The originally-scheduled session has been deferred one week for us to perhaps regain some sort of equilibrium after the recent nightmare disorientation playing out right now in the Middle East. Let us first set expectations by saying it would be presumptuous for us to suggest the goal of the session is to arrive at some sort of definitive answer. We’d be taking a big step simply to pose the right questions.

Highland member Matt Query has provided a very readable historical reference point, citing the rhetorical question posed by Sam Harris (i.e. what would the adversarial parties do if they had the absolute enabling power) as context for the parade of horribles we are now witnessing and is the subject of our discussion.

Let us first stipulate that, at least until the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel was the heroic and democratic underdog struggling for its very existence in the vast and hostile Arab wilderness. For a couple of thousand years, Jewish morality presupposed a kind of victim's righteousness, the special blamelessness of those without great collective power.

That basic sentiment seems to have somehow morphed over the decades with the growth of Israel’s relative military strength. Some of the vitriol recently expressed against her by certain segments of the world comes across as anti-semitism dressed up to look like righteous indignation. It is certainly not for the rest of the world, meaning, implicitly, the historical tormentors of Jews, to presume to give moral instructions to the Jewish people.

Matt’s piece highlights the degree to which Israel has demonstrated a nation's forbearance and distinct lack of vindictiveness in the face of at least two hostile acts through the return of land to the wartime aggressors. In response to the rhetorical question posed in the Sam Harris: Israel’s answer is demonstrated by her historical restraint; that of her enemies is reflected in their charter i.e. wipe her from the map. From Israel’s perspective, it is a complicated moral configuration when the People of the Book become also a People of the gun.

When it comes to Gaza we might address the criticism of Israel’s heavy-handed, maybe dictatorial, governance of the territory. Put that in the context of the reluctance, if not downright refusal, on the part of Arab nations to even help resettle Palestinians. The hypocrisy begs the question: what is really the underlying dynamic of the Middle East.

At the risk of overstatement, it’s almost as if there’s a self-perpetuating mental state that goes beyond nation, religion, maybe even culture, a kind of viral mindset that defies the world of the rational. Maybe the closest historical parallel was nazi Germany. The good news with that example is a kind of deprogramming that set in over time by and large relegating that phenomenon to the history books.

Dare we hope?