Where are the innocent Palestinians?

E. Rowell:  This is an interesting discussion of the definition of innocence and the idea of responsibility for one’s emotions and actions.  An individual with genocidal aspirations or actions often justifies these through the feeling of being a victim of the other’s aggression.  Throughout the world, supporters of Hamas portray Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli aggression, as they justify the barbarity of the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.  But a psychological defense mechanism (i.e. projection) is not a legal defense in a court of law, nor should it be a legal defense in the court of public opinion.

History has presented the Palestinians with the same choice as the “ordinary German” during World War II.

By Saul Goldman, FUTURE OF JEWISH    5 April 2024

There is a difference between the presumption of innocence in a court of law and innocence or virtue in real life.

Significantly, the word “innocence” also connotes ignorance. So even in a court of law, innocence or ignorance cannot be one’s defense.

The rationale of the doctrine “that ignorance of the law is not a defense” lies in a conundrum: If ignorance was an excuse, a person charged with criminal offenses would merely claim that they were unaware of the law in question to avoid liability.

Since it would be impossible, even for someone with substantial legal training, to be aware of every law, this principle represents the price paid in order to ensure that willful blindness cannot become the basis of exculpation.

So why do so many people persist in accusing us, the Jews, of killing thousands of innocent people?

It is clear that people who do bad things, the kind of things that are uncommon for a law-abiding citizen, cannot complain if they incur liability and punishment. Inasmuch as everyone in every society knows that murder, rape, and kidnapping are crimes and that it is illegal and immoral to protect or give aid to a criminal, one must be cognitively hard-pressed to declare that Palestinians are innocent.

Even if many have not pulled the trigger or planted the bomb, they have been “aiding and abetting” — which in law describes the individual who encourages or incites another person in the commission of a crime. While aiding means providing support or assistance to someone, abetting means encouraging someone else to commit a crime.

Furthermore, “accessory” is someone who in fact assists “commission of a crime committed primarily by someone else.” In other words, even in law, innocence is neither indifference nor passivity. The failure to act does not make one virtuous. Hence, to allege that thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed by IDF fire is by and large propaganda.

History has presented the Palestinians with the same choice as the “ordinary German” during World War II. However, the Palestinian has the added reassurance accrued by the Nuremberg Trials that what they are doing and not doing is wrong. There are two categories of sin: the sins of commission and the sins of omission.

To be sure, many Germans actually believed in the racist theories that abounded in Austria and Germany. Many of these theories, although couched in scientific language, were merely rehashed Medieval Christian beliefs that the Jews murdered Christ, poisoned the wells, and used Christian blood in their rituals.

Their heartfelt sentiments notwithstanding, they could hardly be acquitted as innocent. Accordingly, just because the Quran describes Jews as non-humans and Palestinians believe in this doctrine does not acquit them of murder. Jihad, even it is considered a “holy” act by some, is objectively evil.

Tragically, the Palestinians have allowed Hamas to govern their lives. But, if we are to uphold the belief that all people are equal, then Palestinians must be regarded as free agents capable of assuming responsibility for their actions and inactions.

In the Jews’ Biblical idiom, that concept is articulated as “not standing idly by.” By not applying this paradigm within which Palestinians are judged to be guilty or innocent, we are guilty of a form of racism or some sort of moral affirmative action implying that they are not equal to other people in terms of character. Virtue, as Aristotle once described it, is a state of character which manifests itself in choice or preference.

The question we must wrestle with is whether, or within what limits, a man is a free agent in a sense which makes it reasonable to hold him responsible, to praise or blame him, for what he does or omits to do. The Jewish answer is that, even at the cost of his life, a person must resist evil. In Talmudic language, there are circumstances in which one must “accept death rather than transgress.”

Israel is fighting for a better world. But, such a new world cannot exist as long as Hamas exists. Hamas constitutes the hypostasis of evil. What we are witnessing is that evil is actually contagious. It is a form of social cancer that has metastasized through the Islamic and even parts of the Western world.

Tragically, war, even just wars such as ours, incurs unfortunate episodes. Babies are killed. But, to accuse the IDF of indiscriminate killing is a tactic long known in Jewish history. It is an old-fashioned blood libel. No one wants to kill children. No one allows their child to play in traffic. This is the simple obligation of a loving parent.

A jury in Michigan, the U.S. state, found James and Jennifer Crumbley partially responsible for the deadliest school shooting in Michigan’s history. Their son, Ethan, killed four people and injured seven more at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit on November 30th, 2021.

The day after being arrested, the Crumbley’s were arraigned on 24 felony counts, including one count of terrorism and four counts of first-degree murder. James and Jennifer bought the handgun that their son used to carry out the deadly rampage.

If buying a handgun makes them culpable, what could we say about allowing one’s child to be programmed to become a jihadist in Hamas kindergartens? Certainly, we are aware of the kind of education that nurtured German children into becoming war criminals.

German education in the 1930s prompted Lawrence Kohlberg to devote his life to the study of moral development. Consequently in this century, people have come to understand more clearly the difficulty of discovering how best to prepare the young for the successful pursuit of happiness. Our misfortune is that we live next to people whose idea of happiness is 72 virgins.

A defense of the Palestinians may be offered along the lines that they were compelled to act as they did. But, the “I was only following orders…” defense was thrown out in Nuremberg.

Clearly, the Palestinians have willfully entered into a covenant with Hamas despite the fact that the consequences of such an attitude and behavior have been objectively recognized as terrorism.

Not every Palestinian actually infiltrated Israel on October 7th, gang-raped the music festival goers, beheaded babies, burned whole families to death, and kidnapped children and women and the elderly — but the vast majority of them were willing accomplices.