The Commission Report: The Law of the Mind

By Roger Rosenblatt

The Israeli Cabinet's overwhelming acceptance of the report of the commission inquiring into the Beirut massacre will prove important to Israel's wellbeing, but the power of the report goes beyond Israel. Whether or not they meant to, the commissioners produced a philosophical document, an expression of moral thought. What the report says, quietly, within its recommendations and explanations, is that there is a truth in human actions both detectable and accountable without confessions or irrefutable evidence--a secret truth--and that in the eyes of both common justice and common sense, this truth has no place to hide.

This idea comes to light in the report's basic principle of "indirect responsibility," an old principle, needing little clarification. What the Israeli commission called indirect responsibility, Thomas Aquinas deemed the sin of omission, and the concept antedates Aquinas in the Old Testament prophets. In domestic law it goes by the name of negligence. The application is familiar: by doing nothing to prevent a wrongful act, in spite of having the power to do so, one shares a portion of the blame. It may go further. If one sets into motion a train of events that lead to a calamity, however circuitously, he may be culpable as well, the absence of intention being merely a detail.

One of the side virtues of the commission's work is that it elevates the principle of indirect responsibility to international cognizance. The jurists at the Nuremberg trials went to great lengths to cite positive acts, "crimes against humanity." No one was charged with just standing by. The difference in the Israeli report (apart from its not being a court verdict) is that at Nuremberg a victor was judging a fallen enemy, whereas here the accused were called to account by their own people.

But the fundamental force of the report rests not in its application of indirect responsibility, nor in the explosive political context in which it struck a match. Rather its value is that it makes use of a kind of truth that is ordinarily the preserve of psychologists and clergymen. More than that, it claims for this truth equal weight and status with objectively provable reality. The commissioners record that witnesses characterized the massacre as "a disaster which no one had imagined and which could not have been--or, at all events, need not have been--foreseen." They then make this extraordinary announcement: "We are not prepared to attach any importance to these statements." When one says something like that, he can mean only two things. First, I do not believe your account of the circumstances. Second, I know, or strongly suspect, what really occurred.

To make such a claim takes nerve, to say the least. To Sharon and the others the report plainly says: You are indirectly responsible for Sabra and Shatila because you "should have felt apprehension," you should have "take[n] the danger into account"; you "were obligated to foresee as probable" the carnage that ensued.

But what does it actually mean when one finds somebody responsible for an act because he should have known what would happen? He is not imputing stupidity; the person would probably be let off the hook for merely behaving stupidly. Is he implying gross incompetence or a shallow carelessness? Perhaps, but these contentions, too, lessen the degree of personal culpability. No, when someone in authority is told that he ought to have anticipated a disaster, it means that the grand total of his professional experience and knowledge demanded, beyond reasonable doubt, that he behave differently than he did. Indeed, it is also beyond reason able doubt that he merely forgot or tossed aside all that profession al experience and knowledge when he neglected to act. Thus, "You should have known," in certain circumstances, becomes a way of elegantly telling someone he's a liar, a liar more to himself than to others, possibly, but a liar nonetheless.

What this says about human nature is that one cannot escape his own knowledge; he cannot be baptized innocent on a moment's notice; nor may he be born again whenever difficulties make rebirth convenient. What this says about the comprehensiveness of reality is more far-reaching. "We are not prepared to attach any importance to these statements [of self-exoneration]," wrote the commissioners, adding, "and not necessarily due to the fact the this evaluation was refuted by reality"--that is, by the reality of the massacre. In other words, the commission saw an other, deeper reality in the works, the reality of the silent connections the mind makes between experience and reason. These connections, they held, had to be made, claims of what "no one had imagined" notwithstanding.

In fact, the sphere of the report is unapologetically the real world. To those under investigation the commission was, in effect, putting the question "Who are you kidding?" And the question was not wholly rhetorical. In matters of guilt and innocence the gray area is often the largest, and this is the area judicial bodies are usually loath to enter. Yet this commission claimed the territory. Where the report might easily have shrugged away the problem of blame, asserting that these matters of moral choice are so private no one can plumb them, it said in stead these are private areas of conscience that everyone both understands and experiences, and it is only common sense to acknowledge their existence and to mention what goes on there. The commissioners enhanced the concept of moral responsibility by applying reality to it, a shad part of reality certainly, but no less real than shadows. One may even deal in shadows of doubt.

In one law, such an attitude is terribly intrusive. In a court of law, it would be profoundly dangerous to convict and punish some one with "You knew better, and we know you knew better." Here the idea is not only unintrusive; it is almost sympathetic--not for giving of the minds that recognized the danger, however dimly, and did nothing, but at least acknowledging that such things do happen. Without swirling around the mind's various tides of selfdelusion, the report implied, by way of accusation, that selfdelusion, even the most destructive, is recognizable. This gives no consolation to the perpetrators, but it may benefit the rest of us, whose crimes of negligence may be minor but no less effective.

One of the lasting benefits of the Nuremberg trials, despite the continuing controversy that surrounds them, was establishing in the public consciousness that "just following orders" is no excuse for crimes. Here, though the crime is considerably smaller, the value of the report is similar. Both adjudications affirm and expand the notion of what is real in the world. Gunfire is real, and so are thoughts. The wisdom of the commission in making this point the way it did is that Israelis may grasp it best of all. The report notes sharply that Jews are especially and painfully familiar with both the principle of indirect responsibility and how it works, since they have so often watched the world stand by while they were slaughtered in the streets and hated in the mind. The mind. The report is about the treacherous and devious mind. And it says as clearly as it may ever be said that we know what we know, and what we know, we act on--or do not.

--By Roger Rosenblatt This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.