The High Cost that Liberal Secularism Places on the Future

Contrasting the prototypes of “Shimen”—a ḥasidic Jew and Holocaust survivor—and “Heidi,” a highly educated liberal Jew—Moshe Koppel explains their differing responses to the inevitable tension between loyalty and fairness. “Shimen” tends to give them equivalent, if not equal, weight, while “Heidi” has an absolute preference for fairness. Koppel argues that this preference stems from a lack of concern with posterity:

Fairness . . . requires that we value the future almost as much as we value the present; . . . those who live for today are not reliable long-term partners. . . . Heidi is quite certain that she greatly values the future . . . and she has her profound concern about global warming to prove it. But the rest of Heidi’s lifestyle suggests otherwise.

Like almost all of her new friends, Heidi chose not to marry until she was nearly aged forty and chose to have only one child. She regards the family structure that sustained most human societies for millennia as an option no more valid than any other; her admirable compassion for those for whom traditional family life is unsatisfying blinds her to the devastating long-term consequences of low birthrates and the breakdown of the family. What is seen and immediate is more important to Heidi than what is unseen and long-term.

Heidi is a pacifist. She doesn’t identify sufficiently with any country to wish to make sacrifices in its defense; she discounts alarm about evident threats to societies of which she is a member as paranoia and war-mongering. In the short term, her society can withstand military threats based on residual deterrence and the efforts of others, but in the long term, her society will lack the force and spirit required to withstand the barbarians.

Heidi favors economic policies that mitigate inequality in the very short term, but distort incentives in ways that slow economic growth that would alleviate poverty in the long term. Heidi’s subversion of traditional norms regarding the inception and end of life alleviates distress in the short term, but cheapens life in the long term.

Read more at Judaism without Apologies

More about: Judaism, Liberalism, Religion & Holidays

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF