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The Cost of Kindness to the Cruel in Gaza

(Wall Street Journal) Ruth R. Wisse - We need reminding that the liberal who shows compassion to evildoers ends up doing evil to the merciful and good. Hamas's leader, Yahya Sinwar, spent 22 years in Israeli prisons for planning the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. While in prison he was diagnosed with and treated for a brain tumor. He was released in the 2011 exchange of 1,027 Palestinian criminals for one Israeli hostage. A political culture of accommodation has made Jews the most liberal and most easily targeted people in the Middle East. The more Israel has tried to encourage Palestinian self-governance, including by withdrawing from Gaza in 2005, the more Palestinian leaders have fomented violence, culminating in Hamas's cruelties. When a peace-loving civilization indulges its would-be destroyers, it creates a moral imbalance that must end in its own destruction. Israel is learning at too high a cost that the hardest part of protecting liberal democracy is stopping the wicked before they massacre the pure and the good. For two centuries, from fascism in Germany to Islamism in Iran, the war against liberal democracy has been waged through wars against the Jews. Israel most resembles the U.S. in its foundational values and entrepreneurial grit, making it America's useful proxy target. Behind every "death to Israel" comes the threat to America. The protesters are responsible for the aggression they endorse, which includes murder, rape and beheading in the service of obliterating the only gateway to democracy in the region. Faculty members and administrators who fail to prosecute those who have broken the law by harassing Jewish students are accomplices to this evil. The writer is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard.
2024-06-18 00:00:00
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