The trolley problem is a famous philosophical dilemma about a trolley rushing downhill toward a group of five people and is about to run them over. The brakes are broken so the driver can't stop, but they can pull a lever that will divert it to another track where there isn't five people but just one person. The moral question is: should one pull the lever?
Like everything else conceived by philosophers, it turns out the trolley problem isn't really relevant to reality. The trolley problem takes for granted that the value of five lives is greater than the value of one life, and to balance this, it placed on the other side of the dilemma the requirement to take active action to save the five and kill the one. But both sides of the dilemma aren't really important, and don't dictate the decisions of real people.
Here's what did decide things in reality: whether or not we know the person who is going to die. Do we see their face? The fear in their eyes? Do they have a name? Can we hear their mother begging for their life? Have we heard their life story? Great: we can sentence five completely anonymous people to death.
That's all, and everything else is stories you told yourselves to clear your conscience of the blood of five innocent people and avoid the moral dilemma. You told yourselves that it's not certain they'll die, that maybe contrary to all past precedent and any shred of logic they'll manage to dodge the trolley. You told yourselves that the lives of uniformed personnel are worth less than the lives of those not in uniform. You told yourselves that this is a moral duty, as if you don't have a moral duty to those who are going to die. These are all stories. The truth is that you prefer to run over five nameless, faceless people in order to not run over one you've become emotionally attached to.
And let me be clear, I certainly don't accuse the people of Israel of evil or malice. I also don't accuse them of stupidity. I accuse them of cowardice. I accuse them of running away from confronting the dilemma forced upon them. I accuse them of semi-consciously sinking into La La Land instead of looking reality in the eye. I don't know if this is a universal human flaw, or a product of Hollywood culture that obsessively tells itself the myth about Superman who manages in the end to save both the girl and the bus full of children, or even a uniquely Jewish defect. It's also not interesting.
This trolley will reach us and run over dozens of us, in the most optimistic scenario. What we have left to choose is whether we'll pay with the blood of dozens of 19-year-old boys who will be sent to reconquer Netzarim and the northern Strip against a reorganized Hamas, better entrenched, reinforced with hundreds of fresh and eager fighters, and equipped with endless supplies of fuel, water and food; or whether we'll flee beyond the fence in shame and pay one day with the blood of hundreds of slaughtered children in Be'eri, Sderot, Metula and Shlomi. Either way we'll pay.
And when the IDF spokesperson permits publication of another casualty and another casualty, who will be killed conquering those same places we've already conquered and already paid for in blood, places where the IDF established such solid control that it did not suffer additional casualties - what will we say? We'll say you can't prove they were killed because of the deal. Hamas could have recovered for other reasons. Try to prove that the one who pulled the trigger was a terrorist released in the deal and not a terrorist who was in Gaza before.
Like a heavy smoker who got lung cancer and explains, between puffs, that cancer also has a genetic component and actually we can't know for certain. And anyway, what are you talking to me about, it's Bibi's fault. He's the prime minister. I'm just a simple citizen, I have no influence on policy, and that's why I spent a year in protests trying to influence government policy. I'm not responsible for anything, you hear?
I am not responsible.
Those who shouted for a deal are responsible, and those who sat quietly and shouted nothing are also responsible. A year ago, I wrote a post or two against a deal with Hamas, and since then I stayed silent. This wasn't negligence but a conscious decision. It seemed to me that public pressure for a deal was decreasing, and therefore the government would withstand it. This was a mistake. I also didn't want to get into confrontation with dear people, to say harsh things and maybe hurt them, and who knows, maybe a hostage's family member will read this. This was cowardice, and I don't intend to repeat it again. For a year and a half you demanded that I look into the eyes of the hostages, now it's your turn to look into the eyes of the dead.
And of the hostages yet to come.
And one more thing about the agreement with Hamas: One of the most common arguments in favor of the agreement is that we cannot predict the future.
In my view, for example, the likely scenario is that Hamas will absorb the released terrorists directly into its units, use the enormous amounts of supplies it receives to replenish its warehouses and improve its resilience, reorganize militarily according to its needs, transfer weapons and ammunition to areas where they are lacking, fortify and mine the areas from which the IDF withdraws, and strengthen its hold on the civilian population in Gaza – steps that will likely inflict heavy casualties on the IDF.
While I haven't heard anyone argue that this scenario is unreasonable, many have certainly claimed that we cannot predict the future, and therefore we cannot know if the likely scenario will actually materialize.
They are of course completely right, and there are precedents for this. For example, after the Shalit deal, the likely scenario was that the released prisoners would return to terrorism in service of Hamas. One of the unlikely, and in fact completely wild, scenarios was that one of the released prisoners would quickly become the head of Hamas in Gaza and conceive a plan for a ground invasion of Israel, capturing entire communities with their populations, and carrying out the most horrific massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust. After the Disengagement, the likely scenario was sporadic rocket fire on Ashkelon; the wild scenario was barrages of thousands of rockets on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
These two cases teach us that we must never confuse the likely scenario with the only scenario. The agreement signed yesterday with Hamas could certainly lead to the realization of wild scenarios that are very difficult to imagine. Maybe one of those released in the deal will succeed in developing chemical weapons for Hamas. Maybe the month-long ceasefire is the time Hamas needs to complete digging an attack tunnel that will end in the heart of Ashkelon, enabling another massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians. Or maybe something else. I think at least these two scenarios are less outlandish than what the October 7th scenario would have sounded like during the Shalit deal.
Elad Nahshon is a PhD student at Bar Ilan University, studying the political and social history of Zionism and the State of Israel.
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