Facing the Crisis

On October 7, more Jews were killed than on any single day since the Holocaust, many in brutal and sadistic ways. Rapes committed, hostages taken, concertgoers gunned down, corpses desecrated, small children murdered: The attack by Hamas militants on civilians unveiled the terrible darkness of the human heart and our capacity for evil.

It is necessary to mourn. Many were buried in the days after the attack. It is also necessary to support Israel’s right of self-defense, which in the aftermath of the targeting of civilians requires a decisive response. It is fitting, too, to lament the ongoing violence. We should petition God to bring a just peace as soon as possible. But there’s another dimension to these shocking events, one we must face. The atrocities committed by Hamas create a crisis in the proper biblical sense of that term.

“Crisis” transliterates the Greek krisis, which means a separation or sundering. It requires decision: Are we for or against? In the New Testament, the word is often translated “judgment,” as in “the day of judgment,” the appointed hour when God separates the sheep from the goats. The Latin root of “decide” is de + caedere, to cut off or cut away. The notions of judgment and decision are latent in our conventional use of the term. A crisis comes when built-up pressure explodes the status quo. It marks a moment when we can’t just keep on keeping on, when we must decide to go this way—or that.

No doubt, Hamas wished to create a crisis. Its incursion into Israel had no military objectives. The goal was to horrify, to rub the faces of Israelis and their Western supporters in blood-soaked images, which Hamas itself posted on social media for the world to see. These acts of wanton destruction were also meant to inspire Hamas’s allies. Those who seek to inspire terror recognize a truth well known in the ancient world: A man who can torture, humiliate, and kill innocent people with confident indifference becomes a kind of deity. As the Hamas marauders showed the world, they are spiritually free in the darkest sense, able to destroy without moral limits. We are foolish to underestimate the allure of this nihilistic freedom.

We’ve seen a number of people in the West choose to side with Hamas. I am not speaking of Arab immigrants marching in European capitals exulting in the deaths of Jews, a “multicultural” phenomenon that gives us insight into one of the implications of the rainbow flag. Rather, I’m referring to high-placed people in elite American institutions. After assuring a crowd of pro-Palestinian demonstrators that he “abhors violence,” Cornell history professor Russell Rickford celebrated Hamas’s barbarism for breaking the “monopoly of violence.” This achievement—killing more than one thousand—was, he continued, “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Columbia political scientist Joseph Massad pronounced the assault “awesome” and a “major achievement of the resistance.” On the day of the attack, Rivkah Brown, an editor of a left-wing media platform in England, tweeted: “Today should be a day of celebration for supporters of democracy and human rights worldwide, as Gazans break out of their open-air prison and Hamas fighters cross into their colonisers’ territory.” These individuals and others who made similar statements are not naive college students or marginal “extremists.” They are well placed, having been groomed and promoted by establishment institutions.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal (“Dostoevsky Knew: It Can Happen Here”), Gary Saul Morson warns that modern history shows that those whose political views transform atrocities into acts of liberation prepare themselves (and their listeners) to join in the slaughter, should circumstances allow. “It is a terrible mistake to imagine that thuggish deeds are performed only by thugs. Recalling his own early career as a revolutionist, Dostoevsky maintains that his group, which could readily have performed the most terrible acts, was composed of sophisticated people with the Russian equivalent of Ivy League educations.” True, in our time a great deal of outrage and extremism amounts to radical posturing and role-playing, especially on social media. But if we convince ourselves, as some have, that the wanton killing of innocent people can be justified, our moral universe becomes perverted. Morson ends with a warning: “We need to recognize that some of those who justify Hamas’s atrocities would be ready to perform them against their designated enemies.”

We can be grateful that outright endorsement has been infrequent. More widespread has been the call for evenhandedness, which amounts to a refusal to make a judgment. Wendy Raymond, the president of my alma mater, Haverford College, issued a statement a few days after October 7. Referring to internal tensions at the college, she spoke of “common ground” and the need “to bridge differences through dialogue.” These clichés mask a refusal to make a moral judgment that might upset students who endorse the Hamas killings. Raymond assured alumni that students of all backgrounds will receive affirmation and support, and she reminded students that Haverford stands at the ready to provide counselors to those who need emotional assistance. Raymond ended with hortatory words about the ways in which Haverford “prepares students for bold engagement and ethical leadership.” Apparently, that leadership does not require denouncing atrocities. That would be a sin against “inclusion” and a violation of the therapeutic imperative not to take sides.

I’m in favor of “common ground” and negotiated settlements. May the good Lord guide events in the Middle East toward such an outcome. As I write, the Biden administration seems to be charting the proper course. It is supporting Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas, while advising restraint and the use of proportionate means to attain realistic objectives. When he visited Israel after the attack, Biden urged the Israelis to learn from the American experience after 9/11. After that attack on innocent civilians, the American military response was legitimate, indeed necessary. But we employed disproportionate means toward unattainable ends.

In the just war tradition, warfare must aim at establishing the conditions for peace. Those conditions are always complex, all the more so in the face of an enemy that has shown itself to be without scruple. What is to be done? How should Israel’s war against Hamas be conducted? These are difficult moral and military questions that invite criticism, debate, and disagreement.

But we must not deceive ourselves. The wanton killing conducted by Hamas violated every principle of the just conduct of hostilities. The atrocities cannot be justified as the regrettable, unintended deaths of noncombatants in pursuit of legitimate military objectives. They were planned and sought—and then celebrated by Palestinians who danced in the streets, even more “exhilarated” and “energized” by the murder of more than one thousand innocent Jews than was Russell Rickford. Those who cannot call such acts and their celebration evil—and not off the record but in public—have lost their moral compass.

WHILE WE’RE AT IT