ABSTRACT
Desire for vengeance certainly is one of the most potent of human passions. It has been one of the major preoccupations in the world literature. Witness Euripides’ Medea, the Oresteia, Hamlet, or Tess, Cain’s killing of Abel, God’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, and his near destruction of the human race with the Flood. It is a major theme in history as well. Jews were massacred on the grounds of what they were supposed to have done to Jesus. And it is a dominant theme in recent and current affairs. Lidice and Putten were destroyed, and their male populations killed because of the attacks by resistance fighters on Heydrich and some other German officer. Serbian violence in Croatia obtained added stength and motivation from fury about the collaboration and atrocities committed by Ante Pavelitch and his bent 50 years ago. The Imam Abou Kheireidinne, in December 1991, cried out for the establishment of people’s tribunals to “try the traitors” for offenses against the sharia in Algeria. The Israeli air force, February 1992, killed the Hezbollah leader Abbas Musawi to revenge a Palestinian attack on an Israelian village, and Hezbollah forces retaliated by prolonged rocket shelling of northern Israel.
