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The Israelis’ Response: A Consequentialist Perspective on the Pros and Cons of Revenge [1]

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Date: 2023-10-09  

Vengeance turns out to be sometimes life-serving, but sometimes also the source of a dynamic that can continually makes the human world more broken.

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(I apologize for any repetition or lack of tight order. My impulse was to share this quickly in a form that is rough rather than polish it through drafts and publish it after events have perhaps overtaken it.)

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Vengeance is clearly a big deal in the human world.

On the one hand, the Bible thinks it’s important enough to try to take it off the table: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” And when asked by reporters about the idea of “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Gandhi replied, “’An eye for an eye’” will make the whole world blind.

Cycles of vengeance are terrible things, degrading the human world. In the anthropological literature, we can see that when a cultural system has no way out from the endless back and forth of tit for tat, that human world is not a nice place to live in.

On the other hand, one can also see how deep that impulse goes in us humans.

We can see it, for example, in how repeatedly various cultures create stories (and for us, movies) in which the sequence is that the hero gets wronged in ways that make us furious and then we are rewarded with the gratification of our hero’s wreaking vengeance on those that did him wrong. (Vengeance drama was a whole kind of theater in XXX.)

(I myself love a good vengeance drama, and I’ve watched many a Western that takes us through that enactment of vengeance. I can feel that cycle of feeling washing through me in a satisfying way. My hero punching out that badman who did such evil things?)

I’m thinking about this because of the situation of the Israelis today, in the immediate aftermath of suffering great evils—over two hundred people murdered at a music festival, families burned out of their houses, rampant murders of civilians, and that whole panoply of horror. As I write, the nation that has been devastated and traumatized in that way – the number of their dead being several times greater (proportionally) than what the United States suffered on 9/11.

So, the widespread pattern of vengeance in the wish-fulfillment world of Story suggests that the vengeful impulse when one is “wronged” is built into our nature. (And we shouldn’t be surprised, since we can see the same impulse to hit back in many other animals.)

And we should recognize that this impulse to hit back wouldn’t be there in our nature unless it was life-serving for our ancestors to have that impulse. The impulse to revenge wouldn’t be there unless, while our kind was evolving, those who had that impulse were more likely than those lacked it to succeed in the evolutionary game of passing their DNA into the future.

So that impulse to revenge – having evidently been life-serving – deserves respect. Deserves to be listened to.

There was plenty of revenge energy in the forces that destroyed the Nazi regime and the regime that attacked Pearl Harbor.

(And if the Hit Back energy of the U.S. and the U.K. rightly thought the Nazi regime must be destroyed, and indulged fully the Revenge Impulse to that end, it can reasonably be argued that the Israelis could respond to this horrific attack by making the decision to destroy Hamas.

Dealing with Hamas, the impulse for vengeance is likely one they should express in their response.

But revenge has a big downside: it generates a cycle of revenge, in which each side thinks itself wronged, and they play an ugly game of tag, with each side inflicting revenge that in turn must be avenged. The Hamas attackers doubtless saw themselves avenging their wrongs as they slaughtered the Israeli civilians. And the whole history of the Peoples is full of each side feeling more sinned against than sinning, focusing on their opposition, and not recognizing fully how part of the challenge is to change the dynamic of the system.

The Israelis not only have to deal with Hamas, which has inflicted such unspeakable wounds. But they are also in a long-term relationship with the Palestinians. There is likely no escaping that these two peoples will forever have an important relationship with each other, with their being thrown onto the same part of the planet, and with their having now a century-long history of a relationship in which the Cycle of Vengeance has helped perpetuate a destructive state of the world.

The step I propose requires them to recognize ways that they themselves have contributed to the destructive dynamic between the peoples, the cycle of feeling wronged and ??? revenge.

Recognize that there was, for example, a considerable gap between how the Israelis have treated the Palestinians during this long Netanyahu Era, on the one hand, and what one would be reasonable to adopt if the goal was to find the best way to a future where the relationship has escaped the realm of pain and rage and hatred and conflict.

So the Israelis are entitled to their revenge, but they are not without sin and they should combine that with the humility and humanity to reach out to a people who — whatever the problems they’ve had in making the right choices — has had good reasons to feel wronged.

So while the right hand is smiting Hamas in some appropriate way, the left hand is approaching the Palestinian people in a constructive way intended to point toward the better relationship that is the goal. Namely, for the Israelis to acknowledge – in some appropriate way, given the cultural context, depending on how the Palestinians would react to any humility or repentance – that their conduct has been less than ideal.

(Yes, it seems true that the Palestinians have been extraordinarily difficult in the history of this relationship, “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity” and all that. Like Arafat fleeing Camp David rather than try to settle.

(But I can see no way that the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians during the long reign of Netanyahu is anywhere close to being what’s called for if the goal is to maximize the chance that at some future time the Israeli/Palestinian relationship will have lost its current ugly face for one that makes for a better human world for all.

Whatever one judges the defects of the recent Israeli conduct toward the Palestinians (and the last year has been exceptionally bad in that respect), it seems reasonable to believe that an appropriately announced move toward better and fairer and more compassionate policies—whatever would be best designed for moving things toward a better future.

So the Israelis can make two significant moves at the same time, addressing two aspects of the Palestinian opponent the Israelis have to deal with.

A particularly ugly part of the Palestinian opponent got embodied in Hamas, and then launched this Hamas Atrocity. For Hamas, the fist

But then there is the Palestinian people who, as a people will be a major part of the lives of generations of Israelis to come, and people are sometimes capable — especially as the generations change — of overcoming the enmity of the past. (Like the way the French and the Germans shed the repeated traumas of war that came between them and became fellow Europeans over the course of a 20-4o post-war years, as history receded and generations changed. (Every generation is a new human start and changes can be wrought with the turnover of the generations.)

(So that the well-being of the grandchildren of both the Israelis and the Palestinians will likely be seriously impacted by whether the relationship between the peoples is like what it is now, and what would serve people best.)

The Palestinian piece called Hamas gets the fist, in response to its escalating to this level of horrific and cruel ugliness.

And an olive branch to those Palestinians who are at least the grandparents of those Palestinians the Israeli’s own grandchildren will have to have an important relationship.

Hit Hamas, because sometimes Hitting Back is necessary despite the death of innocents.

But expand beyond the vengeance to recognize that the Palestinians have their own history of being injured at Israeli hands, and that it would seem to be unavoidable that what the Israelis do – even rightly – with their first, the Palestinians will experience as but one more terrible thing the Israelis have done to the Palestinian people.

In other words, the collateral death of non-Hamas civilians will itself seem like something that calls for revenge.

Which is why the Israeli Response should combine the vengeance they take with something given in as constructive a spirit as is possible and appropriate under the circumstances, to have a beneficial effect on how much vengeful energy the Palestinian people end up with, after Israel perhaps destroys Hamas.

The cycle of vengeance is – in itself – a major enemy really to both people. It is a pattern that perpetuates the pain and rage and hatred and conflict. Which is why this very fraught moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations – with the Israelis absorbing horrific “wrongs” from some Palestinians, followed the Palestinians watching huge numbers of innocent citizens of Gaza City being killed as unavoidable collateral damage of any serious effort to Hit Back appropriately at Hamas.

It would be a shame – but not a surprise -- if both sides emerge from this crisis feeling more aggrieved even than they did before this crisis began.

So one of the main enemies of both sides is the dynamic between them. The impulse of vengeance is certainly strong in the Hamas attack, and will be if the Israelis decided to destroy Hamas. And even if that impulse is appropriate in this instance – and I lean toward believing that it is. (I believe that Hamas crossed some lines just like the Nazis did after which it was clear that destroying the evil rather than living with it is what serves best if a “better human world” is what is desired.

So while the fist of the Israelis exacts revenge against Hamas, the Israelis make a move to improve the relationship in ways that are within their own unilateral ability to do. Which would require the Israelis to recognize that they’ve been falling far short of what’s possible if getting a better relationship in some eventual future were one’s goal. One can only make improvements if one recognizes what has needed improvement.

The fist feeds the cycle of vengeance, while the other movement of Israel’s appeals to the value of having the relationship be one that inflicts less injury on each other. Moving in directions that make appropriate things better for Palestinians in some appropriate way.

If there is ultimately to be a better future, then a good first step toward that destination would be for the Israeli’s to make changes in the overall Israeli posture toward the Palestinians would actually be improvements, and would be received in some positive way by the Palestinians, would reduce the passion for vengeance, and could lead to further improvement down the line.

I don’t know what the ideal set of changes or invitations it would be. But I expect there are Israelis who could put together a suitable package— based on some sense of what kind of Israeli policy and practice has perpetuated the animosity more than the difficult situation between the peoples required.

The world will inevitably contain conflicts. And the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians emerged out of some very deep matters in human history, including the history of the region, out of which emerged two peoples with legitimate claims to the same homeland. One from more recent times, one from a sacred aspiration of a people driven out of their homeland almost two millennia ago, only to suffer relentless persecution while maintaining their identity as a people.

There are a lot of places on this planet where the different stories of different peoples create problems. But the goal always has to be to get to the place where the conflicts that couldn’t be avoided somehow get resolved – at least as well as they reasonably can be – and that people find a way forward together that isn’t filled with torments they inflict on each other.

This is a most challenging moment for Israel. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a set of considerations more challenging to judge than the set confronting the Israelis—things like the hostages, the 100,000 + missiles that Hezbollah has in Lebanon ready to fly, what the Iranians might do to take advantage of Israel’s reeling from this Hamas attack.

Those calculations are plenty hard, and I have nothing to propose about the complex set of decisions they will make about how they Hit Back. My sole recommendation here is that they combine two moves, one of which can help fight the cycle of vengeance in two ways:

The Israelis stop some of their morally unworthy ways (like letting settlers conduct a virtual “pogrom” against a Palestinian village;

And the Palestinians feel somewhat mollified, despite what happens in Gaza City, by the Israeli’s making things more like what the Palestinian people are entitled to (even given all the difficulties.)

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P.S. I am not interested in arguing about all the issues a lot of people have with Israel. I’ll just say I believe in Israel’s right to exist and I fault Israeli policy for being part of the problem that is so ugly and unending between them and the Palestinians.

And beyond that, I don’t want to engage.

There’s a starting point in this piece, and that’s that I am identifying with the Israelis who are having to make some very important and consequential decisions, with huge implications for their security, taking an extraordinarily complex set of factors properly into account.

I’m talking to other people who share with me some interest in how the Israelis will respond to this terrible event, and how they should respond— with “should” being understood in consequentialist terms.

Whatever will best serve making the human world more whole.

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