Criminally reckless abuse of folk wisdom

Is there a statute that covers that?

Last week Richard Cohen retold a quaint story in the Washington Post: Rabbi saves x many Jewish lives from a tyrant by promising the tyrant that if he leaves these Jews alone the rabbi will teach the tyrant's dog to talk, within a year. Rebbitzin reproaches him: "How are you going to do that? We'll all be killed!" Rabbi replies, "Well, a lot of things could happen in a year; the tyrant could die, or I could die... Or maybe the dog could start talking?"

Dog that looks like a lawyer. From freethinker.co.uk, and you should check out the link because there's a story attached to it.

Now, you will note that the rabbi in this story does not propose to flush out the tyrant's underground Jew-murdering facilities with GBU-28s, or anything like that. But this is [jump]
the use to which Cohen puts the story. He's talking about Iran's nuclear program, and he says attacking Iran is exactly the same thing the old rabbi is up to, "playing for time". Just like the IDF did with Iraq when they destroyed the Osirak reactor back in 1981.

Go see Media Matters for the essential poop on how the Osirak bombing did not delay Iraq's work on building a nuclear weapon and indeed probably stimulated it; how a strike on Iran would likewise be the most certain way of making sure that Iran will build one; and how Israelis themselves overwhelmingly oppose the idea of such a strike.*

What I'm pissed off about is that this apparently cute little parable means exactly the opposite of what Cohen is trying to make it mean, and like a lot of cute little parables it goes pretty deep. In fact damn if I don't feel a sermon coming on... Let's back up a little bit...

*And Atrios for the original moment of outrage that got me here.

Sermon in the Deer Park, as depicted at Wat Chedi Liem, Chiang Mai

Something I've been thinking about a long time (and by no means alone, lots of people have the same idea) is how the best bet for Palestinians if they are ever to achieve a state is to go the full Gandhi, a campaign of nonviolent resistance like the First Intifada only more by the book, so to speak, not just because of the moral satisfaction but still more because of the practical effectiveness: it's the technique that is by far most likely to get them what they want. (What doomed the First Intifada was the violence not so much of Arab kids throwing stones at IDF troops as between Arabs, fomented by the Israeli policy of nurturing Islamist organizations as a "counterweight" to the then sort of Marxist PLO.)

But then what advice would you give, in turn, to Israel in the Palestinian question? Nonviolence belongs to the weak: it's speaking truth (Sanskrit satyagraha means something like "obstinacy in truth") to power. You don't imagine the Knesset leadership marching to Ramallah and sitting down, cross-legged, on the sidewalk outside PLO headquarters. Acting all humble would not hide the fact that they have all the money, and the army, and a sure veto from their uncle in the Security Council, and the 400-odd nukes—it would just make them look silly.

(When Sharon marched his thugs up Temple Mount in 2000 the meaning was unmistakeably violent, even though he said, "What provocation is there when Jews come to visit the place with a message of peace? I am sorry about the injured, but it is the right of Jews in Israel to visit the Temple Mount." Of course the Guardian pointed out at the time that the only enemy he was really thinking about was Binyamin Netanyahu, then girding himself up for a fight over the Likud leadership as the Labor government lay moribund, and his chosen weapon was TV time and sound bites.)

Nevertheless, it's not as if "obstinacy in truth" is a concept in principle foreign to Jews, you know. The Israeli government could practice non-retaliation:

No one...is so bad as to continue "taking advantage indefinitely of the opening given to him and his own impunity", and even those mad with rage have been known to stop "as if thunderstruck when you do not retaliate". The reason for behaving this way, for accepting self-suffering rather than retaliating, is that "your enemy is a man". In fights the enemy is generally dehumanised, is seen as a beast or monster, and "that is the moment and not now when you must stick to the hard truth that he is a man a man like yourself", and "if he is a man, the spirit of justice dwells in him as it dwells in you". (From Thomas Weber on Interpersonal Conflict at mkgandhi.org)

This does not mean giving up the right to self-defense: if we are attacked, or if we see someone else being attacked, we are permitted and indeed obliged to try to stop it.  It means that if we fail to stop an attack we don't turn around and attack back.

I'm thinking here, obviously, of a way of dealing with the Palestinians in the first place: of not trying to extract a punishment for a suicide bombing (isn't that horrible enough for the bomber's family already?—No matter what they say about the glory of martyrdom and blah blah blah), still less a rocket from Gaza or southern Lebanon whose trajectory is more or less random. And again, I'm not saying anything original: there are plenty of people who want to apply a nonviolent approach to this problem, right now.

But that rabbi story seems to me to be about nonviolence in a way that applies particularly to the Iran situation: and about Lanza del Vasto's strictures

against using..."extreme, exceptional, and overpowering" imaginary circumstances for formulating general rules or drawing conclusions from them concerning legitimacy of action. The striving for nonviolence, instead of planning for such possible eventualities, accepts that if they did occur they would be still taken care of somehow (just as if they had been planned for), while during the rest of one's life other almost daily conflicts could be solved in more cooperative ways. (Weber, as above)

The rabbi's approach is neither to weep and wail over his impotence in the face of hatred, nor to insist on mounting a violent resistance that is certain to fail. He doesn't allow his conduct to be guided by the expectation of such extreme circumstances. He begins by "disarming" his oppressor with his unpredictable proposal, and then moves on to acceptance that the disaster may have been averted only for a limited time—with the confidence that it has been averted for now.

And Iran? The rabbi says, "And so you want to start a nuclear power industry? Excellent! Figured out the oil's not going to last forever. And nuclear medicine is a life saver. And you've decided not to build one of those bombs? Good move, they're nothing but trouble, believe me. If you need to borrow one, give me a call, maybe we can work something out..." I'm not trying to be flip, this stuff really works...