In the last week of July 2004, the erstwhile leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said that if Israel dared to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, then Israel would be wiped completely from the earth. As usually happens with genocidal threats when they come from the Islamic world toward Israel, there was no protest on the part of the nations of the world. This silence is in a sense expected, for the world has for years been encouraging and cheering at Arab, and most especially Palestinian Arab, rhetoric calling for the destruction of Israel. This kind of abusive language is not some rare exception, but a kind of accepted slogan when it comes to Israel.
Earlier in 2004, the former Malaysian Prime Minister engaged in the kind of 'racist generalization' that every ' politically correct' person in our enlightened world would ordinarily be most enraged at. He essentially called the Jews of the world, each and every one of them, the evil of mankind. Great protest did not emerge from the places of high responsibility and of supposed high morality, though there were after Jewish protest by few voices. But this kind of abusive general accusation is in truth made all the time by various political and cultural figures of the Arab, Islamic third and even European worlds.
The Jewish people and the state of Israel never respond in kind. Though Israel ostensibly has the power to make rubble of revolutionary Iran, Israel and the Jewish people do not make such threats. Israeli military leaders on occasion might make threats against weapons systems that threaten Israel, but they never engage in outright, threats of human destruction of the kind Israel is so frequently subject to. Israel has endured an unending number of threats from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and other Palestinian terror organizations without replying in kind.
It would seem, on one level, that our enemies hate us far more than we hate them. And it would seem that they truly want to kill us all in a way we do not want to kill them.
One explanation of all this is that the threats are the language of the weak, while Israel with its superior military might needs no such hysterical assurance of its own power. Another explanation is that as part of the cultured world, the West, we understand it is simply not considered right to talk that way. And this while our supposedly more primitive opponents have a strange freedom from any moral restraint linguistically. This, of course, is the same attitude that condemns Israeli acts of self- defense in which terrorists are targeted, and excuses Arab terrorists when they indiscriminately kill civilians. A deeper explanation relates to the Jewish tradition's respect for human life, prohibition against the wanton shedding of blood, injunctions against rejoicing in the death of others even one's enemy.
It is possible to wonder what would happen if Israel, instead of taking all this abuse, replied in kind. Imagine the world's reaction if Defense Minister Mofaz instead released a warning that Israel might have to take action against Iranian nuclear weapons sights, that Israel will destroy fifty Iranian cities should one WMD attack be made on the Tel Aviv area. Most likely, what would happen is a universal condemnation of Israel, and a special disarmament conference directed solely toward it. The whole world would be raging and conspiring to find a way to punish Israel.
This suggests that the present policy of self-restraint in language, which is also in accord with our tradition and national character, is still the wisest. Yet even should we maintain it, and maintain it with dignity and wisdom, it leaves us with a certain bad feeling. For there is a seeming passivity in it, a reconciling of ourselves to injustice. It is as if we are not fighting back, when the clearest lesson of modern Jewish history is that the Jews must be ready to fight and defeat our enemies, not simply wait for external salvation. But here, of course, it might be pointed out that today Israel is not in the same position Jews have been in for two thousand years.
We have a power of response to evil, a power that most of the evildoers understand will destroy them should they go too far. And our linguistic restraint in this sense reflects an inner confidence and power that the creation and defending of the Jewish state has given the Jewish people.
Earlier in 2004, the former Malaysian Prime Minister engaged in the kind of 'racist generalization' that every ' politically correct' person in our enlightened world would ordinarily be most enraged at. He essentially called the Jews of the world, each and every one of them, the evil of mankind. Great protest did not emerge from the places of high responsibility and of supposed high morality, though there were after Jewish protest by few voices. But this kind of abusive general accusation is in truth made all the time by various political and cultural figures of the Arab, Islamic third and even European worlds.
The Jewish people and the state of Israel never respond in kind. Though Israel ostensibly has the power to make rubble of revolutionary Iran, Israel and the Jewish people do not make such threats. Israeli military leaders on occasion might make threats against weapons systems that threaten Israel, but they never engage in outright, threats of human destruction of the kind Israel is so frequently subject to. Israel has endured an unending number of threats from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and other Palestinian terror organizations without replying in kind.
It would seem, on one level, that our enemies hate us far more than we hate them. And it would seem that they truly want to kill us all in a way we do not want to kill them.
One explanation of all this is that the threats are the language of the weak, while Israel with its superior military might needs no such hysterical assurance of its own power. Another explanation is that as part of the cultured world, the West, we understand it is simply not considered right to talk that way. And this while our supposedly more primitive opponents have a strange freedom from any moral restraint linguistically. This, of course, is the same attitude that condemns Israeli acts of self- defense in which terrorists are targeted, and excuses Arab terrorists when they indiscriminately kill civilians. A deeper explanation relates to the Jewish tradition's respect for human life, prohibition against the wanton shedding of blood, injunctions against rejoicing in the death of others even one's enemy.
It is possible to wonder what would happen if Israel, instead of taking all this abuse, replied in kind. Imagine the world's reaction if Defense Minister Mofaz instead released a warning that Israel might have to take action against Iranian nuclear weapons sights, that Israel will destroy fifty Iranian cities should one WMD attack be made on the Tel Aviv area. Most likely, what would happen is a universal condemnation of Israel, and a special disarmament conference directed solely toward it. The whole world would be raging and conspiring to find a way to punish Israel.
This suggests that the present policy of self-restraint in language, which is also in accord with our tradition and national character, is still the wisest. Yet even should we maintain it, and maintain it with dignity and wisdom, it leaves us with a certain bad feeling. For there is a seeming passivity in it, a reconciling of ourselves to injustice. It is as if we are not fighting back, when the clearest lesson of modern Jewish history is that the Jews must be ready to fight and defeat our enemies, not simply wait for external salvation. But here, of course, it might be pointed out that today Israel is not in the same position Jews have been in for two thousand years.
We have a power of response to evil, a power that most of the evildoers understand will destroy them should they go too far. And our linguistic restraint in this sense reflects an inner confidence and power that the creation and defending of the Jewish state has given the Jewish people.