Restoring Our Moral Sense in Troubled Times

Taking the former’s recent book Morality in the Twentieth Century as a point of departure, Jonathan Sacks and Robert P. George argue that the current epidemic of loneliness, cancel culture, political disfunction, and other modern ills have their roots in a spiritual malaise attributable to the decline of traditional religiosity and the radical social changes that have taken place since the 1960s—made much worse by social media. These are problems that can only be counteracted by the cultivation of virtue and character, and the renewal of a common moral language. Rabbi Sacks concludes the discussion with a brief meditation on the distinction between hope and optimism, averring, “No Jew—knowing what we do of our history—can be an optimist, but no Jew worthy of the name ever lost hope.” (Video, 65 minutes. Moderated by Yuval Levin.)

 

Read more at American Enterprise Institute

More about: Jonathan Sacks, Morality, Religion, Social media

 

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