Morality Turned on its Head

Holocaust Survivors in the Hell of Hamas

I had a revelation of sorts regarding the hostages while visiting the gravesite of my mother in law, Haviva, in Los Angeles.  We flew in for one day, “zoomed” with the grandchildren and the one thing we all wanted to know-  what would Savta (Grandma) have said about October 7 and its aftermath? My mother in law was a child survivor, smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto as a seven year old, survived in a closet in Warsaw and then a monastery outside the city.  A cynical woman who had conversations, and not always pleasant ones, with God, on a regular basis, Haviva had a dark view of the world in general and the world’s relations with Jews in particular. 

One of her grandchildren claimed that Haviva would have said “I told you so” as proof that her view of the world, formed in the Ghetto and afterwards, that the Jews will never be safe, was right after all.  Another grandchild was sure she would have been proud of the reaction of the young to October 7 – on that day and after – especially of her 4 grandchildren that fought in Gaza.     Personally, I thought she would have been devastated as the Army that guaranteed that the age of pogroms was over, at least in Israel, turned out to be dream rather than a reality.

It was then, during the discussion taking place between 2 succeeding generations, 9,000 miles apart, that my wife reminded us that there are Holocaust survivors amongst the hostages being held by Hamas.  Here we are talking in theoretical terms about what would have been the thoughts of a perceptive and sharp woman who is no longer amongst us.   It hit me then of the crime that we in Israel and the Western world have committed to these people – to all the hostages, yes – but specifically to those who survived the Nazi onslaught on the Jewish people.   How did the world, how did Israel not demand, without any negotiation or pre-conditions, with only the force of arms, that these survivors not be returned at once?  That the Israeli people, its army and its government owed this to them is without question.  That the Western world – specifically in Europe but also the United States, as defender of the free world and as the main force in the defeat of Nazism, as well as Russia, a country which suffered at the hand of the Nazis and, under Stalin planned a surprise for the Jews in the Soviet Union, many survivors themselves – didn’t rise to the occasion and demand, in no uncertain terms that at least these hostages be returned immediately is a moral lapse, no a moral sin, unworthy of the civilized world.

But the West doesn’t rise to the occasion anymore when it comes to morality.

How did this happen?  I myself am a bit ashamed that this didn’t occur to me one year ago but how did it happen that all the hostages, including those who lived through the Nazi Holocaust, were not given priority over the interests of Hamas and the Hamas sympathizers in Gaza?  How did Israel and the West acaquiesce to the immoral demands that the interests of  those that survived the Holocaust were not given priority over the “humanitarian” concerns of those who are members or sympathizers of Hamas?  Not only that, but the Biden-Harris administration has put economic sanctions on those, in Israel, who have dared to oppose sending this aide to Hamas.  Imagine that – the same sanctions put on Putin and his cronies, on terrorists, on gun running, drug smuggling, sex trafficking criminals are treated the same as a mother whose only “crime” is opposing US policy which a consists of supporting and maintaining Hamas, during wartime at the expense of people who survived the Holocaust.

Let us not fool ourselves and think that no one knew, from the start, that “humanitarian aid” to Gaza meant a financial lifeline to Hamas – we all knew it and yet the US government insisted it be given priority to the freeing of hostages and the West and the Israeli government worked together to make sure that policy was successful.

J’accuse

We have covered this a few times before and don’t have to go into further detail but standing in front of Haviva’s grave I realized that we have been wrong all along.  Being wrong is not evil but using the suffering of others for your own goals is.   Starting with the Israeli government,  I don’t subscribe to the view that Netanyahu does not want the hostages returned and has torpedoed alleged “deals” just to keep his government together.  Rather, I feel that the current government has not been insistent enough with the outside world and the powers inside the country that, come what may,  there will be no letup until they are released.   I speak specifically of the  hostages that are survivors but the truth is that it is correct for all of them. 

The main failure of the government was on the second or third day of the war when the head of the National Security Agency in Israel, Tzachi Hanegbi – a mediocre political hack if there ever was one -announced that Qatar was going to help us.  My initial reaction to this was that he was in the pay of Qatar- no idea if this is true or not, but that was my first thought.   What exactly was the rush to praise Qatar, a country with longstanding animus towards Israel, a country that is friends with Hamas and Iran?  What was the panic that the government felt that made them rush into negotiations with Qatar and Egypt?  And what was it that convinced Netanyahu to send the heads of the Mossad and Shaback and not those with negotiating experience to do the negotiating?  I know the reason – the obsession in Israel that “connections” – what they like to call “proteksia” can solve all problems.  The fact that the heads of the Mossad and Shaback had close connections with Qatar should have been the first red light.  The fact that the negotiations were in fancy hotels in Doha, Cairo and Paris should have been the second red light. 

And now – Sinwar has been killed and the government is returning to the same failed formula with the same failed team.  This is no longer a failure of policy – this is a moral failure of a government with no sense of urgency. 

What would Haviva say about that?

As for the IDF General Staff, led by Chief of Staff Hertzi Halevi, their post-October 7 moral failure has come from doing the minimum necessary in order to leave the situation in the hands of the “negotiators”.  It is not and has never been their job to depend on diplomats to end the war.  They need to plan for total victory – not the cliché, but the fact – and if the diplomats can end the war earlier on acceptable terms then they will acquiesce to that agreement.  But that is not what their plan was – their plan all along was, without telling the officers and soldiers in the field sacrificing all, to do “just enough” – and not to win the war.   Their plan was not to create a situation where they would be freed but to create a situation where Hamas is weakened and leave the solution to the diplomats (who in this case were spies and not even diplomats).  We know from eyewitness reports that the goal of killing a certain percentage of Hamas terrorists in an area and then pulling out took priority over freeing of hostages, even when intelligence said they were in the same area.

Again – this is not only a failure of tactics but a moral failure of the first order as the General Staff and Herzi Halevi leading them were never willing to leave their pre-determined post-modern ideological playbook in order to free those who came to this country with the implicit promise that the country and the Army would protect them, no matter the situation and no matter the risk.  The moral stain on Herzi Halevi is there for the country to see.  

What would Haviva say about that?

We will ignore Russia for now as no one expects any type of moral clarity from Putin.  But what of the West and what of the United States?   The moral ineptitude of France and the United Kingdom should come as no surprise to those who understand that Western Europe is devoid of children and therefore of a future.  They are countries that have surrendered to the Jihad.  Western Europe (and ironically Germany is the exception here) faced its greatest moral challenge since WWII and used it to undermine what used to be known as “common decency”.  That should come as no surprise in countries controlled by the Davos crowd where everything that is “common” – be it culture, whiskey, wine, morality or decency, is suspect.

But what of the United States which has faced these situations in the past and has answered the call with the type of action that showed it understood the moral challenge of the moment?   Even if the policy failed or even if the policy was wrongheaded – behind it always lay a sense of “doing the right thing” – a sense of virtuous behavior. It didn’t always turn out as desired but there was always an attempt to do what is right.

From the start though, the current Biden-Harris administration led by Anthony Blinken has been to use the hostages as tools to force Israel to make decisions that went against, not only its interests (and that of the West, if we may add) but went against the moral imperative of defending the good and punishing evil.   On October 7 there was moral clarity and the case of the hostages presented another instance of that same clarity – especially when dealing with Holocaust survivors – and yet the only thing that Biden-Harris-Blinken could obsess on was the revival of the dead “peace process” and the support of Hamas as a legitimate “idea” rather than a cruel group of criminals.  Using the hostages for policy purposes – let alone that those policy purposes were themselves damaging – is immoral and cynical.   The visits to Yad Vashem by all these American leaders is a cynical farce as they use the actual victims for the purpose of rewarding the descendants of the Nazi regime.

How is it that Biden-Harris cry over the Gazans, the innocent and the guilty, while allowing the totally innocent to languish in the depths of the earth?  The moral depravity of this policy has decent people wondering what comes next?  Is it a denial of the right of Israel, of Jews, to defend themselves?  All the Holocaust education and museums have left people like Biden, Harris, Blinken and Hochstein with a moral tin ear.  Maybe morality can’t be taught but only un-taught.  That is what seems to be the case here.    One can easily unteach what would be one’s normal moral reaction either by intense exposure to cruelty – either via television, movies, video games or even literature or it can be untaught by a deep commitment to an ideology that considers morality itself as passe. 

What would Haviva think?

The moral failure not protecting and defending those who survived the ultimate evil pales in comparison to not putting all else aside to free them once taken hostage.   The fact that Israel sent negotiators to Qatar and that the United States and the West were active participants in that farce instead of giving ultimatums where the end result is total destruction of the guilty, either active or by association, is immoral in itself. 

It’s a few days later and one must wonder what those who survived and those who didn’t must think about the inability once again of the civilized world to defend their brothers and sisters.   What really, would Haviva say?  What would all those buried in Auschwitz say?   We can’t ever know, but we DO know what our enemies, past and present are and would say.

Sometimes the moral thing to do is counterintuitive.   Allowing Hamas to fund its murderous self even if that also means that you are feeding the innocents, while allowing Holocaust survivors to languish in yet another hell is taking morality and turning it on its head.  Sometimes one can’t be morally selfish, but must sacrifice what is the “apparent” moral decision in order to make the true moral decision.   That is true in policy as it is true in election choices. 

Regarding survivors being held by Hamas, one doesn’t have to ask Haviva in order to know what the right moral answer is.