Noah Efron, Charlotte Hallé, and Don Futterman discuss three topics of incomparable importance and end with an anecdote about something in Israel that made them smile this week.
Kill First!
Two thousand and three hundred: That’s how many targeted killing operations Israel has carried out over the years, Israeli journalist and author Ronen Bergman estimates in his stunning new book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations. The book traces the history of a key strategy in the history of Israel’s intelligence and security apparatuses, and raises questions about its ethical and practical aspects. When (if ever) are these assassinations justified, and are they even a smart idea?
The Truth, the Pole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth
Poland’s explosive “Holocaust complicity bill” may or may not be about to become law. After Israel raised concerns about the proposed penalty for anyone accusing Poland of complicity in Nazi crimes, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s explanation that the Holocaust also had its “Jewish perpetrators” then sparked further outrage. Poles had good reason to be lumped together with Germans as perpetrators of the Holocaust, but Poles also have a lot to answer for. So what is Israel to do?
Won’t Anyone Think of the Poor Tour-Guides?
Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin recently proposed a bill that would allow unaccredited tour guides to lead many (though not all) tours. Currently, a prospective guide needs to take a two-year course, a practice resulting in remarkably well-educated guides. But some ask why Israel can’t have architects devising their own tours of cities’ buildings, for example. Is liberalizing tour guiding another small step for post-modern freedom, or is it one liberalization too far?
Music: Lior Perla, in honor of his newest record, Bein Kotlei ha-Zeman, released just this week!
Shoom Davar
Bein Kotley HaZman
Halev Hazeh
Ad Hasof
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Photo by Kobi Gideon/FLASH90: Israeli man sitting in a cafe reads a daily newspaper about the alleged assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai.
I cannot envision a time when no State employs targeted assassination, accountability denied (as in the Arafat case, if true). There is reason to think Russia employs such both internally and externally. Archbishop Romero of El Salvador seems to have been assassinated by a paramilitary or direct agent of the government, the distinction probably not very great. The question for me is not should such assassinations occur but how can they be minimized and what kinds of target can be forbidden. The book discussed herein gives empirical support that innocents as collateral damage can block assassinations, veto not at the top of government but at lower operational levels of refusal to participate (the same can be said of the 2nd Lebanon War where some Israeli pilots either refused their kill command or dumped their load harmlessly for belief innocents or noncombatants where at risk). (I wonder if this logic works in US military drone strikes; actually, I doubt it does.)
But talk of national goals and policy has a drug like effect in our age of popular national communication: we are all at risk, we say, or we all strike back, a feeling of power results even though I am as powerless after such utterance as I was before. I would take a different stance: yes, some of you will be out there, performing these acts. You say you know the political social consequences, but I think just as likely the deep protective primate urge controls. You will always be out there, always have your fingers ready to trigger, always rise to positions of decision I cannot approach, even denied view of the back side of God. The question is not how to stop you, but how to limit when you can act. We need a world where your acts are less needed, but focusing on your world view is unlikely to get us there. You–all of the “you”s, all of us–need some who will refuse your national calculus if progress against war necessities is ever to come–for rest assured, as I know you are, that among your enemies are people who think exactly like you.
Progress to this end has been made–the middling refusers noted above, and the concept of war crimes which, interestingly, all sides want to keep for emergency use. It’s not hopeless at all. Just don’t ask me to put on a uniform and salute. And perhaps be glad some like me so say–well, not me, of no account, but others beyond my ken. Consider giving reverence to some few who refuse the gun.