Evil

This weekend I started watching the Netflix documentary series Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. I was obviously drawn to it because of the war now unfolding in the Middle East and the demented, soulless, brainless orange golem currently controlling the levers of power in the White House who appears to be steering the world toward ruination and catastrophe. Play with fire and get burned.

History rarely repeats itself in the neat and tidy ways we imagine, but it does have an unsettling habit of echoing when political systems grow fragile and grievances become political fuel.

“Evil” is a word I dislike and very rarely use. It has too many religious connotations. It belongs to a universe of absolutes, and we don’t live in absolutes — or at least we shouldn’t.

Through archival footage and dramatizations, interspersed with commentary from historians, the series tells the story of the failed Austrian painter Adolf Hitler, his rise to power in Germany, and the world’s attempt after the war to seek justice at the Nuremberg Trials, where twenty-four of the regime’s most senior surviving figures — including Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and Joachim von Ribbentrop — were prosecuted.

The story is told in part through the eyes of the American journalist William L. Shirer, who had a front-row seat to events. Shirer reported from Berlin during the Nazi period, covered the trials, and later wrote the monumental history The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

The question at the heart of the story is whether there is such a thing as evil.

The answer, I think, is no — at least not as something distant, mythical, and grandiose. Its source is far more mundane. It lies in ordinary human weaknesses: resentment, humiliation, cowardice, opportunism. Not even as interesting, perhaps, as the word “banal” that Hannah Arendt famously used when writing about the bureaucratic mediocrity of Adolf Eichmann.

Watching the series, what strikes you most is how ordinary and unremarkable Hitler himself appears as an individual. His character was shaped by personal failure, grievance, humiliation, and resentment — hardly unique qualities in politics.

His rise from a marginal extremist with a radical agenda and a relatively small following to someone holding the balance of power in parliament was enabled by conservative and moderate politicians who believed they could control him, harness his popular support, and neutralize his more dangerous tendencies.

They miscalculated.

In the fractured political landscape of the Weimar Republic - divided very much along rural/urban lines - elites who feared instability more than extremism opened the door to him, convinced that the institutions of the state would ultimately contain him. It was a door they later discovered they could not close.

Hitler understood how to exploit the situation. His nativist and romantic vision of German greatness appealed to an economically struggling population that was struggling humiliated by defeat in the First World War and by what many perceived as betrayal by a feckless political class who had accepted the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Once in power, Hitler’s first objective was to avenge that national humiliation. The symbolism of forcing France to accept surrender in the Compiègne Forest — inside the same railway carriage used for the 1918 armistice — was no accident. It was revenge made theatrical.

The regime’s genocidal campaign against Europe’s Jews did not emerge all at once as a single master plan. It was radicalized over time, particularly after the Blitz failed to defeat Britain, and the military campaign against the Soviet Union in the east hit a brick wall. Military success had emboldened the regime, while later desperation hardened its brutality, and the plan was codified at the Wannsee Conference in 1942.

But if evil exists at all, it is not the product of some diabolical plan, like in the movies. It's a more organic  process, and often improvised. It flourishes in weakness, grievance and opportunism, and feeds on apathy, fear and cowardice. 

Then it festers and spreads like an untreated disease in the body politic - hiding in plain sight, in words like patriotism, security, loyalty, greatness.

The Orange Golem of Mar-a-Lago

My orthodox friends were giddy at the coincidence of the US launching its bombing campaign just a couple of days before the festival of Purim. They saw in this attack a parallel with the biblical story of the small Jewish community of Shushan, located in ancient Persia (present-day Iran), who miraculously and fortuitously defied a king’s death warrant and turned the tables on his evil henchman Haman.

Haman–Khamenei. Get it?

I see parallels to current events in another Jewish story from folklore: the Golem.

Created from mud, the Golem is an oversized, brainless, soulless humanoid creature of myth possessing superhuman strength, summoned to protect a Jewish community in peril. The creature is brought to life by Jewish mystics who recite a mysterious formulation of sacred texts.

The origins of the story may date as far back as the Talmud, but the best-known versions of the legend come from the late 16th century. In the most famous telling, rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel summons a Golem to defend the threatened Jewish ghetto of Prague.

In this version of the story, the creature is animated by placing the Hebrew word Emet (truth) on its forehead. The creature is deactivated by simply removing the first letter, turning Emet into Met (death)—like flicking an on/off switch.

The Golem of Prague predates Frankenstein by Mary Shelley by more than a century. It’s possible Shelley knew the legend, since the first German publication of the tale appeared in 1808.

Like Frankenstein, the story of the Golem is often read as a cautionary tale—a warning to be careful what you wish for.

According to the legend, the Golem was man’s creation, not God’s. Therefore it lacked the gifts of reason and speech. It carried out the tasks it was given without reflection or restraint, which carries great risk.

In many versions of the story the creature eventually becomes uncontrollable. The power that was unleashed to protect the community turns against it. The Golem runs rampant, wreaking havoc, spreading destruction. The genie has been let out of the bottle, and can't be put back.

With all this talk of Bibi Netanyahu going down to Mar-a-Lago and whispering in the ear of the orange Golem, one has to wonder: Are we living through a contemporary version of this ancient tale?

The Greatest Danger of the War

The first danger of a war with Iran is to the international rules-based order—and global stability.

But the second, far more immediate danger is to American democracy itself.

The stage has already been set.

Last Sunday, a mass shooting in downtown Austin left three dead and a dozen injured. The shooter, a 53-year-old naturalized immigrant with no prior FBI record, wore a hoodie reading “Property of Allah” and reportedly a t-shirt with an Iranian flag underneath. A lone actor, perhaps—but one whose symbolism will be seized by those who want to portray the homeland under threat.

If the war drags on, costing a billion dollars a day, trump will eventually need Congress to approve a special appropriation. He currently lacks the support of both parties. And politically, he is in trouble: unpopular, embattled, facing the very real prospect of a Democratic wave in the midterms that could end his presidency.

Under these pressures, one can imagine a scenario that until recently seemed unthinkable: the declaration of a state of emergency, the assumption of extraordinary wartime powers, the suspension—or outright cancellation—of elections.

A war abroad is no longer just a question of foreign policy. In this climate, it becomes a weapon against the very democracy it claims to defend.

Thinking it Through 2 - The Case for Israel

Notice that in my previous post explaining my reasons for opposing the war, I did not mention Israel.

The reason is simple. Israel can make a coherent and legitimate case for attacking Iran on the basis of self-defense in response to an imminent threat. The United States cannot. And that distinction matters.

The United States, as the most powerful nation in the world by far, has the greatest responsibility, and that includes responsibility to build an international consensus in response to the Iranian regime’s conduct. Instead, by taking unilateral military action, it has undermined the very rules-based international system it claims to defend, and given other great powers free rein to act with impunity.

The threat Iran poses to Israel is one matter, and it is inarguable. The threat Iran poses to the international rules-based system is another.

Israel has a responsibility and obligation to its citizens, as all nations do. For decades, the international community failed to adequately acknowledge the threat Iran poses to Israel. Arguably, Israel felt it had little choice but to act, and do so when Iran was most vulnerable.

The same cannot be said about any threat Iran may pose to the United States. Let’s be clear: there was no imminent threat to the United States or to American citizens. The claim that this war was necessary to prevent such a threat simply does not withstand scrutiny.

As a sponsor of international terrorism, the Iranian regime does represent a threat to the rules-based international system. But that threat is precisely why the response should have been collective and grounded in international law, norms, and conventions. The responsibility of the United States was to build that consensus, not bypass it.

What the war has demonstrated so far is something many analysts long suspected: Iran was, in many ways, a paper tiger. Iran’s feckless military response to Israel’s attacks has revealed just how limited its capabilities really are. Much of the threat turned out to be bluster.

From that standpoint, one could even argue that the war may still prove necessary from the perspective of Israel’s long-term security.

My own position has always been that Israel ultimately possesses the strongest form of protection: nuclear deterrence. For that reason, I have never accepted the argument that Israel faced an existential threat, or that the Iranian regime was suicidal.

Like all regimes, the leadership of the Islamic Republic has always pursued two basic goals: first, self-preservation; and second, the expansion of its ideological influence across the Middle East, including the long-term ambition of a broader Islamic political order. That is not an apocalyptic agenda.

Their campaign against Israel has therefore been primarily religious and ideological rather than strategic. It is also why they signed the JCPOA. The agreement offered them time, legitimacy, and a stage upon which to wage a different kind of war—one fought not with missiles, but with narratives.

Their hope was that Israel would ultimately defeat itself, not on the battlefield, but in the court of international opinion.

There is little reason at this point to believe that the Iranian regime will not survive this war as it is currently being waged, nor that it is losing the capacity to wage conflict through asymmetric means indefinitely—through proxy forces, regional destabilization, and other non‑conventional strategies. 

An aside: After two years of war, massive destruction, loss of life and ruination, and a ground invasion and occupation by the IDF, Hamas is still in control of almost 50% of Gaza. 

The real long‑term cost of this war may not be the battlefield losses of Iran, but the lasting damage to the international rules‑based order itself. By sidelining international law and consensus, the United States has weakened the very norms that restrain conflicts and preserve stability, creating a world in which power, rather than law, increasingly dictates outcomes.

Thinking A Position Through

I’ve been hearing this a lot: “I’m glad Khamenei is gone. So I support the war.”

In a nutshell, that’s what Mark Carney suggested in his initial public statement — one he has since tried to walk back, or at least qualify, by calling the war “regrettable” and "inconsistent with international law."

Regrettable, indeed.

The statement “Khamenei and his terrible regime needed to go, therefore I support the war” is known in the parlance as a non sequitur.

It does not necessarily follow that because you are pleased with a result, you must also approve of the way it came about.

Imagine you’re walking down the street and find a $20 bill on the sidewalk. Lucky day. You’re $20 richer. But that same $20 was clearly dropped by someone else. You can be happy about your gain without celebrating the misfortune that produced it.

So yes — one can be relieved that Khamenei is gone. But that does not oblige anyone to endorse the means that brought it about.

Even if you oppose the terrorism-sponsoring leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran — as most of us do — the action taken by the United States that led to this outcome must also be evaluated on its own terms. Here is the logic:

1. Khamenei and his repressive, criminal regime were undeniably harmful — to the Iranian people and to global stability.

2. Therefore, the world is better off without them.

3. A central reason the Iranian regime was so destabilizing is that it ignored and actively undermined the rules-based international system by sponsoring and spreading terror and violence.

4. Therefore, if the justification for removing them is to preserve international stability and curb terrorism, the action taken must itself respect the norms and conventions of the rules-based international order.

5. The unilateral action of the United States — outside clear international legal authorization — further undermines those same norms and conventions.

In other words, the ends do not justify the means.

In fact, the means may do greater long-term harm than the instability they seek to eliminate.

And the end itself is uncertain. There is no way to predict what follows the assassination of a leader and the decapitation of a regime. Power vacuums do not produce order; they produce struggle. The only certainty is instability.

Add to that the human cost of war, the damage inflicted, and the further erosion of the legal and normative framework that has structured international relations since the end of World War II, and the conclusion becomes clear:

One may oppose the Iranian regime and still condemn the reckless manner in which it was removed.

If the justification for war is the defense of international order, then violating that order to achieve it is self-defeating.

And that is precisely why the war must be opposed.

Celebration of Death

This morning I listened to the second press briefing by the former Fox News host and current U.S. Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. It was like listening to a giddy teenager describing his latest round of Call of Duty 2. It was cavalier, unserious—and horrifying.

In truth, I could only manage about five minutes before changing the station in disgust.

He said things like:

“They are toast and they know it.”

“We will fly all day and all night… death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

“We are punching them while they’re down.”

Then he compared the war to a football game.

Who talks like this? Someone who thinks it’s a game. Someone not fully tethered to the reality of the forces he is unleashing.

I found myself thinking: this is not strategy. It’s glorification. A celebration of death and destruction. The only other leaders I have heard speak in this register are the clerics and officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah—men who inhabit a world of religious martyrdom and apocalyptic rhetoric. They at least clothe it in solemnity. This was something else: swagger.

And then I thought of the reported 168 girls killed at a school in the initial bombing of the city of Minab on Saturday.

It’s often said that war develops a momentum of its own. Once the killing begins, perspective narrows. One coffin is a tragedy; hundreds become a statistic. The language shifts. It becomes a numbers game. That is why Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “To win without fighting is best.”

Instead, what we are seeing—and hearing—is a kind of techno-fascination with the spectacle of war, engineered for television. A belief that dazzling imagery and muscular rhetoric can pacify the public. Hypnotize us. Desensitize us.

As officials grasp for justifications—leaning on the old lie about imminent threats—they obscure the human toll. The terrible price that led the world, after World War II, to attempt something better: a system of rules meant to govern conflict and mitigate its consequences—mass migration, refugees, starvation, disease—the suffering of the defenseless and the vulnerable.

How easily we forget. How easily the world we worked so hard to build and maintain can begin to disintegrate before our very eyes.

Institutions that took generations to construct—laws forged from the ashes of catastrophe, alliances born of hard lessons, norms written in the memory of mass graves—prove far more fragile than we ever wanted to believe. 

The tragedy is not only in the lives lost. It is in the erosion of the guardrails that were meant to prevent those losses in the first place.

How easily we forget—and how costly that forgetting becomes.

Rubio Throws The Jews Under The Bus

My jaw dropped yesterday.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, speaking to reporters after briefing congressional leaders on the attack on Iran, said the following:

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Read that carefully.

The United States struck Iran because Israel’s action would have triggered retaliation against American forces, effectively forcing Washington’s hand.

Rubio — one of the more conventional figures in an otherwise unconventional administration — was clearly reaching for a legal rationale: anticipatory self-defense. A pre-emptive strike to prevent imminent harm. That is the language of Article 51 of the UN Charter.

But in constructing that argument, he did something deeply irresponsible and dangerous.

He framed American military action as reactive to Israel’s decision-making. In doing so, he handed anti-Israel conspiracy theorists, and outright anti-Semites, a talking point that we've heard over and over again: U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Israel.

Now, I have little doubt that Netanyahu lobbied aggressively for a strike. He has long argued that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose an existential threat to Israel, and he has been pressing Washington to “finish the job” they started last June. Trump — impulsive, glory-seeking, and drawn to performative displays of power — is obviously susceptible to appeals of cos-playing the military commander in chief. Add to that the intoxication of being the president who finally eliminated America’s long-time nemesis, Khamenei, a moment to rival Obama ordering the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

But lobbying is not coercion. Advocacy is not control. And it is reckless for an American Secretary of State to blur that line in public.

The United States has no clear legal or moral justification for initiating a war with Iran. That, to my mind, is indisputable. 

Israel, however, can plausibly argue that a pre-emptive strike in self-defense is justified since it faces an imminent existential threat. 

The United States is in a categorically different position. Supporting an ally with intelligence, defensive systems, or materiel is one thing. Launching an offensive strike is another entirely. International law, and basic moral reasoning, recognize that distinction.

Which is why Rubio’s comment is so egregious. In a moment that demanded clarity and restraint, he reached for a thin legal veneer and, in the process, reinforced one of the most dangerous narratives in modern political discourse, putting Jews everywhere, especially in America, in peril.