Yizhar’s landscape is morally neutral and devoid of ominous signs

Evidence

The landscape, like the fatigued soldiers, like the prisoner, and like the hills and the paths, all share in what had earlier been described as “a kind of easy unconcern-the unconcern of good days when there was no evil in the world to forewarn of other evil things to come” (294/H91). Lacking signs and forewarning indicators, the landscape (and what is in it and of it) is unconcerned and, one could almost say, beyond good and evil. Like beasts of burden, the landscape (and what is in it and of it, quiet flocks and “dim, human forms”) is thus marked by a “faithful resignation.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 584

Categorization

• XREF: The morally neutral, signless landscape merits contrast with Chesteron’s/Harari’s point that evil arrives without forewarning — and with the midwife’s tale and the broader question of how environments fail to signal perpetrators.