Lex Talionis II: the matter of Israelis, Palestinians and more
[ by Charles Cameron — vendetta, vengeance, an eye for an eye, compensation, forgiveness, and the question of limits ]
.
I didn’t want this pair of events to slip by entirely unnoticed.
The first image above shows part of the “wanted” poster with which Rabbi Menachem Liebman offered a $100,000 reward to whoever would kill Huliad and Nidar Ramadan, recently released by Israeli authorities as part of the prisoner-swap for Gilad Shalit, who had previously been convicted of killing his own son, Shlomo Liebman, a settlement security guard.
The second, lower image is taken from the reciprocating offer of a $100,000 reward made by Dr Awad al-Qarni on Facebook, to whoever who would capture an(other) Israeli soldier.
These things tend to escalate. According to this AllGov report, Prince Khaled bin Talal of Saudi Arabia commented that “Dr Awad al-Qarni said he was offering $100,000 to only take a prisoner but they [unnamed in the original Reuters report, but presumably Israelis] responded by offering $1 million to kill Awad al-Qarni” – and himself pledged an additional $900,000 to the bounty on the capture of Israeli soldiers, bringing the total to $1 million.
Accompanying this story on the AllGov site, appositely enough, was this illustrated quote from Mohandas Gandhi:
For those who have trouble killing Ramadan brothers or capturing Israeli soldiers, lesser rewards are also available in the United States: this article reports that a “$4,000 reward has been offered for the identity of the police officer who may have been responsible for the injuries sustained by former Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen” during the Oakland Occupy protests recently.
*
Juvenal wrote Semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas Ultio — “revenge is the weak pleasure of a narrow mind”.
*
Let’s think about this for a moment.
Lex talionis is the law of limited retribution – one eye for one eye – found (following similar texts in the code of Hammurabi) in the Mosaic law, Exodus 21.23-25 requiring “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” The rabbis, however, commented that “inasmuch as the law seeks equity, its literal enforcement would frequently lead to gross inequity” [W Gunther Plaut, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, p 571. n. 6.] – and chose to interpret the text as mandating equivalent monetary compensation for value lost.
Tit for tat is a common expression of the same idea, and has also been used in a technical sense in strategies for the iterative playing of Prisoners Dilemma games referred to in my previous post.
Christ‘s injunction in Matthew 5.38-39 reads:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Similarly in the Qur’an, 41:34-35, Muslims are instructed:
Page 1 of 2 | Next page