Much public discussion today—in America, Israel, and elsewhere—centers on the difficult problem of how to balance the dangers of the coronavirus with the economic and psychological costs of lockdowns. In this week’s Torah reading of Pinḥas (Numbers 25:10-26:4), Jonathan Sacks finds guidance in the actions of the titular character, Moses’ nephew Phineas. When the Israelites participate in a pagan orgy with the Midianites, God immediately punishes them with a plague, which Phineas stops by simultaneously skewering a Hebrew chieftain and a Midianite woman with his spear. To Sacks, the lesson here is about the distinction between moral and political decisions:

God declared Phineas a hero. He had saved the children of Israel from destruction, showed the zeal that counterbalanced the people’s faithlessness, and as a reward, God made a personal covenant with him. Phineas did a good deed. Halakhah, however, dramatically circumscribes his act in multiple ways. . . . Legally speaking, Phineas was on very thin ice.

[But] Phineas was not acting on moral principle. He was making a political decision. There were thousands dying. The political leader, Moses, was in a highly compromised position. How could he condemn others for consorting with Midianite women when he himself had a Midianite wife? Phineas saw that there was no one leading. The danger was immense. God’s anger, already intense, was about to explode. So he acted. . . . Better to take two lives immediately, of people who would have been eventually sentenced to death by the court, to save thousands now. And he was right, as God later made clear.

I believe that there are moral and political decisions and they are different. But there is a great danger that the two may drift apart. Politics then becomes amoral, and eventually corrupt. That is why the institution of prophecy was born. Prophets hold politicians accountable to morality. When kings act for the long-term welfare of the nation, they are not criticized. When they act for their own benefit, they are. Likewise when they undermine the people’s moral and spiritual integrity. Salvation by zealot—the Phineas case—is no solution. Politics must be as moral as possible if a nation is to flourish in the long run.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.