Hiroshima and Hamas: Ideas can be defeated
Eighty years ago this week, the United States dropped the only nuclear bombs ever used in war, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A little over a year ago, I sat in Hiroshima at a conference on AI and the ethics of war. The location was intended to warn about the destructive power of military technology. But the city itself — especially its haunting Peace Museum — offered a different lesson, one with urgent relevance to our time: It is possible to defeat an idea.
Japan used to be one of the most militaristic cultures on the planet, seeking to dominate its region and beyond with its military power. The fact that it was defeated in World War II was vital for the wellbeing of the free world. The significance of this may distract from another enormous accomplishment. Japan, now home to more Peace Museums than anywhere else in the world, has made the preservation of peace an obsession.
It is true that this is not simply the result of military force, although that played an important role. Ultimately the idea of Japan’s militarism was defeated by exposing the idea’s futility, and then by replacing it with something better.
As Tom Phuong Le notes in Japan’s Aging Peace, “over seven decades of peace have turned Japan from a war-torn imperial power into the third largest economy and one of the freest countries in the world. Polling data regularly indicates that the Japanese public believes in peace through diplomacy and is skeptical of the effectiveness of the use of force in international relations.”
As political scientist Thomas Berger observes, it wasn’t just the devastation that changed Japan. The shock of total defeat unraveled a militaristic national identity that had been cultivated for generations. Japan replaced it with a national ethos of peace — one that has endured for over 70 years.
In the current war between Hamas and Israel, it has been frequently claimed that Israel’s efforts are doomed, because Hamas represents an idea, and “you can’t kill an idea.” As Hiroshima teaches, that is not true. The fundamental threat that Hamas poses to Israel and to civilization in general, the scourge of terrorism, can be defeated, if the world has the will to do so.
The underlying ideology and methodology of terrorism, that the Rule of Law and the moral codes of democracies can be exploited for political ends, can be defeated and disproved. Terrorism must be shown to be a dead end — militarily, politically, and morally. Its leaders eliminated; its actions seen to lead only to death and chaos. And its defenders must be confronted with the absurdity of claiming to oppose “genocide” while supporting the mass slaughter of innocents. Most urgently at this moment, hostage-taking cannot be legitimized, allowed to be a valid and fruitful strategy for attaining any political goal.
Hamas must be defeated ideologically, which means that its worldview must be disproven and rejected, and its political goals must be stymied. The many who are repulsed by its depravity must make their voices heard louder than those who have dominated the campuses and the streets, and, crucially, our airwaves and our governments must not reward their tactics.
The point here is not simply which side is wrong; it is that terrorism as a strategy is unacceptable. British PM Keir Starmer, and other world leaders, rewarding Hamas’s atrocities with a state is not merely allowing evil-doers to win; they are allowing evil itself to win.
The Museum of Peace in Hiroshima reveals many things: that the people of Japan were deeply affected by bombings, and that they never want war again. It also leaves one with the impression that they do not feel responsible for what happened, and, if anything, blame America. Does this last fact matter? Perhaps not; maybe the US can absorb the reputational hit, if lasting peace is the result.
Tom Phuong Le, who sees the museum as careful not to be critical of Americans, feels that such an “absence of overt political agenda” creates a space for visitors to focus on the message of peace itself. The question of Japanese responsibility for what transpired is separated out from the appreciation for the devastation that resulted, “allow[ing] the Japanese to grapple with anti-militarism on their terms which includes repentance…” and also contributing to “consequentialist beliefs that peace is valuable and desirable.”
There is much unfair blame being extended to Israel regarding the Gaza conflicts, a phenomenon which is frustrating and painful, and consequential. Nonetheless, combatting this may be less significant than progressing to what is necessary to bring a lasting peace.
The concept of defeating an idea actually goes back to the Bible. The commandment of war against the nation of Amalek — a source of much controversy in the current conflict — is often understood as one of annihilation. However, according to Maimonides, this is not at all the goal, but rather moral transformation. In his view, the ideal is that, following an overture for peace, Amalek will abandon its terroristic ways and reform. He even recognized the potential for both individuals and that nation as a whole to convert out of the status of Amalek. Further, he was not mandating a conversion to Judaism, but simply an acceptance of the moral code. In Maimonides’s view, which has not been disputed, the war against Amalek — which is, of course, a conventional, literal war, when necessary — is ultimately against an idea, not against people.
My 13-year-old daughter was with me in Hiroshima, and, as the youngest present, was asked to publicly read the conference’s resolution, representing next generation. It contained the words, copied from the cenotaph, “we shall not repeat the evil.” Whose evil did the authors mean — Japan’s? America’s? I later discovered many different translations of the Japanese text with differing implications. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. If the enduring message is that Japanese militarism is a chapter that country never wants to revisit, the world is the winner. The same must become true for Hamas’s legacy of terrorism.
