If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the matzah ball

UK Foreign Minister Jack Straw made an interesting comment yesterday:

“There is a real concern too that the West has been guilty of double standards, on the one hand saying the United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iraq must be implemented; on the other hand, sometimes appearing rather quixotic over the implementation of resolutions about Israel and Palestine,” Straw said.

The Israelis responded to the comments as being “very upsetting” that there could be any comparison between Saddam’s dictatorship and the Israeli democracy, which misses the point entirely, but I surmise that’s exactly what it is intended to do. Even with the current war in Iraq, the Israelis seem content to continue to uproot Palestinian Authority infrastructure under the guise of counterterrorism measures. I suppose the war provides good cover to do what only weeks ago would have been seen as heavy-handed.

For anyone really interested in a good article on Jewish concepts of forgiveness and “hate as a virtue,” read Meir Soloveichik’s article printed in First Things in February 2003. Interesting stuff.

The Protestant theologian Harvey Cox, who is married to a Jew, wrote a book on his impressions of Jewish ritual. Cox describes the Jewish holiday of Purim, on which the defeat of Haman is celebrated by the reading of the book of Esther. Enamored with the biblical story, Cox enjoys the tale until the end, where, as noted above, Esther wreaks vengeance upon her enemies. Like Sister Johanna, he is disturbed by Jewish hatred. It cannot be a coincidence, he argues, that precisely on Purim a Jew by the name of Baruch Goldstein murdered twenty innocent Muslims engaged in prayer in Hebron.

There is something to Cox’s remarks. The danger inherent in hatred is that it must be very limited, directed only at the most evil and unrepentant. According to the Talmud, the angels began singing a song of triumph upon the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt until God interrupted them: “My creatures are drowning, and you wish to sing a song?” Yet the rabbis also state that God wreaked further vengeance upon Pharoah himself, ordering the sea to spit him out, so that he could return to Egypt alone, without his army. Apparently one must cross some terrible moral boundary in order to be a justified target of God’s hatred—and of ours. An Israeli mother is right to raise her child to hate Saddam Hussein, but she would fail as a parent if she taught him to despise every Arab. We who hate must be wary lest we, like Goldstein, become like those we are taught to despise.