"The end of the act with forethought" - a constant temptation exists when we are faced with a difficult problem that has an available and effective solution for the present, but it is likely to prove to be a disaster when considering the long-term consequences.
The tendency to choose the immediate solution stems from the constant quality of dealing with the urgent rather than what builds permanent layers, the thinking of "after the flood" and other human character traits. When the heavy price of these decisions is revealed, it is sometimes too late to repair the damage.
Such is the price of bringing the Shin Bet into internal questions in the State of Israel. The very gravity of the problem, the terrible bloodshed in the Arab sector, and the state's obligation to do what it can to prevent it – there must be no dispute.
Years ago, we wrote about it, backing the government system to act either on the repulsive left or on the close-knit right. In this emergency, it is possible that even measures that are not normally taken, but are within the framework of law and ethics, deserve to be mobilized to deal with the abyss; But even then, short-term achievement wages must be weighed against long-term damage.
The use of the ISA as part of the fight against criminal offenses is beyond limits, since a large series of serious consequences will be created as a result, from various directions:
ISA work methods and sources of information will be exposed, and will not allow the organization to fulfill its central mission in the field of intelligence; An additional great power will be given to the governmental authority, at a time when there is a weakening (some of which is justified) of the checks and balances that need to exist; More and more civilians will be defined as enemies, even when the reality is not, and there will be a push into the arms of extremists. Getting used to using force alone, instead of seeing it only as one of the means by which problems are dealt with, will become permanent, and on and on.
More broadly, there are rules for deciding when radical tools should be used to solve present problems with less consideration for future outcomes. This is true only when it comes to a challenge that endangers the entire system (and on the issue of violence in the Arab sector, we are indeed close to it); Only when all summers have ended and there is no other solution (and we are far from it); Only when barriers and walls were built to withstand the slippery slope of using these tools for other governmental purposes (and this was not done at all); And only when it is possible to mark the boundaries of time and context (which is also not done).
We have written similar things in the past, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the possibility of using spyware to track public dangers arose.
Therefore, instead of looking for the available, easy and very dangerous solution, it is right to exhaust the existing tools in order to fulfill the state's duty to its citizens, part of which is to mobilize Arab society itself to deal with what is wreaking havoc on it.
In this way, we will not find ourselves in the future in a reality that we will not be able to limit again.
All this is not intended to diminish, God forbid, the allocation of the resources required to do so, but in order to introduce into the consideration system not only the immediate but also the right, justified, moral and appropriate.
Rabbi Yuval Sharlow is Head of Ethics at Tzohar
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