and twisted in the months following the attack by the fiendish propaganda campaign causing them to worry about the war’s effect on Joe’s chances in Michigan—due to a population that effectively supported the terrorist monsters and cared not a whit for the eight Americans, let alone the 240 other innocents dragged into Hell—would Hersh and these others have survived? Imagine an Israel that had not found itself restrained and under assault, not told to pause, not scolded in pissy little phone calls with petulant American establishmentarians, without arms and aid held up, without being lectured about the geostrategic value of going slow or not going at all. Imagine an Israel that was not told by its best friend in the world that offensive action in Gaza had become self-defeating, was not told that Israel should care more about feeding people in Gaza than about eliminating the threat to its 9 million citizens and pummelling Hamas until that evil group of thugs cried uncle and begged for way to negotiate to return the hostages.
Imagine an America that did not lose its nerve under a president whose team knew perfectly well he was infirm and was working desperately to stave off his eventual collapse and departure from the race to save their own rotten and misbegotten jobs.”
To which you host responds, “Bingo.”
Ethics Alarms 
This is a tough one, Jack. I am inclined not to see this many Israelis as ethics dunces. But, rather, to see them as frustrated and exhausted. I (and my brothers) obsess about this awful situation, multiple times daily, and recognize the evil, wicked genius of Yahya Sinwar. But, not living there or having family there, or serving in the IDF—albeit still being a fierce Zionist/secular Jew—I am loathe to judge the Israeli populace.
Still, this war will not end until Sinwar and Hamas are destroyed, period.
Then, there is this surreal dispatch from the New York Times, which I received via email hours ago:
“Abu Obeida, the spokesman of Hamas’s military wing, said that militants charged with protecting hostages had been given new directives about how to handle situations in which Israeli military approaches holding locations for hostages. He didn’t explain the new instructions, but he said they were handed down following an Israeli operation that rescued four hostages in central Gaza in June.”
Shades of Eric Blair/George Orwell.
If “Abu Obeida” actually used this phraseology, it should be in quotes. If the NYT journalist used this phraseology, then this world is going to Scheiß much faster than I ever thought it ever would. The “new directives”: Hamas will of course execute every last hostage, because Sinwar has already shown that he cares not about the consequences. He is daring Israel (and the US) to continue to come after him. Hamas executed a beautiful 23 year old American Jewish boy, who could be my son, nephew, neighbor, or son-in-law, at point blank range. That is a clear and direct FUCK YOU to the Democratic Party and Biden and Harris. Sinwar will have no compunction about doing the same to the rest. Hersh Goldberg-Polin and the others, all young, beautiful, and in their prime, were shot at Sinwar’s personal direction. Just like Hitler personally ordered the beheading of an American graduate student, Mildred Harnack, in 1943.
We are dealing with pure evil here. It is not Israel. It is Hamas and Sinwar. I do not envy Bibi Netanyahu. But I defer to him. And I support him for the time being. Any “cease fire” that leaves Sinwar alive is worthless. Period. Or, if entered, it will be violated by Hamas within a few days anyway.
Anyway, thank you for writing about this. I have not had such anxiety since the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Steve Berlin
Steve—I’m sorry you had to submit this twice. I haven’t been near my computer for a while.
I am told that I am unduly unforgiving when misguided conduct is caused by non-ethical considerations. I guess so. But a civilization’s survival often depends on not getting tired, frustrated angry at life’s vicissitudes, etc. The strategy of—you’re right—evil adversaries like Hamas is to outlast the opposition. When a society decides that what’s worth fighting for is too hard to fight for, that’s when the bad guys win. Hamas loves these protests. This is one reason why I object to the commonly heard rationalization, “Well, you can understand why he did it.” Understanding it is too often used to justify the conduct in question.
Melanie Philips, an astute British commentator, calls it “suicidal stupidity.” Of course you and she are correct. The Israeli public I hope —and believe— will rally. Bibi needs to channel his inner Churchill, and inspire and lead them. I trust he will.
I also have the thinnest film of faith in the Biden Harris administration, and can only hope that they do not give in to the woke, Jew-hating wing of the Party, and don’t follow Starmer’s pusillanimous lead by embargoing certain necessary arms. Iran won’t stop feeding its proxies all manner of rockets and financial support until punishment is exacted on it. Perhaps Biden, in his dotage, and Harris (who I hope can think and make decisions coherently for a few minutes a day, though I have my doubts) will see Sinwar’s FYOU for what it is, and assist Bibi in finishing the job in Gaza. As to Iran, part of me thinks (hopes, really) that the “ceasefire” deal will include having the IAF bomb the Iranian oil exporting ports, thereby crippling the Mullah’s cash cow (and temporarily angering China by disrupting its oil flow, but just temporarily), so then the hypocrites in Washington, London, Paris, and Oslo can publicly blame Bibi for doing what we, the US, should have done years ago when Obama was POTUS, busy trying to appease the Mullahs. Only Bibi has the courage and will to do it, but he and the IDF/IAF cannot do it alone.
Anyway, thank you, Jack—your posts on this topic are helping me tremendously.
Jack, I hadn’t gotten to Bret Stephens’s column until now, but it’s a good read.
This is one of more profound ethics/morals debates, and the Israeli public is facing it now. And, in many ways it gets to the heart of Judaism. Who would’ve thought we’d see it in our lifetimes? After Munich 1972, I did not think I’d see it—such overt, violent Jew hatred. And here it is, right before our nose. Who is savage enough to kidnap people and murder them like this? And of the Israeli populace’s reaction: well, this is the stuff of plays, novels, biographies, and histories. Anyway, your post has helped me to think about this ancient—and ever-contemporary—tragedy in a new light. And for that I deeply thank you. (btw: I still subscribe to the NYT, and Brett Stephens is one reason why.)https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/03/opinion/israel-hostages-gaza.html?smid=url-share
Glenn Reynolds this morning: “Israel should openly demand unconditional surrender, as the Allies did in WWII and as the Union did in the American Civil War, and should proceed to force Hamas to that end with unlimited warfare, as the Allies did in WWII and the Union did in the American Civil War.”
I honestly don’t understand why Israel didn’t do this from the start. It is obviously justified and would cut off the pro-Hamas “cease-fire” demands.
Glenn Reynolds raises a good point. I don’t know why either. I’d guess it’s hotly debated by Israelis every morning over their coffee. They hotly debate everything anyway—including who has the best coffee.