Bowing plays a regular part in Jewish prayer, and, for many Jews, the High Holy Day services involve complete prostration. While the Hebrew Bible frequently mentions genuflection before God, the action is quite foreign to modern Western society; the philosopher Immanuel Kant even described it as “contrary to human dignity.” But to Avital Levi, bowing has profound ethical and religious significance:

Bowing elevates us by shaping us into servants of God. . . . God is a king whose aim is to rule with justice and charity, and the rule of any king is only made possible by the king’s servants, who assist him. Like a human king, God, [in the Hebrew Bible, does not] carry out his plans alone. . . . God oversees the actions of others, but He needs human beings who will take charge, command, lead, and act as an example so that His charity and justice will prevail.

This is why we find that the individuals who are called servants of God in the Hebrew Bible are those who use their position, power, and influence to carry out God’s goals. For example, God chooses His servant Abraham to found the Israelite people because he knows Abraham will teach his children God’s way of doing charity and justice (Genesis 18:19).

Thus the biblical commandment to serve God is not a commandment to be a slave. Rather, it is a commandment to use one’s power and influence to serve God by keeping his laws and carrying out his will.

When we bow down, we hide our eyes that help us see danger and understand our surroundings. This helps us focus on and be aware of the limits of our power and understanding, as well as our need for leadership and assistance. We place ourselves in a position that lowers us before someone else, and makes us vulnerable to them, by exposing our backs and limiting use of our arms and legs. We thereby acknowledge that someone else is more powerful, allowing Him to take charge and direct us.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.