As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) during the 1956 Suez Crisis, and Defense Minister during the Six-Day War in 1967, Moshe Dayan became a symbol of the military prowess of Israel.
To better understand the ongoing horrific conflict in Gaza, pause over Moshe Dayan’s reflections standing close to the Gaza border in 1956 eulogizing a 21-year-old Israeli security officer who had been slain by Palestinian and Egyptian assailants:
“Let us not today cast blame on his murderers. What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight years now, they have sat in refugee camps of Gaza and watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their land and villages , where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home.”
I am reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s reflection on slavery, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever….”
I am further reminded of John Brown, who slaughtered five proslavery men at Pottawatomie Creed in Kansas in the name of emancipation and was sentenced to death for his attack on Harper’s Ferry. This is what he said as the curtain closed on his life: “I say, I am too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done -- as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments. -- I submit; so let it be done!”
Living an optimal moral life is extremely challenging. It requires infinite education, reflection, and experience. It is the dividing line between man and beast. Go for it!
Norman Finkelstein has also been looking at Gaza through the lens of those who violently opposed slavery.