Hanukkah ended last night, and I hope our Jewish readers and friends passed a good one. On Jeffrey Goldberg's blog I found this pretty great Chabad Lubavitch video. Seems to me to be a sentiment that Jews and all friends of the Jewish people, and of Israel, should keep in their hearts and in their prayers these difficult days:
Because Israel exists, and because America exists, there will always be at least two places in the world in which Jews can light the menorah in freedom.
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but Rod, children are dying under bombs made in our country. Some of them may not even Muslim, they may be your and my Orthodox brothers and sisters. Is this good too?
You expect me to call war good? I won't, because I don't think war is good. The pertinent question is not whether or not war is good, but whether or not it is just. I don't see that the provenance of the bombs, or the religious affiliation of the people upon which they fall, have anything to do with the justice, or injustice, of a particular war.
American-made bombs dropped by Americans fell upon Christian homes and Christian children in World War II. Was it wrong, then, to fight Hitler? Union shells rained down on my hometown once -- American bombs launched by Americans against Americans! -- which is an incredible tragedy, but does not therefore render the Union cause in the Civil War unjust.
War is tragic. It always means a failure by mankind. But that's not the same as saying a particular war is wrong. Anyway, if a war is morally unjust, it doesn't matter where the bombs came from or upon which sort of religious folk they are falling. And if it's just, same deal. That we may share something in common with the poor souls caught in the crossfire magnifies the tragedy's emotional component, but only that.
@Rod: Who defines justice? Of course in any war all sides are going to say they're doing the right thing. I'm not saying that there's some argument that justifies the Holocaust (though Hitler took a stab at it). But if the Nazis had somehow won WW2, well, the winners write the history books. Justice in war is very subjective.
Scary thought, no? Not just that we could be living in a radically different world today if Europe had permanently collapsed and (most likely) America withdrawn from the fight against Nazis, but that the decisions we make today concerning how we exert military force may not be defined in absolute terms of right and wrong.
On topic, though, that's a wonderful video.
Not only that, the US is complicit in the Israeli oppression of Palestinians whose land they confiscated so many years ago. Not so edifying as that video pretends to be. As a New Yorker, I've had enough exposure to their worst to render me indifferent to their plight.
And who is "they", Carly? The big bad Joooos? Moronic.
Here in Canada we give our Jews fake matches and mock their pathetic lighting attempts. We also force them to eat ham.
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