Uri Elitzur
Photo: Zoom 77
Power of revenge
Should we see Jewish vendetta for yeshiva attack, it will be sign of State’s erosion
In his memoirs, late Israeli politician Yigal Allon recounted his first night of guard duty at a small agricultural community, when he was 12 years old. His father grabbed a rifle, and together they went out for the night. For long hours they hid in the darkness, and early in the morning they indeed saw two Arabs arrive with a donkey and start to load bags of grain.
To the child’s great surprise, his father handed over the rifle to him, and then left his hiding spot and charged at the thieves with his bare hands. A long battle ensued – two against one – and by the end of it the thieves fled, wounded and bruised, without the stolen grain. However, the father also returned to his son injured and bruised.
Allon was stunned and frightened and told his father: They are two and you are one. They could have killed you. Why didn’t you shoot them? After all, you have a gun. His father then proceeded to teach him about the Arab concept of vendetta. If I shoot them, their relatives would be obligated to avenge their death, and then we would have gone from a simple story about thieves to a cycle of death and revenge that cannot be stopped.
Allon presented the story as a model of moderation and responsibility that later showed him the way when he was an adult. But on second thought, this is in fact a story that praises revenge. After all, what did the father tell his son between the lines? You are right, kid. Had the Arabs not subscribed to this vendetta culture, I would shoot and kill them, but because of the prospect of revenge I refrained from doing so.
Survival instinct
A sense of revenge is one of the most basic human instincts, just like any other survival instinct. Civilization could blur and repress it, but you cannot completely uproot the urge for revenge from a man’s heart just like you cannot uproot the need for love or the sense of fear.Darwinists would likely say that evolution implanted revenge within us, because for millions of years people who did not possess this gene simply did not survive. They became fewer and eventually became extinct. Anthropologists may say that this “hot blood” is in fact a sophisticated manipulation of a very level-headed mind. The elders of the tribe instill in generation after generation the moral obligation to avenge, thus creating a balance of terror that safeguards members of the tribe vis-à-vis other tribes and also amongst themselves.
What does a civilized society do when it faces this terrible thing, which at the same time is also necessary and may be required for survival? The State replaces the tribe, and its first order of business, before anything else, is to create a situation whereby law, order, and basic justice prevail and a person feels secure that someone protects him and punishes the bad guys. When this security turns into an existential situation and is deeply entrenched, this can lull the primal survival instinct that pushes people to commit acts of revenge.
Mourning tent a disgrace
Instincts may be dormant, but they do not die. It is a fact that a vendetta culture is very common among tribal populations and places where there is no orderly or reliable government in power, or among criminal groups that live outside the bounds of the legal system.In recent years, the basic sense of security and the feeling that we have a State that safeguards us has been eroded around here. This sense of security completely crumbles when we see a mourning tent for a murdering terrorist being erected within sovereign Israeli territory along with Hamas flags, and people come to offer their congratulations and sympathy, as if there is no police and no government.
If, God forbid, we see a Jewish vendetta for the massacre at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, do not look for the inciters or the rabbi who said something that can be interpreted in one way or another. The responsible party is the one that created man and implanted the urge of revenge within him. The guilty parties also include the police chief or military major general, or whoever it may be that should have removed this mourning tent without thinking twice while confiscating and burning all the posters, thus behaving like a State and a kingdom, rather than a spineless entity.
Yes, they should have first distinguished between good and bad and only then coped with the High Court of Justice, and yes, they should have endangered their own career in order to prevent bloodshed.
