Revenge undertaken by a government against an ‘enemy’ acting against the state and its citizenry is expected and sometimes necessary, but rides a very fine line, constitutionally and morally.
Revenge is different from defence – the failure of the latter may not justify the former. Revenge is rooted in the usually disallowed principle of retributive justice (in India, the logic of retribution is inapplicable, but incapacitation of threat is valid).
Therefore, questions arise on Israel’s ensuing morality and legality of reaction when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promises “mighty vengeance” and then tweets by quoting poet Hayim Nahman Bialik, “Revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan” to end all speculation about intent.
Netanyahu is fully entitled to outrage at the despicable actions of a terror organisation like Hamas, but to match (and exceed) the misconduct of a terror organisation onto the civilians of the ‘other’ side is indefensible. In such times, even the sense of proportionality in reaction takes a backseat.
History is instructive, that beyond obvious impropriety, such reciprocal bloodshed is always counterproductive and has never been a solution to any insurgent/terror movement, ever!
Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Revenge Policies
In Judaism, the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible also warn against revenge.
In Deuteronomy (32:35), God implores, “Vengeance belongs to me.” But leaders cherry-pick scriptures to legitimise their actions and therefore revenge can, for example, be framed to the case of the children of Israel ordered to attack Midianites (Numbers 31:2); as Samson was granted divine assistance seeking revenge against Philistines for the loss of his eyes (Judges 16:28).
Quasi-theocratic states (Netanyahu had described Israel, “The nation-state of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people alone”) can always contextualise their conduct to religious texts and can literally frame any argument, as they please.
Such religiosity breeds brazenness that cares two hoots for the fact that the United Nations (the UN, and not some obviously biased and vested body like the OIC) has sanctioned Israel a greater number of times, as compared to the entire sum of the rest of the world – but Tel Aviv couldn’t care less.
Israel is not new to disproportionate revenge and Netanyahu’s fellow Likud leader of the yesteryears, Ariel Sharon, personified the same template of an unapologetic and ruthless ‘strongman’ who believed in brutal power as a means to attain goals. That Israel then was perhaps at its most violent and distant from its purported goals (as it is now again), is an ignored matter. Sharon’s political braggadocio had shot to fame with the promise of a “quick operation” with the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, but the same persisted for 18 years at a terrible price and no achievement to show for it.
Castigated as the “butcher”, “bulldozer” et al, he was notorious for revenge and land grab by suggesting, “Everyone should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that is grabbed will be in our hands”. The net impact of his aggressive politics was the second intifada which resulted in gross mayhem with over 4,000 deaths, across both sides.
Ariel Sharon’s revenge policies secured nothing, and it only strengthened an even more vituperative strain of extremism i.e., Hamas, that ultimately displaced the PLO/Fatah in terms of the principle ‘enemy’.
It was only at the end of his political career that Ariel Sharon accepted the futility of disproportionate revenge and ordered the ‘disengagement’/evacuation of Israeli settlements in Gaza in 2005 – but it was too little, too late, and even as Ariel Sharon is relegated to the dark pages of history as a “butcher”, today his partisan-ideological successor, Netanyahu, walks the same slippery path.
Committment to Revenge is Critical to Survive Politically
Globally, the curse of spewing revenge is tempting and theatrical, but the end result is consistently disappointing. Then-US President George Bush had for the ‘War on Terror’ stated grandiloquently, "A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them."
Later, tapping into the popular call for retribution he promised, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” This was no empty or vague threat from a leader of some sub-Saharan dictatorship answerable to none, but one from the most powerful superpower and the leading light of democracy and ‘Free World’ i.e., the United States of America.
It temporarily galvanised George Bush’s personal ratings to the highest ever for a US President! Except that after twenty years of America’s most prohibitively expensive and futile war with a bill of $8 trillion for post-9/11 wars and 9,40,000 direct war deaths – not only did it fail spectacularly in Afghanistan, but the Americans were bundled out embarrassingly by the ragtag Taliban who wore out the coffers, coffins, and patience of the US.
Revenge was probably not an invoked word in Doha, where the US humiliatingly negotiated its own exit from Afghanistan, at the hands of the Taliban.
Similarly, the other superpower (increasingly questionably so), Russia, had to eat the humble pie after declaring a “special military operation” in Ukraine. Putin too had sought vengeance, “Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history”.
Well over a year later, a decidedly weaker Ukrainian side has held out stoutly as surreal optics of a possibly imploding Russian reality stare. Putin’s brave words notwithstanding, it is a stunning stalemate between a nuclear-powered Russia and a beleaguered Ukraine, at best.
Ironically, it is democracies that are most susceptible to misplaced commitments of revenge, as opposed to dispensations with shades of authoritarism, who don’t care about public perception, beyond a point. In democracies, the leadership is perennially gripped with approval ratings and can happily forsake better sense, towards committing the impossible, even if they know the inevitability to be so. Revenge is emotional gold in politics. It is knowingly short-term.
Unlike some non-military Israeli leaders like Golda Meir or Menachem Begin, Netanyahu is not wet-behind-the-years in terms of knowing the inefficacy of the scorched earth policy by overusing the military lever (he served in the IDF and is from an illustrious ‘military family’) – but that muscularity makes for glitzy optics of resoluteness, ultra-nationalism, and ‘strongman’ ensures that he plays to the gallery.
As the longest-serving Prime Minister of Israel ever, Netanyahu wouldn’t be the politically winning and compelling ‘Brand Netanyahu’, without the posture and rabblerousing of revenge. Commitment to revenge is critical to survive politically, never mind its painfully deleterious impact, subsequently.
The Narrative on Both Sides is Set by Revenge-seekers
Looking dispassionately, Israel’s history of disproportionate retaliation has never served its own interest of security, save affording a ‘muscular’ reputation that only constricts its own interests, eventually. But since the immediate risks of talking rapprochement and engagement outweigh the short-term benefits of talking disproportionate revenge (even if they know it to be untrue), the charade of ‘muscularity’ endures.
Therefore, leaders like Netanyahu invest heavily in dark ruminative thinking to prey on raw emotions towards seeking bloodlust as revenge.
Importantly, it is not to downplay the importance of retaliation, acting in defence, or building deterrence capacity – but only to suggest the setting of sharp direction, limits, and delinked suppositions with the entirety of a populace. Hamas and their deplorable actions do not represent the just Palestinian cause, just as Netanyahu or the whole of the Israeli civilian population does not represent the exclusivist Zionist sensibilities (hence abhorrent for Hamas to conflate attack Israeli civilians).
Sadly, the narrative on both sides is set by revenge-seekers who only diminish their respective causes and ensure a catastrophic cost to their own people, in the long run.
It is as the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, finally said, “We should try and minimise the collateral damage. This is not a competition of who kills more. We are not interested in killing civilians”, and said so, after conceding that it was Netanyahu who was willy-nilly responsible for shunning moderate Palestinians and pooh-poohing engagement, which created the monster of Hamas.
Revenge talk is always cheap and counterproductive. Period.
(The author is a Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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