If, on October 6th, 2023, you’d told me that I’d spend much of the next three months thinking and writing about the conflict in the Middle East, I wouldn’t have believed you. And if you’d told me that talking about this conflict would be harder, more emotionally charged, and more plagued with absolutism than my many conversations about trans rights or racial reckonings or Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face, I’d have told you that you were out of your mind.
Kill all of Hamas even if it means killing an unlimited number of non-combatant Palestinians is probably a lingering result of hatred for Muslim Arabs after the 9-11 takedown of the World Trade Center. The desire for revenges leads to a Hatfield–McCoy feud that can go on for far too long.
Some have seen these words from me before, but I'll write them again. I had not been in Vietnam long when I saw the bodies of dead Viet Cong sappers found dead in the wire after the previous night's action. Their body's broken from gunfire, bones snapped and protruding from their skin, intestines in plain view. They were young, mostly about 13 years old. My first thought was that their mothers were waiting for them. My next thought was, so is mine. I was 18. They were child soldiers who had come to kill me. They were the enemy. The children who appeared on the road wherever we stopped after a truck hit a mine or we waited to cross a pontoon bridge were not the enemy. If a VC popped up in their midst, I would have chosen my M-16 in preference to a frag.
America was aghast when it learned of the My Lai massacre. Most of America anyway. Sadly, Isriel, America's darling, seems to have fewer detractors as they frag the children at the bridge.
This is an emotionally fraught subject, and I respect that people can have different takes on it. I can feel your compassion as you try to slice and dice tricky situations which have no clean answers. Please don't take what I have to say as being insensitive to the emotion involved, on a personal level (like me and you).
However, I fear that in the bigger picture (beyond me and you) such a framing is calculated to create overwhelming emotions which saturate the rational mind, alas more often bringing out the worst cognition (even while invoking the best).
Could you personally look into their eyes and order a small company of soldiers into certain death, in order to enable a larger formation to retreat and escape that fate? Or could you look instead into the eyes of the larger group who would die due to your inability to sacrifice the smaller group? Does this way of making a decision by eye contact squeamishness strike you as functional?
That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome. It favors local rather than global optimization, or short term versus long term thinking.
But it's even more problematic if the morally costly option is presented in isolation - your scenario posits nothing about the consequences of your deciding NOT to take an action which results in the death of a non-combatant child. Your scenario omits any balancing, presenting only an isolated moral cost with nothing to be gained. If there were no overriding reasons, then no I could not. If there WERE over-riding reasons, then whether or not I as in imperfect human could personally take some action does not determine whether it's the wisest action.
And again, I realize you are trying to sort out some morally fraught no-win situations as best a human can, so I have a lot of sympathy and my (hopefully gentle enough) dissent is not motivated by disrespect.
In the overwhelmingly unlikely hypothetical case of my personally needing to shoot an innocent child in order to save a larger group, whether I did or not, I'd likely be one of the casualties. It would likely destroy me either way. But that feature of my psyche doesn't guide us in selecting the best path.
"That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome."
I understand the dangers of appeals to emotion in situations where logic is necessary, but the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality.
No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to blockade two million people into a relatively small area, persecute them for decades, and then drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack.
No rational person could claim that because these extremists committed this atrocious attack, ANY response, no matter how atrocious, was the exclusive fault of the extremists.
No rational person could call the 2 million people living in the region, with extremely limited ability to leave thanks to the aforementioned blockade, "human shields" instead of "innocent, uninvolved civilians." No rational person could argue that the foremost military power in the region, with the full support of arguably the foremost military power in the world, can't do better than dropping 65,000 tons worth of unguided bombs on civilian targets.
So I think this "look in the eyes" rhetoric, is about humanising the people who are dying right now. We SHOULD feel emotion for them. It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life. Every single person staunchly defending Israel's atrocities does so on the back of this 1200 people killed on October 7th. And righty so. This, too, should stir our emotions.
I'm just astonished by how many people only seem to be able to generate emotion in one direction.
Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find.
> "No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to ... drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack."
That latter assertion is quite a good outrage producer, but as is my wont, I wondered where this figure "3 Hiroshima's" came from, as it seems surprisingly large upon even superficial consideration. The Hiroshima bomb was estimated at 12 to 18 kilotons, so three times that would be 36,000 to 54,000 tonnes of TNT.
The largest (non-nuclear) ordinance used by the IDF is the BLU117, or so called 2000 pound bomb, which actually contains about 1000 pounds of TNT equivalent, so it would take about 70,000 -110,000 of such bombs to equal 3 Hiroshima bombs.
For context, the US has supplied 5400 BLU117, but it's unlikely that all have been used. We do know that hundreds have been tho.
Of course, the vast majority of the artillery, rockets and bombs used in Gaza were much smaller than that monster. So that claim is a bit dubious, likely exaggerated by severalfold, perhaps even an order of magnitude high. But that estimate would be subject to revision with facts from a competent and unbiased source.
So where did the claim come from? Apparently, it came from the Gaza Media Office, an organ of Hamas (ie: part of their propaganda apparatus).
From what I can find in a quick search, it looks like those who wish to fuel the anti-Israel narratives are (1) exaggerating the number of weapons dropped or fired, (2) falsely assuming that all of them are very large indeed, and (3) counting the total starting weight (including casings, rocket motors, guidance, fuel, etc) as being pure TNT. And counting on an audience who *wants* to believe the worst and will not do any checking.
Simply taking Hamas' word for it, and repeating without any verification (or even quick reality-check arithmetic) their 3 Hiroshima framing, which was calculated to foster outrage in a gullible public in the West, is less than optimal for factuality.
Likewise assuming that 100% of that exaggerated 65,000 tonnes of explosive was unguided (better estimates of the percentage is 40-45%), and assuming that it was all dropped on civilians (and none of it on military targets). Good for outrage, bad for truth.
Let's all beware of unreflective echoing of propaganda - and the "motivated reasoning" bias we can ALL experience in uncritically accepting anything which seems to support the point we wish to make. This is a note to myself as well, so nobody should take it too personally, but we should all take it seriously and up our game.
(Let me note that my primary point is about using known unreliable sources like Hamas in our writing. Doing post-writing research which is selectively looking for the highest numbers one can cull from other sources in order to be 'right' - ie: sources which were not considered before writing - does NOT mean the initial credulity goes away. At best it means one was lucky.)
And once again - even if the figures from Hamas (or from peace groups, etc) are grossly exaggerated for propaganda effect, there is zero doubt that Israel has nevertheless engaged in truly massive destruction in Gaza, and that can be justly condemned. So I'm not arguing against the main point, but cautioning about good process - about not believing and amplifying a questionable source just because it supports our point.)
(Aside: Apart from total quantities, just the use of several hundred 2000 pound bombs in a crowded area like Gaza - which has been verified by bomb crater analysis of satellite photos - is in itself very hard to justify, even if it's not tens of thousands of such bombs. I am appalled at many things that Israel has done).
But we can do that condemnation carefully, without being taken in by easily dispelled misinformation from propaganda sources. We must trust that the truth is enough to support our points, with no need for exaggeration.
"Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find."
For the record, I find disclaimers like this, which you use quite frequently, to be unnecessary and condescending. If you write a sentence, you don't then need to instruct people to read it.
If, in their reply, you feel that they've made an unfair assumption about your motives, it's obviously appropriate to point that out. But I think it's sensible to give people the benefit of the doubt that they'll at least read what you've written and aren't going to react like irrational children.
This is just my feeling on it, of course. Others might feel differently. But thought I'd offer the feedback, as stuff like that just makes it exponentially more likely I won't bother replying.
Anyway, that said, I appreciate this comment. We completely agree that accurate, clearly expressed information is important. And while I did check the figures for myself, I didn't go into the same detail you did regarding tonnage vs direct explosive force. So, looks like the correct figure is around one Hiroshima's worth, no? Google is telling me that the explosive yield of a bomb is typically around 30-40% of the weight. 65,000 x 0.3 = 19,500. Little Boy, according to Wikipedia, was 15,000.
I don't have any great problem using information from Hamas or Gaza as long as I do some verification myself. Hamas' figures have proven to be accurate over the many years of this conflict, there's no good reason to believe they aren't here. I think a lot of people constantly trying to cast doubt on the "Hamas figures" are doing so because the reality of what Israel is doing is tough fro them to swallow. And while Hiroshima comparison are undeniably emotive, I think it's also quite difficult for the people to get a sense of what 65,000 tons of bombs means. Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot. But there's no context.
Anyway, I'd repeated the "3 Hiroshimas" in an article, which I've now corrected (I'll just stick with tonnage rather than "Hiroshima units" until I find a better way to convey the scale), so again, really appreciate the correction.
> "the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality."
Exactly. People on all sides are using and being influenced by emotional manipulation, and so cognitively compromised that they often cannot recognize even basic truths.
Where we may differ is that I believe the only hope of minimizing the terrible outcomes is through reducing that irrational raw emotionality, rather than expanding it.
Let me be very clear about something, which is usually misunderstood and which I fear might easily be misunderstood here. I do not believe that pure rationality alone can ever provide a guide, by humans or any other intelligence, organic or artificial. An absolutely rational entity, operating based on pure reason without any non-rational assumptions, values, or axioms, has no purpose or goal or meaning. Without values, it's no more or less rational to destroy the world with dirty nuclear weapons than to cure cancer.
I think the latter is a better outcome, but only because it is more coherent with my (irrational) values.
I see reason and rationality not as providing the values (which are not rational), but as providing the tools for effectively implementing values, and avoiding sabotaging oneself through disconnect with reality.
So when I advocate for a rational perspective on a situation like Israel/Palestine, I'm not suggesting that rationality should or even could be untethered to values and emotions as the underlying motivations, only that our reasoning and exploration of alternatives not be cognitively blinded by emotions so as to inadvertently undermine those underlying values and emotions.
As best I can decipher the issues in Israel/Palestine, a deficit of passionate emotions is not the core dysfunction, and the way out does not involve further "stirring our emotions". The deficit I see is in dispassionate reasoning and respect for truth, while still anchored to underlying humane values.
> "It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life."
I sympathize with your passion, but I think that statement represents a misunderstanding. The loss of 20+ thousand lives is a terrible tragedy, but when literally millions of lives are hanging in the balance (in an all out future war), SOMEBODY has to look at the situation with clear vision, rather then through a red haze of irrational emotionalit and knee-jerk response to the immediate stimulus, or there could be vastly larger tragedy in the offing.
That is, the rationality I am advocating is DEEPLY intertwined with caring about lives - ALL of the lives which are on the line, not just the subset showing up in videos. Wanting to avoid going off half cocked in a blind reaction to an emotionally evocative incident is an outgrowth of deep caring about the ultimate outcomes, not of indifference.
In case it's not clear, everything I'm saying also fully applies to the emotional reaction of Israelis to the terrorist attack on Oct 7. There too rational concerns (grounded in humane values, not free floating) need to over-ride appeals to strong emotion (like revenge). My saying that doesn't come from not caring about the 1400 lost Israeli lives - but from ALSO caring about the millions of other lives (Israeli and Palestinian) which are still on the line.
I am quite sympathetic to the high emotions (on both sides), but I do not wish to lose my ability to reason clearly by joining them. If that path produced good outcomes, the issues would have been long solved. My goal is to have clear sight connected by good reasoning to positive humane values in seeking the best outcome for all - rather than being emotionally hijacked and stampeded by whatever atrocity is in my visual field at the moment. If you feel that makes me an uncaring monster, I will just have to live with that.
Yeah, as Dave said, I don't think anybody's accusing you of being any kind of monster. The point is that there's a difference between allowing for emotion and being ruled by your emotions. Just as, as you say, there's a difference between being rational and being a robot (not accusing you of being a robot or, in fact, any of these. Just establishing a baseline).
If we were all looking at the situation with clear vision, Israel would follow international law by defining it's borders in line with the 1967 borders, ending the blockade and, at the very least, reshaping the West Bank Barrier in line with those borders, removing the illegal settlements, and allowing Palestinians forcibly removed from their homes to return. Israel's attempts to move forward without accepting this are a significant source of the turmoil in the region.
Israel would also recognise that bombing Gaza into oblivion can only ever radicalise their enemies even further and lead to more attacks in future.
The Palestinians would accept Israel's acceptance of International law with good grace, denounce all future violence, and devote their energies to making their Palestinian state flourish.
The Palestinians would also recognise that acts of violence against the most powerful military force in the region, even if that military force is breaking international law, can only ever end badly for Palestine.
This is all perfectly rational and humane. But it's not even close to where we are. Because there are decades of emotion clouding the issue for both sides. So first, we have to start with the simplest possible questions like, "how can we get these people to agree to stop killing each other as soon as possible?"
I think the main reason Palestinians hate Israelis are the aforementioned violations of international law. Most of all, the humiliation and suffering related to the blockade, occupation and settlers.
I think the main reason Israelis hate Palestinians is the fear that one of them will come to Israel and blow themselves up on a bus or in a synagogue. Or now, come across the border with paragliders and rape, kill and abduct civilians. There's also the fear that Palestinians want to drive them from what they see as their God-given land.
If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions. You have to bridge gaps where there's a strong difference of opinion about what the "best solution for everyone" is. And the best way to do that, as you say, is to appeal to simple--and hopefully common--values.
Saving the lives of as many children as possible. Freeing hostages. Liberating innocent people from oppression. Allowing people to live peacefully in the land they were born in. Most people can agree on the importance of these ideas because we can empathise and emote. We know we'd want these things for ourselves and the people we love. The people who can't compromise even on issues like these are the ones who are being irrational. And sometimes you need to poke them to remind them of the full human weight of what they're arguing.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing on the broader point, we need cool heads. We can't allow a single atrocity to dominate all other thinking. I just also think there's a real danger of being cool headed to the point where these human beings just become abstract numbers. 10,000 here, 1,400 there. Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important.
> "If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions."
I fully agree, at a broad and general level.
Analysis and persuasion have different characters, and should not be conflated into one big ball of sameness.
Accurate analysis is hindered, not helped, by constant emotional hijacking. That's a time when it's best to have the ability to detach from the emotions of the moment in order to better understand the rational connection between actions and our humane values.
After one uses this dispassionate logic to better understand real world, you are correct that one still needs to use emotional arguments to persuade others, because that's how the majority get convinced.
Both are true, of their separate domains. But it is not helpful to lump them together and assume that the same dynamics apply to both accurate analysis and to public persuasion, so if passionate emotionality helps with the latter it must also help with the former.
I'm guessing that by "1967 borders" you don't mean the borders from 1967 to present, but the borders from 1949 to 1967, ie: basically the "green line" 1949 armistice borders, right?
Why do you see the 1949 armistice line as more legitimate than, say, the 1946 borders? Or the 1947 UN partition plan?
A problem is - a lot of Palestinians (and their supporters in the Arabic and/or Muslim world as well as the West) do not accept the borders established by war in 1949 either (ie: your (pre) 1967 border).
Look at Gaza - whose border pretty much follows the 1949-1967 borders. Israelis are not shrinking Gaza, in fact in 2005 they forcibly removed all the settlers, in what the left leaning government sold as "land for peace". But the Gazans overwhelmingly elected two parties who were not calling for an end to the blockade, but an end to Israel entirely.
What I'm getting at is: do you believe that a "return to the pre-1967 borders" (even if Palestinians do not accept those borders as any more valid) would end or reduce the intention of eliminating Israel? Our would it result in Israel essentially facing the same implacable opposition, only much better armed and positioned?
Try this: use Google maps to zoom in on the Tel Aviv area, and note how far t is from the 1949-1967 border to, say, Tel Aviv. The airport is only about 8 miles from the border. Hesbolah has reportedly amassed 100,000 rockets in the north, so an independent Palestine could do so too, far closer to Israeli population centers. But they wouldn't even need rockets - it's in very easy artillery range. Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers would likely become similar to Seol South Korea, with massive North Korean artillery able to destroy any portion thereof.
The possibility of a war with Palestinian losses 10 or 100 or more times greater than what's happening in Gaza today would be very real (along with an even greater multiplier of Israeli losses). Literally millions of lives would be at stake, and if Israel were to feel they were losing, nukes would come out.
I can't simply say "a rational person would obviously agree that withdrawing to the pre-1967 borders would obviously reduce rather than increase the chances of a catastrophic war in the coming decades". We don't know the future, but the chances of a vastly worse outcome for Israelis and Palestinians seems is hardly trivial.
In the strategic circumstance, with literally millions of lives likely on the line, it seems short sighted to simply decide on the best course forward based on no more than what saves thousands of lives in the immediate future - no matter how many horrifying videos try to emotionally hijack our rational long term considerations, under the nominal intention of "reminding us" that there are real people dying.
If one is concerned about a far more catastrophic war in the future, we have to factor in the real people with faces and names who would die in that conflict - even tho we don't have videos of those people yet, to activate our limbic systems and amygdala.
I've been reading the Hamas charter, the statement of Hamas leaders, the statement of PA leaders, and opinion polls among Palestinians (which are skimpy because it's very hard to do, even before this war). I personally don't see much realistic hope of peace, only of different front lines. And from that perspective, I can understand why Israel may be unwilling to return to the pre-1967 borders.
That doesn't mean there could not be some border which would work better for peace than the 1949 green line, or the present situation. But it makes harping on the pre-1967 border as if it would produce peace and security rather questionable.
I'm also not saying that means the Israeli's are justified in their actions. I think what's happening is horrible, and I want it to end in a better world.
I'm saying that some of the proposed "solutions" may be penny wise and pound foolish, ineffective in the real world of achieving the nominal aims of said solution, and too likely leading to even larger wars. Good (short term) intentions do not automatically lead to good (longer term) outcomes.
> "Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important."
I fully agree that each human affected has a face and a name.
However, at this moment, I am swamped with exactly that "reminder". The first ten times it might generously be termed a "reminder" just in case one had forgotten, but by the 100th time, it can come to feel like emotional manipulation because one hasn't forgotten.
And this can be done by both sides.
As I have said, I have sympathy for the strong passions, I can easily understand where they come from. But when almost EVERY attempt to rationally discuss the options gets hijacked by strong emotionalism, I do not think that lack of passion is the real problem or that further "stirring the emotions" is on the path out of the problem. Sober, unbiased, rational evaluation (grounded in big picture humane values) is in far shorter supply than inflamed passions.
If I rarely heard such "reminders" and most of the discussion was about seeking truth through reason and evidence, I might think that a reminder is needed. But when "reminders" are ubiquitous, and seem to be displacing other discussion, I question the value and role of once again shifting the discussion to the horrors of it all (as if that had been forgotten).
It starts feeling like CSJ folks saying "why don't we ever talk about race?", when such talk is already omnipresent.
I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN officer told me that when he finally went back for a visit with family still there he decided that the emotional wounds of the war would not heal until the last person with living memory of the war was dead.
In Israel/Palestine with never ending war that won't happen. They must accept the unacceptable horror of what is happening, and their part in it.
When I asked if people could kill the little girl as an acceptable pragmatic act of war if you saw her face as she died, it was implicit that you would have to accept her nocturnal visits in your dreams and not see yourself as a monster when you awake.
Not about judging which side is worse in that conflict, but if we were participants we would judge ourselves until we are dead.
I got that you were talking about the emotional cost (anticipated cost inhibiting action in advance, or trauma cost afterward), when asking if I could shoot a young girl in the head while looking into her eyes. I don't know that I personally could, even if in this contrived question that action would save 10 other young girls. But even if I personally couldn't do it, I might still think that 10 for 1 is the better answer if one has the guts to do it (and bear the cost).
I read about people who survive being trapped (eg: fallen tree or rubble) by cutting off their leg - painful but otherwise they die. I don't know if I personally could do that. But my human limitations don't mean that cutting off one's leg is thereby the wrong course of action in the larger picture. Those who do such a thing first need to be able to objectively engage with the reality they face (death if they don't cut off the leg) rather than fantasies, and secondly they need the strength to carry out an action which is bad in the short turn but good in the longer run.
I personally might also have a hard time being a field surgeon or a general. That doesn't mean there isn't a proper role for those who could.
(The above is about the broader concept of judging the rightness of the action, by whether it would be personally incredibly painful, rather than looking at the larger picture - using a deliberately different scenario to facilitate clear thinking. It is NOT meant to be any direct analogy to Israel/Palestine, so please nobody try to pick apart an analogy I was not making.)
You call the question contrived. It is not. Currently Israel is reducing Gaza to rubble and know full well that they are killing non-combatants, including a high number of children. But they do it with thousand-pound bombs where they don't see their victims and the horror is an abstraction.
In the case of the My Lai massacre during the war in Vietnam, Lt. Calley was rightfully prosecuted but the higher lever officers who ordered a preparatory artillery strike on the village were not. They knew the artillery strike they were ordering would be killing of civilians, but they were not looking them in the eye.
The Hamas ghouls certainly saw the faces of their victims and if they were all exterminated, I would not shed a tear for them.
Although rare, Israel has prosecuted IDF ground troops for unjustified killings https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244 , but the leaders ordering it on a large scale seem exempt.
In the Marine's Hymn there is a phrase, "And to keep our honor clean". "Death before dishonor" was a popular tattoo back in the day. In my view, purposeful killing non-combatant (not collateral but purposeful) is dishonorable. The scale of what is taking place leads me to believe that it is purposeful and dishonorable and even Israel considers it to be a crime, for low level grunts who see those they kill. But just as with the My Lai massacre, that only seems to apply to those who see their faces.
I didn't actually write that as an appeal to emotion, but to shine a light on the idea that it is far easier to support "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." when you are not the killer. One who sees the reality.
It might seem tactically sound to toss a frag into a bunch of kids if an enemy combatant pops up in their midst, but it is strategically foolish. If you kill one of my daughters in callous disregard (bug splat) you will not end my will to fight you, you will create it. Israel is creating enemies faster than they can kill them.
America used napalm and Willie Peter in Vietnam, but I never saw WP used as an airburst, let alone over a village. But when I saw these pictures, nobody had to tell me what it was. Excuse my French, but my instant thought was, "Those mother f****rs!" It takes a lot of balls to deny that that was white phosphorus with such an obvious bold-faced lie and 𝐈𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥, 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐭? Try to tell me that this is a tactical attack on a military target and not terrorism aimed at a civilian population.
Dave, I think we can all agree, 100% of us reading this substack, that it would be harder to intentionally kill a child in cold blood (for some greater purpose), than for somebody else to do it. Can we just stipulate that, and move to other issues?
For example, would Israel returning to the 1949 armistice borders make a more catastrophic war more or less likely in the next decade or two - the answer to that does not depend on whether it's harder or easier to kill a person while looking them in the eye.
You are welcome to condemn the excesses of Israelis and of Palestinians; in nearly every case I would agree with you. I just don't tend to think that curated atrocities tend to bring out the wisest parts of human being seeking the least awful outcomes for millions of people. Analysis is best done dispassionately (while connected to underlying humane values in the larger picture). It may take a lot of passion to implement even well thought out policies, but that's a separate step.
As a side question, you cite an article from 2009. Are you recounting your reaction from seeing that photo in 2009, or your outrage today in seeing a 2009 photo? Or was your reaction of "Those MF's" in response to 2023 photos which you did not reference?
I saw it then and that is what I thought at the time. Now I have seen video of large buildings collapsing into their footprint like the World Trade Center in the first days of response and Gaza laid to waste like Carthage now. Israel has always been disproportionate in its response. Has it caused its enemies to stop attacking our to do increasingly spectacular attacks?
I have not taken sides in this, but I call out both sides when I see what they are doing as wrong. I'm not a fan of the US sending 2000 pound bombs for use in a counter incergency in a city. The biggest round that has exploded near me was a 1000 pounder.
The people who tried and failed to catapult it and blew themselves up didn't see any of their friendlies in my proximity. I don't hold it against them or think it wrong. It was an unexploded bomb intended to be used on them that they collected after ASP1 blew up. 18 hours of boom, boom, boom that widely distributed a lot of ordinance sent back to us with bad intentions. I wouldn't want someone to try to kill my next door neighbor with one.
Thank you too. My original point was that it is easier to kill the faceless, and an armchair warmonger. As the conversation went on, I couldn't help but mention that I think (just my opinion) that Israel is doing a large-scale terror campaign. That is not a whatabout to defend the Hamas unambiguous terror attack.
It goes to something I wrote previously about the difference in counterinsurgency and war against nations. But even with that difference, with occupations terror tactics like rape take place that are not like bombing factories with civilian workers. I do think there is space for moral lines to be drawn and it should be.
After reflection, this brings up for me the "Trolley Problem", a widespread (and also contrived) thought experiment in moral philosophy. Briefly, for any reader not familiar, it goes like this:
"An out of control trolley car is barrelling down the track and about to kill 10 innocent workers further down the track, who cannot see it in time. However, you are stationed at a track switch between the trolley and the workers and can see the whole situation, and you know that if you pull a lever, the trolley will be diverted down another track, where there is only one worker who will be killed. Should you pull the level?"
You can think about that a bit and perhaps posit and answer.
-----
But then let's add some emotional juice to it:
"If you divert the trolley, before it hits the single worker, she will see that you have pulled the lever and directly caused her death, and will look you right in the eye as the trolley arrives, letting out a blood curling scream of terror. After the impact, you will have a clear view of her broken and bloody body, with her brains squished around the tracks."
Does adding this sudden jolt to the limbic system and the amygdala better illuminate the question of "what is the right thing to do morally, pull or not pull", or does it obscure that question? Would rationality (within an underlying moral value framework like causing the least harm) be a better approach to deciding the moral question, or would following your immediate visceral emotions be the wisest and best choice?
My answer: adding the emotionally evocative context does not change the moral question of pulling or not pulling the lever to switch the trolley, it just adds an additional personal cost to the person making the decision such that they might be more likely to make the wrong decision about the lever if they (understandably) can't personally bear that cost.
And that ties to a larger and more general question:
Is it wisest to determine "the right thing to do morally" based on rationally evaluating facts in light of underlying values, or by doing whatever is believed to be emotionally easiest on the decider?
Unfortunately, your quoted hypothetical question seems to me (if I understand it) to be aimed at supporting the latter approach. If in my flawed human psychology I were to be too squeamish to pull the lever in time and thus save 9 lives, that personal emotional limitation doesn't make not pulling it the morally best answer.
Nor would it make somebody who (at great emotional cost to themselves) does pull the lever a monster operating by ruthless and uncaring logic. They are still operating from deep caring, just at a higher level of cognition vs immediate emotion.
I won't delete my first response, since it's on the record and has been responded to in turn, but I like this answer better. Thanks for raising these tough issues, Dave.
I dunno, this is a very tough one. I have to admit, Tom is bringing up a lot of good points, but you're also saying what I started saying in the last few weeks - yeah, maybe the 'g' word fits the Israelis here too, even if they haven't formally declared war on the Palestinians' existence like Hamas and the Pals' religion has. It's why I really have to hold my nose to say anything supportive of the Pals, because they are *so tainted* with millennia-long Jew hatred - but so are the Jews, with their ancient enemies, and the real tragedy is they're all related genetically. But...and I wrote about this recently, Time pointed out that one doesn't have to declare formal genocide for it to be so. Actions count for a lot, and this is looking very, well, genocidey.
Let's remember, when we're talking about land-stealing to talk about *all* the land-stealers in this scenario, like the ancestors of many of today's Pals who invaded, colonized, settled, and oppressed in the 7th century and after. Let's remember that some Pals *and* Jews have lived there continuously for many hundreds, even thousands of years. Let's remember that many of the people living there now came from somewhere else. That the Jews *literally have no place else to go* because they fled Europe in the last century and the Arab countries pushed many of them out after the creation of Israel. So the Arab world can just suck it. They contributed mightily to this mess.
At this point the Pal death toll is ~25,000 (so sez Al Jazeera and CNN but I don't know how accurate that is) but it's definitely over 20K and that's looooong past payback for October 7.
Still...I vacillate because they *both* have to live there, and *some* on both sides favour a two-state solution, Hamas & Netanyahu agree there shouldn't be, and I come back to WHY THE FUCK DID YOU PEOPLE VOTE FOR THAT YAHOO AGAIN? and HEY, HOW'S THAT HAMAS VOTE WORKING OUT FOR YOU?
What it keeps coming back to is...who's worse? I'm not sure, but I give a slight edge to Hamas/Palestinians because....expressed genocide. Esp in the Koran (where i learned the Jews have *one* tree that protects them.)
"Time pointed out that one doesn't have to declare formal genocide for it to be so"
Yeah, I don't think anybody *declares* genocide. They just start killing people and come up with some justification for it.
I'm honesty totally unmoved by arguments that go back thousands of years about whose land this "really" is. Never mind ones that rely on imaginary tales from an ancient book. As you say, Jews and Muslims have lived alongside each other in that region for centuries. Mostly, it's worth noting, without incident. It's when the Jews and the British decided that a piece of land would belong *only* to Jews, and they would decide all of the laws (and immediately passed laws that discriminated in favour of Jews), that things got really explodey.
As I've pointed out a few times recently, 40% of the people living in Gaza right now weren't even born when Hamas were voted in to power. Another 10-20%, at least, were too young to vote. And besides, the rest of the world could say the same thing to America about Trump. And, it seems terrifyingly likely, will have an opportunity to say it again in November. We all know how rarely leaders truly represent their people.
So yeah, I don't think this is as simple as "who's worse". Because what you're doing is asking that question about the very worst people on either side, and then applying that judgement to everybody else. ~2.297 of the 2.3 million people in Gaza had nothing to do with October 7th. Only a tiny proportion of the ~9 million Jews living in Israel are responsible for the atrocities taking place in Gaza.
As I've been saying all along, I think our attention should be on that overwhelming majority of people who aren't killing or raping anybody.
Actually a few do. The Nazis did. So has Hamas and the founder of Islam. They both explicitly state that one needs to kill *all* the Jews. And that's what I keep coming back to. The Pals voted for Hamas *knowing* they want to exterminate the Jews. Plenty of them support it, even if they never take up a weapon themselves. We don't know which ones. I *do* know Pal schools are indoctrinating kids to be antisemitic and express violence against Jews. I've seen a few of the videos. It's why I find it so hard to express sympathy for the Palestinians, even though I *know* they're not all like that, and for all I know today, maybe plenty of Jews are plotting now to get rid of their ancient enemies once and for all. The British proposal may have been bungled badly, but Pals had a problem with jews on their land before 1948. Google the 1929 Hebron Massacre which reads very similarly to the Oct 7 attack but without the hang gliders. And that was before Hamas was invented, so guess who was responsible for *that* one.
They've both been on the land since forever, and both have ancestors that stole, settled, or otherwise colonized land over the centuries. I laugh when I hear campus morons going on about how the Jews are 'oppressors' and 'settlers' and 'colonizers' - apparently they're unaware of how exactly like that Islam has been, seeing as it was founded by a warlord! Apparently these brainiac scholars missed the Great Invasion by the Probably Not Very White Ancestors of the Palestinians in the 7th century. Or how many migrated from other lands in the last 150 years. I mean, call a colonizer a colonizer but call *all* of them out...not just the colonizing oppressors you *like* :)
Anyway. I keep dreaming of holding a massive nuke over the land and saying, "You've got 24 hours to hammer out a lasting peace agreement. you've had enough time already. Figure it out and get back to us or we turn Israel and Gaza and the West Bank into a crater and there will be nothing left to fight over."
"The Pals voted for Hamas *knowing* they want to exterminate the Jews. Plenty of them support it, even if they never take up a weapon themselves."
I've pointed this out many times recently, but 40% of the people in Gaza weren't even born when Hamas was voted into power. Imagine if Trump's little coup had been successful, and he'd gone on to rule America for another 18 years, and he'd done some terrible thing. Would it be fair to say that "the Yanks voted for Trump, *knowing* that he was a dirtbag narcissist?" Especially if 40% of Americans were under 14 and 51% of the country *didn't* vote for Trump?
As I've also said many times recently, the people in Gaza have very good reason to hate Israel. Not Jews, Israel. Any one of us who was born and raised there would feel the same. That in no way justifies Hamas raping women or killing civilians. But it makes it easier to understand why they don't condemn Hamas. Especially given that polls suggest many are unaware of the full horror of what Hamas did.
" but 40% of the people in Gaza weren't even born when Hamas was voted into power.". Very true. But ugh, they get indoctrinated into antisemitism early. That's the thing - not the kids' fault how they're raised, but who the fuck is teaching them this? And yes, you're right about Trump, although we already did get attacked by Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and they didn't give a crap how many people they killed. Terrorism sucks, and yes, the Pals have got a lot of reason to hate Israel (and I'll say Israelis rather than Jews).
It's a difficult, ugly situation. I just find the Pals extremely unsympathetic as victims because of the antisemitism that's baked into their religion. And if we didn't have as many haters in the West Bank, where the non-Hamas gang resides, they must surely hate us now.
Honestly? I think Trump's going to be horrendous for Americans if he gets in again - and he's not ruling from jail - and it probably won't involve inviting some enemy to attack us - but I've already considered that anyone who voted for him whose life gets worse deserves it. I felt that way after he got in the first time and many foreign countries, including Canada, hit the red states hard with tariffs in response to his. That surely affected poorly those Americans there who *didn't* vote for him. That's life in the states of unpopular whack jobs, whether it's Trump's America, Hamas's Gaza or Nuttin'-yahoo's Israel.
Bottom line: I know I should feel more sympathy for the Palestinians. Working on it. It would really, really, really really REALLY REALLY help if the Islamic world overall would reject the terrorism in their Koran the way Christians & Jews have rejected much of the violence in the Bible.
This is a wonderful article, as usual, but I remember Golda Meir's definition of the problem: (It's because) Egypt and Syria and the other Arab countries refuse to acquiesce to our existence. Therefore there can be no compromise. They say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don’t know of a compromise. And that’s why we have no choice.”
This is the problem with declaring war on a heavily armed neighbour; your people die, no matter how young they are. My sympathy in this is with the people of Gaza who are paying for the stupidity of Hamas in this instance, but I'm afraid there can be no peace until our Golda can be proved wrong.
"Egypt and Syria and the other Arab countries refuse to acquiesce to our existence. "
Yeah, one of the problems with the brutality of Israel's response (and behaviour prior to October 7th) is that it's difficult to focus on any of the other aspects of the conflict. Would Palestinians "acquiesce to Israel's existence" without the blockade and the land theft? According to the UN resolution I mentioned to Tom, yes they would. It's Netanyahu who refuses to accept the 1967 borders.
There's no doubt that there are people in the region who want Israel wiped from the map. But it's difficult to get an understanding of what's driving that, or how much support they have in this aim, when Israel is doing so many things wrong. There's a difference between acquiescing to Isreal's existence and acquiescing to Israel's dominance.
But Egypt, Syria, and Jordan *have* all acquiesced to Israel's existence. The external military threat Israel faces bears no resemblance to that faced by Golda Meir's Israel in the 1960s.
I'm not quite sure what point you are making here, but if you are suggesting that Egypt et al's acquiescence in the past holds out hope for Hamas's now, then I agree that we should not despair, but I think you are being a tad sanguine.
No, my point is that the external existential threat that Israel faced in '67 or '73 doesn't exist today. Egypt/Jordan/Syria isn't going to launch a surprise attack against a nuclear armed Israel in 2024.
I love you Steve. Yet, on this, we may need to agree to disagree. Israel is a country. It deserves to exist without the threat of violent attack across its borders. If 1000+ Americans were violently and brutally murdered from a cross-border attack from, say, Vancouver - do you really think anyone internationally would have the balls to demand the US didn’t turn that province into a parking lot to deter another attack?
I’m a feminist. The international refusal to condemn and demand the women raped and taken into Gaza be released before any other discussion takes place is, quite frankly, a betrayal.
I hate people dying innocently in war.
It’s awful. Where is the international demand that Hamas, who jubilantly celebrated killing Jews, be held to account? Where is the accounting for the millions in international aid turned to the service of recreating the caliphate? These people don’t want a state. They want the death of Jews (then Christians). And most importantly, the humiliation and degradation of women who dare to live free. So to hell with that.
Hamas reports the numbers. Hamas seeks to control the narrative. While I don’t deny terrible levels of death in Gaza, I don’t believe their numbers and I hold Hamas accountable for hiding behind civilians. It’s a damn war crime what they have done. Where are the people holding these assholes to account? Why is the Jewish state the only one held responsible despite the many wars that kill tons of Muslims?
Ah - I’m likely way too upset to make sense of this. Yet the women brutalized raped and murdered haunt me. Do they haunt you?
"Ah - I’m likely way too upset to make sense of this. Yet the women brutalized raped and murdered haunt me. Do they haunt you?"
This is the aspect of all this that confuses me the most. Yes, those women haunt me. The videos I saw, especially, but certainly not exclusively, the video of Shani Louk's body being paraded and spat on by militants makes me feel physically sick every time I think of it.
But the videos and stories of women and children in Gaza with their limbs blown off, especially, but certainly not exclusively, the story of a woman who was buried under rubble while giving birth, the rescuers found the heads of her twins emerging from her birth canal, her sixteen-month old daughter, the only survivor, paralysed, those stories haunt me too.
Those women and children are also women and children. Why is a failure to condemn their deaths any less of a betrayal?
Hamas have been reporting the numbers of every conflict since around 2006. Those numbers have always been independently verified to be accurate. But heck, even if we halve them, if a mere 12,000 civilians have been killed in 100 days, most of them women and children, I just don't understand how this provokes so much less horror and outrage in some than the 1200 civilians killed in Israel.
The only explanation I can think of is the aforementioned videos. A video of a terrorist raping or attacking a single terrified woman has more visceral impact than seeing a rocket hit an apartment building. For me too. Regardless of how many women and children were inside that building. And Israel, for all their flaws, haven't raped Palestinians in this conflict (it's worth pointing out the this wasn't true during the Nakba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss)). But I don't know, I just can't understand how this continues to hold true as the number rise.
And yes, first of all I think many people would demand that the U.S. didn't turn Vancouver into a parking lot. But there are also very significant differences between your scenario and the scenario in Gaza. First, the people in Vancouver could leave. And were free to leave at any point before the attacks. Second, the U.S. isn't horribly mistreating the people living in Vancouver. It isn't stealing their land, it isn't holding them under blockade, it isn't standing idly by as American civilians kill them. If they were, I think people would view the situation very differently.
I think anybody with a brain and a heart is upset by this. But to see this situation clearly, we have to do better than letting our hatred for what Hamas did justify the obliteration of the innocent people unfortunate enough to live in the same region.
No, not a “parking lot,” sorry. That’s Steve’s point. Gaza does not consist of 2.3 million soldiers.
Sadly for Israel, which I have supported for most of my life, it has lost the world on this one, even its friends. A few weeks or even eight weeks after 10-7 I would not be saying what I am now. But new information requires new views.
There are places like Tel Aviv and Haifa that consist mostly of sane wonderful people--the Israelis I know and love. But they do not run Israel now.
One half of Gaza’s population are minors. Do you hold them accountable? The commenter advocates reducing all these children to a "parking lot." This serves no rational defensive purpose. There is no viable end game for Israel's current course short of emptying Gaza by making it unlivable. If these people have nowhere to go (and they don't thanks to Egypt), they will die in huge numbers---we have seen nothing yet.
And where will that leave Israel? A nuclear armed pariah state. Israel is losing its moral argument for existence in favor of raw power. It is losing the world as well. I cry for a country I have supported. So do my Jewish children.
Define minors. In Gaza, 14 year-olds are definitely military aged males. What percentage of the "minors" reported by Hamas are 14-20 year old young men? You have NO idea. What is Israel supposed to do about them on the battlefield? Use rubber bullets?
"Gaza, 14 year-olds are definitely military aged males"
Jesus Christ David, how is it possible that you're able to write something like this about 14-year-old children? 14-YEARS-OLD!!! And let's be very clear, ~40% of people in Gaza are under 14. 14 is the top end of that age range you're blithely dismissing the killing of.
And further, even if we've really reached the point where we can tell ourselves that 14-year-old male lives are worthless, that they're all terrorists and rapists, I'll remind you that just slightly more than half of those "children' are girls. We DO have an idea about that.
I think we all need to be mindful of our souls here. It's easy, when you're having a debate with somebody on the internet, where the desire to score a rhetorical point is animating your fingers, when the dead people we're talking about are just numbers on a page, to lose sight of what you're advocating or defending.
Unlike the US in Falloujah, Israel uses far more heavy bombs than bullets.
Israel has already lost, and stands to lose far more as it continues on this trajectory, than it will ever gain in security. Its allies, its moral standing in the world, even its arguments for existence after the Holocaust and Russian pogroms have been attenuated by hypocrisy.
What is left to it is raw power. It will exist as a totalitarian religious security state in the future. The liberal Israel we all knew and respected is gone for good I’m afraid.
As a liberal lifelong lover of the Israel of yore, that of the tolerance of Haifa, it's going to be a relic of the past, and I mourn it.
Your take on this incredibly complex and devastating issue aligns with mine more than any other I've read or heard. I find myself saying out loud at news reports "Please just stop."
Steve, as usual I appreciate your trying to thoughtfully nuance your takes, and to apply general principles rather than tribal loyalties. And this issue is particularly difficult, because it's hard to find the good guys; all sides have legitimate grievances, and none are very pure themselves. In that context, I'm not taking a political "side". My goal is accurate, insightful, and hopefully actionable understanding of all sides. That can include agreeing or disagreeing with some side about some point, without always supporting or opposing that side.
So I'd like to nuance a bit further around the edges.
The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home.
To put it another way, this imagines the IDF goal as past focused - asserting that their primary purpose is indiscriminate retribution for recent Israeli deaths. Let's call this the "revenge model".
Another model of the IDF mission in Gaza is more future focused: they could want to prevent any recurrence of Oct 7 like attacks. Let's call this the "preventive model". In this model, Israel believes that unless they destroy virtually the entire tunnel system in Gaza, greatly degrading the military capability of Hamas, the promised repeat attacks will be launched. So, in this model, they have to finish taking out almost all of the tunnels to make the invasion worthwhile. It's slow and dangerous work - for soldiers and any remaining civilians.
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So, two models. The key questions differ depending on the model and what it seeks (revenge or prevention):
[revenge model] - if the other tribe killed X of yours, and you kill n*X of theirs, how big an "n" is OK?
[preventative model] - is there an effective alternative approach for preventing future attacks which Israel could take, at lower collateral damage to civilian Gazans?
The number of civilian losses matters in any case of course, but it's the ONLY concern in the revenge model, while it needs to be discussed in context and balance with the prevention goals in the second model.
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Both models would predict civilian deaths in Gaza, but in different ways and degrees.
My reading of the news and analysis provides more support for the "preventive model". If Israel's goal was to kill lots of Gazans in indiscriminate attacks, they could do that safely and vastly more efficiently from within their own borders, suffering near zero casualties. They could have done that in a week.
Instead they are systematically destroying the tunnel complexes from end to end, while trying to evacuate civilians - and this is consistent with their stated intentions.
I think a cease-fire will become far easier after the IDF has destroyed the Hamas tunnels, but is going to be a harder sell to Israel before then. The cost to both sides (on many levels) is terrible, but if all that doesn't even stop Hamas for long from attacking again, then what was gained?
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Any discussion which centers "civilian deaths in Gaza" as the only or key issue while completely ignoring any concerns for "how to prevent future attacks", is going to be distorting our thinking rather than illuminating it.
I'm not signed up for any side in that conflict. My personal focus is more on trying to understand as fully as possible the underlying dynamics that keep this conflict from being resolved. I haven't found any very plausible solutions, but I'd dearly like one. Meanwhile, I may sometimes speak up if I hear what seems to be fuzzy thinking or a misinformed viewpoint on ANY side. Fostering mistaken understanding does not lead to solutions.
So for example, I'm not myself asserting that destroying the Hamas tunnel system is a workable, or the only workable, approach to seriously inhibiting future attacks. I'm just saying that's how Israel sees it, so arguments which presume their main goal is revenge ("stop because you've done enough revenge") will understandably fall on deaf ears of people who are saying "we haven't yet destroyed enough tunnels to stop future repeat attacks, and that's what motivates us, not revenge".
Solid proposals for how they could stop future attacks in a better way would be apropos.
Or argumetns for why they don't need to take out all the tunnels, or why they should accept future attacks if the only way to stop them will increase the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, or various other responses which would address the core Israeli concerns as revealed by official statements and by their actions.
But meeting "we need to prevent future attacks" with "you've had enough revenge so stop" is miscommunication, not debate.
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I think Steve proposes that Israel withdraw to 1967 borders as part of a solution. Some two state variant like that used to be my supported position as well.
As I understand it today, the question for Israel is whether having an independent Palestinian state would end the attacks on Israel, or make the attacks ever larger and more deadly. I would be glad to hear reason and evidence to believe one or the other of these outcomes.
However bad the situation there now, it could easily become 10 to 100 times worse even locally, if two armed neighboring states fight to the death. (Not to mention spreading to the rest of the world) And I unfortunately see the "two state solution" as being fairly likely to lead to that. A short term approach to saving tens of thousands of lives could lead to later losing millions; or not. Anyway, I would LOVE to have confidence in a peaceful two state outcome, so if somebody believes in that, please reason with me, give me evidence for more hope.
"The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home."
Hmm, I don't think this is any vaguely serious person's framing. It certainly isn't my framing.
After what Hamas did, I don't think anybody expected Israel to go into Gaza, kill 1200 civilians, and call it a day. Not least because in every single conflict for decades, Israel has responded to aggression from Palestinians with a death toll tens of times greater than was inflicted on it. I think the overall ratio of Palestinian civilian to Israeli civilian deaths stands at around 17:1.
The problem was, Israel's stated goal of destroying Hamas is poorly defined, likely impossible, and very difficult to connect to the slaughter taking place in Gaza right now.
There are ~30,000 Hamas soldiers. How many of them have to be killed before Hams is "destroyed"? All of them? Okay, how will they know when they've done that? How much civilian "collateral damage" will that require? What about the Hamas leadership living outside of Gaza? What about the young men being radicalised, right now, into joining Hamas? Do all of them have to be killed too? This is what I mean by undefined. This is why, after 25,000 people have been killed, after 100+ days of near relentless bombing, Israel shows no sign of stopping and no signs of accomplishing any of its "goals."
And how do you prevent future attacks when you have given millions of people very, very good reason to hate you? We're not just talking about the bombing since October 7th here. Palestinians were attacking Israel before Hamas came along. Before the tunnels. The tunnels, and even Hamas, aren't the source of Israel's problems.
The source of the problem is two-fold:
1. Israel's violent oppression of the Palestinian people and its ongoing theft of land.
2. Anti-semitic extremists who want to kill all Jews.
Solving problem 1 is obviously entirely in Israel's hands. They could do it tomorrow. Solving problem 2 is out of Israel's hands. But I think the dangers of problem 2 are fuelled by problem 1.
Antisemitism is, of course, not a new problem. But Jews and Arabs have lived peacefully alongside each other in that region of the world for centuries. The establishment of a Jewish state in the region, a place that the Jews said, "this is OURS," not, "we will live here with everybody else," was, I think, one of the key drivers of the current problems. As I say in my conversation with Tom, David Ben-Gurion, the "founding father" of Israel, seems to agree with this assessment.
Israel's actions after that; land theft, the horrors of the Nakba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss), the oppression of the Palestinian people, only fuelled anti-Jewish sentiment. And this made it easy for the extremists to recruit people to their side.
I don't believe (and obviously my beliefs don't necessarily count for much, but I think they make sense here), that most of the 30,000 people fighting for Hamas are anti-Jewish extremists. I think they hate Israel for reasons that are frankly quite understandable. Things ike Israel killing members of their family, or stealing their parents' homes, or forcing them to live under siege.
I'm not saying that if Israel stopped doing this things, it would make the people in the region love them, but I think this is the only way to begin a peace process. You can't negotiate peace while you're standing on somebody's neck. And given that Netanyahu is never going to lift his foot off the Palestinians' necks, the first step towards a two-state solution now resides in removing him from power. To be fair, I think the vast majority of people, including Israelis, agree with that.
The problem is Hamas, not necessarily the Palestinians. There’s millions of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and East Jerusalem who live largest peaceably(if tense at times) with Israeli Jews. Cities like Haifa are even largely integrated.
There is room for more moderate Palestinians and Jews, but neither runs the show now.
Israel’s current course will result in enormous casualties (we have only seen the start) with no viable end game. It’s impossible to root out guerrillas with bombs without taking the civilian population with it. In the process, Israel will lose the world, including the United States and Europe. It’s on its way to becoming a quasi genocidal pariah state--indeed kind of like Hamas itself.
As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I cry as I confess I no longer can support Israel in good conscience.
I completely understand. I cannot give unconditional support to any side. All sides have legitimate grievances, and no sides are pure.
The population of Gaza is variously estimated between 2 and 2.5 million by different sources. It has been growing by about 2% per year, 40-50,000 people. If we take Hamas' figures as accurate, Israel has killed about half a year's population growth, setting the population back to what it was last summer. That is a terrible, terrible tragedy. (Tho it's far down the list of conflict deaths in recent years).
How much is at stake here? I believe that literally millions of lives, on all sides, are at stake.
I very much care about the suffering in Gaza (and the West Bank, and around the world). But I don't want to be stampeded by that into courses of actions which might result in millions of deaths down the line.
I agree about millions of lives. This could spin seriously out of control. And China/Taiwan is now leagues worse than just days ago as a result of independence-minded Lai's election (DPP) last week, and as a result of diverted attention and resources in Ukraine and now the Middle East. China was humiliated by the Taiwan election, and it is nothing if not opportunistic.
I will take a straight up bet on a Chinese economic blockade on part or all of Taiwan in 2024-2025. If Trump is elected, I'll give you odds in 2025. Trump is an isolationist at heart despite his bloviating, and I think Xi knows that.
I always appreciate your intelligent and informed commentary.
But shouldn't it be obvious that killing over 1% of the population of Gaza will generate more Hamas recruits?
If you're looking for a solution that will prevent more attacks, there needs to be a clear path to granting Palestinians civil rights. That could be a one state solution, where Jews make up about 7 million people in a state with about 14 million people. Or it could be a two state solution. Or I suppose Israel could drive all the Palestinians out of greater Israel, which would probably require killing many tens of thousands of civilians, and some willingness of a neighbor, Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan, to cooperate and admit millions of refugees.
From my perspective, Israel is committing slow suicide. A democratic nation can not survive while oppressing a huge chunk of its population. It took the US until the late 1960s to learn that lesson, and Blacks only make up 15% of the population. Palestinians in the occupied territories make up 36% of Israel's population.
Israel will eventually learn that if something can not go on forever, it will stop.
I'm sure that Israel is 100% aware of that, having dealt closely with it for decades. It's hardly a new insight in unconventional warfare, and has probably been taught on day one of studying same for a century.
However, the Israeli analysis could be that Hamas already has as many recruits as it can equip anyway, so it's more important to destroy the military and organizational infrastructure which allows Hamas to send rockets and invasions into Israel.
They may be weighing 30,000 actual trained Hamas fighters with a fantastic tunnel system and 15 years of accumulated weaponry, supplies, etc be more dangerous than 90,000 potential recruits who may hate Israel but do not have the infrastructure and tools to attack it.
Israel knows it cannot eliminate every existing member of Hamas, but they seem to hope that they can render Hamas militarily impotent for a decade or more, which is a different proposition (whether they are correct or not in their calculations is frankly beyond my ability to discern).
In all honesty, I don't see much of a long term path for Israel. You suggest with good reason that they are committing long term suicide, but your suggested alternatives may be seen as shorter term suicide and thus no better. If they can survive long enough, perhaps something like a reform movement might break out in the Arab world, and produce new options for further survival; if they commit suicide in the shorter term, there's less to hope for.
To my best assessment (and I do not claim to be an expert, tho I read experts on all sides), neither a one state nor a two state solution will create peace and continued existence for Israel. Other countries taking Palestinians as refugees might work for Israel, but (1) the Palestinians don't want that and (2) the potential host countries have had bad experiences with Palestinians and do not want them.
In the US, Blacks make up about 13% of the population. Inside Israel proper, about 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabic today, mostly Muslim or Christian Arabs. They vote, they elect members of parliament, and the supreme court justice who ruled against Netanyahu was Arabic.
The residents of Gaza and of the West Bank, by and large, do not want to be Israeli citizens. They might accept temporary citizenship if that was seen as a temporary step towards the elimination of Israel, which it would very possibly be.
If you think that giving everybody in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank equal citizenship would end well, I suggest moving to South Africa for a few years and then let's talk. I too cheered the idealism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but in the end it has not produced a society able to cooperate. There is a very poor historical track record from mixing peoples who hate each other, and having them sort it out democratically. If you doubt that, name the 3 best successes from history.
(Let me be very clear - I personally would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a positive ending from just that one state solution with people willing to use democratic means and accept the outcome, rather than violence; that would please me no end. But that wishful thinking doesn't make it the most likely outcome.)
It appears we agree that Israel is on a long term path with a very bad ending.
I'm arguing a counterfactual: that had Israel worked with and empowered the PA in the West Bank, instead of working non-stop to humiliate it and steal land from its residents, perhaps it would have a rational negotiating partner by now.
But there's no way to know if my counterfactual was accurate. I'm just guessing when I claim/hope that there's still a way out via a two state solution if Israel works with the PA, or a reconstituted PA.
However, such a solution would require Israel to start dismantling its West Bank settlements, and I see absolutely no evidence that Israel is prepared to do that, or anything else to change the status quo today.
Still, I can't help but think that indiscriminately killing 25,000 and counting people, the vast majority of whom must certainly be civilians, is moving Israel and the Palestinians towards a far worse place.
A rare miss for you in my view, Steve. You pose a legitimate question in the sense of "is there a boundary to retribution for terrorism?". However, you (in my view) misinterpret or misconstrue a lot of the relevant history by doing narrow citations of 70 year old remarks. There are legitimate grievances on either side of this, but it's not at all a symmetric matter and this is evinced in several obvious patterns of behavior and by the how the preponderance of muslim-majority neighbors choose to wall themselves off from any contact with Palestine as well. Best wishes.
Sure. Several examples in your text and, again, my position is that it's complex and there are legitimate grievances on both sides, but it's not a symmetric position. Much of your article in my opinion has the perspective that there are two equally cooperative partners with similar aims for their people, and this is simply false, or at best unsupported by evidence.
Re: Shlomo Ben-Ami - you are lifting one quote out of a very long back + forth process at Camp David. There are many alternative quotes you could have lifted. You could have also quoted him as saying "the Palestinians never made a counter-proposal, and that is the heart of the matter". He also said this about Camp David.
So narrowly choosing one quote in service of a viewpoint is the sort of things that you typically decry, and which fills your writing with nuance and interest.
Re: Ben-Gurion - very similar issues, if more complex. This has been known forever, as these are old talking points. eg this is a 2009 article prior to the full flowering of "social justice" which honestly discusses these quotes.
A narrow lens paints a particular picture but is not necessarily informative. One can show a picture of Palestinians suffering and cursing Israel, or one can show a picture of eg. Palestinian protests against Hamas, like the recent one at a hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Free Palestine from Israel? or Hamas? or both? Who is the trustworthy negotiating partner that represents the interests of the Palestinians now? Certainly it's not Hamas. Again, one of the few times I think you have missed upholding your own standards of nuance. You can cherry pick this to clap back at me if you wish, but I'm just trying to give you an honest, if hastily written (sorry typos), reply inbetween work gigs today. Appreciate what your're doing in general.
"Free Palestine from Israel? or Hamas? or both? Who is the trustworthy negotiating partner that represents the interests of the Palestinians now? Certainly it's not Hamas."
Yes, I agree completely. I even wrote an article entitled "Free Palestine From Hamas." The Palestinian people are the great losers in all of this. Controlled by Israel and ruled over by Hamas, neither of whom care whether they live or die. I oppose Hamas and I oppose what the Israeli government is doing and has done to them for decades. But I admit, my focus leans toward the group that is killing them by the tens of thousands right now.
I'm not narrowly choosing quotes. As I've said, I don't have an agenda here other than thinking through an end to the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people and a path to a lasting peace. When I talk to zionists, I obviously spend more time talking about the flaws in the Zionist narrative. When I talk to people who think Hamas are "freedom fighters" I spend more time talking about the sheer idiocy of that idea. But peace cannot be achieved without a clear-eyed recognition of both sides of this. The good and the bad.
A) I think David Ben-Gurion's quote sums up the situation perfectly. And is equally true today as it was all these years ago. There are serious conceptual problems with the founding of Israel. It's frustrating to see people today deny this or call noticing it antisemitic when the founding father of Israel understood them perfectly well.
And while, as I said to Tom, that's the situation we have and the Palestinians have to accept that, it's unreasonable to ignore the fact that they. have a valid grievance there.
You've never seen and will never see me write a word in defence of Hamas. But that's totally irrelevant to the question of whether Israel has mistreated the Palestinian people. Palestinian protests against Hamas (which, again, I've written about) don't change Ben-Gurion's point or the injustices Israel is perpetrating. Palestinians are right to be protesting both.
B) My quote of Shlomo wasn't meant to be the final word on the Israel-Palestine peace process. As I said, quite clearly I think, it was a rebuttal to this half-brained talking point that Palestinians don't want peace because they turned down deals brokered by the U.S. The first question, in that case, should surely be, what were they offered? And Shlomo's point, is that what they were offered wasn't great.
And as I mention, there *is* a counter offer, sitting on the floor of the UN, which Palestine have agreed to, which hundreds of other member states support, and which has been vetoed repeatedly by, you guessed it, Israel and America. That doesn't mean Israel don't want peace either. It says you can't simply blame one side for the lack of a deal. Which is what Tom was trying to do.
You say this isn't a symmetric position. And I agree. But where that asymmetry lies depends entirely on the perspective you look at it from (See? There's that nuance you know and love😉). The Israeli government has been breaking international law and aiding and abetting extremists as they commit acts of aggression and terror against the Palestinians every single day. This has been true for decades.
Various Palestinian leaderships have countered this with brutal attacks on innocent civilian targets, most horrifically, on October 7th.
Hopefully everybody can agree that both of these are wrong. Which is worse? I have my feelings, as does everybody. But I frankly don't think the question is very useful. A peace process requires everybody to look forward. And part of that is recognising the futility of playing "who is worse" forever.
Agreed with much of what you wrote - I tried to read your article (Save Palestine from Hamas) but it was paywalled - fair enough! :)
A. You mention "thinking though an end...to a lasting peace". What do you imagine that looks like? I'm genuinely curious and it's not a loaded question - I feel like I only hear 3 different options, none of which is satisfying: 1) 2 state solution, but make it better this time. 2) No more Israel. 3) no more Palestine.
B. You also describe having issues with the founding of Israel - I assume you mean the Balfour declaration (1917) or do you mean the resolution of the Arab-Israel war in 1948/Nakba- you don't mention anything by name. As you certainly know, the "zionist" project was in response to the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust. Since you are, in principle, opposed to genocide, it seems odd not to recognize the underlying need or motivation here.
I could be mistaken, but at the time my understanding of history is that the Jews were mostly moving into unoccupied swampland, etc. and not overthrowing major metropolitan areas or taking desirable farmland. Indeed there was no state of "Palestine" in 1917, etc. for them to take as you know. So it's hard for me to grasp your specific beef with it all historically. What is the alternative there? A global diaspora of Jews vs. a specific state? I can't understand what you would advocate for in response to the Holocaust.
C. Lastly, you deride the notion that "Palestinians don't want peace". That's really hard to square with all of the available evidence - the squandering of a massive amount of global charity money on weapons instead of food and infrastructure, a charter (recently revised) that literally calls for the extermination of Jews, etc. The cheering after Oct 7th in the streets. I could go on, of course.
Per our prior dialogue, you can pin this on Hamas if you wish - but at some point you have to ascribe agency to people, even if they're subject to indoctrination from early on in life. To be fair, I don't doubt that there is a strong cohort of Palestinians who are increasingly tired of Hamas but scared to rise up - there have been recent cases where Hamas has brutally murdered people speaking up about this in the streets - but again if Palestinians aren't afraid to violently rise up against one class of oppressors (Israel) how is it fair to not expect them to rise up against their most local oppressors (Hamas)? It's one of many double standards that are again, frustrating.
I'm thinking through this as well, and I don't have a position other than Hamas had to know what the response to Oct 7th would be prior to acting. They knew the Palestinian people would suffer, and Israel would suffer - all while they sat in mansions in Qatar.
D. Question on media consumption/construction of reality - I'm also trying to sort out how to arrive at reliable figures on this - how are you sourcing numbers? I see things in some media on the thousands killed (which you gesture at), then I see media on the other side of the spectrum saying these numbers are from the Gaza ministry of health, and many of the "children" being killed are teenage freedom fighters and not innocents. And analyses of the numbers released by the Gaza ministry of health - the rapidity and absolute certainty of death tolls that get revised daily in unusual ways. It's just impossible for me to know what's going on so I'm curious how you're sorting through information.
"C. Lastly, you deride the notion that "Palestinians don't want peace". That's really hard to square with all of the available evidence - the squandering of a massive amount of global charity money on weapons instead of food and infrastructure, a charter (recently revised) that literally calls for the extermination of Jews, etc. The cheering after Oct 7th in the streets. I could go on, of course."
I'll address this one first, because I think it's the key reason why people see Palestine so differently.
The first point you mention, squandering global charity money on weapons, is obviously "pinned" on Hamas. Just as you don't decide how the U.S government spends money, the people of Gaza don't decide how Hamas spends money. I'm sure they'd rather that money was spent on food and infrastructure for them and their families. This is uncontroversial, no?
But as for the cheering in the street after Oct 7th, I think this is only confusing if you overlook a few things. First of all, I'm confident in saying that the majority of people in Gaza hate Israel. Not Jews necessarily, but Israel. And I find this incredibly easy to understand. If you or I were born and raised in Gaza, I'm almost certain we'd feel the same way.
And while I'm certain there's antisemitism mixed in with that, I think the key reason is the aforementioned rather brutal oppression Israel has inflicted on them for decades. So yes, I think Gazans, like all other human beings, want peace. But I think they want liberation from Israel's tyranny just as much. And I think while that tyranny persists, many of them will be happy that somebody has struck a blow against their enemies (it's worth noting here that polls suggest most Gazans are unaware of the full horror of what Hamas did, state media and all that).
So I don't judge them too harshly for their celebrations on October 7th. Of course, I disagree with them, but I haven't lived their life. It makes me think of Nat Turner's slave rebellion. Nat Turner killed dozens of women and children, even babies during his rebellion. Am I horrified by that? Of course! Do I condemn his actions from my position of safety and liberty? Absolutely. Would I judge slaves too harshly if they said they understood or approved of his aims, even if not his methods? No.
A. Yes, I'm in the "two-state solution but make it better" camp. This is clearly the only viable peaceful solution, regardless of whether it's difficult. And knowing what I know today, I place a significant chunk of the blame for the failure of a two-state solution on Israel. International law states that all of the land Israel has occupied since 1967 is illegally occupied. Palestine has said for over a decade that it will accept a two-state solution that includes a return to the 1967 borders and a right to return for Palestinians forced from their homes (this is also required by international law). Israel have refused to accept this, partly for reasons I'll come to later.
Given that Israel has broken these laws for so many decades, I acknowledge the there are major logistical problems with just moving all of the Israelis living in illegal settlements within Israel's borders. Compromise will be necessary from both sides here. It's going to be uncomfortable for all concerned. Just, I think, less uncomfortable than other 75 years of killing.
B. Yes, I'm opposed, in principle and in practice, to genocide. But that doesn't mean I think any action that uses the Holocaust as justification is right or makes sense. As I'm sure you know, Jews and Arabs have lived side-by-side in that part (and other parts) of the world, largely without issue for centuries. The problem with Israel, conceptually, is taking a part of that land, where Arabs were living, and saying, "This is ours. This is only (or at least very preferentially) for Jews."
The reason for the Nakba, the reason Israeli is so dead set against the right of return, the reason for the settlements, the reason a Jew born in Brooklyn has greater citizenship rights in that part of the Middle East than a Muslim born in Jerusalem, is because they want to maintain or create Jewish majorities as they slowly take over more land. Israel have been quite open about this.
Israel is the only place in the world where rights are granted not by birthplace, not by residency status, not even by religion (there are lots of secular Jews), but by group identity. Personally I don't think this concept can survive, because I think it's flawed at its root. I mean, just imagine an explicitly white or black or Mormon nation state, where people with this identity receive preferential treatment and the government openly manufactures majorities to ensure its influence.
Israel exists and I support its continued existence. But I think it needs to change.
D. I have no particular problem accepting figures from Gaza's health ministry. Given that there have been decades of killing, Hamas have had many occasions to report death figures. Those past figures have been independently verified, including by Israel, and always found to be accurate. The "ThOsE aRe HaMaS fIgUrEs" rhetoric is just a deflection in my opinion. We trust Israel's figures too. Even though they've gone from 1400 innocent civilians to 1200 to around 1000 to around 700 innocent civilians with another 300 or so soldiers.
Same goes for the "are they really children" rhetoric. According to current figures, around 10,000 children have been killed. That's people 17 and under. Let's assume that every single one of those 0-17-year-old boys is a child soldier. That leaves is with 5,000 baby and teenage girls killed in just 100 days. Fifty every single day, none of whom are Hamas. And remember, this horrific outcome is the best case scenario in which we have to imagine 2-year-old boys as "freedom fighters."
So as far as information goes, even if we assume dishonesty, and there's no solid reason to do so, the horror of what's happening is just overwhelming.
Thanks for taking the time to reply, and share another layer of depth in how you're thinking about this very complex issue. Particularly regarding what a humane endpoint might look like and how you process or think about sources of information.
You've been a good-faith exponent for the principled version of (what strikes me as) a more pro-Palestinian perspective. As we've both stated, there are legitimate grievances on both ends, and fundamental asymmetries. Uncontroversially, I mourn for the dead on both sides, am horrified both by the thought of hostages (including babies) in the Gazan tunnels as well as the ongoing reports of decimation against the Palestinians. Everyone is wrong and everyone is righteous.
Before one can broker a more stable agreement, the thugs of Hamas must be ejected from power. I see scattered reports of Palestinians protesting them (as they refuse to eg distrubute aid or horde resources), but I don't know how to really move things forward until new leadership is recognized there. We might disagree on some finer points, but this has been a fruitful discussion for me; hopefully for you. A ceasefire is as temporary as the next suicide bomber or rocket, and just welcomes another inevitable cycle of reprisal and death. Some regions just enter into a mess and never emerge (Darfur).
Well-said. I too don't have a side in this argument. I despise Hamas and "radical Islam" in general, but I have also never heard a convincing argument in support of Zionism. Now both sides have a moral high ground to claim, with all the exaggeration and hyperbole that comes with it. How could anything good come from this?
Tom's standard of "renounce violence" is more than a bit much. No "state" if you want to call Gaza that, can exist under pacifism. Of would unconditionally renounce all violence.
That said, I cannot think of another entity (including ISIS) in which the leadership considered their OWN civilian deaths as a political benefit. (And it seems to be working, even on Steve.) Even the Nazis had air raid shelters and put time and effort into warning people and getting them into them.
Unfortunately, it's hard to see how Israel stops when there is a possibility that the October 7th planners-- and make no mistake, the WORST things that happened were planned, but make the rapes by Russian troops (also a planned reprisal) look like an orgy at Woodstock, could still be in charge. Your early reaction was correct. However this is not merely a reprisal for October 7, as Hamas would not consider it an incentive not to do it again. In fact, I fear they think they are winning.
Yep, it is working on me. Because Hamas, for all their evil, aren't the ones dropping the bombs. This idea that because Hamas did this terrible thing, every single terrible thing that happens afterwards is their fault, is just absolutely insane to me. Especially as Israel has done plenty of terrible things to the people of Gaza and the West Bank before all this.
I mean, say we had some kind of ongoing land feud, but one day we get into a fight and you kill me. Is my family justified in killing your entire family because you "started it"? Would it be your fault if they blow up your house with your friends and family inside? Do we not admit ANY sense of proportionality or aim to punish only the people responsible?
That would be awesome. There's one problem. It's impossible. As soon as I hear about how to punish only those responsible, I will start a campaign for a Nobel Prize for that person. When one state (or whatever) commits an act of war against another, the people of that "state" pay the price. What is "proportional?" Pearl Harbor was 3,000 mostly military lives lost. Should we have stopped after Midway? The Germans killed almost NO American civilians. Should we not have bombed Berlin? The ONLY clean way for this would be for the people of Gaza to rise up against Hamas. There is NO evidence they would if they could. In fact, the West Bank doesn't hold elections BECAUSE they are afraid Hamas would win. I can feel as bad as I want to about children being bombed. I feel bad about children being raised to be the kind of people who call home to brag about killing a Jewish family. But Israel's first priority has to be to make October 7th as unlikely to happen again as possible. And your individualizing above is unusually facile for you. As is the "plenty of terrible things." October 7th is a game changer, and put this in a more existential level and denying that is useless. But I'll play along. If I kill you in the land feud, and your family knows my family is plotting to keep killing even after your family kills me, and is likely to come over and rape your whole family to death while burning them alive in front of you, should they stop at just killing me?
But back to proportionality and our "just war." We killed more Japanese civilians by a factor of thousands than they killed of ours. And probably similar ratios of Germans. Should we have had a cease fire in order to feel better about Berlin's babies?
" As soon as I hear about how to punish only those responsible"
No, no, come on now, let's not make perfect the get out clause for good. I understand that innocent people die in war. I understand that a military response can't be perfectly targeted at only the people responsible. But we are SOOOO far past that now. Not only that, but America was at war with JAPAN, not just a terrorist group who launched an attack from there.
WW2 was an existential war for the allies. And again, there's the central point that unlike Israel, America had done nothing to Japan to justify Japan's aggression. Yet still, decades later, America's decision to drop nukes on civilians has eroded its moral standing in every conflict since. And even America stopped at two. Israel have dropped the equivalent of three with no end in sight. Knowing perfectly well that Hamas will never surrender.
Actually, America had an oil embargo on Japan and was definitely tilted toward China in the region, (there were these dudes called The Flying Tigers, etc.) though nothing quite approaching Lend Lease in Europe...
Exactly, this is why people like myself are objecting to so many of the people Israel is killing being innocent Palestinians. Who, we're constantly assured everybody understands, are not Hamas. This is also why comparisons to the number of civilians killed in WWII don't quite stack up.
And yes, I agree, Israel's priority should be to make another attack like October 7th as unlikely as possible. How is it possible you think the way to achieve this is to radicalise thousands of Palestinians by killing their children and mothers?
Now it's just getting silly. October 7th happened BEFORE all this. So less likely in the future is that all the infrastructure is gone. Period. And probably half of Hamas fighters qualify as "children" in these counts.
How is it possible that you're so sure this isn't the way but have ZERO suggestions of a way?
Israel has been doing half measures for years. The horrific -- and organized-- nature of October 7th made total war inevitable. I feel sorry for the victims of hurricanes, too. But I don't rail at Earth's weather systems. I don't feel good about it, and I don't rah rah every day saying, "Good shot, Israel!" other than when I hear some Hamas asshole got surgically targeted. It was just obvious this was how it was going to go. Iran KNEW this was how it was going to go when they played their Gaza pawn.
And you have spent all your time lately blaming Israel for the deaths of Hamas's HUMAN SHIELDS. In Mogadishu, Adid lined up civilians to shoot at the trapped Americans. We didn't expect our guys to not shoot their way out. (Maybe that's just a Muslim warlord thing?) But it all happened in one night and there wasn't a permanent Somali refugee infrastructure in place.
I mean seriously. The Palestinian refugee infrastructure is 70 years old! Everybody in Eastern Europe and Indochina was expected to settle somewhere in that time and we didn't set aside places for them to claim. Much of this ongoing situation is deliberately using Palestinians by their "own side" as pawns in the anti-colonialism Third World UN coalition to strike at what they view as the last Western colonial power (mixed in with Islamic anti-semitism, which is considered a legit point of view in those circles-- as Ivy League schools have shown.
So I'm not buying that all this is caused by Israel's decades of mistreatment. Even Arafat admitted at the end to the Clinton Administration that he was getting 90plus percent of what he wanted in the negotiations, but if he accepted them, he was a "dead man."
I agree with you on basically everything, but here I am very split. I am a firm believer in the right of Israel to exist and to protect its citizens, and, more importantly, I know the history of the region. As long as Arab states use Palestinians as a proxy in a war to drive the Jews out, this conflict has no end. And, fuck, they have! From the beginning! From the very moment they decided Jews have no right to be there or to have their own country in a place they have been inhabited from the dawn of times, and they invented the nation of "Palestine" and made up a "warrior" with Arafat's face, who was in fact trained and schooled by the KGB and other helpful actors from the Communist bloc. Every time they have rejected the 2-state solution (regardless of your childish argument of "it was not good enough for them") they used Palestinians as pawns in a hate game. Also, your claim that Hamas is not in control in the West Banks, is correct in theory only; in reality, Hamas pushes an ideology embraced by the majority of Palestinians, including (or even especially) those in the West Banks (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/22/1207863782/who-governs-the-west-bank-understanding-palestinian-political-leadership)
Yes, it is absolutely horrific that so many innocent people die as scapegoats in a war they don't want, and it happens every single damn time! It is estimated that between 500,000 and 2 million German civilians died in WWII from ally bombardings and Soviet war crimes, without counting the over 200,000 that Nazis killed in euthanasia programs. I am afraid this conflict is headed that way, just like the Iraq war, or the bloody Syrian civil war, or the one in Yemen. There is a way to put an end to this, though, one that you discount here, for whatever reasons you might have: what if Qatar, Egypt and a coalition of Arab states said "enough" and decided to expel all Hamas leaders and support the return of all hostages to Israel, and work together with Israel towards a peaceful resolution? Would that be acceptable for you? What if, instead of wanting the total destruction of Israel, they would leave the Jewish state alone, and support the reconstruction and development of a Palestinian State that would build schools instead of tunnels?
I am heartbroken for the thousands of people who were killed on both sides during this monstrous conflict, but I also understand that for all Jews in Israel this is a question of life and death, now or never, you or me. I don't agree with it, but I won't pretend to be in their shoes and to know better than themselves what is best for them. As heartless and awful as it sounds, Palestinians could all be given safe haven in any of the Arab countries in the area, at least temporarily, until a solution is worked out. The Israeli Jews cannot say the same, and you know it very well. If the pogrom of October 7 was possible on their own territory, imagine what would happen to them in their declared enemy's space!
"what if Qatar, Egypt and a coalition of Arab states said "enough" and decided to expel all Hamas leaders and support the return of all hostages to Israel, and work together with Israel towards a peaceful resolution? Would that be acceptable for you?"
Yes, this would be perfectly acceptable to me. I want the hostages released (preferably before Hamas or the IDF kills any more of them). I want Hamas to be destroyed. I support any solution that gets those ~130 hostages released that doesn't, for some abstract reason, involve the slaughter of ~24,000 equally innocent people. I don't understand how this math is working differently for anybody else. Heck, I'd even *kind of* understand if the 24,000 innocent deaths were guaranteed to bring those 130 hostages home but it hasn't even achieved that.
But also, your solution is only half a solution.
There would still remain the question of the borders of that Jewish state (a question that Israeli governments have repeatedly refused to answer).
There would still be the question of Israel retuning the land that is not and never hs been officially part of the Jewish state (something that Netanyahu has openly refused to do, even though holding it is against international law).
There would still be the question of the blockade of Gaza and the West Bank barrier and the discrimination against and disenfranchisement of Arabs in Israel.
Israel have proposed precisely zero solutions to any of these major issues. And, in fact, have been openly hostile to addressing them.
The 2 million people in Gaza could not be given safe haven in a neighbouring state. This is only possible to say when you think in numbers and not in human beings. It's practically impossible. Not only that, but it's exactly what the extremists in Netanyahu's government want (and what some of the have proposed). But if those people leave their land, they will never get it back. Just as we saw in the Nakba. A significant part of this conflict is built around Israel's clear desire to take all of the land from the river to the sea.
But that is not Israel's land.
I keep hearing people say that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. I agree. But why is it that the people who say this can't see that the Palestinian people have the same rights? And the they will inevitably fight for them.
I agree with many of the issues you raise. Alas, it is really too late for the international community to raise them NOW! These issues have been brewing for more than 75 years, ever since the creation of the state of Israel and the complete refusal of Palestinians and other Arab countries to accept the two state solution. Look at the partition plan for 1947! The Palestinian side was more than adequate for the one million (or so, as there are no real statistics from that time) Palestinian Muslims who claimed the land, but when they rejected the plan and declared war to Israel the international community didn't raise a finger! They started conflicts with Israel in 1948, 1967, 1971, 1973, 1985, 1987, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and now 2023, helped by the Arab neighbors. Are you kidding when you claim Israel has the desire to take all the land? The PLO was created in 1964, when Gaza was controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan, who also controlled the East Jerusalem, including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount! In 1964 there were no Israeli settlements in Gaza, nor in Judea or Samaria (The West Bank) and they had no intention to send their people in a new war! What land did PLO want to "liberate" in 1964? After the 1967 Six Day war, the PLO launched attacks from Jordan. In 1970, to save his country, King Hussein of Jordan expelled PLO to Lebanon (where they helped start the civil war that destroyed the country, the only country with a Christian majority in the Middle East). Wanna guess why Jordan expelled them? Don't take it from me, take it from the horse's mouth, the "brave" Zuheir Mohsen, one of the members of the PLO Executive Council : " The creation of a Palestinian State is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Jaffa and Haifa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine (my note: the wonderful from the river to the sea), we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan". It was NEVER about the land (a land that used to belong to Jews and Palestinians equally)! They just wanted to kill the Jews - just search for all the pogroms Jews went through while they were inhabiting that land before the creation of Israel and the destruction of Jewish settlements between 1920 and 1940: Bnei Yehuda, Tel Hai, Metula, Kfar Saba, Kfar Malal, Kfar Uria, Ruhama, Hartuv, Hulda, Motza, Poria, Gaza, Beit She'an. Nakba was a human tragedy caused by ALL forces involved in the conflict! The 700,000 Palestinians who lost their lives or were forced to flee have their equivalent in the more than 850,000 Jews who were killed or expelled at the same time from the neighbouring Arab states. The difference is that while the Jews found a haven in Israel, the Palestinians were stuffed into refugee camps and denied citizenship wherever they would go. They are and have always been pawns in the effort of Arab countries from the Middle East to refuse any autonomy to Jewish population. Yes, of course, Palestinians have the right to inhabit land that belonged to their ancestors. How far back should we go for that claim? British Empire? Ottoman Empire? Byzantine Empire? Roman Empire? Persian Empire? Achaemenid Empire? Neo-Assyrian Empire? Kingdom of Israel? Egyptian Empire? Akkadian Empire? Frankly, Palestinians will never own that land fully if they continue to claim it belongs to them only, and no Jews will ever be allowed to be there. This is the ONLY fixation political forces in that part of the world have had or will have, and I know it because I've lived there. Once you learn the history of that land and you live in Israel your optics change dramatically. So yes, my friend, that train has left the station a long time ago. That land is not blessed, it's damned by the murderous ideation of a pan-Arabic coalition that wants no Jews in their middle.
"Are you kidding when you claim Israel has the desire to take all the land?"
No, I'm not kidding at all! I don't even have to look to history.
As I mentioned to Tom, Benjamin Netanyahu stood on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, before October 7th, and held up a map with Palestine completely erased and Israel occupying all the land from the "river to the sea".
Israeli settlers have been stealing Palestinian land (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eac1l1ozfLc), by force, for decades. And with the help of the IDF, have stolen more, in the West Bank, since October 7th. Forcing people from their houses at gunpoint in some cases. Again, this is justified by the claim that the land is theirs and ignored, and sometimes aided, by the Israeli government.
I'm not denying at all that there are Muslim extremists who want to kill Jews. Hamas among them. But let's not pretend Israelis are all moderates.
Netanyahu is not Israel, and you know that very well, please don't be disingenuous! Of course there are extremists in every single country, and maybe in Israel more than elsewhere, for good reasons - you cannot live under the threat of daily rockets thrown at you by a neighbor who hates you to the point of beheading your children, and still love this neighbor. But while this idea of a "greater Israel" is an extremist view in Israel, it is mainstream among Palestinians to hold the view that "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free"... of Jews. The reality is that Jews can live side by side or integrated peacefully with others (20%+ of the ISRAELI population is Muslim or Druze or Christian, holding full rights and representation) but Muslims cannot, when they are in charge. Name any Muslim majority democracy in which non-Muslims exist and have equal status. 950,000 Jews were expelled from middle eastern Muslim countries in the 20th century. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews cannot return to those places where they had many generations of relatives. But non-Jews can absolutely live in Israel peacefully. Maybe if the citizens of Gaza and West Bank stopped acting like terrorists, led by corrupt and genocidal Palestinian governments in blind rage towards Israeli Jews (vs Egypt or Jordan that also controlled these areas at times), they too could live in freedom to pursue their best lives. How did those Muslim Arab-Israelis come to be there? Because they or their forefathers were not "driven out," but instead chose to remain and become Israeli citizens.
On Arabs living in Israel, here's a piece from Wiki about Jerusalem:
"Under Israeli law, Arab residents of East Jerusalem and Druze residents of the Golan Heights (both Israeli-occupied territories) have the right to apply for Israeli citizenship, are entitled to municipal services, and have municipal voting rights; this status is upheld due to Israel's effective annexation of the former through the Jerusalem Law of 1980 and of the latter through the Golan Heights Law of 1981.[22] Both groups have largely foregone applying for Israeli citizenship, with the Palestinians of East Jerusalem and the Syrians of the Golan Heights mostly holding residency status."
Do you really believe that such an action would result in either:
1 -- Palestinians in the West Bank getting to vote in Israeli elections, and have the right to keep their land in the West Bank?
2 -- A real Palestinian state where residents of the West Bank controlled land ownership and the justice system in that area, which would probably result in many Israeli settlements in the West Bank having to be abandoned?
Because I don't. I don't see Israel granting any rights to Palestinians, either in the WB or Israel proper.
And yet, this means that Israel's 7 million Jews need to keep 5 million non-citizen Palestinians oppressed forever. There's no way that ends well.
You mirror my thoughts pretty clearly here. Dan Senor’s weekly conversations with Israeli’s offers nuanced, sensible, historically accurate discussion.
You also should note that within a few years of the end of WW2, (West) Germans were indeed voting in their own elections, and controlled their own destiny.
Indeed. But they didn't do that just because, they did it because other nations (especially the US) made it possible. We are talking about West Germany, of course, as the Soviets blocked aid from the Marshall Plan to any Communist country in the area, including East Germany. West Germany went on to become intrinsically connected with other countries in the West, especially France, to avoid a subsequent war. This could only be possible in the Middle East if the Arab countries would love their citizens more than they hate the Jews in Israel. So you are partially right, this might not be possible, but not because Israel is opposed to peace. The ball is not in their court on this.
Dear Steve, I like what you right very much it's thoughtful and rational and I agree with most of what you say. Killing children in Gaza is as wrong as it was on October 7th but terrible as it is to say so your example of refusing to kill a child that his father is using as a hostage is something you would not do is too simple. The father who is also a fighter may have already killed someone in your family and may be threatening to kill another of your children and you believe he believes in his own and his child's martyrdom. We come to these situations with enormous complexities from our own experience that make us damaged and damaging. These are tragedies not just right and wrong choices. My own experience makes me guilty and afraid. I wouldn't join the Zimbabwe Liberation party because I would not join people who might kill my parents. Instead I joined sympathisers of South African freedom. Definitely a non-combatant, I lived in Zambia and woke one night to the Rhodesian SAS bombing liberation fighters near my home. We put our children on mattresses on the floor, found our passports but had to wait till the morning. I terrified myself by wondering what I would do if the Rhodesian SAS were defeated and one desperate man came knocking on my door asking for help. Of course the Rhodesian won that battle. Zambians were not seasoned fighters. To add even more complexity many Rhodesian soldiers were black conscripts - not those in the SAS of course - but how was life for the families of black conscripts faced with freedom fighters? Where do we run to?
Kill all of Hamas even if it means killing an unlimited number of non-combatant Palestinians is probably a lingering result of hatred for Muslim Arabs after the 9-11 takedown of the World Trade Center. The desire for revenges leads to a Hatfield–McCoy feud that can go on for far too long.
Some have seen these words from me before, but I'll write them again. I had not been in Vietnam long when I saw the bodies of dead Viet Cong sappers found dead in the wire after the previous night's action. Their body's broken from gunfire, bones snapped and protruding from their skin, intestines in plain view. They were young, mostly about 13 years old. My first thought was that their mothers were waiting for them. My next thought was, so is mine. I was 18. They were child soldiers who had come to kill me. They were the enemy. The children who appeared on the road wherever we stopped after a truck hit a mine or we waited to cross a pontoon bridge were not the enemy. If a VC popped up in their midst, I would have chosen my M-16 in preference to a frag.
America was aghast when it learned of the My Lai massacre. Most of America anyway. Sadly, Isriel, America's darling, seems to have fewer detractors as they frag the children at the bridge.
𝐈n 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞'𝐬, 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐬𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥'𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥, 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚 𝐧𝐨𝐧-𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭? 𝐘𝐨𝐮! 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭?
> "𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚 𝐧𝐨𝐧-𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭?"
This is an emotionally fraught subject, and I respect that people can have different takes on it. I can feel your compassion as you try to slice and dice tricky situations which have no clean answers. Please don't take what I have to say as being insensitive to the emotion involved, on a personal level (like me and you).
However, I fear that in the bigger picture (beyond me and you) such a framing is calculated to create overwhelming emotions which saturate the rational mind, alas more often bringing out the worst cognition (even while invoking the best).
Could you personally look into their eyes and order a small company of soldiers into certain death, in order to enable a larger formation to retreat and escape that fate? Or could you look instead into the eyes of the larger group who would die due to your inability to sacrifice the smaller group? Does this way of making a decision by eye contact squeamishness strike you as functional?
That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome. It favors local rather than global optimization, or short term versus long term thinking.
But it's even more problematic if the morally costly option is presented in isolation - your scenario posits nothing about the consequences of your deciding NOT to take an action which results in the death of a non-combatant child. Your scenario omits any balancing, presenting only an isolated moral cost with nothing to be gained. If there were no overriding reasons, then no I could not. If there WERE over-riding reasons, then whether or not I as in imperfect human could personally take some action does not determine whether it's the wisest action.
And again, I realize you are trying to sort out some morally fraught no-win situations as best a human can, so I have a lot of sympathy and my (hopefully gentle enough) dissent is not motivated by disrespect.
In the overwhelmingly unlikely hypothetical case of my personally needing to shoot an innocent child in order to save a larger group, whether I did or not, I'd likely be one of the casualties. It would likely destroy me either way. But that feature of my psyche doesn't guide us in selecting the best path.
"That kind of "look them in the eye" decision making does not, in my view, constitute a likely path out of tricky situations where we need every ounce of our rational perspective to choose the least bad outcome."
I understand the dangers of appeals to emotion in situations where logic is necessary, but the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality.
No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to blockade two million people into a relatively small area, persecute them for decades, and then drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack.
No rational person could claim that because these extremists committed this atrocious attack, ANY response, no matter how atrocious, was the exclusive fault of the extremists.
No rational person could call the 2 million people living in the region, with extremely limited ability to leave thanks to the aforementioned blockade, "human shields" instead of "innocent, uninvolved civilians." No rational person could argue that the foremost military power in the region, with the full support of arguably the foremost military power in the world, can't do better than dropping 65,000 tons worth of unguided bombs on civilian targets.
So I think this "look in the eyes" rhetoric, is about humanising the people who are dying right now. We SHOULD feel emotion for them. It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life. Every single person staunchly defending Israel's atrocities does so on the back of this 1200 people killed on October 7th. And righty so. This, too, should stir our emotions.
I'm just astonished by how many people only seem to be able to generate emotion in one direction.
Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find.
> "No rational person could argue that it was reasonable to ... drop three Hiroshima's worth of bombs on the civilian population when extremists commit an undeniably atrocious attack."
That latter assertion is quite a good outrage producer, but as is my wont, I wondered where this figure "3 Hiroshima's" came from, as it seems surprisingly large upon even superficial consideration. The Hiroshima bomb was estimated at 12 to 18 kilotons, so three times that would be 36,000 to 54,000 tonnes of TNT.
The largest (non-nuclear) ordinance used by the IDF is the BLU117, or so called 2000 pound bomb, which actually contains about 1000 pounds of TNT equivalent, so it would take about 70,000 -110,000 of such bombs to equal 3 Hiroshima bombs.
For context, the US has supplied 5400 BLU117, but it's unlikely that all have been used. We do know that hundreds have been tho.
Of course, the vast majority of the artillery, rockets and bombs used in Gaza were much smaller than that monster. So that claim is a bit dubious, likely exaggerated by severalfold, perhaps even an order of magnitude high. But that estimate would be subject to revision with facts from a competent and unbiased source.
So where did the claim come from? Apparently, it came from the Gaza Media Office, an organ of Hamas (ie: part of their propaganda apparatus).
From what I can find in a quick search, it looks like those who wish to fuel the anti-Israel narratives are (1) exaggerating the number of weapons dropped or fired, (2) falsely assuming that all of them are very large indeed, and (3) counting the total starting weight (including casings, rocket motors, guidance, fuel, etc) as being pure TNT. And counting on an audience who *wants* to believe the worst and will not do any checking.
Simply taking Hamas' word for it, and repeating without any verification (or even quick reality-check arithmetic) their 3 Hiroshima framing, which was calculated to foster outrage in a gullible public in the West, is less than optimal for factuality.
Likewise assuming that 100% of that exaggerated 65,000 tonnes of explosive was unguided (better estimates of the percentage is 40-45%), and assuming that it was all dropped on civilians (and none of it on military targets). Good for outrage, bad for truth.
Let's all beware of unreflective echoing of propaganda - and the "motivated reasoning" bias we can ALL experience in uncritically accepting anything which seems to support the point we wish to make. This is a note to myself as well, so nobody should take it too personally, but we should all take it seriously and up our game.
(Let me note that my primary point is about using known unreliable sources like Hamas in our writing. Doing post-writing research which is selectively looking for the highest numbers one can cull from other sources in order to be 'right' - ie: sources which were not considered before writing - does NOT mean the initial credulity goes away. At best it means one was lucky.)
And once again - even if the figures from Hamas (or from peace groups, etc) are grossly exaggerated for propaganda effect, there is zero doubt that Israel has nevertheless engaged in truly massive destruction in Gaza, and that can be justly condemned. So I'm not arguing against the main point, but cautioning about good process - about not believing and amplifying a questionable source just because it supports our point.)
(Aside: Apart from total quantities, just the use of several hundred 2000 pound bombs in a crowded area like Gaza - which has been verified by bomb crater analysis of satellite photos - is in itself very hard to justify, even if it's not tens of thousands of such bombs. I am appalled at many things that Israel has done).
But we can do that condemnation carefully, without being taken in by easily dispelled misinformation from propaganda sources. We must trust that the truth is enough to support our points, with no need for exaggeration.
"Please read this sentence: I am NOT defending the massive Israeli attack on Gaza, which is undeniable. This is more about critical thinking in the consumption of news sources, versus simply repeating the most outrageous accusations one can find."
For the record, I find disclaimers like this, which you use quite frequently, to be unnecessary and condescending. If you write a sentence, you don't then need to instruct people to read it.
If, in their reply, you feel that they've made an unfair assumption about your motives, it's obviously appropriate to point that out. But I think it's sensible to give people the benefit of the doubt that they'll at least read what you've written and aren't going to react like irrational children.
This is just my feeling on it, of course. Others might feel differently. But thought I'd offer the feedback, as stuff like that just makes it exponentially more likely I won't bother replying.
Anyway, that said, I appreciate this comment. We completely agree that accurate, clearly expressed information is important. And while I did check the figures for myself, I didn't go into the same detail you did regarding tonnage vs direct explosive force. So, looks like the correct figure is around one Hiroshima's worth, no? Google is telling me that the explosive yield of a bomb is typically around 30-40% of the weight. 65,000 x 0.3 = 19,500. Little Boy, according to Wikipedia, was 15,000.
I don't have any great problem using information from Hamas or Gaza as long as I do some verification myself. Hamas' figures have proven to be accurate over the many years of this conflict, there's no good reason to believe they aren't here. I think a lot of people constantly trying to cast doubt on the "Hamas figures" are doing so because the reality of what Israel is doing is tough fro them to swallow. And while Hiroshima comparison are undeniably emotive, I think it's also quite difficult for the people to get a sense of what 65,000 tons of bombs means. Is that a lot? It sounds like a lot. But there's no context.
Anyway, I'd repeated the "3 Hiroshimas" in an article, which I've now corrected (I'll just stick with tonnage rather than "Hiroshima units" until I find a better way to convey the scale), so again, really appreciate the correction.
Steve, I fully agree that:
> "the entire situation is fraught with this kind of emotional pleading. That's why this situation has led to such irrationality."
Exactly. People on all sides are using and being influenced by emotional manipulation, and so cognitively compromised that they often cannot recognize even basic truths.
Where we may differ is that I believe the only hope of minimizing the terrible outcomes is through reducing that irrational raw emotionality, rather than expanding it.
Let me be very clear about something, which is usually misunderstood and which I fear might easily be misunderstood here. I do not believe that pure rationality alone can ever provide a guide, by humans or any other intelligence, organic or artificial. An absolutely rational entity, operating based on pure reason without any non-rational assumptions, values, or axioms, has no purpose or goal or meaning. Without values, it's no more or less rational to destroy the world with dirty nuclear weapons than to cure cancer.
I think the latter is a better outcome, but only because it is more coherent with my (irrational) values.
I see reason and rationality not as providing the values (which are not rational), but as providing the tools for effectively implementing values, and avoiding sabotaging oneself through disconnect with reality.
So when I advocate for a rational perspective on a situation like Israel/Palestine, I'm not suggesting that rationality should or even could be untethered to values and emotions as the underlying motivations, only that our reasoning and exploration of alternatives not be cognitively blinded by emotions so as to inadvertently undermine those underlying values and emotions.
As best I can decipher the issues in Israel/Palestine, a deficit of passionate emotions is not the core dysfunction, and the way out does not involve further "stirring our emotions". The deficit I see is in dispassionate reasoning and respect for truth, while still anchored to underlying humane values.
> "It IS monstrous to be purely rational about such immense loss of life."
I sympathize with your passion, but I think that statement represents a misunderstanding. The loss of 20+ thousand lives is a terrible tragedy, but when literally millions of lives are hanging in the balance (in an all out future war), SOMEBODY has to look at the situation with clear vision, rather then through a red haze of irrational emotionalit and knee-jerk response to the immediate stimulus, or there could be vastly larger tragedy in the offing.
That is, the rationality I am advocating is DEEPLY intertwined with caring about lives - ALL of the lives which are on the line, not just the subset showing up in videos. Wanting to avoid going off half cocked in a blind reaction to an emotionally evocative incident is an outgrowth of deep caring about the ultimate outcomes, not of indifference.
In case it's not clear, everything I'm saying also fully applies to the emotional reaction of Israelis to the terrorist attack on Oct 7. There too rational concerns (grounded in humane values, not free floating) need to over-ride appeals to strong emotion (like revenge). My saying that doesn't come from not caring about the 1400 lost Israeli lives - but from ALSO caring about the millions of other lives (Israeli and Palestinian) which are still on the line.
I am quite sympathetic to the high emotions (on both sides), but I do not wish to lose my ability to reason clearly by joining them. If that path produced good outcomes, the issues would have been long solved. My goal is to have clear sight connected by good reasoning to positive humane values in seeking the best outcome for all - rather than being emotionally hijacked and stampeded by whatever atrocity is in my visual field at the moment. If you feel that makes me an uncaring monster, I will just have to live with that.
Yeah, as Dave said, I don't think anybody's accusing you of being any kind of monster. The point is that there's a difference between allowing for emotion and being ruled by your emotions. Just as, as you say, there's a difference between being rational and being a robot (not accusing you of being a robot or, in fact, any of these. Just establishing a baseline).
If we were all looking at the situation with clear vision, Israel would follow international law by defining it's borders in line with the 1967 borders, ending the blockade and, at the very least, reshaping the West Bank Barrier in line with those borders, removing the illegal settlements, and allowing Palestinians forcibly removed from their homes to return. Israel's attempts to move forward without accepting this are a significant source of the turmoil in the region.
Israel would also recognise that bombing Gaza into oblivion can only ever radicalise their enemies even further and lead to more attacks in future.
The Palestinians would accept Israel's acceptance of International law with good grace, denounce all future violence, and devote their energies to making their Palestinian state flourish.
The Palestinians would also recognise that acts of violence against the most powerful military force in the region, even if that military force is breaking international law, can only ever end badly for Palestine.
This is all perfectly rational and humane. But it's not even close to where we are. Because there are decades of emotion clouding the issue for both sides. So first, we have to start with the simplest possible questions like, "how can we get these people to agree to stop killing each other as soon as possible?"
I think the main reason Palestinians hate Israelis are the aforementioned violations of international law. Most of all, the humiliation and suffering related to the blockade, occupation and settlers.
I think the main reason Israelis hate Palestinians is the fear that one of them will come to Israel and blow themselves up on a bus or in a synagogue. Or now, come across the border with paragliders and rape, kill and abduct civilians. There's also the fear that Palestinians want to drive them from what they see as their God-given land.
If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions. You have to bridge gaps where there's a strong difference of opinion about what the "best solution for everyone" is. And the best way to do that, as you say, is to appeal to simple--and hopefully common--values.
Saving the lives of as many children as possible. Freeing hostages. Liberating innocent people from oppression. Allowing people to live peacefully in the land they were born in. Most people can agree on the importance of these ideas because we can empathise and emote. We know we'd want these things for ourselves and the people we love. The people who can't compromise even on issues like these are the ones who are being irrational. And sometimes you need to poke them to remind them of the full human weight of what they're arguing.
I don't think we're actually disagreeing on the broader point, we need cool heads. We can't allow a single atrocity to dominate all other thinking. I just also think there's a real danger of being cool headed to the point where these human beings just become abstract numbers. 10,000 here, 1,400 there. Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important.
> "If I've learned one thing over the past few years of talking and writing about these kinds of issues, it's that being objectively correct, having all your facts right and using iron-clad logic, isn't even close to enough. You always have to contend with people's emotions."
I fully agree, at a broad and general level.
Analysis and persuasion have different characters, and should not be conflated into one big ball of sameness.
Accurate analysis is hindered, not helped, by constant emotional hijacking. That's a time when it's best to have the ability to detach from the emotions of the moment in order to better understand the rational connection between actions and our humane values.
After one uses this dispassionate logic to better understand real world, you are correct that one still needs to use emotional arguments to persuade others, because that's how the majority get convinced.
Both are true, of their separate domains. But it is not helpful to lump them together and assume that the same dynamics apply to both accurate analysis and to public persuasion, so if passionate emotionality helps with the latter it must also help with the former.
I'm guessing that by "1967 borders" you don't mean the borders from 1967 to present, but the borders from 1949 to 1967, ie: basically the "green line" 1949 armistice borders, right?
Why do you see the 1949 armistice line as more legitimate than, say, the 1946 borders? Or the 1947 UN partition plan?
A problem is - a lot of Palestinians (and their supporters in the Arabic and/or Muslim world as well as the West) do not accept the borders established by war in 1949 either (ie: your (pre) 1967 border).
Look at Gaza - whose border pretty much follows the 1949-1967 borders. Israelis are not shrinking Gaza, in fact in 2005 they forcibly removed all the settlers, in what the left leaning government sold as "land for peace". But the Gazans overwhelmingly elected two parties who were not calling for an end to the blockade, but an end to Israel entirely.
What I'm getting at is: do you believe that a "return to the pre-1967 borders" (even if Palestinians do not accept those borders as any more valid) would end or reduce the intention of eliminating Israel? Our would it result in Israel essentially facing the same implacable opposition, only much better armed and positioned?
Try this: use Google maps to zoom in on the Tel Aviv area, and note how far t is from the 1949-1967 border to, say, Tel Aviv. The airport is only about 8 miles from the border. Hesbolah has reportedly amassed 100,000 rockets in the north, so an independent Palestine could do so too, far closer to Israeli population centers. But they wouldn't even need rockets - it's in very easy artillery range. Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers would likely become similar to Seol South Korea, with massive North Korean artillery able to destroy any portion thereof.
The possibility of a war with Palestinian losses 10 or 100 or more times greater than what's happening in Gaza today would be very real (along with an even greater multiplier of Israeli losses). Literally millions of lives would be at stake, and if Israel were to feel they were losing, nukes would come out.
I can't simply say "a rational person would obviously agree that withdrawing to the pre-1967 borders would obviously reduce rather than increase the chances of a catastrophic war in the coming decades". We don't know the future, but the chances of a vastly worse outcome for Israelis and Palestinians seems is hardly trivial.
In the strategic circumstance, with literally millions of lives likely on the line, it seems short sighted to simply decide on the best course forward based on no more than what saves thousands of lives in the immediate future - no matter how many horrifying videos try to emotionally hijack our rational long term considerations, under the nominal intention of "reminding us" that there are real people dying.
If one is concerned about a far more catastrophic war in the future, we have to factor in the real people with faces and names who would die in that conflict - even tho we don't have videos of those people yet, to activate our limbic systems and amygdala.
I've been reading the Hamas charter, the statement of Hamas leaders, the statement of PA leaders, and opinion polls among Palestinians (which are skimpy because it's very hard to do, even before this war). I personally don't see much realistic hope of peace, only of different front lines. And from that perspective, I can understand why Israel may be unwilling to return to the pre-1967 borders.
That doesn't mean there could not be some border which would work better for peace than the 1949 green line, or the present situation. But it makes harping on the pre-1967 border as if it would produce peace and security rather questionable.
I'm also not saying that means the Israeli's are justified in their actions. I think what's happening is horrible, and I want it to end in a better world.
I'm saying that some of the proposed "solutions" may be penny wise and pound foolish, ineffective in the real world of achieving the nominal aims of said solution, and too likely leading to even larger wars. Good (short term) intentions do not automatically lead to good (longer term) outcomes.
> "Reminding ourselves that each one of them had a face and a name is important."
I fully agree that each human affected has a face and a name.
However, at this moment, I am swamped with exactly that "reminder". The first ten times it might generously be termed a "reminder" just in case one had forgotten, but by the 100th time, it can come to feel like emotional manipulation because one hasn't forgotten.
And this can be done by both sides.
As I have said, I have sympathy for the strong passions, I can easily understand where they come from. But when almost EVERY attempt to rationally discuss the options gets hijacked by strong emotionalism, I do not think that lack of passion is the real problem or that further "stirring the emotions" is on the path out of the problem. Sober, unbiased, rational evaluation (grounded in big picture humane values) is in far shorter supply than inflamed passions.
If I rarely heard such "reminders" and most of the discussion was about seeking truth through reason and evidence, I might think that a reminder is needed. But when "reminders" are ubiquitous, and seem to be displacing other discussion, I question the value and role of once again shifting the discussion to the horrors of it all (as if that had been forgotten).
It starts feeling like CSJ folks saying "why don't we ever talk about race?", when such talk is already omnipresent.
I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN officer told me that when he finally went back for a visit with family still there he decided that the emotional wounds of the war would not heal until the last person with living memory of the war was dead.
In Israel/Palestine with never ending war that won't happen. They must accept the unacceptable horror of what is happening, and their part in it.
When I asked if people could kill the little girl as an acceptable pragmatic act of war if you saw her face as she died, it was implicit that you would have to accept her nocturnal visits in your dreams and not see yourself as a monster when you awake.
Not about judging which side is worse in that conflict, but if we were participants we would judge ourselves until we are dead.
I got that you were talking about the emotional cost (anticipated cost inhibiting action in advance, or trauma cost afterward), when asking if I could shoot a young girl in the head while looking into her eyes. I don't know that I personally could, even if in this contrived question that action would save 10 other young girls. But even if I personally couldn't do it, I might still think that 10 for 1 is the better answer if one has the guts to do it (and bear the cost).
I read about people who survive being trapped (eg: fallen tree or rubble) by cutting off their leg - painful but otherwise they die. I don't know if I personally could do that. But my human limitations don't mean that cutting off one's leg is thereby the wrong course of action in the larger picture. Those who do such a thing first need to be able to objectively engage with the reality they face (death if they don't cut off the leg) rather than fantasies, and secondly they need the strength to carry out an action which is bad in the short turn but good in the longer run.
I personally might also have a hard time being a field surgeon or a general. That doesn't mean there isn't a proper role for those who could.
(The above is about the broader concept of judging the rightness of the action, by whether it would be personally incredibly painful, rather than looking at the larger picture - using a deliberately different scenario to facilitate clear thinking. It is NOT meant to be any direct analogy to Israel/Palestine, so please nobody try to pick apart an analogy I was not making.)
You call the question contrived. It is not. Currently Israel is reducing Gaza to rubble and know full well that they are killing non-combatants, including a high number of children. But they do it with thousand-pound bombs where they don't see their victims and the horror is an abstraction.
In the case of the My Lai massacre during the war in Vietnam, Lt. Calley was rightfully prosecuted but the higher lever officers who ordered a preparatory artillery strike on the village were not. They knew the artillery strike they were ordering would be killing of civilians, but they were not looking them in the eye.
The Hamas ghouls certainly saw the faces of their victims and if they were all exterminated, I would not shed a tear for them.
Although rare, Israel has prosecuted IDF ground troops for unjustified killings https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244 , but the leaders ordering it on a large scale seem exempt.
In the Marine's Hymn there is a phrase, "And to keep our honor clean". "Death before dishonor" was a popular tattoo back in the day. In my view, purposeful killing non-combatant (not collateral but purposeful) is dishonorable. The scale of what is taking place leads me to believe that it is purposeful and dishonorable and even Israel considers it to be a crime, for low level grunts who see those they kill. But just as with the My Lai massacre, that only seems to apply to those who see their faces.
I didn't actually write that as an appeal to emotion, but to shine a light on the idea that it is far easier to support "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." when you are not the killer. One who sees the reality.
It might seem tactically sound to toss a frag into a bunch of kids if an enemy combatant pops up in their midst, but it is strategically foolish. If you kill one of my daughters in callous disregard (bug splat) you will not end my will to fight you, you will create it. Israel is creating enemies faster than they can kill them.
America used napalm and Willie Peter in Vietnam, but I never saw WP used as an airburst, let alone over a village. But when I saw these pictures, nobody had to tell me what it was. Excuse my French, but my instant thought was, "Those mother f****rs!" It takes a lot of balls to deny that that was white phosphorus with such an obvious bold-faced lie and 𝐈𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥, 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐭? Try to tell me that this is a tactical attack on a military target and not terrorism aimed at a civilian population.
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/0114/p07s01-wome.html
I am not a pacifist, but a revenge terror campaign is too much and that is what it has become as I see it.
Dave, I think we can all agree, 100% of us reading this substack, that it would be harder to intentionally kill a child in cold blood (for some greater purpose), than for somebody else to do it. Can we just stipulate that, and move to other issues?
For example, would Israel returning to the 1949 armistice borders make a more catastrophic war more or less likely in the next decade or two - the answer to that does not depend on whether it's harder or easier to kill a person while looking them in the eye.
You are welcome to condemn the excesses of Israelis and of Palestinians; in nearly every case I would agree with you. I just don't tend to think that curated atrocities tend to bring out the wisest parts of human being seeking the least awful outcomes for millions of people. Analysis is best done dispassionately (while connected to underlying humane values in the larger picture). It may take a lot of passion to implement even well thought out policies, but that's a separate step.
As a side question, you cite an article from 2009. Are you recounting your reaction from seeing that photo in 2009, or your outrage today in seeing a 2009 photo? Or was your reaction of "Those MF's" in response to 2023 photos which you did not reference?
I saw it then and that is what I thought at the time. Now I have seen video of large buildings collapsing into their footprint like the World Trade Center in the first days of response and Gaza laid to waste like Carthage now. Israel has always been disproportionate in its response. Has it caused its enemies to stop attacking our to do increasingly spectacular attacks?
I have not taken sides in this, but I call out both sides when I see what they are doing as wrong. I'm not a fan of the US sending 2000 pound bombs for use in a counter incergency in a city. The biggest round that has exploded near me was a 1000 pounder.
The people who tried and failed to catapult it and blew themselves up didn't see any of their friendlies in my proximity. I don't hold it against them or think it wrong. It was an unexploded bomb intended to be used on them that they collected after ASP1 blew up. 18 hours of boom, boom, boom that widely distributed a lot of ordinance sent back to us with bad intentions. I wouldn't want someone to try to kill my next door neighbor with one.
> "I have not taken sides in this, but I call out both sides when I see what they are doing as wrong."
That commonality is why we can calmly discuss this. Thanks.
Thank you too. My original point was that it is easier to kill the faceless, and an armchair warmonger. As the conversation went on, I couldn't help but mention that I think (just my opinion) that Israel is doing a large-scale terror campaign. That is not a whatabout to defend the Hamas unambiguous terror attack.
It goes to something I wrote previously about the difference in counterinsurgency and war against nations. But even with that difference, with occupations terror tactics like rape take place that are not like bombing factories with civilian workers. I do think there is space for moral lines to be drawn and it should be.
A sarcastic paraphrasing of Numbers 285 from the Skeptics annotated Bible: "𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘎𝘰𝘥'𝘴 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘔𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘴' 𝘢𝘳𝘮𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘔𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘭𝘦𝘧𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦, 𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘢𝘺𝘴: "𝘏𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦? 𝘒𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘭𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘮. 𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘺 𝘭𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘩𝘪𝘮, 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴." 𝘚𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘔𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘴 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 𝘎𝘰𝘥) 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴. 𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘨𝘰𝘵 32,000 𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴 -- 𝘞𝘰𝘸! (𝘌𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘥 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘺 -- 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘴.) 31:1-54"
When religion becomes an OK for the despicable to take place it does
https://youtu.be/5y2FuDY6Q4M?si=0K3B19vAjA72IBlI
Written a few days later then my other response; I'd like to take another try at clarity.
(Caution - I will NOT be analogizing anything in this post to the Gaza situation, it's about the moral reasoning we apply to many situations)
> 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚 𝐧𝐨𝐧-𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭? 𝐘𝐨𝐮! 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭?
After reflection, this brings up for me the "Trolley Problem", a widespread (and also contrived) thought experiment in moral philosophy. Briefly, for any reader not familiar, it goes like this:
"An out of control trolley car is barrelling down the track and about to kill 10 innocent workers further down the track, who cannot see it in time. However, you are stationed at a track switch between the trolley and the workers and can see the whole situation, and you know that if you pull a lever, the trolley will be diverted down another track, where there is only one worker who will be killed. Should you pull the level?"
You can think about that a bit and perhaps posit and answer.
-----
But then let's add some emotional juice to it:
"If you divert the trolley, before it hits the single worker, she will see that you have pulled the lever and directly caused her death, and will look you right in the eye as the trolley arrives, letting out a blood curling scream of terror. After the impact, you will have a clear view of her broken and bloody body, with her brains squished around the tracks."
Does adding this sudden jolt to the limbic system and the amygdala better illuminate the question of "what is the right thing to do morally, pull or not pull", or does it obscure that question? Would rationality (within an underlying moral value framework like causing the least harm) be a better approach to deciding the moral question, or would following your immediate visceral emotions be the wisest and best choice?
My answer: adding the emotionally evocative context does not change the moral question of pulling or not pulling the lever to switch the trolley, it just adds an additional personal cost to the person making the decision such that they might be more likely to make the wrong decision about the lever if they (understandably) can't personally bear that cost.
And that ties to a larger and more general question:
Is it wisest to determine "the right thing to do morally" based on rationally evaluating facts in light of underlying values, or by doing whatever is believed to be emotionally easiest on the decider?
Unfortunately, your quoted hypothetical question seems to me (if I understand it) to be aimed at supporting the latter approach. If in my flawed human psychology I were to be too squeamish to pull the lever in time and thus save 9 lives, that personal emotional limitation doesn't make not pulling it the morally best answer.
Nor would it make somebody who (at great emotional cost to themselves) does pull the lever a monster operating by ruthless and uncaring logic. They are still operating from deep caring, just at a higher level of cognition vs immediate emotion.
I won't delete my first response, since it's on the record and has been responded to in turn, but I like this answer better. Thanks for raising these tough issues, Dave.
No one does that. Could I drop a bomb on a Hamas installation knowing that children live in Gaza? Yes.
Actually, some do that, but it's much easier to kill the faceless which is why I asked.
𝘐𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦, 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵. -𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘌. 𝘓𝘦𝘦
There lies the problem. War is not terrible from afar where you don't have to see the faces of the those that you kill.
Yes so many armchair quarterbacks who don’t know wat.
I dunno, this is a very tough one. I have to admit, Tom is bringing up a lot of good points, but you're also saying what I started saying in the last few weeks - yeah, maybe the 'g' word fits the Israelis here too, even if they haven't formally declared war on the Palestinians' existence like Hamas and the Pals' religion has. It's why I really have to hold my nose to say anything supportive of the Pals, because they are *so tainted* with millennia-long Jew hatred - but so are the Jews, with their ancient enemies, and the real tragedy is they're all related genetically. But...and I wrote about this recently, Time pointed out that one doesn't have to declare formal genocide for it to be so. Actions count for a lot, and this is looking very, well, genocidey.
Let's remember, when we're talking about land-stealing to talk about *all* the land-stealers in this scenario, like the ancestors of many of today's Pals who invaded, colonized, settled, and oppressed in the 7th century and after. Let's remember that some Pals *and* Jews have lived there continuously for many hundreds, even thousands of years. Let's remember that many of the people living there now came from somewhere else. That the Jews *literally have no place else to go* because they fled Europe in the last century and the Arab countries pushed many of them out after the creation of Israel. So the Arab world can just suck it. They contributed mightily to this mess.
At this point the Pal death toll is ~25,000 (so sez Al Jazeera and CNN but I don't know how accurate that is) but it's definitely over 20K and that's looooong past payback for October 7.
Still...I vacillate because they *both* have to live there, and *some* on both sides favour a two-state solution, Hamas & Netanyahu agree there shouldn't be, and I come back to WHY THE FUCK DID YOU PEOPLE VOTE FOR THAT YAHOO AGAIN? and HEY, HOW'S THAT HAMAS VOTE WORKING OUT FOR YOU?
What it keeps coming back to is...who's worse? I'm not sure, but I give a slight edge to Hamas/Palestinians because....expressed genocide. Esp in the Koran (where i learned the Jews have *one* tree that protects them.)
"Time pointed out that one doesn't have to declare formal genocide for it to be so"
Yeah, I don't think anybody *declares* genocide. They just start killing people and come up with some justification for it.
I'm honesty totally unmoved by arguments that go back thousands of years about whose land this "really" is. Never mind ones that rely on imaginary tales from an ancient book. As you say, Jews and Muslims have lived alongside each other in that region for centuries. Mostly, it's worth noting, without incident. It's when the Jews and the British decided that a piece of land would belong *only* to Jews, and they would decide all of the laws (and immediately passed laws that discriminated in favour of Jews), that things got really explodey.
As I've pointed out a few times recently, 40% of the people living in Gaza right now weren't even born when Hamas were voted in to power. Another 10-20%, at least, were too young to vote. And besides, the rest of the world could say the same thing to America about Trump. And, it seems terrifyingly likely, will have an opportunity to say it again in November. We all know how rarely leaders truly represent their people.
So yeah, I don't think this is as simple as "who's worse". Because what you're doing is asking that question about the very worst people on either side, and then applying that judgement to everybody else. ~2.297 of the 2.3 million people in Gaza had nothing to do with October 7th. Only a tiny proportion of the ~9 million Jews living in Israel are responsible for the atrocities taking place in Gaza.
As I've been saying all along, I think our attention should be on that overwhelming majority of people who aren't killing or raping anybody.
Actually a few do. The Nazis did. So has Hamas and the founder of Islam. They both explicitly state that one needs to kill *all* the Jews. And that's what I keep coming back to. The Pals voted for Hamas *knowing* they want to exterminate the Jews. Plenty of them support it, even if they never take up a weapon themselves. We don't know which ones. I *do* know Pal schools are indoctrinating kids to be antisemitic and express violence against Jews. I've seen a few of the videos. It's why I find it so hard to express sympathy for the Palestinians, even though I *know* they're not all like that, and for all I know today, maybe plenty of Jews are plotting now to get rid of their ancient enemies once and for all. The British proposal may have been bungled badly, but Pals had a problem with jews on their land before 1948. Google the 1929 Hebron Massacre which reads very similarly to the Oct 7 attack but without the hang gliders. And that was before Hamas was invented, so guess who was responsible for *that* one.
They've both been on the land since forever, and both have ancestors that stole, settled, or otherwise colonized land over the centuries. I laugh when I hear campus morons going on about how the Jews are 'oppressors' and 'settlers' and 'colonizers' - apparently they're unaware of how exactly like that Islam has been, seeing as it was founded by a warlord! Apparently these brainiac scholars missed the Great Invasion by the Probably Not Very White Ancestors of the Palestinians in the 7th century. Or how many migrated from other lands in the last 150 years. I mean, call a colonizer a colonizer but call *all* of them out...not just the colonizing oppressors you *like* :)
Anyway. I keep dreaming of holding a massive nuke over the land and saying, "You've got 24 hours to hammer out a lasting peace agreement. you've had enough time already. Figure it out and get back to us or we turn Israel and Gaza and the West Bank into a crater and there will be nothing left to fight over."
"The Pals voted for Hamas *knowing* they want to exterminate the Jews. Plenty of them support it, even if they never take up a weapon themselves."
I've pointed this out many times recently, but 40% of the people in Gaza weren't even born when Hamas was voted into power. Imagine if Trump's little coup had been successful, and he'd gone on to rule America for another 18 years, and he'd done some terrible thing. Would it be fair to say that "the Yanks voted for Trump, *knowing* that he was a dirtbag narcissist?" Especially if 40% of Americans were under 14 and 51% of the country *didn't* vote for Trump?
As I've also said many times recently, the people in Gaza have very good reason to hate Israel. Not Jews, Israel. Any one of us who was born and raised there would feel the same. That in no way justifies Hamas raping women or killing civilians. But it makes it easier to understand why they don't condemn Hamas. Especially given that polls suggest many are unaware of the full horror of what Hamas did.
" but 40% of the people in Gaza weren't even born when Hamas was voted into power.". Very true. But ugh, they get indoctrinated into antisemitism early. That's the thing - not the kids' fault how they're raised, but who the fuck is teaching them this? And yes, you're right about Trump, although we already did get attacked by Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and they didn't give a crap how many people they killed. Terrorism sucks, and yes, the Pals have got a lot of reason to hate Israel (and I'll say Israelis rather than Jews).
It's a difficult, ugly situation. I just find the Pals extremely unsympathetic as victims because of the antisemitism that's baked into their religion. And if we didn't have as many haters in the West Bank, where the non-Hamas gang resides, they must surely hate us now.
Honestly? I think Trump's going to be horrendous for Americans if he gets in again - and he's not ruling from jail - and it probably won't involve inviting some enemy to attack us - but I've already considered that anyone who voted for him whose life gets worse deserves it. I felt that way after he got in the first time and many foreign countries, including Canada, hit the red states hard with tariffs in response to his. That surely affected poorly those Americans there who *didn't* vote for him. That's life in the states of unpopular whack jobs, whether it's Trump's America, Hamas's Gaza or Nuttin'-yahoo's Israel.
Bottom line: I know I should feel more sympathy for the Palestinians. Working on it. It would really, really, really really REALLY REALLY help if the Islamic world overall would reject the terrorism in their Koran the way Christians & Jews have rejected much of the violence in the Bible.
This is a wonderful article, as usual, but I remember Golda Meir's definition of the problem: (It's because) Egypt and Syria and the other Arab countries refuse to acquiesce to our existence. Therefore there can be no compromise. They say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don’t know of a compromise. And that’s why we have no choice.”
This is the problem with declaring war on a heavily armed neighbour; your people die, no matter how young they are. My sympathy in this is with the people of Gaza who are paying for the stupidity of Hamas in this instance, but I'm afraid there can be no peace until our Golda can be proved wrong.
"Egypt and Syria and the other Arab countries refuse to acquiesce to our existence. "
Yeah, one of the problems with the brutality of Israel's response (and behaviour prior to October 7th) is that it's difficult to focus on any of the other aspects of the conflict. Would Palestinians "acquiesce to Israel's existence" without the blockade and the land theft? According to the UN resolution I mentioned to Tom, yes they would. It's Netanyahu who refuses to accept the 1967 borders.
There's no doubt that there are people in the region who want Israel wiped from the map. But it's difficult to get an understanding of what's driving that, or how much support they have in this aim, when Israel is doing so many things wrong. There's a difference between acquiescing to Isreal's existence and acquiescing to Israel's dominance.
But Egypt, Syria, and Jordan *have* all acquiesced to Israel's existence. The external military threat Israel faces bears no resemblance to that faced by Golda Meir's Israel in the 1960s.
I'm not quite sure what point you are making here, but if you are suggesting that Egypt et al's acquiescence in the past holds out hope for Hamas's now, then I agree that we should not despair, but I think you are being a tad sanguine.
No, my point is that the external existential threat that Israel faced in '67 or '73 doesn't exist today. Egypt/Jordan/Syria isn't going to launch a surprise attack against a nuclear armed Israel in 2024.
I love you Steve. Yet, on this, we may need to agree to disagree. Israel is a country. It deserves to exist without the threat of violent attack across its borders. If 1000+ Americans were violently and brutally murdered from a cross-border attack from, say, Vancouver - do you really think anyone internationally would have the balls to demand the US didn’t turn that province into a parking lot to deter another attack?
I’m a feminist. The international refusal to condemn and demand the women raped and taken into Gaza be released before any other discussion takes place is, quite frankly, a betrayal.
I hate people dying innocently in war.
It’s awful. Where is the international demand that Hamas, who jubilantly celebrated killing Jews, be held to account? Where is the accounting for the millions in international aid turned to the service of recreating the caliphate? These people don’t want a state. They want the death of Jews (then Christians). And most importantly, the humiliation and degradation of women who dare to live free. So to hell with that.
Hamas reports the numbers. Hamas seeks to control the narrative. While I don’t deny terrible levels of death in Gaza, I don’t believe their numbers and I hold Hamas accountable for hiding behind civilians. It’s a damn war crime what they have done. Where are the people holding these assholes to account? Why is the Jewish state the only one held responsible despite the many wars that kill tons of Muslims?
Ah - I’m likely way too upset to make sense of this. Yet the women brutalized raped and murdered haunt me. Do they haunt you?
"Ah - I’m likely way too upset to make sense of this. Yet the women brutalized raped and murdered haunt me. Do they haunt you?"
This is the aspect of all this that confuses me the most. Yes, those women haunt me. The videos I saw, especially, but certainly not exclusively, the video of Shani Louk's body being paraded and spat on by militants makes me feel physically sick every time I think of it.
But the videos and stories of women and children in Gaza with their limbs blown off, especially, but certainly not exclusively, the story of a woman who was buried under rubble while giving birth, the rescuers found the heads of her twins emerging from her birth canal, her sixteen-month old daughter, the only survivor, paralysed, those stories haunt me too.
Those women and children are also women and children. Why is a failure to condemn their deaths any less of a betrayal?
Hamas have been reporting the numbers of every conflict since around 2006. Those numbers have always been independently verified to be accurate. But heck, even if we halve them, if a mere 12,000 civilians have been killed in 100 days, most of them women and children, I just don't understand how this provokes so much less horror and outrage in some than the 1200 civilians killed in Israel.
The only explanation I can think of is the aforementioned videos. A video of a terrorist raping or attacking a single terrified woman has more visceral impact than seeing a rocket hit an apartment building. For me too. Regardless of how many women and children were inside that building. And Israel, for all their flaws, haven't raped Palestinians in this conflict (it's worth pointing out the this wasn't true during the Nakba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss)). But I don't know, I just can't understand how this continues to hold true as the number rise.
And yes, first of all I think many people would demand that the U.S. didn't turn Vancouver into a parking lot. But there are also very significant differences between your scenario and the scenario in Gaza. First, the people in Vancouver could leave. And were free to leave at any point before the attacks. Second, the U.S. isn't horribly mistreating the people living in Vancouver. It isn't stealing their land, it isn't holding them under blockade, it isn't standing idly by as American civilians kill them. If they were, I think people would view the situation very differently.
I think anybody with a brain and a heart is upset by this. But to see this situation clearly, we have to do better than letting our hatred for what Hamas did justify the obliteration of the innocent people unfortunate enough to live in the same region.
No, not a “parking lot,” sorry. That’s Steve’s point. Gaza does not consist of 2.3 million soldiers.
Sadly for Israel, which I have supported for most of my life, it has lost the world on this one, even its friends. A few weeks or even eight weeks after 10-7 I would not be saying what I am now. But new information requires new views.
There are places like Tel Aviv and Haifa that consist mostly of sane wonderful people--the Israelis I know and love. But they do not run Israel now.
Gaza does also not consist of 2.3 million hostages. Hamas has overwhelming support of the people, who celebrated October 7.
One half of Gaza’s population are minors. Do you hold them accountable? The commenter advocates reducing all these children to a "parking lot." This serves no rational defensive purpose. There is no viable end game for Israel's current course short of emptying Gaza by making it unlivable. If these people have nowhere to go (and they don't thanks to Egypt), they will die in huge numbers---we have seen nothing yet.
And where will that leave Israel? A nuclear armed pariah state. Israel is losing its moral argument for existence in favor of raw power. It is losing the world as well. I cry for a country I have supported. So do my Jewish children.
Define minors. In Gaza, 14 year-olds are definitely military aged males. What percentage of the "minors" reported by Hamas are 14-20 year old young men? You have NO idea. What is Israel supposed to do about them on the battlefield? Use rubber bullets?
"Gaza, 14 year-olds are definitely military aged males"
Jesus Christ David, how is it possible that you're able to write something like this about 14-year-old children? 14-YEARS-OLD!!! And let's be very clear, ~40% of people in Gaza are under 14. 14 is the top end of that age range you're blithely dismissing the killing of.
And further, even if we've really reached the point where we can tell ourselves that 14-year-old male lives are worthless, that they're all terrorists and rapists, I'll remind you that just slightly more than half of those "children' are girls. We DO have an idea about that.
I think we all need to be mindful of our souls here. It's easy, when you're having a debate with somebody on the internet, where the desire to score a rhetorical point is animating your fingers, when the dead people we're talking about are just numbers on a page, to lose sight of what you're advocating or defending.
Unlike the US in Falloujah, Israel uses far more heavy bombs than bullets.
Israel has already lost, and stands to lose far more as it continues on this trajectory, than it will ever gain in security. Its allies, its moral standing in the world, even its arguments for existence after the Holocaust and Russian pogroms have been attenuated by hypocrisy.
What is left to it is raw power. It will exist as a totalitarian religious security state in the future. The liberal Israel we all knew and respected is gone for good I’m afraid.
As a liberal lifelong lover of the Israel of yore, that of the tolerance of Haifa, it's going to be a relic of the past, and I mourn it.
90% of the people protesting Israel started protesting on October 8th. That's why the moral capital argument falls flat with them.
Your take on this incredibly complex and devastating issue aligns with mine more than any other I've read or heard. I find myself saying out loud at news reports "Please just stop."
Steve, as usual I appreciate your trying to thoughtfully nuance your takes, and to apply general principles rather than tribal loyalties. And this issue is particularly difficult, because it's hard to find the good guys; all sides have legitimate grievances, and none are very pure themselves. In that context, I'm not taking a political "side". My goal is accurate, insightful, and hopefully actionable understanding of all sides. That can include agreeing or disagreeing with some side about some point, without always supporting or opposing that side.
So I'd like to nuance a bit further around the edges.
The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home.
To put it another way, this imagines the IDF goal as past focused - asserting that their primary purpose is indiscriminate retribution for recent Israeli deaths. Let's call this the "revenge model".
Another model of the IDF mission in Gaza is more future focused: they could want to prevent any recurrence of Oct 7 like attacks. Let's call this the "preventive model". In this model, Israel believes that unless they destroy virtually the entire tunnel system in Gaza, greatly degrading the military capability of Hamas, the promised repeat attacks will be launched. So, in this model, they have to finish taking out almost all of the tunnels to make the invasion worthwhile. It's slow and dangerous work - for soldiers and any remaining civilians.
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So, two models. The key questions differ depending on the model and what it seeks (revenge or prevention):
[revenge model] - if the other tribe killed X of yours, and you kill n*X of theirs, how big an "n" is OK?
[preventative model] - is there an effective alternative approach for preventing future attacks which Israel could take, at lower collateral damage to civilian Gazans?
The number of civilian losses matters in any case of course, but it's the ONLY concern in the revenge model, while it needs to be discussed in context and balance with the prevention goals in the second model.
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Both models would predict civilian deaths in Gaza, but in different ways and degrees.
My reading of the news and analysis provides more support for the "preventive model". If Israel's goal was to kill lots of Gazans in indiscriminate attacks, they could do that safely and vastly more efficiently from within their own borders, suffering near zero casualties. They could have done that in a week.
Instead they are systematically destroying the tunnel complexes from end to end, while trying to evacuate civilians - and this is consistent with their stated intentions.
I think a cease-fire will become far easier after the IDF has destroyed the Hamas tunnels, but is going to be a harder sell to Israel before then. The cost to both sides (on many levels) is terrible, but if all that doesn't even stop Hamas for long from attacking again, then what was gained?
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Any discussion which centers "civilian deaths in Gaza" as the only or key issue while completely ignoring any concerns for "how to prevent future attacks", is going to be distorting our thinking rather than illuminating it.
I'm not signed up for any side in that conflict. My personal focus is more on trying to understand as fully as possible the underlying dynamics that keep this conflict from being resolved. I haven't found any very plausible solutions, but I'd dearly like one. Meanwhile, I may sometimes speak up if I hear what seems to be fuzzy thinking or a misinformed viewpoint on ANY side. Fostering mistaken understanding does not lead to solutions.
So for example, I'm not myself asserting that destroying the Hamas tunnel system is a workable, or the only workable, approach to seriously inhibiting future attacks. I'm just saying that's how Israel sees it, so arguments which presume their main goal is revenge ("stop because you've done enough revenge") will understandably fall on deaf ears of people who are saying "we haven't yet destroyed enough tunnels to stop future repeat attacks, and that's what motivates us, not revenge".
Solid proposals for how they could stop future attacks in a better way would be apropos.
Or argumetns for why they don't need to take out all the tunnels, or why they should accept future attacks if the only way to stop them will increase the number of civilian deaths in Gaza, or various other responses which would address the core Israeli concerns as revealed by official statements and by their actions.
But meeting "we need to prevent future attacks" with "you've had enough revenge so stop" is miscommunication, not debate.
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I think Steve proposes that Israel withdraw to 1967 borders as part of a solution. Some two state variant like that used to be my supported position as well.
As I understand it today, the question for Israel is whether having an independent Palestinian state would end the attacks on Israel, or make the attacks ever larger and more deadly. I would be glad to hear reason and evidence to believe one or the other of these outcomes.
However bad the situation there now, it could easily become 10 to 100 times worse even locally, if two armed neighboring states fight to the death. (Not to mention spreading to the rest of the world) And I unfortunately see the "two state solution" as being fairly likely to lead to that. A short term approach to saving tens of thousands of lives could lead to later losing millions; or not. Anyway, I would LOVE to have confidence in a peaceful two state outcome, so if somebody believes in that, please reason with me, give me evidence for more hope.
"The framing offered from the pro-Palestinian side is that Israel is engaged in mindless retribution without end (probably ending only in genocide), and focuses on noting that Israel has already caused many more deaths in Gaza than Israelis killed Oct 7, so they should consider their revenge mission complete and go home."
Hmm, I don't think this is any vaguely serious person's framing. It certainly isn't my framing.
After what Hamas did, I don't think anybody expected Israel to go into Gaza, kill 1200 civilians, and call it a day. Not least because in every single conflict for decades, Israel has responded to aggression from Palestinians with a death toll tens of times greater than was inflicted on it. I think the overall ratio of Palestinian civilian to Israeli civilian deaths stands at around 17:1.
The problem was, Israel's stated goal of destroying Hamas is poorly defined, likely impossible, and very difficult to connect to the slaughter taking place in Gaza right now.
There are ~30,000 Hamas soldiers. How many of them have to be killed before Hams is "destroyed"? All of them? Okay, how will they know when they've done that? How much civilian "collateral damage" will that require? What about the Hamas leadership living outside of Gaza? What about the young men being radicalised, right now, into joining Hamas? Do all of them have to be killed too? This is what I mean by undefined. This is why, after 25,000 people have been killed, after 100+ days of near relentless bombing, Israel shows no sign of stopping and no signs of accomplishing any of its "goals."
And how do you prevent future attacks when you have given millions of people very, very good reason to hate you? We're not just talking about the bombing since October 7th here. Palestinians were attacking Israel before Hamas came along. Before the tunnels. The tunnels, and even Hamas, aren't the source of Israel's problems.
The source of the problem is two-fold:
1. Israel's violent oppression of the Palestinian people and its ongoing theft of land.
2. Anti-semitic extremists who want to kill all Jews.
Solving problem 1 is obviously entirely in Israel's hands. They could do it tomorrow. Solving problem 2 is out of Israel's hands. But I think the dangers of problem 2 are fuelled by problem 1.
Antisemitism is, of course, not a new problem. But Jews and Arabs have lived peacefully alongside each other in that region of the world for centuries. The establishment of a Jewish state in the region, a place that the Jews said, "this is OURS," not, "we will live here with everybody else," was, I think, one of the key drivers of the current problems. As I say in my conversation with Tom, David Ben-Gurion, the "founding father" of Israel, seems to agree with this assessment.
Israel's actions after that; land theft, the horrors of the Nakba (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ1TAOibLss), the oppression of the Palestinian people, only fuelled anti-Jewish sentiment. And this made it easy for the extremists to recruit people to their side.
I don't believe (and obviously my beliefs don't necessarily count for much, but I think they make sense here), that most of the 30,000 people fighting for Hamas are anti-Jewish extremists. I think they hate Israel for reasons that are frankly quite understandable. Things ike Israel killing members of their family, or stealing their parents' homes, or forcing them to live under siege.
I'm not saying that if Israel stopped doing this things, it would make the people in the region love them, but I think this is the only way to begin a peace process. You can't negotiate peace while you're standing on somebody's neck. And given that Netanyahu is never going to lift his foot off the Palestinians' necks, the first step towards a two-state solution now resides in removing him from power. To be fair, I think the vast majority of people, including Israelis, agree with that.
The problem is Hamas, not necessarily the Palestinians. There’s millions of Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank and East Jerusalem who live largest peaceably(if tense at times) with Israeli Jews. Cities like Haifa are even largely integrated.
There is room for more moderate Palestinians and Jews, but neither runs the show now.
Israel’s current course will result in enormous casualties (we have only seen the start) with no viable end game. It’s impossible to root out guerrillas with bombs without taking the civilian population with it. In the process, Israel will lose the world, including the United States and Europe. It’s on its way to becoming a quasi genocidal pariah state--indeed kind of like Hamas itself.
As a lifelong supporter of Israel, I cry as I confess I no longer can support Israel in good conscience.
Israel’s
I completely understand. I cannot give unconditional support to any side. All sides have legitimate grievances, and no sides are pure.
The population of Gaza is variously estimated between 2 and 2.5 million by different sources. It has been growing by about 2% per year, 40-50,000 people. If we take Hamas' figures as accurate, Israel has killed about half a year's population growth, setting the population back to what it was last summer. That is a terrible, terrible tragedy. (Tho it's far down the list of conflict deaths in recent years).
How much is at stake here? I believe that literally millions of lives, on all sides, are at stake.
I very much care about the suffering in Gaza (and the West Bank, and around the world). But I don't want to be stampeded by that into courses of actions which might result in millions of deaths down the line.
I agree about millions of lives. This could spin seriously out of control. And China/Taiwan is now leagues worse than just days ago as a result of independence-minded Lai's election (DPP) last week, and as a result of diverted attention and resources in Ukraine and now the Middle East. China was humiliated by the Taiwan election, and it is nothing if not opportunistic.
I will take a straight up bet on a Chinese economic blockade on part or all of Taiwan in 2024-2025. If Trump is elected, I'll give you odds in 2025. Trump is an isolationist at heart despite his bloviating, and I think Xi knows that.
I always appreciate your intelligent and informed commentary.
But shouldn't it be obvious that killing over 1% of the population of Gaza will generate more Hamas recruits?
If you're looking for a solution that will prevent more attacks, there needs to be a clear path to granting Palestinians civil rights. That could be a one state solution, where Jews make up about 7 million people in a state with about 14 million people. Or it could be a two state solution. Or I suppose Israel could drive all the Palestinians out of greater Israel, which would probably require killing many tens of thousands of civilians, and some willingness of a neighbor, Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan, to cooperate and admit millions of refugees.
From my perspective, Israel is committing slow suicide. A democratic nation can not survive while oppressing a huge chunk of its population. It took the US until the late 1960s to learn that lesson, and Blacks only make up 15% of the population. Palestinians in the occupied territories make up 36% of Israel's population.
Israel will eventually learn that if something can not go on forever, it will stop.
> "will generate more Hamas recruits?"
I'm sure that Israel is 100% aware of that, having dealt closely with it for decades. It's hardly a new insight in unconventional warfare, and has probably been taught on day one of studying same for a century.
However, the Israeli analysis could be that Hamas already has as many recruits as it can equip anyway, so it's more important to destroy the military and organizational infrastructure which allows Hamas to send rockets and invasions into Israel.
They may be weighing 30,000 actual trained Hamas fighters with a fantastic tunnel system and 15 years of accumulated weaponry, supplies, etc be more dangerous than 90,000 potential recruits who may hate Israel but do not have the infrastructure and tools to attack it.
Israel knows it cannot eliminate every existing member of Hamas, but they seem to hope that they can render Hamas militarily impotent for a decade or more, which is a different proposition (whether they are correct or not in their calculations is frankly beyond my ability to discern).
In all honesty, I don't see much of a long term path for Israel. You suggest with good reason that they are committing long term suicide, but your suggested alternatives may be seen as shorter term suicide and thus no better. If they can survive long enough, perhaps something like a reform movement might break out in the Arab world, and produce new options for further survival; if they commit suicide in the shorter term, there's less to hope for.
To my best assessment (and I do not claim to be an expert, tho I read experts on all sides), neither a one state nor a two state solution will create peace and continued existence for Israel. Other countries taking Palestinians as refugees might work for Israel, but (1) the Palestinians don't want that and (2) the potential host countries have had bad experiences with Palestinians and do not want them.
In the US, Blacks make up about 13% of the population. Inside Israel proper, about 20% of the Israeli citizens are Arabic today, mostly Muslim or Christian Arabs. They vote, they elect members of parliament, and the supreme court justice who ruled against Netanyahu was Arabic.
The residents of Gaza and of the West Bank, by and large, do not want to be Israeli citizens. They might accept temporary citizenship if that was seen as a temporary step towards the elimination of Israel, which it would very possibly be.
If you think that giving everybody in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank equal citizenship would end well, I suggest moving to South Africa for a few years and then let's talk. I too cheered the idealism of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but in the end it has not produced a society able to cooperate. There is a very poor historical track record from mixing peoples who hate each other, and having them sort it out democratically. If you doubt that, name the 3 best successes from history.
(Let me be very clear - I personally would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a positive ending from just that one state solution with people willing to use democratic means and accept the outcome, rather than violence; that would please me no end. But that wishful thinking doesn't make it the most likely outcome.)
It appears we agree that Israel is on a long term path with a very bad ending.
I'm arguing a counterfactual: that had Israel worked with and empowered the PA in the West Bank, instead of working non-stop to humiliate it and steal land from its residents, perhaps it would have a rational negotiating partner by now.
But there's no way to know if my counterfactual was accurate. I'm just guessing when I claim/hope that there's still a way out via a two state solution if Israel works with the PA, or a reconstituted PA.
However, such a solution would require Israel to start dismantling its West Bank settlements, and I see absolutely no evidence that Israel is prepared to do that, or anything else to change the status quo today.
Still, I can't help but think that indiscriminately killing 25,000 and counting people, the vast majority of whom must certainly be civilians, is moving Israel and the Palestinians towards a far worse place.
A rare miss for you in my view, Steve. You pose a legitimate question in the sense of "is there a boundary to retribution for terrorism?". However, you (in my view) misinterpret or misconstrue a lot of the relevant history by doing narrow citations of 70 year old remarks. There are legitimate grievances on either side of this, but it's not at all a symmetric matter and this is evinced in several obvious patterns of behavior and by the how the preponderance of muslim-majority neighbors choose to wall themselves off from any contact with Palestine as well. Best wishes.
"However, you (in my view) misinterpret or misconstrue a lot of the relevant history by doing narrow citations of 70 year old remarks."
Could you expand on this?
Sure. Several examples in your text and, again, my position is that it's complex and there are legitimate grievances on both sides, but it's not a symmetric position. Much of your article in my opinion has the perspective that there are two equally cooperative partners with similar aims for their people, and this is simply false, or at best unsupported by evidence.
Re: Shlomo Ben-Ami - you are lifting one quote out of a very long back + forth process at Camp David. There are many alternative quotes you could have lifted. You could have also quoted him as saying "the Palestinians never made a counter-proposal, and that is the heart of the matter". He also said this about Camp David.
Here's a lengthy interview with him in Ha-Aretz:
https://webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/ben-ami.html
So narrowly choosing one quote in service of a viewpoint is the sort of things that you typically decry, and which fills your writing with nuance and interest.
Re: Ben-Gurion - very similar issues, if more complex. This has been known forever, as these are old talking points. eg this is a 2009 article prior to the full flowering of "social justice" which honestly discusses these quotes.
https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
A narrow lens paints a particular picture but is not necessarily informative. One can show a picture of Palestinians suffering and cursing Israel, or one can show a picture of eg. Palestinian protests against Hamas, like the recent one at a hospital in Deir al-Balah.
Free Palestine from Israel? or Hamas? or both? Who is the trustworthy negotiating partner that represents the interests of the Palestinians now? Certainly it's not Hamas. Again, one of the few times I think you have missed upholding your own standards of nuance. You can cherry pick this to clap back at me if you wish, but I'm just trying to give you an honest, if hastily written (sorry typos), reply inbetween work gigs today. Appreciate what your're doing in general.
"Free Palestine from Israel? or Hamas? or both? Who is the trustworthy negotiating partner that represents the interests of the Palestinians now? Certainly it's not Hamas."
Yes, I agree completely. I even wrote an article entitled "Free Palestine From Hamas." The Palestinian people are the great losers in all of this. Controlled by Israel and ruled over by Hamas, neither of whom care whether they live or die. I oppose Hamas and I oppose what the Israeli government is doing and has done to them for decades. But I admit, my focus leans toward the group that is killing them by the tens of thousands right now.
I'm not narrowly choosing quotes. As I've said, I don't have an agenda here other than thinking through an end to the killing of tens of thousands of innocent people and a path to a lasting peace. When I talk to zionists, I obviously spend more time talking about the flaws in the Zionist narrative. When I talk to people who think Hamas are "freedom fighters" I spend more time talking about the sheer idiocy of that idea. But peace cannot be achieved without a clear-eyed recognition of both sides of this. The good and the bad.
A) I think David Ben-Gurion's quote sums up the situation perfectly. And is equally true today as it was all these years ago. There are serious conceptual problems with the founding of Israel. It's frustrating to see people today deny this or call noticing it antisemitic when the founding father of Israel understood them perfectly well.
And while, as I said to Tom, that's the situation we have and the Palestinians have to accept that, it's unreasonable to ignore the fact that they. have a valid grievance there.
You've never seen and will never see me write a word in defence of Hamas. But that's totally irrelevant to the question of whether Israel has mistreated the Palestinian people. Palestinian protests against Hamas (which, again, I've written about) don't change Ben-Gurion's point or the injustices Israel is perpetrating. Palestinians are right to be protesting both.
B) My quote of Shlomo wasn't meant to be the final word on the Israel-Palestine peace process. As I said, quite clearly I think, it was a rebuttal to this half-brained talking point that Palestinians don't want peace because they turned down deals brokered by the U.S. The first question, in that case, should surely be, what were they offered? And Shlomo's point, is that what they were offered wasn't great.
And as I mention, there *is* a counter offer, sitting on the floor of the UN, which Palestine have agreed to, which hundreds of other member states support, and which has been vetoed repeatedly by, you guessed it, Israel and America. That doesn't mean Israel don't want peace either. It says you can't simply blame one side for the lack of a deal. Which is what Tom was trying to do.
You say this isn't a symmetric position. And I agree. But where that asymmetry lies depends entirely on the perspective you look at it from (See? There's that nuance you know and love😉). The Israeli government has been breaking international law and aiding and abetting extremists as they commit acts of aggression and terror against the Palestinians every single day. This has been true for decades.
Various Palestinian leaderships have countered this with brutal attacks on innocent civilian targets, most horrifically, on October 7th.
Hopefully everybody can agree that both of these are wrong. Which is worse? I have my feelings, as does everybody. But I frankly don't think the question is very useful. A peace process requires everybody to look forward. And part of that is recognising the futility of playing "who is worse" forever.
Hi Steve,
Agreed with much of what you wrote - I tried to read your article (Save Palestine from Hamas) but it was paywalled - fair enough! :)
A. You mention "thinking though an end...to a lasting peace". What do you imagine that looks like? I'm genuinely curious and it's not a loaded question - I feel like I only hear 3 different options, none of which is satisfying: 1) 2 state solution, but make it better this time. 2) No more Israel. 3) no more Palestine.
B. You also describe having issues with the founding of Israel - I assume you mean the Balfour declaration (1917) or do you mean the resolution of the Arab-Israel war in 1948/Nakba- you don't mention anything by name. As you certainly know, the "zionist" project was in response to the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust. Since you are, in principle, opposed to genocide, it seems odd not to recognize the underlying need or motivation here.
I could be mistaken, but at the time my understanding of history is that the Jews were mostly moving into unoccupied swampland, etc. and not overthrowing major metropolitan areas or taking desirable farmland. Indeed there was no state of "Palestine" in 1917, etc. for them to take as you know. So it's hard for me to grasp your specific beef with it all historically. What is the alternative there? A global diaspora of Jews vs. a specific state? I can't understand what you would advocate for in response to the Holocaust.
C. Lastly, you deride the notion that "Palestinians don't want peace". That's really hard to square with all of the available evidence - the squandering of a massive amount of global charity money on weapons instead of food and infrastructure, a charter (recently revised) that literally calls for the extermination of Jews, etc. The cheering after Oct 7th in the streets. I could go on, of course.
Per our prior dialogue, you can pin this on Hamas if you wish - but at some point you have to ascribe agency to people, even if they're subject to indoctrination from early on in life. To be fair, I don't doubt that there is a strong cohort of Palestinians who are increasingly tired of Hamas but scared to rise up - there have been recent cases where Hamas has brutally murdered people speaking up about this in the streets - but again if Palestinians aren't afraid to violently rise up against one class of oppressors (Israel) how is it fair to not expect them to rise up against their most local oppressors (Hamas)? It's one of many double standards that are again, frustrating.
I'm thinking through this as well, and I don't have a position other than Hamas had to know what the response to Oct 7th would be prior to acting. They knew the Palestinian people would suffer, and Israel would suffer - all while they sat in mansions in Qatar.
D. Question on media consumption/construction of reality - I'm also trying to sort out how to arrive at reliable figures on this - how are you sourcing numbers? I see things in some media on the thousands killed (which you gesture at), then I see media on the other side of the spectrum saying these numbers are from the Gaza ministry of health, and many of the "children" being killed are teenage freedom fighters and not innocents. And analyses of the numbers released by the Gaza ministry of health - the rapidity and absolute certainty of death tolls that get revised daily in unusual ways. It's just impossible for me to know what's going on so I'm curious how you're sorting through information.
"C. Lastly, you deride the notion that "Palestinians don't want peace". That's really hard to square with all of the available evidence - the squandering of a massive amount of global charity money on weapons instead of food and infrastructure, a charter (recently revised) that literally calls for the extermination of Jews, etc. The cheering after Oct 7th in the streets. I could go on, of course."
I'll address this one first, because I think it's the key reason why people see Palestine so differently.
The first point you mention, squandering global charity money on weapons, is obviously "pinned" on Hamas. Just as you don't decide how the U.S government spends money, the people of Gaza don't decide how Hamas spends money. I'm sure they'd rather that money was spent on food and infrastructure for them and their families. This is uncontroversial, no?
But as for the cheering in the street after Oct 7th, I think this is only confusing if you overlook a few things. First of all, I'm confident in saying that the majority of people in Gaza hate Israel. Not Jews necessarily, but Israel. And I find this incredibly easy to understand. If you or I were born and raised in Gaza, I'm almost certain we'd feel the same way.
And while I'm certain there's antisemitism mixed in with that, I think the key reason is the aforementioned rather brutal oppression Israel has inflicted on them for decades. So yes, I think Gazans, like all other human beings, want peace. But I think they want liberation from Israel's tyranny just as much. And I think while that tyranny persists, many of them will be happy that somebody has struck a blow against their enemies (it's worth noting here that polls suggest most Gazans are unaware of the full horror of what Hamas did, state media and all that).
So I don't judge them too harshly for their celebrations on October 7th. Of course, I disagree with them, but I haven't lived their life. It makes me think of Nat Turner's slave rebellion. Nat Turner killed dozens of women and children, even babies during his rebellion. Am I horrified by that? Of course! Do I condemn his actions from my position of safety and liberty? Absolutely. Would I judge slaves too harshly if they said they understood or approved of his aims, even if not his methods? No.
A. Yes, I'm in the "two-state solution but make it better" camp. This is clearly the only viable peaceful solution, regardless of whether it's difficult. And knowing what I know today, I place a significant chunk of the blame for the failure of a two-state solution on Israel. International law states that all of the land Israel has occupied since 1967 is illegally occupied. Palestine has said for over a decade that it will accept a two-state solution that includes a return to the 1967 borders and a right to return for Palestinians forced from their homes (this is also required by international law). Israel have refused to accept this, partly for reasons I'll come to later.
Given that Israel has broken these laws for so many decades, I acknowledge the there are major logistical problems with just moving all of the Israelis living in illegal settlements within Israel's borders. Compromise will be necessary from both sides here. It's going to be uncomfortable for all concerned. Just, I think, less uncomfortable than other 75 years of killing.
B. Yes, I'm opposed, in principle and in practice, to genocide. But that doesn't mean I think any action that uses the Holocaust as justification is right or makes sense. As I'm sure you know, Jews and Arabs have lived side-by-side in that part (and other parts) of the world, largely without issue for centuries. The problem with Israel, conceptually, is taking a part of that land, where Arabs were living, and saying, "This is ours. This is only (or at least very preferentially) for Jews."
The reason for the Nakba, the reason Israeli is so dead set against the right of return, the reason for the settlements, the reason a Jew born in Brooklyn has greater citizenship rights in that part of the Middle East than a Muslim born in Jerusalem, is because they want to maintain or create Jewish majorities as they slowly take over more land. Israel have been quite open about this.
Israel is the only place in the world where rights are granted not by birthplace, not by residency status, not even by religion (there are lots of secular Jews), but by group identity. Personally I don't think this concept can survive, because I think it's flawed at its root. I mean, just imagine an explicitly white or black or Mormon nation state, where people with this identity receive preferential treatment and the government openly manufactures majorities to ensure its influence.
Israel exists and I support its continued existence. But I think it needs to change.
D. I have no particular problem accepting figures from Gaza's health ministry. Given that there have been decades of killing, Hamas have had many occasions to report death figures. Those past figures have been independently verified, including by Israel, and always found to be accurate. The "ThOsE aRe HaMaS fIgUrEs" rhetoric is just a deflection in my opinion. We trust Israel's figures too. Even though they've gone from 1400 innocent civilians to 1200 to around 1000 to around 700 innocent civilians with another 300 or so soldiers.
Same goes for the "are they really children" rhetoric. According to current figures, around 10,000 children have been killed. That's people 17 and under. Let's assume that every single one of those 0-17-year-old boys is a child soldier. That leaves is with 5,000 baby and teenage girls killed in just 100 days. Fifty every single day, none of whom are Hamas. And remember, this horrific outcome is the best case scenario in which we have to imagine 2-year-old boys as "freedom fighters."
So as far as information goes, even if we assume dishonesty, and there's no solid reason to do so, the horror of what's happening is just overwhelming.
Hi Steve,
Thanks for taking the time to reply, and share another layer of depth in how you're thinking about this very complex issue. Particularly regarding what a humane endpoint might look like and how you process or think about sources of information.
You've been a good-faith exponent for the principled version of (what strikes me as) a more pro-Palestinian perspective. As we've both stated, there are legitimate grievances on both ends, and fundamental asymmetries. Uncontroversially, I mourn for the dead on both sides, am horrified both by the thought of hostages (including babies) in the Gazan tunnels as well as the ongoing reports of decimation against the Palestinians. Everyone is wrong and everyone is righteous.
Before one can broker a more stable agreement, the thugs of Hamas must be ejected from power. I see scattered reports of Palestinians protesting them (as they refuse to eg distrubute aid or horde resources), but I don't know how to really move things forward until new leadership is recognized there. We might disagree on some finer points, but this has been a fruitful discussion for me; hopefully for you. A ceasefire is as temporary as the next suicide bomber or rocket, and just welcomes another inevitable cycle of reprisal and death. Some regions just enter into a mess and never emerge (Darfur).
Well-said. I too don't have a side in this argument. I despise Hamas and "radical Islam" in general, but I have also never heard a convincing argument in support of Zionism. Now both sides have a moral high ground to claim, with all the exaggeration and hyperbole that comes with it. How could anything good come from this?
Tom's standard of "renounce violence" is more than a bit much. No "state" if you want to call Gaza that, can exist under pacifism. Of would unconditionally renounce all violence.
That said, I cannot think of another entity (including ISIS) in which the leadership considered their OWN civilian deaths as a political benefit. (And it seems to be working, even on Steve.) Even the Nazis had air raid shelters and put time and effort into warning people and getting them into them.
Unfortunately, it's hard to see how Israel stops when there is a possibility that the October 7th planners-- and make no mistake, the WORST things that happened were planned, but make the rapes by Russian troops (also a planned reprisal) look like an orgy at Woodstock, could still be in charge. Your early reaction was correct. However this is not merely a reprisal for October 7, as Hamas would not consider it an incentive not to do it again. In fact, I fear they think they are winning.
"And it seems to be working, even on Steve."
Yep, it is working on me. Because Hamas, for all their evil, aren't the ones dropping the bombs. This idea that because Hamas did this terrible thing, every single terrible thing that happens afterwards is their fault, is just absolutely insane to me. Especially as Israel has done plenty of terrible things to the people of Gaza and the West Bank before all this.
I mean, say we had some kind of ongoing land feud, but one day we get into a fight and you kill me. Is my family justified in killing your entire family because you "started it"? Would it be your fault if they blow up your house with your friends and family inside? Do we not admit ANY sense of proportionality or aim to punish only the people responsible?
That would be awesome. There's one problem. It's impossible. As soon as I hear about how to punish only those responsible, I will start a campaign for a Nobel Prize for that person. When one state (or whatever) commits an act of war against another, the people of that "state" pay the price. What is "proportional?" Pearl Harbor was 3,000 mostly military lives lost. Should we have stopped after Midway? The Germans killed almost NO American civilians. Should we not have bombed Berlin? The ONLY clean way for this would be for the people of Gaza to rise up against Hamas. There is NO evidence they would if they could. In fact, the West Bank doesn't hold elections BECAUSE they are afraid Hamas would win. I can feel as bad as I want to about children being bombed. I feel bad about children being raised to be the kind of people who call home to brag about killing a Jewish family. But Israel's first priority has to be to make October 7th as unlikely to happen again as possible. And your individualizing above is unusually facile for you. As is the "plenty of terrible things." October 7th is a game changer, and put this in a more existential level and denying that is useless. But I'll play along. If I kill you in the land feud, and your family knows my family is plotting to keep killing even after your family kills me, and is likely to come over and rape your whole family to death while burning them alive in front of you, should they stop at just killing me?
But back to proportionality and our "just war." We killed more Japanese civilians by a factor of thousands than they killed of ours. And probably similar ratios of Germans. Should we have had a cease fire in order to feel better about Berlin's babies?
" As soon as I hear about how to punish only those responsible"
No, no, come on now, let's not make perfect the get out clause for good. I understand that innocent people die in war. I understand that a military response can't be perfectly targeted at only the people responsible. But we are SOOOO far past that now. Not only that, but America was at war with JAPAN, not just a terrorist group who launched an attack from there.
WW2 was an existential war for the allies. And again, there's the central point that unlike Israel, America had done nothing to Japan to justify Japan's aggression. Yet still, decades later, America's decision to drop nukes on civilians has eroded its moral standing in every conflict since. And even America stopped at two. Israel have dropped the equivalent of three with no end in sight. Knowing perfectly well that Hamas will never surrender.
Actually, America had an oil embargo on Japan and was definitely tilted toward China in the region, (there were these dudes called The Flying Tigers, etc.) though nothing quite approaching Lend Lease in Europe...
And Israel is a war with Hamas.
"And Israel is a war with Hamas"
Exactly, this is why people like myself are objecting to so many of the people Israel is killing being innocent Palestinians. Who, we're constantly assured everybody understands, are not Hamas. This is also why comparisons to the number of civilians killed in WWII don't quite stack up.
And yes, I agree, Israel's priority should be to make another attack like October 7th as unlikely as possible. How is it possible you think the way to achieve this is to radicalise thousands of Palestinians by killing their children and mothers?
Now it's just getting silly. October 7th happened BEFORE all this. So less likely in the future is that all the infrastructure is gone. Period. And probably half of Hamas fighters qualify as "children" in these counts.
How is it possible that you're so sure this isn't the way but have ZERO suggestions of a way?
Israel has been doing half measures for years. The horrific -- and organized-- nature of October 7th made total war inevitable. I feel sorry for the victims of hurricanes, too. But I don't rail at Earth's weather systems. I don't feel good about it, and I don't rah rah every day saying, "Good shot, Israel!" other than when I hear some Hamas asshole got surgically targeted. It was just obvious this was how it was going to go. Iran KNEW this was how it was going to go when they played their Gaza pawn.
And you have spent all your time lately blaming Israel for the deaths of Hamas's HUMAN SHIELDS. In Mogadishu, Adid lined up civilians to shoot at the trapped Americans. We didn't expect our guys to not shoot their way out. (Maybe that's just a Muslim warlord thing?) But it all happened in one night and there wasn't a permanent Somali refugee infrastructure in place.
I mean seriously. The Palestinian refugee infrastructure is 70 years old! Everybody in Eastern Europe and Indochina was expected to settle somewhere in that time and we didn't set aside places for them to claim. Much of this ongoing situation is deliberately using Palestinians by their "own side" as pawns in the anti-colonialism Third World UN coalition to strike at what they view as the last Western colonial power (mixed in with Islamic anti-semitism, which is considered a legit point of view in those circles-- as Ivy League schools have shown.
So I'm not buying that all this is caused by Israel's decades of mistreatment. Even Arafat admitted at the end to the Clinton Administration that he was getting 90plus percent of what he wanted in the negotiations, but if he accepted them, he was a "dead man."
I agree with you on basically everything, but here I am very split. I am a firm believer in the right of Israel to exist and to protect its citizens, and, more importantly, I know the history of the region. As long as Arab states use Palestinians as a proxy in a war to drive the Jews out, this conflict has no end. And, fuck, they have! From the beginning! From the very moment they decided Jews have no right to be there or to have their own country in a place they have been inhabited from the dawn of times, and they invented the nation of "Palestine" and made up a "warrior" with Arafat's face, who was in fact trained and schooled by the KGB and other helpful actors from the Communist bloc. Every time they have rejected the 2-state solution (regardless of your childish argument of "it was not good enough for them") they used Palestinians as pawns in a hate game. Also, your claim that Hamas is not in control in the West Banks, is correct in theory only; in reality, Hamas pushes an ideology embraced by the majority of Palestinians, including (or even especially) those in the West Banks (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/22/1207863782/who-governs-the-west-bank-understanding-palestinian-political-leadership)
Yes, it is absolutely horrific that so many innocent people die as scapegoats in a war they don't want, and it happens every single damn time! It is estimated that between 500,000 and 2 million German civilians died in WWII from ally bombardings and Soviet war crimes, without counting the over 200,000 that Nazis killed in euthanasia programs. I am afraid this conflict is headed that way, just like the Iraq war, or the bloody Syrian civil war, or the one in Yemen. There is a way to put an end to this, though, one that you discount here, for whatever reasons you might have: what if Qatar, Egypt and a coalition of Arab states said "enough" and decided to expel all Hamas leaders and support the return of all hostages to Israel, and work together with Israel towards a peaceful resolution? Would that be acceptable for you? What if, instead of wanting the total destruction of Israel, they would leave the Jewish state alone, and support the reconstruction and development of a Palestinian State that would build schools instead of tunnels?
I am heartbroken for the thousands of people who were killed on both sides during this monstrous conflict, but I also understand that for all Jews in Israel this is a question of life and death, now or never, you or me. I don't agree with it, but I won't pretend to be in their shoes and to know better than themselves what is best for them. As heartless and awful as it sounds, Palestinians could all be given safe haven in any of the Arab countries in the area, at least temporarily, until a solution is worked out. The Israeli Jews cannot say the same, and you know it very well. If the pogrom of October 7 was possible on their own territory, imagine what would happen to them in their declared enemy's space!
"what if Qatar, Egypt and a coalition of Arab states said "enough" and decided to expel all Hamas leaders and support the return of all hostages to Israel, and work together with Israel towards a peaceful resolution? Would that be acceptable for you?"
Yes, this would be perfectly acceptable to me. I want the hostages released (preferably before Hamas or the IDF kills any more of them). I want Hamas to be destroyed. I support any solution that gets those ~130 hostages released that doesn't, for some abstract reason, involve the slaughter of ~24,000 equally innocent people. I don't understand how this math is working differently for anybody else. Heck, I'd even *kind of* understand if the 24,000 innocent deaths were guaranteed to bring those 130 hostages home but it hasn't even achieved that.
But also, your solution is only half a solution.
There would still remain the question of the borders of that Jewish state (a question that Israeli governments have repeatedly refused to answer).
There would still be the question of Israel retuning the land that is not and never hs been officially part of the Jewish state (something that Netanyahu has openly refused to do, even though holding it is against international law).
There would still be the question of the blockade of Gaza and the West Bank barrier and the discrimination against and disenfranchisement of Arabs in Israel.
Israel have proposed precisely zero solutions to any of these major issues. And, in fact, have been openly hostile to addressing them.
The 2 million people in Gaza could not be given safe haven in a neighbouring state. This is only possible to say when you think in numbers and not in human beings. It's practically impossible. Not only that, but it's exactly what the extremists in Netanyahu's government want (and what some of the have proposed). But if those people leave their land, they will never get it back. Just as we saw in the Nakba. A significant part of this conflict is built around Israel's clear desire to take all of the land from the river to the sea.
But that is not Israel's land.
I keep hearing people say that Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself. I agree. But why is it that the people who say this can't see that the Palestinian people have the same rights? And the they will inevitably fight for them.
I agree with many of the issues you raise. Alas, it is really too late for the international community to raise them NOW! These issues have been brewing for more than 75 years, ever since the creation of the state of Israel and the complete refusal of Palestinians and other Arab countries to accept the two state solution. Look at the partition plan for 1947! The Palestinian side was more than adequate for the one million (or so, as there are no real statistics from that time) Palestinian Muslims who claimed the land, but when they rejected the plan and declared war to Israel the international community didn't raise a finger! They started conflicts with Israel in 1948, 1967, 1971, 1973, 1985, 1987, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and now 2023, helped by the Arab neighbors. Are you kidding when you claim Israel has the desire to take all the land? The PLO was created in 1964, when Gaza was controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan, who also controlled the East Jerusalem, including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount! In 1964 there were no Israeli settlements in Gaza, nor in Judea or Samaria (The West Bank) and they had no intention to send their people in a new war! What land did PLO want to "liberate" in 1964? After the 1967 Six Day war, the PLO launched attacks from Jordan. In 1970, to save his country, King Hussein of Jordan expelled PLO to Lebanon (where they helped start the civil war that destroyed the country, the only country with a Christian majority in the Middle East). Wanna guess why Jordan expelled them? Don't take it from me, take it from the horse's mouth, the "brave" Zuheir Mohsen, one of the members of the PLO Executive Council : " The creation of a Palestinian State is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Jaffa and Haifa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine (my note: the wonderful from the river to the sea), we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan". It was NEVER about the land (a land that used to belong to Jews and Palestinians equally)! They just wanted to kill the Jews - just search for all the pogroms Jews went through while they were inhabiting that land before the creation of Israel and the destruction of Jewish settlements between 1920 and 1940: Bnei Yehuda, Tel Hai, Metula, Kfar Saba, Kfar Malal, Kfar Uria, Ruhama, Hartuv, Hulda, Motza, Poria, Gaza, Beit She'an. Nakba was a human tragedy caused by ALL forces involved in the conflict! The 700,000 Palestinians who lost their lives or were forced to flee have their equivalent in the more than 850,000 Jews who were killed or expelled at the same time from the neighbouring Arab states. The difference is that while the Jews found a haven in Israel, the Palestinians were stuffed into refugee camps and denied citizenship wherever they would go. They are and have always been pawns in the effort of Arab countries from the Middle East to refuse any autonomy to Jewish population. Yes, of course, Palestinians have the right to inhabit land that belonged to their ancestors. How far back should we go for that claim? British Empire? Ottoman Empire? Byzantine Empire? Roman Empire? Persian Empire? Achaemenid Empire? Neo-Assyrian Empire? Kingdom of Israel? Egyptian Empire? Akkadian Empire? Frankly, Palestinians will never own that land fully if they continue to claim it belongs to them only, and no Jews will ever be allowed to be there. This is the ONLY fixation political forces in that part of the world have had or will have, and I know it because I've lived there. Once you learn the history of that land and you live in Israel your optics change dramatically. So yes, my friend, that train has left the station a long time ago. That land is not blessed, it's damned by the murderous ideation of a pan-Arabic coalition that wants no Jews in their middle.
"Are you kidding when you claim Israel has the desire to take all the land?"
No, I'm not kidding at all! I don't even have to look to history.
As I mentioned to Tom, Benjamin Netanyahu stood on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, before October 7th, and held up a map with Palestine completely erased and Israel occupying all the land from the "river to the sea".
In October, an Israeli concept paper laid out a plan to remove all of Gaza's population into Egypt (https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-population-transfer-hamas-egypt-palestinians-refugees-5f99378c0af6aca183a90c631fa4da5a).
In March, another member of Netanyahu's government claimed there was no such thing as the Palestinian people (https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-minister-says-no-such-thing-palestinian-people-2023-03-20/) laying claim to Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and even Jordan!
You can find countless videos (this one contains several examples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61MjES_3iNE&t=101s) of Israeli's insisting that the land is all theirs.
Israeli settlers have been stealing Palestinian land (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eac1l1ozfLc), by force, for decades. And with the help of the IDF, have stolen more, in the West Bank, since October 7th. Forcing people from their houses at gunpoint in some cases. Again, this is justified by the claim that the land is theirs and ignored, and sometimes aided, by the Israeli government.
I'm not denying at all that there are Muslim extremists who want to kill Jews. Hamas among them. But let's not pretend Israelis are all moderates.
Netanyahu is not Israel, and you know that very well, please don't be disingenuous! Of course there are extremists in every single country, and maybe in Israel more than elsewhere, for good reasons - you cannot live under the threat of daily rockets thrown at you by a neighbor who hates you to the point of beheading your children, and still love this neighbor. But while this idea of a "greater Israel" is an extremist view in Israel, it is mainstream among Palestinians to hold the view that "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free"... of Jews. The reality is that Jews can live side by side or integrated peacefully with others (20%+ of the ISRAELI population is Muslim or Druze or Christian, holding full rights and representation) but Muslims cannot, when they are in charge. Name any Muslim majority democracy in which non-Muslims exist and have equal status. 950,000 Jews were expelled from middle eastern Muslim countries in the 20th century. Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews cannot return to those places where they had many generations of relatives. But non-Jews can absolutely live in Israel peacefully. Maybe if the citizens of Gaza and West Bank stopped acting like terrorists, led by corrupt and genocidal Palestinian governments in blind rage towards Israeli Jews (vs Egypt or Jordan that also controlled these areas at times), they too could live in freedom to pursue their best lives. How did those Muslim Arab-Israelis come to be there? Because they or their forefathers were not "driven out," but instead chose to remain and become Israeli citizens.
On Arabs living in Israel, here's a piece from Wiki about Jerusalem:
"Under Israeli law, Arab residents of East Jerusalem and Druze residents of the Golan Heights (both Israeli-occupied territories) have the right to apply for Israeli citizenship, are entitled to municipal services, and have municipal voting rights; this status is upheld due to Israel's effective annexation of the former through the Jerusalem Law of 1980 and of the latter through the Golan Heights Law of 1981.[22] Both groups have largely foregone applying for Israeli citizenship, with the Palestinians of East Jerusalem and the Syrians of the Golan Heights mostly holding residency status."
Do you really believe that such an action would result in either:
1 -- Palestinians in the West Bank getting to vote in Israeli elections, and have the right to keep their land in the West Bank?
2 -- A real Palestinian state where residents of the West Bank controlled land ownership and the justice system in that area, which would probably result in many Israeli settlements in the West Bank having to be abandoned?
Because I don't. I don't see Israel granting any rights to Palestinians, either in the WB or Israel proper.
And yet, this means that Israel's 7 million Jews need to keep 5 million non-citizen Palestinians oppressed forever. There's no way that ends well.
You mirror my thoughts pretty clearly here. Dan Senor’s weekly conversations with Israeli’s offers nuanced, sensible, historically accurate discussion.
You also should note that within a few years of the end of WW2, (West) Germans were indeed voting in their own elections, and controlled their own destiny.
Indeed. But they didn't do that just because, they did it because other nations (especially the US) made it possible. We are talking about West Germany, of course, as the Soviets blocked aid from the Marshall Plan to any Communist country in the area, including East Germany. West Germany went on to become intrinsically connected with other countries in the West, especially France, to avoid a subsequent war. This could only be possible in the Middle East if the Arab countries would love their citizens more than they hate the Jews in Israel. So you are partially right, this might not be possible, but not because Israel is opposed to peace. The ball is not in their court on this.
Israel doesn't require democracy in Syria in order to resolve the issue of democracy in Israel.
Dear Steve, I like what you right very much it's thoughtful and rational and I agree with most of what you say. Killing children in Gaza is as wrong as it was on October 7th but terrible as it is to say so your example of refusing to kill a child that his father is using as a hostage is something you would not do is too simple. The father who is also a fighter may have already killed someone in your family and may be threatening to kill another of your children and you believe he believes in his own and his child's martyrdom. We come to these situations with enormous complexities from our own experience that make us damaged and damaging. These are tragedies not just right and wrong choices. My own experience makes me guilty and afraid. I wouldn't join the Zimbabwe Liberation party because I would not join people who might kill my parents. Instead I joined sympathisers of South African freedom. Definitely a non-combatant, I lived in Zambia and woke one night to the Rhodesian SAS bombing liberation fighters near my home. We put our children on mattresses on the floor, found our passports but had to wait till the morning. I terrified myself by wondering what I would do if the Rhodesian SAS were defeated and one desperate man came knocking on my door asking for help. Of course the Rhodesian won that battle. Zambians were not seasoned fighters. To add even more complexity many Rhodesian soldiers were black conscripts - not those in the SAS of course - but how was life for the families of black conscripts faced with freedom fighters? Where do we run to?