All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing… This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile… The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. – Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” 1955

In mythology, Sisyphus was a man who was sentenced by the Greek gods to ceaselessly push a rock up a hill and watch it roll back down. In his work “The Myth of Sisyphus,” French existentialist Albert Camus wrote that Sisyphus’ punishment came from the gods’ belief that there are few crueler punishments than harsh and pointless labor. Camus, however, argued that Sisyphus could eventually turn his curse into a calling, as a struggle invents purpose. He could learn to find meaning in his strenuous labor. What was intended as punishment could become a source of satisfaction, and even hope, despite the suffering and disappointment.  

On March 2, Hezbollah launched rockets toward Israel and began what is now developing into the third, or perhaps fourth, Israel-Lebanon war. The IDF Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister have told the country that there is no defined timeline to end the war, since this is the “war of our generation” and could go on “indefinitely.” The acceptance by the Israeli public of the new campaign in Lebanon betrays a profound forgetting not only of every time Israel........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)