Israeli state officials met on
August 7, 2025 to debate Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plan to expand the presence
of the IDF, Israel’s military, to include all of the territory in Gaza, which had
been under Israeli occupation anyway for many decades. With Gaza already under
Israeli occupation, characterizing Netanyahu’s plan as being “to conquer all
or parts of Gaza not yet under Israeli control” is strange.[1]
Similarly, mischaracterizing the E.U. as a bloc even though that union
has the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial is
odd. The media’s artful way of reporting is without doubt superficial relative
to Netanyahu’s unvirtuous decisions and their respective consequences to which
the labels of genocide and holocaust have justifiably been applied
around the world. Behind the relevant vice lies an extreme egocentricity that the
ethical theory of Sikhism describes quite well, even to the level of ontology
or metaphysics.
Netanyahu’s office released a
statement claiming that the prime minister’s plan to station armed Israeli
troops throughout the occupied territory is a way to “further achieve Israel’s
goals in Gaza.”[2]
Excluded was any compassion or even thought for the well-being of the residents
of Gaza, as if no such responsibilities are entailed in being an occupier. I
contend that the vice of wrath lies behind the egocentricity of the statement,
and that this vice in turn is predicated on the supposition that anyone
opposing one’s self-interest or that of one’s side is merely an object and thus
can be used to further one’s own aims. This duality flies in the face of a
metaphysic of Oneness, wherein everyone is connected rather than separate. This
is none other than the Sikh theory of the five vices being sourced in haumai.
That Netanyahu’s wrath is
egocentric can be gleaned even from how he treated opposition within the IDF as
being easily expendable, as if the Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant
General Eyal Zamir were merely a puppet for the prime minister to toss away the
moment Zamir showed pushed back publicly on Netanyahu’s plan. Zamir suggested “that
the plan would endanger the lives of the [Israeli] hostages and further stretch
Israel’s military.”[3] “That
prompted Netanyahu to say in a post on X that if [Zamir] objected to the plans,
he could resign.”[4]
Ouch! Zamir stated that the IDF would “continue to express our positions
without fear, in a substantive, independent, and professional manner,” and puppets,
which are mere objects, do not behave as such. In other words, Netanyahu’s hasty
reaction evinces or points back to an egocentric perspective in which other
people are objects rather than other human beings, whom, Kant wrote, should, as
rational beings, be treated as ends in themselves rather than merely as
means. This applies even to the starving, emaciated 2 million humans still alive
in Gaza, whom the Israelis are puppeteering to fight like dogs over scant
food-drops.
Kant’s ethic against treating
other rational beings as mere objects is also in the Sikh religious ethic,
which is useful here in describing Netanyahu’s mentality and what it implies
metaphysically. The Sikh ethic actually focuses on five vices, each of
which is sourced in haumai. “Fundamentally,” according to Keshav Singh, “haumai
is a kind of false conception of oneself as singularly important, and
correspondingly, a false conception of the world as revolving around oneself,
as a world of objects there for one’s use.[5]
At its extreme, haumai is “a kind of ethical solipsism: an inability to
conceive of anyone or anything but oneself as an ethical subject.”[6]
In other words, Haumai “is a kind of false conception of oneself as
singularly important, and correspondingly, a false conception of the world as
revolving around oneself, as a world of objects there for one’s use. Vice,
then, comes down to the failure to recognize the importance of others. The
corresponding picture of virtue is that virtue consists in a recognition of the
importance of others.”[7]
Whereas virtue is related to the “recognition of an ultimate reality on which
all are One,”[8]
haumai, and thus each of the five vices that are sourced in it, involve
the illusion (maia) of separateness wherein only oneself (or one’s
group) counts as significant.
Sikhism makes the leap from
ethics and ontology/metaphysics to theology in viewing the One as divinity and
not just as real. “The Divine, in Sikhism, is conceived of as absolute and
all-encompassing, and is often referred to as literally (the) One. . . . the
Divine as a kind of all-encompassing unity.”[9]
A unity that grounds everything, rather than everything being divine (i.e.,
pantheism), is not reality per se, but pertains to what is ultimately real. It
is important, I submit, to distinguish ontology and metaphysics from the sui
generis, or unique, domain of theology. In Sikhism, “enlightenment consists in
experiencing ultimate reality, thereby merging with the Divine,” whereas “haumai
creates a duality between self and other, cutting one off from ultimate
reality and preventing enlightenment.”[10]
So if it seems like in going
to such an extreme as committing a genocide and even a holocaust, Netanyahu and
his cadre have lost touch with reality, Sikhist ethics would say yes because viewing
and treating people as objects is inconsistent with the Oneness whose unity
makes duality wherein only oneself is significant (and a human being) an
illusion. In this regard, Sikhism is in line with Shakara’s non-dualist Advaita
Vedanta school of Hinduism wherein the soul of every people is in essence
Brahman, which is infinite being.
It only remains for us to identify the specific Sikh vice that pertains to Netanyahu, for once known, it can be related back to raumai, which is predicated on the metaphysical illusion (or delusion) of duality between oneself and everyone else. That vice that is most salient in the dogmatic mentality and actions of Israel’s prime minister and his cadre of high officials is krodh, which, as appetitive wrath, is “a kind of vengeful, consuming anger” that is not righteous anger at injustice.[11] In the Sikh scripture, SGGS, is written, “O wrath, you are the root of strife; compassion never rises up in you.”[12] This definitely applies to the Israeli troops going ultimately from orders from Netanyahu. Instead, of any mercy and compassion, krodh is a“vengeful appetite that controls people like puppets.”[13] This can be seen even in how Netanyahu lashed out at Zamir when he resisted being merely a puppet. As for Netanyahu’s underlying motivation, meaning being even more motivating that his desire to make the Palestinians in Gaza suffer and even die, it is worth observing that krodh “manifests haumai” in that “the wrathful person wants to hurt others to improve his own status or make himself feel better. In this way, he views others as mere objects, and considers only the importance of his own inward-facing desires.”[14]
Singh’s comment that self-interest is one way of understanding haumai is
in my view too generous; selfishness, wherein benefits are intentionally
excluded from other people (unless, as a byproduct, oneself benefits) is more
apt. But even selfishness does not account for using other people as objects absent
any compassion or mercy. Maimonides’ point that the Abrahamic deity, or “God,”
can judge a mentality so bad in terms of sin that God removes even the possibility
of such a person asking God for forgiveness. Hence Yahweh hardens Pharaoh’s
heart in the Book of Exodus. So too, it seems, that deity has hardened
Netanyahu’s heart. Divine wrath can be understood to be a reaction to krodh
sourced in haumai and evinced so horrifically as by government officials
persecuting a genocide or holocaust on millions of other human beings.
1. Gavin Blackburn, “Israel’s
Security Cabinet Debates Expanding Gaza Operation Despite Opposition,”
Euronews.com, August 7, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Keshav
Singh, “Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics,” The Monist, Vol. 104 (2021):
319-36, p. 320.
6. Ibid, p. 321.
7. Ibid,
p. 319.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 321.
10. Ibid., p. 322.
11. Ibid., p. 326.
12. Ibid., p. 326 (1358 in SGGS).
13. Ibid. p. 326.
14. Ibid., p. 326.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Keshav Singh, “Vice and Virtue in Sikh Ethics,” The Monist, Vol. 104 (2021): 319-36, p. 320.
6. Ibid, p. 321.
7. Ibid, p. 319.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 321.
10. Ibid., p. 322.
11. Ibid., p. 326.
12. Ibid., p. 326 (1358 in SGGS).
13. Ibid. p. 326.
14. Ibid., p. 326.
