Why They Fight
To return to the unpleasant question of Gaza, Jon Chait had a post the other day explaining that the kind of bloodshed and suffering the Israelis are afflicting is okay because of the asymetric subjective desires of the parties to the conflict:
Israel has a problem with Hamas because Hamas believes Israel has no right to exist. If Hamas lay down all its weapons, Israel would lift its blockade. If Israel lay down all its weapons, Hamas would kill as many Israelis as it could.
One way to reply to this is à la Ezra Klein who observes that at some point you need to judge based on what’s actually happening. And what’s been happening is that whatever Hamas’ ambitions may or may not have been, they were scattering short-range inaccurate rocket fire on Israel that was causing little damage. Israel struck back with actions that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and pushed over a million more closer to the brink of starvation. And in general this is an important aspect of the conflict — irrespective of intentions, over the years you have many more dead Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.
But another piece of the puzzle is that though American Jewish liberals tend to take a lot of comfort in the idea of Israel’s good intentions and good faith throughout this whole process, there’s a reason approximately no Arabs anywhere in the world see it that way. All throughout the “peace process” years — through the good ones and through the bad ones — Israel continued expanding both the geographical footprint of its settlements and the population living upon them. For most of this time, Israel has often appeared unwilling to enforce domestic Israeli law on the settler population, to say nothing of abiding by international law or agreements made. And while Israel has stated a desire to leave the Gaza Palestinians alone in their tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave, the “disengagement” from Gaza has never entailed letting Palestinians control their borders or exercise meaningful sovereignty over the area. The proposal has basically been that if Palestinians cease violence against Israel, then the Gaza Strip will be treated like an Indian reservation. Israel’s policy objectives in the West Bank appear to be first seizing the choice bits of it, and then withdrawing behind a wall with the residual West Bank treating like post-”disengagement” Gaza.
I’m not a believer in violence, and so I certainly don’t think that Hamas’ rocket attacks have been an appropriate, morally defensible, or effective means of protesting this one-sided bargain. But it’s important to understand that it’s simply not the case that Hamas is the only party to this conflict that’s working toward unreasonable goals.
92 Responses to “Why They Fight”
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January 1st, 2009 at 4:41 pm
Didn’t you want to buy a handgun?
January 1st, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Let’s hope little Jamie Kirchick is offline today, or else he and Marty Peretz are going to shit in their pants.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:16 pm
This is a pretty good summary of why there are no good guys in this conflict.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:19 pm
“tiny, overcrowded, economically unviable enclave”
Tiny and overcrowded is unavoidable, but economically unviable is not necessarily so. Singapore and Hong Kong get by with an even higher population density on the same order of magnitude of absolute land size land (Gaza – 150 sq mi, Singapore – 350 Sq mi, Hong Kong – 420 Sq mi , but Hong Kong island itself is only 38 sq mi.) And Gaza is in the approximately the same relative location to major sea lanes. Spend a billion or two to build a decent seaport, stop the blockade seaward (Israel and Egypt can do whatever they want with the land boundary), and develop a tax structure that encourages foreign direct investment. This obviously does nothing with the West Bank, but one thing at a time.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Spend a billion or two to build a decent seaport
Gaza had a decent seaport and airport (partly paid for by Europeans) until Israel blew them up.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
When a Government uses its authority to force starvation upon a people under its command – it’s rightfully condemned as Evil Incarnate. Stalin, Mao, the British inflicted “Potato Famine” – these are all the ghastly torments of monstrous regimes. Gaza is a modern-day Auchswitz with the sole provision being – the Israelis are just murdering 1,000,000 blockaded Palestinians at an agonizingly slower pace. The entire Civilized World knows this but says little and does nothing lest they upset the Masters of Discourse. So, what exactly are the Palestinians supposed to do? Wait for “J Street” to come to the rescue? For Obama and Alan Colmes to raise a mighty outcry? If it were your people – what would you do?
January 1st, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Apropos of this, attached is a link to an article indicating that Israel is treating Palestinians injured in the fighting in Israeli hospitals. I wonder if the US and Britain allowed Germans injured in the bombing campaign over Germany during WW 2 to be treated in British or American hospitals. This indicates a lack of seriousness on the part of the Government of Israel. This is a war and in a war, no quarter is to be requested or given.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1051946.html
January 1st, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Matthew’s deperation to excuse Hamas’s attacks rarely is this humorous.
Let me see if I understand. Hamas wants to kill all the Jews and eliminate Israel from the map. But, Matthew counters, Israel doesn’t fully enforce its law with respect to settlement. So, according to Matthew, they’re morally equivalent. Because having a policy of killing all the Jews is morally equivalent to having a policy of allowing some settlements, to Matthew. Gee, that settlement policy – how horrific – it’s just like a policy of genocidally killing all the Jews!
January 1st, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I’d like one journalist to ask whatever Israeli far-right talking head uses the “right to exist meme” one question: “Do you believe in Palestine’s right to exist? If so, why do you colonize their territory and control every significant portion of their lives?”
January 1st, 2009 at 5:40 pm
It is always smart and proper to compare this conflict to WWII, because Nazis had no country, army, tanks or airplanes either.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
This of course is the same arguments the Israelis use. “Do you expect us to do nothing?”. And no I’m not setting up a false symmetry. The Israeli actions are at least a magnitude worse. But what exactly do the rockets accomplish. Killing random Israeli civilians does not lessen Palestinian suffering one iota. To steal from elsewhere in the Blogsphere, it is like rapping a Grizzly bear on the snout with a flimsy stick. It angers the bear without reducing his ability to claw or bite you. Poor strategy at the least. And killing civilians, even civilians of a country the attacks you is a war crime. And when it serves no useful purpose that removes any shadow of justification.
And that argument applies a thousand times more to the government of Israel. Starving and bombing Gaza is a war crime, and would remain one even if it did serve to protect Israeli civilians, a war crime on a scale many hundreds of times larger than anything any Palestian groups have done. But since so far it has served to further endanger rather than protect Israelis. So ultimately what can we conclude, but that this is not any kind of self-defense, but a further step in a plan whose end game is some form of genocide?
January 1st, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I’d point out the inherent evil in Apartheid and the illiberality of citizenship status tied to religion, but that would be antisemitic.
Of course Israel has a right to exist, of course its enemies are evil people. None of that excuses Israel’s own acts of impropriety or justifies the fundamental unfairness of its current religious state structure, nor its indefinite occupation of a people granted no fundamental rights or legitimate means to address their grievances. Certainly nothing justifies why my country is expected to sacrifice what little diplomatic and moral credibility it has left on Israels behalf, a state that has frequently shown is more than capable of taking care of itself and which offers no benefit to my own.
January 1st, 2009 at 5:54 pm
When we see the real death toll? Palestinians don’t have gauze and antibiotics–the seriously injured are more likely to die than not. Israel is attacking a densely populated area with F-16s and helicopter gunships. I can’t believe that the first volley, with a hundred tons of ordinance only resulted in three hundred deaths. The massacre is in its fifth day.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:03 pm
SLC – Perhaps you should research how many civilians (Including women in labor) have died waiting at Israeli manned checkpoints the past so many years. Feeling proud yet? Of course you are!
How dare civilians ask for quarter! This is the age of the USA! I suppose those saps in the WTC just did not understand that they were in a war . . . .
January 1st, 2009 at 6:05 pm
I wonder if the US and Britain allowed Germans injured in the bombing campaign over Germany during WW 2 to be treated in British or American hospitals.
Yes, and in fact, were required to by both international law and internal policy.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:16 pm
I don’t get the “Hamas lay down their arms” argument. Has Israel requested unconditional surrender? Are they prepared to adhere to International Law regarding the treatment of conquered territory?
January 1st, 2009 at 6:18 pm
Re Seedee Van
Unfortunately, the Government of Israel found out the hard way that many of the women supposedly in labor were, in fact, homicide bombers armed with explosive belts. The answer to this issue is to spend some of the foreign aid money going to the Gaza Strip on improving the hospitals there instead of spending it on explosives and arms smuggled in from Egypt through tunnels now being systematically destroyed by the bombing campaign.
Re Freddie
Would Mr. Freddie care to provide a reference to his claim. It appears quite unlikely that injured Germans were somehow transported to hospitals in Britain and the US during the war.
By the way, how about starvation in Germany which became quite acute in 1918 due to the British and American blockade of German ports? After the US entered the war, Wilson ordered a massive campaign of mine laying in the North Sea for the purpose of starving Germany into surrender.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:18 pm
I don’t know about the road to hell, but at least the road to self-destruction is paved with good intentions. That is certainly one lesson of the Lebanon incursion or our invasion of Iraq. I have no doubt at all that Cuba and the United States long thought of each other as illegitimate governments and perhaps still do. Yet both had the sense not to start a war over it. Especially while the Soviet Union was around, that would hardly have made the United States safer, and Cuba would still be in deep trouble. Wasn’t the Cuban missile crisis just a lesson that Democrats and liberals aren’t wooses but actually have more sense about looking out for national interests than hard-liners?
January 1st, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I dunno, JohH. The U.S. put missiles in Turkey targeting the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union put missiles in Cuba targeting the U.S. The U.S. withdrew missiles from Turkey. The Soviet Union withdrew missiles from Cuba. There was parity.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:41 pm
You would have pissed in your pants
after 15 minutes
of living under “innacurate rocket fire”.
Why should Israelis give a crap about
criticism from those who don’t a damn about
their safety and well being ?
January 1st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Thank you.
January 1st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I love reading all the helpless whining
on liberal blogs about
Israel striking back.
It shows the world is still not run by
clueless hippies.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Let’s not forget that Hamas can fuck up Tel Aviv real nice.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Hamas didn’t provoke Israel. Hamas rocket was in retaliation of Israel’s blockade of Gaza strip.
Frankly, it’s a great time for Hamas to use longer range missile and shell out some dough to hire hit men to eliminate a few undesirables.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I love reading all the helpless whining
on liberal blogs about
Israel striking back.
It shows the world is still not run by
clueless hippies.
I am sure pro-Apartheid white South Africans were similarly amused by the (seemingly) ineffective opposition to their regime by a few left-wing activists and singers in the 80’s. But, sooner or later, reality happens.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Georgia provokes Russia. Russia attacks disproportionately. Russia= bad guy
Hamas provokes Israel. Israel attacks disproportionately. Hamas = bay guy
January 1st, 2009 at 7:13 pm
The bombing of Gaza, and the defiance of the Palestinians, reminded me of another heroic people that, although barely had any weapons, decided to die fighting against a much more powerful enemy, instead of being push around and be taken to concentration camps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising
January 1st, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I’d point out the inherent evil in Apartheid and the illiberality of citizenship status tied to religion, but that would be antisemitic.
Excuse me, but citizenship in Israel does not require religious belief. There is a right of return tied to Jewish nationality. Anyone of Jewish descent is eligible, regardless of belief. I have not seen anyone say that Germany’s right of return for those of German nationality is racist.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Re wondering
And in fact, a considerable number of Jews from various Eastern European countries who had ancestral ties to Germany have immigrated there over the last 20 years and been granted citizenship. As an example, there used to be blogger named Alon Levy who was born in Israel but had a German grandparent and was granted German citizenship.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:42 pm
I see that the blogs favorite needledick, Mr. Farid, the phony Zoroastrian, is back again spewing out his crap. Now if the Government of Israel has taken a leaf from the Hafaz Assad playbook and, instead of using smart munitions to keep Palestinian casualties to a minimum, had instead arranged several hundred artillery pieces along the border with Gaza and turned that place into a free fire zone, then Mr. Farid would really have something to whine about. The residents of Gaza can be thankful that Hafaz Assad is not the Prime Minister of Israel as the fatalities would be in the 10s of thousands, not in the hundreds.
January 1st, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Why should Israelis give a crap about
criticism from those who don’t a damn about
their safety and well being ?
We pay for it, asshole.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
SLC Says:
January 1st, 2009 at 6:18 pm “The answer to this issue is to spend some of the foreign aid money going to the Gaza Strip on improving the hospitals . . .”
If only those imaginary hospitals could get power, clean water and less cratering – it would be great!
I’d really like to hear how you can disassociate from reality so easily . . .
January 1st, 2009 at 8:13 pm
I love SLC’s metric for gauging whether an act of violence is justified: if it’s not worse than what Assad did to Hafa, then it’s perfectly fine.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:19 pm
What’s this about Israel starving out Gaza with a blockade. Gaza has a border with a fellow Arab state, Egypt. It is sealed too. Why do we only blame Israel? I won’t answer that one.
Bookwormhole.net — over 700 published book reviews.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Re: I’d point out the inherent evil in Apartheid and the illiberality of citizenship status tied to religion, but that would be antisemitic.
Israeli citizenship is tied to ethnicity, not religion. Of course that’s an illiberal concept. (So is basing citizenship on the accident of birth within national borders.) So what? It doesn’t make it evil. Or have we come to the point where fashionable Yglesian hipsters consider everything illiberal to be evil? Truly, Yglesiasn hipsters are among the least tolerant people (in a meaningful sense) around these days.
What you call illiberalism, I call common sense.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
SLC,
You said, “Unfortunately, the Government of Israel found out the hard way that many of the women supposedly in labor were, in fact, homicide bombers armed with explosive belts”
Do you really know of any cases of supposedly pregnant women blowing themselves up at internal West Bank checkpoints? Most people don’t really count 0 as many. And when you make your argument depend on such fantasies it just makes clear how non-serious your arguments are.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Al,
While Hamas has made clear that it believes Palestinians should control all of the area that is currently in dispute (much as the extremists in the settlement movement believe that Israel has) there is no evidence that under such circumstances Hamas favors genocide. While getting to accuse ones opponent of intending genocide certainly sounds like a powerful moral argument, it becomes somewhat weakened when the charge is not actually based on any evidence.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Leaving aside weather it is morally or strategically justified, Matt’s post was just a long-winded way of saying that the best way to get a group of people who don’t care about you to pay attention to you is to kill some of them. This is obviously true. It is something George Washington understood, for one example.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:57 pm
SLC – I know you’re an old dude, but one day you and I are going to meet and it’s going to be ugly, you Kahanist fuck.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Who violated the ceasefire first and most severely, Israel or Hamas? As I understand it the Hamas rocket fire was due to Israeli ceasefire violations, but I don’t know whether this was justified or what the story was.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:25 pm
What would be interesting would be this: ponder an alternative history where the CSA won its independence, and Matt was on the front lines in DC. Every day, rockets poured across the border striking poor neighborhoods in southeast DC. Would Matt be pondering reconciliation? Would Matt be urging restraint? Would Matt want to ignore the stated desires of the other side and merely pay attention to the current military capabilities?
January 1st, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Al,
While Hamas has made clear that it believes Palestinians should control all of the area that is currently in dispute (much as the extremists in the settlement movement believe that Israel has) there is no evidence that under such circumstances Hamas favors genocide.
But that’s false.
The call to genocide is included right in Hamas’s charter, in Article 7.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:31 pm
And, again, let’s remember the point of Matthew’s post here – according to Matthew, Israel’s refusal to fully enforce its laws with respect to settlement is totally morally equivalent to Hamas’s call to genocide, as set forth in its charter.
You have to be pretty desperate to excuse Hamas to say that Israel’s settlement policy is equivalent to Hamas’s call to genocide.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Despite their military superiority, I doubt if Israel will be successful against Hamas in Gaza. Hamas needs to only ride out the air strikes — move their missiles into tunnels and have their remaining leadership disperse — then they’ll be able to fight the IDF on their own terms, when ground forces enter Gaza. It will be house-to-house fighting until the IDF takes high enough casualties that the Israeli government decides it can’t afford to throw anymore resources into fighting a guerrilla war. Before that occurs, we’ll see lots of Palestian civilians caught in the crossfire, and Hamas will score propaganda points. If Israel is forced to withdraw, Hamas will gain — even if it takes heavy casualties — and have an improved standing the hearts and minds of the Arab world. If by some chance Israel decides to stay-the-course in Gaza despite a guerrilla war, Hamas wins the propaganda points, because the results on the Palestinian civilian population will look like genocide. Hamas sees this as a win-win situation, and unless Israel has learned something from its previous failure to take out Hezbollah, it’s going to get its nose bloodied again and reputation further sullied.
Likewise, I suspect the days of Israel being a US strategic ally are numbered. Not that we’re going to fall over and start supporting the Palestinians, but the political cost of supporting Israel’s failure to manage its Palestinian insurgency will be too high.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Re Francisco The Man
Gee, that sounds like a threat.
Re Lon
If there was so much as 1 case, it would justify caution on the part of Israeli Authorities. In addition, there have been cases where the ambulances transporting sick Palestinians have been searched and weapons and explosives have been found.
Re Seedee Vee
Excuse me Mr. Vee. There are hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The power reductions and deliveries of fuel oil for a poswr station in Gaza which Mr. Vee mentions have come in response to rocket fire from the various terrorist organization there. Apparently, Mr. Vee and the other Israel bashers think that the Government of Israel is somehow obligated to allow the terrorists to be able to fire off their qassems and mortars at will with no retaliation.
Re Lon
Mr. Lon is somewhat deluded here. The leaders of Hamas consider all of Palestine theirs and have stated that, in the event of a Palestinian victory, the entire Jewish population of Israel will be ethnically cleansed, either by expulsion or and Eichmann solution.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:57 pm
To Ron (#20),
Having seen the way Israelis drive around Sderot, and having observed them chain smoking while pumping gasoline into their cars at gas stations, I really don’t think that the rockets from Gaza are all that far up on the list of actual dangers they face.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:28 pm
The current campaign will not materially affect anything. End of story.
The misery will play itself.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:30 pm
SLC is projecting. The reality is closer to Israel eventually perpetuating genocide upon the Palestinians.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Hey, there is power and money to be had in dedicating yourself to fighting some ‘other’, the enemy. Lots more power and lots more money for the Israelis so they do it better. It is however a disastrous way to run a country. Well, as if Israel or the territories are really a country or countries.
You know I have heard not a single repeatable scholar of antiquity in Israel believes there is more than a sliver of historical truth in what we call the Old Testament. 70 million Americans, give or take, believe it’s virtually all literally true. The word irony hardly begins to cover this circumstance.
January 1st, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Israel has no right to exist as a STATE. The UN had no legal authority to partition Palestine as it did, or allow the creation of the Zionist state. The UN had a mandate to develop Palestine and allow a portion – a SMALL portion – of Palestine to be set aside to relocate Jews displaced from the war. Period. Nothing more.
While I have criticized Hamas every time for pathetic tactics in their resistance against Israel, the fact remains that Hamas is basically justified in anything they do based on the sixty years that Israel has engaged in state terrorism against the Palestinians. That includes lobbing rockets into Israeli territory. If Israel doesn’t want their civilians getting killed – the same citizens who mostly support the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the military adventures against Lebanon and the Palestinians – they should move them out of range – and out of what should be Palestinian territory.
In fact, as one article I read the other day said, the fact that Ashkelon is being targeted by Hamas rockets is ironic – because Ashkelon was in fact settled by Palestinians until they were driven out by the 1948 Israeli terror attacks against Palestinians.
From Robert Fisk:
“Nobody can reject or condemn the revolt of a people that has been suffering under military occupation for 45 years against occupation force,” said General Shlomo Gazit, former chief of Israeli military intelligence, in 1993.
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 am
Al, I know it’s been proven at least 300 times in these here parts that you simply can’t read… but it’s probably worth doing this for the 301st time.
“And, again, let’s remember the point of Matthew’s post here – according to Matthew, Israel’s refusal to fully enforce its laws with respect to settlement is totally morally equivalent to Hamas’s call to genocide, as set forth in its charter.”
No, this isn’t the point of the post. Matt does not base his argument on a moral equivalence. Chait claimed the moral high ground for Israel, based on their nobler intentions. Yglesias is arguing that the relative moral merits of each side’s intentions are only part of the story. Judged based on the actual facts on the ground, the Israelis are killing far more Palestinian civilians than vice versa, and their settlement policies are oriented toward a long-term solution that is completely unworkable.
This seems to be the most difficult thing in the world for neocons to grasp — at some point our actions must be judged by their real-world outcomes, not by their moral clarity on the drawing board.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 am
And if you read “The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas)”:
http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html
nothing in it talks about genocide against Jews – only the elimination of the Zionist conspiracy against Islam.
In fact, one codecil explicitly says this:
As Wikipedia reports:
This quite clearly establishes that Hamas goal is not the genocide of Jews in Palestine, but the elimination of the Zionist STATE – a valid goal, despite its religious basis, since the UN had no legal authority to create such a state.
As for attacks on civilians, Wikipedia has this:
And this:
Bottom line: Most of the statements made against Hamas are based on hearsay, and the statements made by some of its members on occasion which do not clearly reflect its official policy.
This is the same situation as Iran, where random statements made by various members of the Iranian government are taken as official policy, which they are not – and on top of which, many were mis-translated, sometimes deliberately by known Israeli Mossad front organizations like MEMRI, whose translations are quoted several times in the Wikipedia article on Hamas.
On top of which, Hamas’ declared goals have been modified frequently over the years as part of negotiations. While Hamas has never renounced its ultimate purpose of returning all of Palestine under Palestinian control – again, a legitimate goal based on the illegality of the Israeli state – they have accepted lesser goals frequently.
Israeli government officials for the last sixty years, however, have made it equally plain that their Zionist goals were the complete displacement of Palestinians from Palestine and the expansion of “Greater Israel” into countries as far east as Iraq.
If Hamas random statements can be adjudged evidence of a desire to commit genocide on Jews, then these same level of statements from Israeli officials can be adjudged a desire to commit genocide on not just Palestinians, but Arabs throughout the Middle East.
What’s good for the goose…
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 am
I’m glad Mr Hack saved me the time and energy it takes to show Al for the complete liar he is here.
For the really slow: Israel is a state. Israelis/Jews are people. Calling for the elimination of the state does not require or even imply killing all its people. Destroying the Soviet Union did not entail killing hundreds of millions of Russians. Using the word “genocide” in this context is the height of intellectual dishonesty.
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:31 am
‘Using the word “genocide” in this context is the height of intellectual dishonesty.’
Nolaboyd, meet Al.
Seriously, why does Al, like so many of these Straussian fucks, think that rhetoric is so much more significant than, say, the reality of hundreds of deaths?
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:26 am
Great Post Matt,
Although I have to wonder what measures you suggest Palestinians in Gaza do. I think when talking about resistance to imperialism and colonialism, one can argue about various tactics of violent resistance. Because when your entire society is being systematically destroyed and your children have no future they have every right to respond violently to that situation.
In addition I think that its important that if you recommend a people commit to non-violence in the face of massive violence from a far more powerful foe, then you have a duty to stand with them. As Malcolm X put it, you are asking them to “suffer peacefully” and its important for credibility sake that if you are asking people to suffer that you take some risks yourself and join them. And I don’t mean just blogging about it, although that is important too.
I would also like to add that this is not abstract, there are non-violent demonstrations happening almost every day in the West Bank either in Nilin, Bilin or a dozen other places. And there are Israelis (Anarchists Against the Wall) and Internationals (ISM) who are a part of these demonstrations and in some cases the organizing of these demonstrations. In fact there are several non-violent activists that have already been murdered, a couple of them international (Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall).
Non-violence is no joke, it requires a tremendous amount of courage, self-control, resolve and patience; and dont think you can truly understand this without doing it yourself. As a person who was born and grew up in the US and had participated in ISM in 2002, I could only do it for a few months before I became absolutely terrified for my own life and the hopelessness of it all.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:04 am
My roommate was there with the ISM 2002-2005 in just about every place you could get rubber bulleted, tear gassed, bombed, or shot and he’s sort of a fucking wreck. I’ve got friends who served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan and at least there you could shoot back at people.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:22 am
If you get you wish, and the state of Israel is no more, what exactly do you think the endgame will be?
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
wondering #28, “Anyone of Jewish descent is eligible, regardless of belief.” As I have read, Jews who have renounced Judaism and become xians or apostates etc. are not eligible, though the basic law says that anyone with a Jewish mother or grandmother is eligible. I guess that is not racist?
There was a big legal problem with ex-Soviet immigrants who were exactly practicing.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:32 am
I’m sure that the column by Mr. Yglesias’ favorite columnist in todays Washington Post will raise the blood pressure of the Israel bashers on this blog.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101780.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR
In addition, a link to a column by Michael Gerson will not allow those blood pressure to recede.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/01/AR2009010101782.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:27 am
About four to five million more Jews living in the US/Canada.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:49 am
Well, we have a few honest questions, is the failure of the Hamas Rocket attacks to kill Israelis a function of design or of luck?
Why is Egypt blockading Hamas as well? Are they a pawn of Israel?
If Hamas stopped their attacks on Israel, would Israel open the border again?
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:15 am
Well I awfully hope it wasn’t the only state wiped out of existence, I would prefer if all of them are. But lets suppose Israel is the only one, I would want a state of its citizens, open to immigration with equal land rights and immigration rights for its current residents. In addition I would expect a restoration of its indigenous inhabitants and their descendants who are now living in refugee camps. The could even rename the place “The Holy Land”, “Terra-Santa”, or just Israel-Palestine and you would get few complaints.
The bigger question is what do you want Israel to be, do you honestly want to live in a Walled in Jewish Ghetto run by Generals? Is that the type of environment that you would want to raise your children in? My best friend is from a prominent family in Israel, all of his siblings have left it permanently because they feel that the entire society is rotten from top to bottom. I feel really bad for them. I also identify with them because I feel the same way about the United States, with Israel and its acolytes playing no small role.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:53 am
“And in general this is an important aspect of the conflict — irrespective of intentions, over the years you have many more dead Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.”
Seems to me that the most important aspect of the conflict is “never learning.”
I mean, where else on earth would it even be a question that if you lob rockets at neighboring country, eventually they will attack back? And go look at that chart that shows how the number of rockets has increased insanely– from about 4 in 2000 to 2000 in 2008. It’s time to pound Hamas out of existence. Obvious, simple, inevitable when you go poking armies with sticks.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:02 am
Matt and other self-hating Jews might be interested in this
article, by a Muslim physician.
But they probably won’t bother to read it.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:03 am
This is not about lobbing rockets at a neighboring country. Gaza is not a neighboring country. It’s closer to a giant prison camp, an Indian Reservation or the Warsaw Ghetto writ large.
Gaza exists entirely under Israeli control. The Israeli’s for their part have adopted a policy of terror and starvation inside Gaza, under the guilse of ‘pulling out.’ It’s a cheap way to brutalize and not take any responsibility.
Does Hamas lob rockets? Sure they do. Is that an act of war? Yes it is. Has Israel occupied Gaza going on forty years? Yes. Does Israel control Gaza’s life? Yes. Who is warring on who? Hamas response is that its rockets are a futile but necessary act of defense, a response to intolerable conditions, to Israel’s war on it and the Palestinians. Is this true? Well, yeah. And what’s Israel’s response? To make conditions ever more intolerable.
SLC, who veers wildly between mildly irrational and full bore neonazi fruitcake, repeatedly makes the point that this is a war that’s been going on for a hundred years.
But for some reason, he’s too caught up in his apocalyptic posturing to ever consider the implications of his own words: That this hundred years war is a war of Zionism and its creation, Israel, upon the Palestinian people.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 am
“And what’s been happening is that whatever Hamas’ ambitions may or may not have been, they were scattering short-range inaccurate rocket fire on Israel that was causing little damage.”
I find this kind of reasoning really weak. Don’t worry about those rockets, chances are they won’t do too much damage! A nation has to defend its citizens. Can you imagine the response from the US if Mexicans were launching rockets into the US? The notion that a military response should be proportionate is silly . That is how you prolong a conflict endlessly. A truly proportionate response would be for Israel to just randomly start launching rockets into Gaza.
The plight of the Palestinians is a sad one, yet it is also of their own making. Let’s not forget that they elected Hamas to power. The pain they are now feeling should not come as a surprise.
As a thought experiment it is useful to ask what would happen if the Palestinians gave up terrorism, agreed that Israel wasn’t going anywhere and had a right to exist, stopped teaching their children religiously fueled hatred of the Israelis and started agitating for their own state through nonviolent means. I tend to think that they would have their own state pretty quickly and their people would be much better off. Why is that scenario almost unthinkable? What does that say about the Palestinians.
Given the US response to 9-11 I tend to think that we would far more violent and aggressive if placed in the same situation.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:52 am
“It’s time to pound Hamas out of existence.”
Back to the Stone Age, you might say? It’s hard to argue with a strategy that’s worked so many different times.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
“Given the US response to 9-11…”
Which also killed nobody?
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
And what’s been happening is that whatever Hamas’ ambitions may or may not have been, they were scattering short-range inaccurate rocket fire on Israel that was causing little damage.
My own sympathies are pronouncedly pro-Palestinian, but I have a hard time with this kind of ‘moral luck’ argument. I don’t see how an actor gets moral credit for lack of success, despite their best efforts, at an attempt to do something evil.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
This is BS, I am sorry Israel is better at killing than Hamas. The fact remains that Israel kills in response. No matter how you slice it or try and justify it, there would be no violence in Gaza or in Israel if the Palestinians would stop the violence. The blame rests on them and them alone. If someone breaks into your home and you kill him, that’s his problem, you are innocent. Time and time again since the beginning the terrorists have refused any peace or treaty that would allow the continued existence of Israel. Stop defending killers, they get exactly what they deserve. The Palestinians get what they deserve to. If they aren’t protesting Hamas and their tactics then they can’t cry about Israeli responses that leaves civilians dead.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I skip over Richard Steven Hack’s diatribes – life’s too short. However, as I indicated above, Hamas’s does not simply call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It calls for killing the Jews. I even cited the article of Hamas’s charter which calls for killing the Jews.
I just read the Hamas charter. The passage Al alludes to relates to Judgment Day and sounds suspiciously like Christian End Times groups here who want to finesse God into bringing about the end of the world — and the death of the Jews — by stirring up the hornet nest of the Mid East. Does Al also condemn the Christian End Timers?
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
As a thought experiment it is useful to ask what would happen if the Palestinians gave up terrorism, agreed that Israel wasn’t going anywhere and had a right to exist, stopped teaching their children religiously fueled hatred of the Israelis…I tend to think that they would have their own state pretty quickly and their people would be much better off.
Dan: I think Israel’s actions in the West Bank badly undermine your thought experiment. If Israeli leadership were serious about living in peace under a two state solution, the obvious move would be to undermine Hamas in Gaza by helping the Palestinians in the West Bank to develop a truly sovereign, viable, independent nation, and then use that as exhibit “A” as to why it makes sense for the Gazans to dump Hamas (because peaceful coexistence with Israel pays dividends!). Israel ought to be unilaterally pulling back to its 1967 borders, reversing its colonization of Palestinian lands, and announcing a large economic aid package to develop the new Palestinian state. I think under such a scenario a lot of Palestinians might question whether or not it makes sense to continue supporting war-mongers like Hamas. Unfortunately, playing ball with Israel doesn’t seem to yield much in the way of deliverables if you’re a Palestinian.
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
There is plenty of land in the Sinai peninsula which is being unused by Egypt. Egypt, like Israel, is a recipient of billions of dollars in U.S. aid. Why not use this aid as leverage to encourage Egypt to cede an area equal in size to Gaza (but closer to the border of mainland Egypt than Israel) to any Gazans who want to move there? This new territory would be out of rocket range of Israel, but Palestinians who want to live in peace and have a chance to build their own prosperous territory would have a chance to do so there. Palestinians who would rather stay in Gaza and fire rockets at Israel will be able to do so as well (and suffer the inevitable retaliations), but they won’t be able to use the first group of Palestinians as human shields.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Jasper,
What you say is all fine, but I don’t think it underimnes my point at all. You are only talking about what Israel should do as if the Palestinians have no say in the matter. Do you really think that all it would take to end the conflict is for Israel change its approach? The Palestinians have to make some changes too!
Too often when there is another suicide bombing or rocket attack from the Palestinians it is excused as just what what those Palestinians do. The attitude seems to be that getting upset about it is like getting mad at a cat for killing a bird, it is just their nature. Despite all the crap that the Palestinians have to put up with, they do have the choice not to launch rockets into Israel.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
tomemos,
I think you missed my point. We killed a hell of a lot of people and threw away a lot of our civil liberties in the process. My point is that faced with similar provocation, the US would be far more violent and oppressive than the Israelis have been. Thus it seems a bit hypocritical for us to be all that outraged at Israel.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm
If anything, the Gaza situation shows that the land-for-peace strategy doesn’t work. Israel gave up the land in Gaza and still didn’t get peace. It’s impossible to have peace with a group committed to your destruction. Two things are necessary for there to be peace between Israel and Gaza:
1) Gaza has to be run by Palestinians who are interested in peace with Israel.
2) Those Palestinians have to have a monopoly on the use of force in Gaza.
Until that happens, expect more of the same.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
You are only talking about what Israel should do as if the Palestinians have no say in the matter.
They mostly don’t have a say in what Israel does. Very few Arabs have the vote.
Do you really think that all it would take to end the conflict is for Israel change its approach?
Of course not. But a change in Israeli policy is almost certainly a prerequisite to ending the conflict.
Despite all the crap that the Palestinians have to put up with, they do have the choice not to launch rockets into Israel.
Sure. They could refrain from reacting violently to Israeli provocations just as Israel could refrain from reacting violently to Palestinian provocations. As it happens there’s now a tit-for-tat cycle of violence in evidence. Which is just what the doctor ordered if one is not interested in compromise. I have no doubt that plenty of actors on both sides are not interested in compromise. It would just be nice if some actors on the Israeli side could force their government to engage in a policy that undermines the appeal of the radicals. That means showing you’re interested in a two-state solution, which in turn at minimum means getting serious about ending Israeli colonization. Israel, of course, isn’t serious about a two-state solution, most Palestinians know this, and this inevitably feeds radicalism.
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
If anything, the Gaza situation shows that the land-for-peace strategy doesn’t work.
It doesn’t show what you assert. For starters nobody is suggesting that “land for peace” alone (sans economic development) is sufficient. You can’t combine a pullout of Gaza with economic warfare and then moan that the Palestinians aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain. But secondly, Israel has aggressively colonized a significant portion of the West Bank. Pulling out of only Gaza doesn’t satisfy the land-for-peace ideal. If Israel leaves ALL Palestinian lands by pulling back to its 1967 borders and allows the Palestinians to have a fully sovereign independent nation and cooperates with the rest of the rich world in funding robust economic development efforts, you can get back to us about Palestinian intransigence.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
There will never be peace so long as too many on both sides want it all. Extremist Pals want Israel and the jews to disappear and extremist Israelis and “settlers” from Brooklyn want all the land “promised” in the bible. Neither side will get it all. Israel will not disappear, Pals will not sit under grandpa’s lemon tree in Haifa nor will the millions of Arabs on the West Bank and Gaza graciously move to Jordan. In the mean time, both sides never seem to tire of killing eachother’s children. Maybe its all part of the middle east negotiation process.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Excuse me, but citizenship in Israel does not require religious belief. There is a right of return tied to Jewish nationality. Anyone of Jewish descent is eligible, regardless of belief.
Right, so a mixture of racism and religious bigotry, then.
What’s this about Israel starving out Gaza with a blockade. Gaza has a border with a fellow Arab state, Egypt. It is sealed too. Why do we only blame Israel? I won’t answer that one.
Because of the bombing and because…Well, we don’t! There was a protest outside the Egyptian London embassy just today and Egypt has seen massive protests both in Khartoum and in Cairo.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
“It doesn’t show what you assert. For starters nobody is suggesting that “land for peace” alone (sans economic development) is sufficient.”
You can’t have economic development without rule of law and a government in Gaza that seeks economic development. The Israelis can’t do anything to give that to the Palestinians, who had every opportunity to focus on economic development after the Israel withdrawal from Gaza. In fact, the high tech greenhouses Israelis built in Gaza, which exported produce to Europe, were purchased by wealthy Jews to be given to the Palestinians intact. The Palestinians promptly destroyed them.
“There will never be peace so long as too many on both sides want it all. Extremist Pals want Israel and the jews to disappear and extremist Israelis and “settlers” from Brooklyn want all the land “promised” in the bible.”
Here’s the key difference. The Israeli government has a monopoly on the use of force, so extremist Israelis aren’t an insurmountable obstacle to peace. Remember the extremist Israelis who were forcibly removed from Gaza? There is no such restraint of extremists on the Palestinian side; therefore, there is no hope for peace.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
My own sympathies are pronouncedly pro-Palestinian, but I have a hard time with this kind of ‘moral luck’ argument. I don’t see how an actor gets moral credit for lack of success, despite their best efforts, at an attempt to do something evil.
Think of it as much the same mechanism that means attempted murderers get lighter sentences than actual ones.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Remember the extremist Israelis who were forcibly removed from Gaza?
Uh…They were forcibly removed by other Jews. Imagine if Palestinians had tried the same, even assuming that orders against stopping them failed to trigger mutiny within the IDF.
And don’t try and spring Fatah-Hamas combat as a counter-example. Fatah were engaged in an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected government by force. That was two violent forces (one with an electoral mandate, the other without) vying for power and nothing comparable to the removal of illegal settlers by overwhelming state force.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:53 pm
# 74 – Of course! The war crime of ethnic cleansing! That is bound to resolve the issue.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Several people have repeated this. It’s not true…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_nationality_law
It’s acceptable to be athiest/agnostic.
This finesses the more complicated questions regarding land ownership (jewish national fund). And the I rather believe defining ethnicity solely along maternal lines is clearly religious (though possibly defensible)
I’m sure that one could mount a reasonable defence of the religious character, but it’s pretty dishonest to equate Israeli citizenship with most other countries.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:23 am
“Uh…They were forcibly removed by other Jews. Imagine if Palestinians had tried the same, even assuming that orders against stopping them failed to trigger mutiny within the IDF.”
James,
You have missed the point spectacularly. You don’t think I’m aware that the Israeli troops who forcibly removed the Israeli settlers were also Jews? The point is that the Israeli government has a monopoly of force over its people, and so has the power to enforce the terms of a settlement with the Palestinians, even if the terms of that settlement are unsatisfactory to a radical minority of Israelis. There is no similar will or ability on the Palestinian side. Until there is, there will be no chance of peace, because Hamas or one of the numerous smaller splinter groups will continue to launch attacks on Israel, regardless of what concessions Israel makes to the de jure Palestinian leadership.
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