The Price of Ill‐programmed Self‐defense – We Must Face What We Do[Note 1. This essay is based on a Lecture the author ...] , [Note 2. The author enormously appreciates the discussions and comments made ...]

Throughout history, large‐groups in conflict have in the name of self‐defense carried out preemptive attacks against those who threatened their land and its people. While such attacks have often brought accolades and praise from the perpetrating group, from the mid‐twentieth century on, especially following on the 1948 United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there has been a sharper‐than‐before ideological shift away from “Might is Right” toward responsibility for “Crimes against Humanity”. While the perpetrating group's glories have brought the generations that follow much pride, increasingly the group's breach of Geneva‐type Conventions and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights have brought condemnation which has wrought guilt and shame to the perpetrator's children and their children. There are renowned examples in history of such collective guilt and shame that have become part of the perpetrating large‐group's identity and psyche, such as (1) the United States' importing slavery which to this day brings not only guilt and shame to many of us, but also continuous events of turmoil to our society that so ignobly treated African Americans; and, (2) several generations of Germans today continue to experience profound shame and guilt for what their Nazi Third Reich forbearers did to about 11 million “undesirables”. While certainly not comparable to these abominable examples, should not Israel be consciously aware of the consequences of perpetrating on the Palestinians unduly provocative and destructive self‐defense strategies that may in consequence be costly to the Jewish people's collective psyche and induce much guilt and shame in generations of Jews that will follow us?