Hope is an imperative

Editorial

The publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times has resigned after publishing an editorial that proposes assassinating U.S. President Barack Obama as a means of protecting the Israeli people.

The Jan. 13 article by Andrew Adler, which is no longer available online, posited three possible strategies by Israel in response to Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon. These included a preemptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah, which Adler said would be bolstered by a nuclear Iran, a direct strike on Iran or, a third option: “... give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice-president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

Major American Jewish groups have condemned the article. The Atlanta Jewish Federation suspended relations with the paper pending Adler’s departure.

The issue raises the simple question: How could anyone be in a moral or mental position where he would propose killing the president of the United States as a strategic possibility?

The viciousness of the rhetoric in the United States (and, occasionally, in Canada) diminishes the pitch of discourse to intolerable depths. While certainly never as blatantly murderous as the Atlanta article, the Republican presidential candidates, in their debates, have been speaking of the president in terms that might well push an irrational person to act out. By repeatedly stating that the president is bent on destroying the America they idealize, the candidates, among so many others, are raising the stakes in dangerous ways.

Just this week, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords resigned from Congress to focus on her recovery, a year after she was shot by a home-grown terrorist who acted in an environment ripe with incitement to violence and “Second Amendment remedies,” which refer to Americans’ right to bear arms. The fact that her assailant’s sanity is a matter of debate in the ongoing criminal process does not diminish the argument against extreme and violent language. (In Arizona, “not guilty by reason of insanity” is not a valid verdict, but the state does offer a verdict of “guilty but insane.”) Indeed, it is precisely the individuals who are least stable who may be motivated to act based on the incendiary rhetoric permeating the discourse. We cannot defend potentially inciting language even based on the contention that only irrational people would be inclined to act on it. These are precisely the audiences we should be aware of when choosing our words.

We have become accustomed to Muslim public figures assuring us that the extremists who speak or act in the name of Islam do not represent authentic Islam. It is now our turn to stand up forcefully and declare that Adler’s words do not reflect authentic Judaism. Is it not Judaism that gave to the world the Ten Commandments, among which the interdiction against killing is high on the list? To the credit of major representative agencies of the Jewish people, the response has been uniform and unequivocal. We are in agreement, thankfully, that murder is wrong.

But the fact that an environment exists in which an erstwhile legitimate newspaper could publish such a suggestion behooves us to delve a bit deeper into the issue. If assassination were the solution – if it were even seriously considered as a possible strategy – then we as a civilization may as well end our fight against the terrorism that kills civilians in Israel and elsewhere because, in trying to defeat them, we will have become them.

Not only that, but any progress in the world – technological, scientific or social – comes from competing ideas, experimentation and an openness to the world around us. By limiting our worldview to the point where killing somebody because they represent (or are feared to represent) divergent opinions is considered acceptable, we condemn ourselves to a cruel, ignorant and hopeless future.

To defend Jewish values, or any other system of ethical living, and to defend the pluralistic civilization we cherish (Jewish values and pluralistic civilization are not coincidentally linked), it is incumbent on us to reject absolutely the violence expressed by Adler. Yes, if we are being attacked and our lives are in imminent danger, we are required to defend ourselves – this is not the situation in America by any stretch of the sane imagination.

When it comes to Israel, a country that most of us love so dearly, it is easy to get carried away. But because it is a country that we love so much and that we want so much to be a light among the nations, it is all the more necessary for us – especially when speaking on her behalf – to dedicate ourselves to civil discourse, greater transparency and freedom of dialogue, which is the opposite of threatening death or violence against those with whom we disagree.

At the heart of pluralistic civilization, progress and human values is the exchange of ideas with the intent of changing minds and making change through the force of our ideas, not the force of arms. As naive as some may call it, we will not abandon the hope of beating our swords into ploughshares.

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