Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Esq . was a pulpit rabbi and attorney in the United States and now lives in Israel where he teaches Torah in Modiin and serves as the Senior Research Associate for the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy and as the Israel Region Vice-President of the Coalition for Jewish Values. The exuberance people feel at the release last week of American hostages held by Russia – Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, and others – should be tempered by the price Western nations were forced to pay for them: the release of murderers, thieves, and spies. It underscores that the West has become utterly incapable of dealing with rogue nations – nations that evince contempt for fundamental moral norms, and not just international law – and that incapacity hampers Israel as well. It was not always like this. Simply put, the United States indulged a state of affairs in which innocent civilians such as tourists, journalists, and dual citizens can just be grabbed off a Russian street, incarcerated in harsh conditions, tried under false pretenses, and blatantly used as pawns in order to free real bad actors. Such weakness only encourages more such hostage taking, whenever the need arises. The feeble response of the US was to protest, and when those protests were ineffective, to strongly protest, and when those also failed, to create hash tags, sign petitions, bask in their superior morality, protest some more, and then surrender to the Russian demands for an exchange of prisoners – the innocent for the guilty. Indeed, further hostage-taking is unnecessary, as Russia still holds twenty Americans, all to remain in prison until another exchange is warranted. There was a time when arrests of Americans in Russia would be met with arrests of Russians in America. When diplomats or journalists of one country were expelled, the other country would then expel diplomats or journalists of its adversary. These days, the judicial system in democracies would not countenance arrest of an enemy’s innocent civilians (which does not preclude that from happening on foreign soil, with the acquiescence of a friendly government). As such, the playing field is uneven, and slanted in favor of the amoral countries. They have no limiting principle except expedience. They do what it takes to win or, at least, achieve their strategic objectives. Democracies are hamstrung by their commitment to quaint moral notions that, sadly, have little place in international relations. This is one reason why the West never wins wars anymore. Victory is never the goal of any struggle; the goal is always de-escalation, and conflict avoidance at any cost. The fact that the US celebrated the return of these hostages – as Russia celebrated the return of their agents – proves the point. The goal was to release the hostages, period, despite the statement being broadcast to all about international norms and Western fragility. The US never even enacted a travel ban for its citizens to Russia, sanctions against Russia because of the Ukraine invasion have had little effect, and Russian citizens move freely throughout the West, unafraid of any repercussions. In other words, the rogue nations – Russia, China, Iran – are winning, and there is little the West can do at this point to stop them, if there is not going to be a change in tactics. The rogue nations are the prime movers, they set the tone of international discourse, they control the lives and well-being of people far from their borders, and they pay almost no price for it. And the West just wants to give peace a chance, as the rogue nations spread their anarchy and mischief across the world. Israel suffers from this as well, with the twist that we have for too long indulged the fiction of the “proxy” terrorist groups. Imagine if Israel created a “proxy” fighting force that had a free hand in dealing with the enemy as brutally as was deemed necessary, and then denied that it had any control over this force. Who would accept that? It is bad enough that Iran wages war through surrogates and pays no price for it – its oil fields lie unmolested, generating billions of dollars of revenue, with Western submission to the relaxation of sanctions – as it attacks Israel and American assets in the Middle East. Far worse is the fiction propagated by American diplomacy that compelled Israel to distinguish between Hamas and Gaza – as if Hamas were not the elected rulers there – and between Hezbollah and Lebanon – as if Hezbollah is not the dominant component of the government there. The Hamas/Gaza distinction was accepted by Israel because of Biden arms blackmail and greatly impeded the war effort; fortunately, the Hezbollah/Lebanon distinction has been rejected by Israel. What is still extant, and the prevailing theme in US diplomacy, is halting the fighting short of victory, de-escalation, an end to violence, all of which will just allow the bad actors to survive to massacre another day. This surrender to rogue actors is part of the same pattern that produced the West-Russia hostage for prisoner exchange. And since democracies change governments much more frequently than do dictatorships, when the deconfliction inevitably blows up, it is usually on someone else’s watch. The Allies did not distinguish between Nazi Germany and German civilians, nor between Imperial Japan and Japanese civilians, which is why those enemy civilians were bombed to oblivion (this week marks 79 years since two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and those rogue nations surrendered unconditionally. In the West, the will to win has dissipated; consequently, Israel’s stubborn insistence on victory – and survival – perplexes some and antagonizes others. The inability to fight evil by all means necessary – I am not even referring to nuclear weapons, which have limited practical value – is typified by Israel’s uncontrollable and unmanageable Supreme Court which has now taken on the cause of protecting the “rights” of the Hamas terrorists who murdered, raped, brutalized, and kidnapped, and still threaten to do it again. Our justices are unduly and unseemly concerned with the conditions of their incarceration. But count me among those who could not care less about the conditions of people who burned alive children, and so incinerated one Jewish woman that she was only identified this week as dead, ten months after being murdered. These terrorists are not soldiers. Their targets were civilians. They do not deserve prisoner-of-war status. They do not deserve to be treated any better than our hostages are being treated and, indeed, they deserve to be treated worse – because our hostages are innocent, pure souls and they are guilty, contemptible, unfit even to be called human beings. They are not criminal to be incarcerated or soldiers to be exchanged at the end of the war. They are savages who have lost their right to live on this planet. Similarly, it is a morally obscene that Israeli prosecutors are looking to indict IDF soldiers accused of maltreatment of a terrorist ... by that very terrorist. They must think that “this terrorist might rape and mutilate Jewish women but he would never even think of lying to frame the accused soldiers and demoralize others.” It is a legal system that has again failed us, does not represent or speak for the people, and should have been reformed years ago. Yet, we hear constantly that our morality is our greatest strength, and we must maintain the moral high ground or we will “lose the world’s support.” The latter is risible, as our attempts to fight a “moral war” have earned us only international opprobrium, charges of war crimes, and indictment threats against our leaders and soldiers. It is the worst of all worlds – our self-restraint is harming our chances for victory and we are still vilified as international criminals. We have been foolishly providing food to our enemies at Biden's demand– and nonetheless are still being accused of starving them. Bizarre, but not unexpected, as these are the tactics the enemy employs in its quest for victory and our demise. Morality is undoubtedly a great strength, but not the modern Western moral notions that have seeped into our society. Our benighted justices and self-proclaimed moralists who sit in their ivory towers pondering the abstractions of “rights of enemy combatants” and “rights of enemy civilians” will only be pleased with stalemate, which means defeat. They are imbued with values that, in large measure, are alien to Jews. They assume that it is more moral to be a victim than to be a victor, not realizing that the greatest moral triumph is the defeat of evil and the forging of a better world. Victory speaks for itself, and as the Allies did after World War II, they duly deliberated the morality and ramifications of their conduct. But they did it after World War II, not during, and they certainly did not afford their enemies the benefits of our morality that they had so brazenly mocked and callously breached. Morality that is not reciprocated is an albatross, a tool for defeat, and a gift to the rogue nations and terrorist groups. The West is handcuffed by moral notions it fabricated and improvised (better, that its most liberal, progressive elements fabricated and improvised). Those bear little resemblance to the Torah’s ethic of warfare, which is absolute, designed to completely vanquish the enemy and win, and deter future attacks from our foes (see, for example, Chapter 6 of Rambam’s Laws of Kings and their Wars). The West must learn to fight fire with fire, which will in short order quell the ardor of the rogue nations, wipe the gleeful smirks off their faces, and rein in their worst impulses. And we must learn that our enemies are not entitled to the benefits of Western morality, which they know is an effective weapon against us and the means to their survival. They are entitled to the Torah’s morality, which prioritizes our lives, physical and spiritual. And those who fear the effects on the Jewish soul during or after a war fought according to Torah norms, fret not. We should be confident that fidelity to Torah itself purifies and sensitizes. Fighting a war on the enemy’s terms, pace, and morality is a recipe for defeat. The West does not realize that, and so its influence on world events is waning, its leaders are hapless, and evil is proliferating. We must realize that, and soon, take seriously that our enemies want to destroy us and will not be assuaged by soft words or a cease fire, and act accordingly. That is the Jewish ethic that should guide our leaders, and with the help of the Almighty, lead us to victory and redemption.
