An aerial night view rendering of the Abrahamic Family House, including a mosque, from left, church and synagogue, on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. Image courtesy of Adjaye Associates
HOWARD EPSTEIN: THE WOKE DISGRACE THEMSELVES
“I shall have such revenges on you… I shall do such things … what they are yet I know not: but they shall be the terrors of the earth”. That, as proclaimed by Shakespeare’s King Lear, is what revenge looks like, The Times (of London) please note. In an article published on Saturday last, highly critical of the presidents of three American Ivy League universities, Hugh Tomlinson was unable to control his pen to the extent of distinguishing self-defense from revenge, thus: “America’s elite Ivy League universities have become a lightning rod for the culture war battle that now surrounds the war in Gaza as Israel continues its bombardment of the Palestinian territory to avenge the deadly attack by Hamas on October 7”. [Emphasis added – and we shall return to the Ivy League presidents shortly.]
How is what Israel is doing in Gaza not revenge but self-defense? By conducting a war of attrition against Hamas’ capabilities, Israel intends to defend itself by ensuring that it will be many years before Hamas can (if ever again) threaten Israelis and their communities. That is self-defense, properly compliant with the Laws of War.
“But”, some ask, “is Israel acting proportionately?” Let us be quite clear. The Laws of War, which derive from the Geneva Conventions, do not say that as 1,500 Israelis were killed, the Israeli response should be limited to killing an equal number of Gazans. Self-defense is not so circumscribed, but the rules of “proportionality” must be observed. Note, however, that proportionality in this context means “incidental and involuntary damages caused to the civilian population during a military attack shall not be excessive in comparison to the direct military advantage obtained”. It is a test to be applied many times in a war: in relation to each battle, skirmish, combat event, and encounter with the enemy, the commander of troops must evaluate the military advantage sought, and reduce or eliminate so far as practically possible the incidental and involuntary damage to civilians. A response such as Lear threatened is not admissible and, similarly, it is not properly open to the media to categorize self-defense as revenge. That can only encourage anti-Jewish hatred amongst the ignorant and misguided.
It is not only the media pouring fuel on the fire. The shameful performance (you can find it on YouTube) of the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Pennsylvania universities in the US Congress last week was living proof of the rot that wokeism has introduced into the ivory towers (of the UK as well as the US) that are supposed to turn out into society the top brains, the fine material, the class acts who will shape our future. Some hope, while superficial journalism and wokeism hold sway.
The Ivy League presidents wanted to put calls on their campuses for Jewish genocide “into context”. As Matthew Sayed, wrote in last weekend’s Sunday Times, “they were seeking to avoid transgressing woke ideology”. In other words, the dog was whimpering to its wagging tail, “You shake me. You shape me. I will alter my form accordingly”.
The “snowflakes” created by the woke culture of the “progressive liberal” left, who demand “trigger warnings” lest they be offended by the genius of Shakespeare (eg CAUTION: Romeo and Juliet contains violence and death), have managed not to be scandalised or traumatised by what they have seen and read of the pogromim of Simchat Torah. Nor are they horrified to the very edge of insanity by what they have seen and read about the degradation, abasement, and humiliation in the vile rape, as a weapon of war, by Hamas of females, who were (“were”, as most of them were despatched after their unspeakable torture), incidentally, Jewish.
Another academic springs to mind: Isaiah Berlin, who defined an anti-Semite as someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary. How fortunate he was not to live to see these days when wide swathes of Western society prove his definition achievable.
When I wrote last week about the Jewish future being not in the West, where Jew-hatred has been imbibed with the mother’s milk for two millennia, but in the Sunni Arab world, I was of course aware of the Abrahamic Accords with Israel, that have been warmly embraced in the Gulf and in Morocco. I was, however, then unaware of the pride of Abu Dhabi: the Abrahamic Family House. Google it and see the magnificent new mosque, church and synagogue complex. The Ghanaian-British architect, David Adjaye, explained that he wanted to create a campus that “starts to dissolve the notion of hierarchical difference – it should represent universality and totality – something higher, that enhances the richness of human life”.
“Ah, brave new world that hath such people in it!” Shakespeare’s Miranda (in The Tempest) provides the appropriate observation on Adjaye and his UAE clients.
It is easy in fiction and journalism to start with tragedy and end with comedy. The tragedy we are living through will not be so easily reversed but, if the disgraceful performances in Congress last week come to be seen as the highwater mark of wokeism, then – albeit at a cost we should never have had to bear – there will have emerged, from our ongoing pain, some hope of improvement.
© December 2023 – Howard Epstein – www.howard-epstein.com
