Netanyahu Against The Generals

(an email to Brett Stephens, WSJ op-ed columnist, concerning his piece of May 24, 2016)

Mr. Stephens:

I find your interesting piece concerning the killing of the Palestinian kid and the resulting brouhaha very informative. I have three quarrels (I assume few people write you who have no quarrel!) –to wit:

1)      A security establishment –rather, one or more individuals within that establishment—who feel no compunction about publicly telling off its masters could be construed to be doing the duty of an informed citizen, as long as those individuals are willing to accept the consequences. Far from moving to become a law unto itself, such a military could be seen as resisting illegal orders (of the type that the defendants at Nuremburg so famously failed to sustain as justification for their illegal actions). Perhaps you would prefer to have such officers simply resign in silence, and thereafter hold their tongues out of –what? Some sense of loyalty to what they believe is an illegitimate cause?

2)      I find it remarkable that you assert “religious, ideological, and electoral considerations” to be the “stuff” of democracy. I would have thought that these things are the risk factors, parochial or partisan, that, in a democracy, stand as hurdles to a dispassionate consideration of what is in the nation’s best interests.

3)      Your closing comment about “those who believe themselves to be virtuous” versus “those who merely wish to be free” is intriguing: who are those who do not “believe themselves to be virtuous?” Are you among them? Aha! I thought not, because nobody is. We all believe we are good, within our own terms; and that includes the Palestinians who stab Israelis no less than the Israelis who destroy the olive trees of Palestinian farmers. But my real point is this: you say, “In the West, the virtuous are secular elites imposing … ‘the vision of the anointed’ on the benighted masses.” Please:

a.       By the inclusion of “secular,” I presume you do not mean those who refuse to follow the law, and so deny marriage licenses to gay couples;

b.      I assume you do not mean those who defy the Supreme Court so that a monument to the Ten Commandments can be placed in public space;

c.       I assume you do not mean those who murder abortion doctors, or shoot up public spaces in pursuit of religious virtue.

No, by “secular” you evidently mean those who try to affect public policy by changing laws and how they are applied (no matter how upsetting to those who cherish the status quo ante in all things).

And, I assume that “those who merely wish to be free” include those who want all the benefits, and none of the constraints, of operating businesses and personal lives in the public sphere. As an example, I would remind you that to say that a clergyman can be compelled to perform a homosexual wedding ceremony is simply false: but I believe that, if he wants to act as an officer of the state, he should be so compelled. I attended a gay wedding in Illinois in 2005, in a church. How so? The minister simply did not exercise the right (which he possessed, for other purposes) to certify a legal union. Let all the preachers with objections simply stop holding themselves out as authorized by the government to sign marriage certificates, and they should be okay marrying only those who belong to acceptable categories. The happy couples could then make a fifteen-minute stop at the courthouse on a convenient day and get their civil paperwork.

Because I raise controversial matters, (and on the perhaps remote assumption that you actually read all the stuff you undoubtedly get) I should declare myself, to some extent: I am a US citizen, a Jew, and inclined to socialistic beliefs. I have voted for Republicans, Democrats, Greens, and Socialists in my time. I am concerned about our democracy only to the extent that I find it threatened by Know-Nothingism and the willing forfeiture, by some candidates, of their cognitive capacities in favor of preening to masses who they prefer to be “benighted” because it is less work to cater to them than to lead them.

I expend this energy on your columns, occasionally, because I find your statement of facts coherent and balanced. But you must admit that your adjectives sometimes give away the game, when it comes to your conclusions.