Drawing on the work of the anthropologist Richard Schweder as well as on rabbinic sources, Moshe Koppel divides the various regulations Judaism imposes on its adherents into three groups, which, respectively, enforce fairness, loyalty, and restraint. Correlatively, violations of these rules are harm, disrespect, and degradation. Although all societies have taboos in each of these categories, today’s liberal cosmopolitans put a disproportionate value on fairness, while Jewish tradition tends to regard them as close to equal. Koppel illustrates his point by referring to two archetypal figures from his own life—a religiously observant Holocaust survivor named “Shimen” and a Jewish graduate student named “Heidi”:

Shimen . . . wouldn’t say kiddush over a stolen bottle of wine. He knows that under certain circumstances one can violate a prohibition in order to observe a positive commandment, but it would never occur to him that this principle would include violation of duties to other people. . . . So, Shimen does not regard the fairness foundation and the loyalty and restraint foundations as being exactly equal.

Likewise, Heidi shares Shimen’s revulsion at disrespect and degradation. She shares Shimen’s instinctive sense that incest [a violation of restraint], for example, is wrong. Similarly, she agrees that speaking ill of one’s deceased father [a violation of loyalty], even if nobody is harmed by such speech, is wrong. She is as revolted by cannibalism, [another violation of restraint], as any conservative would be, even if the deceased has died naturally and willed his body for that purpose.

So Heidi is not completely insensitive to the loyalty and restraint foundations [of morality]. . . . [But] in Heidi’s culture, fairness is given much greater importance than loyalty and restraint. . . . When two different moral foundations rub up against each other, fairness always wins. Thus, if homosexual acts are regarded as dissolute, as they were in Heidi’s culture until recently, while restrictions on such acts are now seen as causing undue harm to homosexuals, the outcome is clear. The very idea of dissoluteness sounds archaic to Heidi. Similarly, if intermarriage is regarded as a betrayal of tribal loyalty, as it was in Heidi’s culture until recently, while restrictions on intermarriage are now seen as intolerant, the resolution is again obvious. The very idea of tribal loyalty sounds bizarre to Heidi.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.