AC writes:
The Israeli military has concluded in a report that the shelling of Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish's house that killed his daughters was "reasonable".
In Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, after
deciding that he was indeed an übermensch, and, as such, was possessed
with the right and responsibility to rid the world of scum for the sake
of humanity and to ease his "intense repulsion", and after triumphing
over moral qualms associated therewith, was left with one challenge:
whether in the course of his ghastly act he will be "…subject to a
failure of will and reasoning power…." Says the narrator:
At first—long before indeed—he had been much occupied with one
question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily
detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He
had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his
opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility
of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every
criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a
childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence
and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse
of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease,
developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the
perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment
of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the
individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The
question whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the
crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of
the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide.
question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily
detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He
had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his
opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility
of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every
criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a
childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence
and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse
of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease,
developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the
perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment
of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the
individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The
question whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the
crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of
the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide.
When he reached these conclusions, he decided that in his own case there
could not be such a morbid reaction, that his reason and will would
remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for the
simple reason that his design was "not a crime…."
The
Israelis have reached very much the same conclusion as Raskolnikov:
their "reason…would remain unimpaired…," for their shelling of the
doctor and his children was "not a crime." Unlike Raskolnikov, however,
they're unlikely to pay their penance in Siberia.
Israelis have reached very much the same conclusion as Raskolnikov:
their "reason…would remain unimpaired…," for their shelling of the
doctor and his children was "not a crime." Unlike Raskolnikov, however,
they're unlikely to pay their penance in Siberia.
