Hammurabi

Nearly 4,000 years ago, our legal system was founded in the

 Code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was the King of Babylon, a Semitic empire. The code predated Leviticus, but he described it well in the Torah. 

“If anyone injures his neighbor, as he has done, it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him."

The  goal of Hammurabi and Leviticus was to limit violence. If you slap a man twice, he gets to slap you twice, not 15 times. He's entitled to justice, not vengeance. 

About three weeks ago, Hamas launched a sneak attack on Israelis so insanely savage that Hamas will be forever linked to the Rape of Nanking, the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Hitler's genocides. Israel lost 1,400 people, many of them civilians murdered one at a time. 

The Code of Hammurabi has been superseded, of course, by newer laws that Hamas and Israel do not follow. 

The old code would have entitled Israel to crude justice, the deaths of 1,400 enemy people. Instead the Israelis have killed thousands of civilians, including several thousand children. The deaths were modern war crimes. And they aren't stopping. 

Anyone can see this broad stream of death. The killings are broadcast on television in Russia, Africa, India and Latin America. Antisemitism has surged around the world. New generations of terrorists are forming. Hostages wait for release.

Sen. Collins

After many years of not seeing or hearing from Senator Susan Collins, I was shocked to see her alive on TV today and disappointed. 

The Dead

You probably saw what I did Sunday morning on television. The bodies of four or five Palestinian children laid in a row. Dressed in shorts. On their bare legs their names had been written by their parents with a black gel pen. 

When War Stops

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."   

-- E.M. Forster

Along somewhat similar lines, Albert Camus once published an essay in which he wrote that if it were his duty to set off a bomb that would destroy important Nazis but also his mother, he would not trigger the bomb. That position got him ejected (to this day) from the Stalinist part of the French Left.

Camus worked in the French underground in World War Two.    

Do you owe your primary loyalty to kith and kin or to a nation, a religion, an ideology? Should you first be loyal to what Sartre called  "a leap of faith"? A leap that makes your life meaningful. You can dedicate your life to Christianity or to MAGA. You can make that leap. Or are friends and family more important? 

In real life I suppose the issue isn't clear. Hamas recently raided inside Israeli homes where they murdered children, old women and so on. Did they murder them for Islam or Palestine or for their kith and kin? 

Suppose, for the sake or argument, you live in a large universe with billions of stars and planets. The giant universe exists for no purpose you can determine. The universe exists, as far as you can tell, without a goal. But life seems good enough. That was Camus' view. No leap of faith.

Israel is about to invade Gaza. Some predict the war will last ten years. The Israelis say that the war will make Israel safe forever--that claim can't be serious.

So far in the Hamas-Israel war, about 5,000 people have been killed. Camus might ask if that number is enough. Or would 50,000 lives, mostly children and teenagers, be a better place to stop. 

Taking Sides

Last weekend two demonstrations about the Hamas-Israel war faced off in our town square, one in support of Palestinians and a much smaller one in support of Israelis. 

What is going on in Gaza and Israel is hard to process. 

Do these California demonstrations help create a path to peace in West Asia? Is a path to peace what matters?

What might create a path?

According to Captain Thirdrate, a path to peace will require a government in Israel that cares deeply about meeting the needs of Palestinians. And Hamas, with a history of unspeakable savagery, would have to be replaced by credible Arab leaders. 

Then negotiations for peace could start. 

Israel, Hamas and the Invention of War Crimes

Israel and Hamas (and their American followers) are accusing one another of war crimes. Is it a war crime to capture a baby and then cut off its head? Is it a war crime to deprive civilians of electricity, food, clean water and medicines? Yes. Today those are war crimes. But where did the concept of war crimes come from?

Aristotle talked about a just war. Muslim armies in the 7th century made a point of sparing the lives of prisoners of war.  But a legal code restricting military behavior was first published in the 1863, written by Francis Lieber for the American army and authorized by Abraham Lincoln. It banned the murder of babies but not starvation. That ban came later. 

In World War Two, deliberately killing civilians from the air was not a war crime. Airplanes had not been covered in the early manuals. Hence the mass bombings of Berlin, London, Dresden and Tokyo, in that order. 

In 1943 we knew that it was wrong to target children. Of course, we did. And today the deliberate targeting of civilians is forbidden but not always punished.

Gaza

I'm opposed to war except in defense of kith and kin, and I place the blame for carnage on the first side to pull a trigger. That applies to Hamas in the new round of everlasting battle in West Asia.

There will be many more pointless civilian deaths in Israel and Gaza. Or is the point of endless war--is the point to keep leadership in power?  

McCarthy

Today I heard NBC talkers referring to the fall of Kevin McCarthy as "a Greek tragedy." My guess is that they've forgotten their Aristotle. 

A tragic hero is someone well-known and decent who comes to an undeserved bad end. He or she must be someone we identify with.  A tragic hero does not offend our moral sensibilities.

McCarthy isn't decent. He isn't even a vertebrate. The dude has as much spine as a cow pie baking on a commercial street in Bakersfield at high noon in mid-July. 

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Murdoch exaggerated

Rupert Murdoch recently commented that Sean Hannity is "retarded  like most Americans."(Note that "retarded" has become an unacceptable pejorative word.)  

Murdoch exaggerated, of  course. Half of all Americans have above average intelligence. That is better than, say, Great Britain, where a Brexit majority voted for economic suicide. 

Also note that some below average Americans aren't stupid. Many are only somewhat disabled and genuinely contribute to society as high school wrestling coaches, border guards, tobacco venders and Republicans.  

There is, however, a price to pay for stupidity. Experts say that 40% of covid deaths could have been prevented if more Americans had been smart enough to get vaccinated and wear masks. 

Death rates have been disproportionally high in red states, which seems fair. 

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