Peter Espeut
WHEN KING HAMMURABIinvented the Law of Talion ("an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth") it was a tremendous advance in the code of civil law. Prior to this, an aggrieved person would retaliate out of all proportion to his injury; e.g. "If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold" (Genesis 4:24). What the Law of Talion did was to require proportionality in retaliation: "When a man causes a disfigurement in his neighbour, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has disfigured a man, he shall be disfigured" (Leviticus 24:19).
Jesus replaced the Law of Talion with his own Law of Love: "You have heard it said ... but I say to you ..." (Matthew 5: 27-48), but that is not my point today. Jewish law requires that the response to a grievance or injury be proportionate, and it seems that the modern state of Israel has abandoned this principle codified in their Testament.
BOMB ATTACKS
If Hamas makes an incursion into Israel and captures an Israeli soldier, to bomb Palestine for a week is out of all proportion. If Hezbollah captures two Israeli soldiers, to bomb southern Lebanon every day is overkill. Kidnap members of Hamas and Hezbollah in return, yes; defend your civilians from the home-made rockets being launched into Israel, yes; but to bomb bridges and ports and power plants and government buildings and to kill innocent civilians seems to be out of line with the ethics in the Jewish scriptures, and a return to pre-Hammurabi times.
The international community has spoken with one voice in condemning both the attacks on Israel and the scale of Israel's retaliation - except for the fundamentalist United States of America (U.S.A.) Government. Indeed, the only reason Israel is getting away with this unfair and immoral behaviour is because it is supported in almost everything it does by the U.S.A. I remember after 9/11 a forlorn American voice on CNN asking: "Why do they hate us so?" I wonder if he has yet come up with the answer?
For those with a sense of history, the fact that the U.S.A. would support this kind of behaviour is not surprising. This potentially great country - which likes to style itself as the 'Guardian of the Free World' - is the only country in history to have dropped an atomic bomb on human beings; not on soldiers and other military personnel, but on civilians - men, women and children; and not only once but twice. Here is another example of disproportionate response: neither the continental U.S. nor Hawaii was under direct threat of attack, and the war was almost over. Sending the Afghan prisoners-of-war to Guantanamo Bay was not the first time the U.S.A. violated the Geneva Convention.
I will never forget the fact that, wanting to arrest the President of Panama for drug trafficking, the U.S.A. invaded Panama, killing hundreds of innocent people in the process. Yes, you want the man, but surely it is wholly out of line to invade a country and kill a lot of people to capture one man? For me, the U.S.A. lost the moral high ground right there! If there were someone in Jamaica they want badly enough, we have to face up to the hard facts that they might invade Jamaica to capture them, and kill a lot of Jamaicans in the process! Jamaica must be one of the few countries in this region not yet invaded by the U.S.A. Give it time!
BLIND WORLD
It was Mahatma Gandhi who said that if we followed the principle of 'an eye for an eye' we would end up with a world of blind people. Can't the Israelis and the Palestinians see that trading reprisals in an endless series only multiplies hate, and takes them no closer to a resolution? The blindness has already set in!
Here in fundamentalist Old Testament Jamaica we are big into this business of reprisal killings too. In some of our garrison areas, the original sin was committed so long ago that few (if any) can remember what the issue was; maybe all the original parties walk no longer with us. Yet those still alive can recite a record of recent wrongs, and the killings continue.
Is it too much to hope that we can beat our swords into ploughshares before we all go blind?
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and a Roman Catholic deacon.
