Auribus Teneo Lupum: Holding a Wolf by its Ears
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Jefferson used the phrase “holding a wolf by the ear” a couple of times in his correspondence. He wrote John Holmes (no, not that John Holmes, the other one) and, in regards to the Missouri controversy, says “But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
The situation with Israel and Gaza can’t last forever. This is obvious.
A wolf by the ear. You can’t safely hold him. You can’t safely let him go.
The problem is that while the list of solutions to the problem over there is somewhat well-populated, the list of *acceptable* solutions is a blank piece of paper.
The more extreme of the solutions that I’ve seen take the form of “What they need to do is…” and then go on from there to mention something that Israel would never acquiesce to, something that Europe would never support, and/or something that the US wouldn’t support. “They need to bomb the other guys until the rubble bounces!” (a paraphrase, but only mildly exaggerated) or “They need to just up and leave and hand over the keys and go somewhere else” (a paraphrase, but only mildly exaggerated). You know, “ethnic cleansing” is the nice way to put it. There are solutions to the problem that are also a bit more, erm. Well. There are very, very cruel solutions that are even worse than those that involve killing everybody on this or that side.
I imagine that a handful of people recommend killing everybody. On both sides.
I think it’s safe to say that particular category of solution is a non-starter. Even as it may feel great to say “get rid of the bad people in the area and just let everybody else live in peace”, Israel/Palestine would never acquiesce to that, Europe wouldn’t support it, and the US wouldn’t support it.
Well, there’s the whole “status quo, kick the can down the road” thing. We call a ceasefire, we rebuild fences, we rebuild a couple of buildings, and we go back to the way it was before. This has the benefit of denial. Everybody can pretend that this isn’t going to happen again for another decade or so. Maybe we’ll have a few trials and maybe we’ll blow up a few more weapon depots but we can say “We have an absence of active violence! Therefore Peace!” and we can get back to normal for a few years.
Quite honestly, this strikes me as the path we’re most likely to take, at the end of the day… but I don’t think that it’ll work for half as long as we hope it will and, more importantly, it doesn’t change anything.
So we need something like an active, real solution to the problem. Something that results in something close to sustainability or, at least, an ability to kick the can down the road for a lifetime or so.
And now I have to digress for a moment because I’m going to be using a word that will likely be wildly misinterpreted and I’m hoping to just keep it to moderate misinterpretation: I’m going to use the word “abolish”.
Now, I’m using the word in a way that was pretty common a year or two ago. If someone said “abolish the police”, we wouldn’t immediately assume that they were hoping that all police would be taken behind the chemical sheds and summarily shot. “Abolish the police” does not mean “commit genocide” and it doesn’t mean “kill few enough people to deny genocide”.
And so, in the next little bit, when I say “We have to abolish Hamas”, I am not saying “we need to commit genocide”. Instead, I’m using the term “abolish” the way that people used “abolish the police”.
One of the non-status quo positions regarding the police was not that the police needed to be abolished, but that it needed to be reformed through an extensive list of changes. Any given item on the list wouldn’t be a silver bullet but merely one of the many necessary steps to get the police back to a level of acceptability.
We have to abolish Hamas.
We mentioned Jefferson at the beginning of the essay. What was The Missouri controversy? It had to do with slavery. Specifically, the addition of new states and whether the new states would be slave states or not and how the existing slave states wanted new states to allow it and non-slavery states very much did not and there had to be a balance between new states lest the non-slave states gain an upper hand in the House and Senate.
You know why Oklahoma has that panhandle instead of Texas going up just a little bit more? Yeah. That was the Missouri Compromise.
Which brings us to the CSA in the 1800s. The Confederate States of America were propping up a *HORRIBLE* institution and were responsible for horrible atrocities.
The CSA needed to be abolished.
Now, again, to say that “The CSA needed to be abolished” is not to say that “everybody in the South needed to be genocided,” nor is it to say “most of those people should have been killed”. It’s not even to say that those states needed to go away or be redrawn. But the CSA, as an institution, needed to be gone. The culture that made the CSA a reality needed to be gone.
Some might take the opportunity here to point out that perhaps The Union didn’t have the moral authority necessary to abolish the CSA. There are many criticisms that people have made of The Union (and Lincoln himself) that are good criticisms and, yes, The Union needed to be reformed (and, over many decades, a teaspoon of the bushel of necessary reforms have been applied).
To say that the CSA should have been abolished is not to let The Union off the hook. But The Union only needed to be reformed. The CSA needed to be abolished.
So too with Hamas. To say that Hamas needs to be abolished is not to let Israel off of the hook. Israel needs some serious reforms.
But Hamas cannot be reformed to somewhere near “good enough” without losing what makes Hamas Hamas. To reform Hamas to acceptability is to abolish Hamas.
We can go over a list of the atrocities by Hamas in the last few days to get the start of the picture (the massacre of civilians at a music festival (which Hamas is now attempting to deny and blame on Israel), harm against civilians (which Hamas is now attempting to blame on Gaza civilians, the murder of infants (which has the strangest defenses pointing out that, hey, the babies weren’t *DECAPITATED*), and, historically, the use of hospitals as headquarters, the dismantling of irrigation equipment to take irrigation pipes to make missiles…) and, over and over again, demonstrations that the culture of Hamas isn’t a culture that it would be possible to accommodate.
Even if every Israeli were suddenly airlifted to the Catskills and the keys were handed over to the people of Gaza, they wouldn’t be able to, for example, run greenhouses that they might find themselves in possession of. More than that, three years ago, Al-Jazeera had a documentary where Hamas showed how they used the water pipes to make rockets. They engage in suppression of protests that are against them rather than against Israel. They have demonstrated not that they can govern, but only that they are pretty good at engaging in violence.
A story that I find sadly representative of the rot in the culture is the story of the synagogues burned following the departure of Israel from Gaza back in 2005. Perfectly good buildings, perhaps suitable for a museum dedicated to the oppression of the Israelis during the occupation, burned to the ground. Not used for something else. Not used for shelter or storage. Just burned. What a waste.
If all the Israelis were gone tomorrow, there is no reason to believe that the synagogues would not be burned. Perhaps, this time, they might leave the water pipes in the ground.
The Gaza strip needs a culture that looks at an abandoned synagogue and sees real estate, rather than fuel for a fire.
The culture of the Gaza strip needs to have the Hamas part excised and only after that might some sort of semi-sustainable peace be established. Hamas needs to be abolished as the Confederates were abolished. Then, sadly, years of reconstruction would be required. It needs education that doesn’t teach what Hamas taught, entertainment that focuses on different things than how Hamas entertained, and labor that rewards different things than Hamas rewarded.
There are many things that don’t have to change and many things that can stick around because Hamas is not essential to Gaza, any more than the CSA is essential to the southern United States. But to make the Union work, the CSA had to be abolished. It had to go away.
The goal is not to make Gaza into a Mini-Israel. The goal is to make it someplace that merely needs to be reformed. Perhaps even someplace that needs to be reformed even less than Israel does! Someplace like The West Bank, say.
And, you know what, after that we can start working on Reforming Israel. There’s a lot of work to do! Israel has done *A LOT* wrong over the past few decades. Much of it against the Gaza Strip. The second class citizenship, the blockades, the nigh-apartheid treatment of the civilians there, and the Schrödingerian status of Gaza as not a state but not a colony. The list is long and amends ought to be made to the citizens of Gaza.
But that Reform is secondary to the need to Abolish Hamas.
This can’t last forever, but it certainly can last longer than I have to live.
As much as I think Civil War analogies are always a good way to talk to Americans about underlying truths, I think the main problem here is evidenced by the CSA adopting a Constitution that was nearly identical to the existing one except for primarily one thing. They had a war and the one thing was decided by amending the Constitution to eliminate that one thing. I don’t see anything so simple here. Certainly the U.S. didn’t take action to modify the culture of the former CSA regions or pay anything to rebuild the war-torn South. At most they extended voting rights with the hope that freemen would support the Republican party in national elections.
Elections tend to be overrated by Americans. Hamas was elected once.Report
Well, this goes back to something we discussed a million years ago.
The interesting part of “Liberal Democracy” isn’t the “Democracy” part.
We can’t bomb Gaza into Liberalism and we can’t kill our way to it.
What bombing and killing might be able to accomplish is to get certain other things to stop. I’m sure that we’re all familiar with the term “Whistling Dixie”. Getting to the point where we can say “Oh, they’re just Whistling Dixie” about the Gazans would be a good goal.Report
This is deeper than the liberal / illiberal democracy distinction. What are the electoral politics of a place below a certain level of personal security and economic stability? Below a certain minimum GDP/per capita democracy is generally not sustainable, and there are a lot of examples of how electoral politics work in post-war setting or amidst an economic depression. I would expand this observation to Israel itself, the electoral politics stemming from the average citizen’s security concerns are going to be vastly different than those in some privileged community that doesn’t see the need for police or personal firearms.Report
This is a really good friggin’ question.
I’m going to spend a day thinking about it. Ping me again if I fail to answer by Sunday night.Report
No elections are very important. The problem with is Hamas is they had ONE ELECTION then now more. Parties need to lose and accept that loss ( hi modern Republican party). The people of Gaza need to be able to run their own country. This is very basic liberal thought and the basis for any sort of consent of the governed. It’s also one of the ways to channel potential violence into working through non violent means.
One of the big problems with this is Israel, at some point, is going to have to accept and work with governments they dislike and work with people they hate.Report
How to change both the victor and loser in a war to prevent future wars is a challenge. A Sisyphean challenge. The outlines of what both sides need doesn’t seem that hard: no more f*cking violence, democracy for Gaza with independent parties, rebuilding Gaza and developing a functioning state with a decent economy. And of course no more f*cking violence. Hamas needs to be gone but so does Bibi and his settler fluffing coalition. Now just how to do any of that after the brutality Israel is going to deliver is the giant question.Report
Sure. Get rid of Bibi. Put him on trial! Throw him in prison!
Reform the heck out of Israel!
But Hamas shouldn’t be around. At all.
“But what about if it were in name only?”
“I don’t know why that’s so important but, sure. The essence needs to change, though. The word ‘Hamas’ will need a new referent.”Report
There will be some replacement for Hamas since they do speak for a section of the people. It would be best if that replacement worked through electoral means. Gazan’s need reps to speak to their pain and deliver relief. Which has not been something Israel has wanted. Which is part of the root of all this.Report
How about, instead of electoral means, attrition?Report
The Israeli/Palestinian issue has to be one of the most brutal and intractable issues globally. My own perspective on it has evolved on it as well- I’d like to think in response to events on the ground.
When I started out becoming aware of this question and arguing about it online in the early aughts I felt pretty strongly pro-Israeli (and pro-Israeli Labor party) and viewed the Palestinian cause with a resigned despair. As events progressed, though, my view of the Palestinians have remained mostly unchanged but my opinion of the Israeli side has degraded to something similar, an exasperated despair.
I’d personally track it back to Sharon. When Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza I was shocked but also intrigued. I’d never liked Sharon (my Jewish friends were lefties and Sharon had always struck me as a right-wing firebrand) but, in hindsight, I have come to realize that he was likely the last of the genuinely liberal right-wing Likudniks. What came after Sharon has greatly heightened my appreciation for the old General. If he had not been felled by that stroke and had, instead, prosecuted the withdrawal from the territories that he had been contemplating history would probably be a much brighter one now. Since Sharon the Likud has led the way in leading Israel into an increasingly corrupt and fundamentalist direction and I am genuinely concerned for its survival- not in terms of physical survival but in terms of its survival as a liberal, democratic state.
As for the outcomes? The answers really haven’t changed a lot:
>Moral Liberal Answer: Israel bites the bullet and annexes the West Bank (and maybe Gaza), gives the Palestinians voting rights and civil rights equal to any other Israeli and then endures a painful period of absorption as they “digest” this new large body of citizens into the polity. As for Palestinian refugees abroad? The Israelis say fish em.
Pros: It is (mostly) moral. It is possible. The Israelis have mostly succeeded in doing this before (with Israeli Arabs), in the long term this offers a plausible path to peace.
Cons: It is HARD. There would be a painful period of genuine violence as the revanchist elements of Palestinian and Israeli society try to scuttle the plan by attacking each other. The policing actions within Israel would be costly and painful and, yes, some Israeli’s (Jewish and Palestinian) would die from internal violence. The political will necessary to make this happen and to stick to the principles of unification would be astronomical and there’s a genuine demographic challenge but, so long as a right of return for Palestinian diaspora isn’t honored then the Israelis could potentially pull it off. It’s likely this is an “answer” to the problem that’s good enough to allow Israel to resolve relations with other Arab states.
>Moral Conservative Answer: Call it the Sharon solution. Israel withdraws from the territories. It annexes territory around major settlement blocks along the new border and around Jerusalem. Palestinians in those areas are offered citizenship or else financial compensation to move. Jewish settlers outside those defensible lines are dragged, forcibly, out of their settlements and are resettled back in Israel. The Israelis would maintain some military presence along the boundaries of this new independent Palestine with the understanding that when/if the Palestinians make peace with the Israelis then the military will withdraw.
Pros: It is (mostly) moral and the Israeli’s did this, mostly, with Gaza. They know they can do this and they know how. Legally speaking this is the simplest solution for the Israeli state apparatus and requires the least reform. It secures Israel and the demographic question is resolved. The Palestinian diaspora can move to the West Bank and would no longer be Israel’s direct headache. The Palestinians would have to start governing themselves in earnest and, hopefully, could eventually become a functional state. It’s likely this is an “answer” to the problem that’s good enough to allow Israel to resolve relations with other Arab states. In theory the Palestinians would eventually tire of pointless extremist raids that only result in some dead Israeli’s and a lot more destruction and death for Palestinians and, as this would in theory allow Israel to make peace with the Arab states, the Palestinians should eventually develop to a point where they don’t want to raid or shoot missiles at Israel.
Cons: The political will required to prosecute this plan would immense. Ever since Sharon put them on notice the Israeli right has been frantically trying to establish facts on the ground to make this option so politically costly as to be impossible. Withdrawing fully from the Territories would expose Israel to considerably more risk from raids and missile strikes and they’d have to be ready and willing to go in, “mow the grass” in retaliation and then (importantly) withdraw again.
Both these outcomes have the downsides of promising heightened casualties for a finite period of time but offer genuine hope that, in the long term, peace will settle on the region. The alternative of perpetual conflict status quos might have a lower year by year immediate casualty count but, when assumed out into the foreseeable future, has a higher body count.
There’s also the strategy the Israeli’s seem to be pursuing. Call it the nu-Likud strategy.
>Immoral Nu-Likud strategy: Increase settlements in the territories and grind the Palestinians down. Assume that right wing Israeli birth rates will allow the Israelis to outnumber the Palestinians and encourage lower fertility and emigration from the territories and also general abuse of Israeli Arabs. This also gives the Israeli-Likud right a steadily increasing base of fundamentalist voters to support a series of illiberal Likud governments that will continue to transform the Israeli state into a Jewish fundamentalist one. Think of this as a kind of ethnic cleansing in very slow motion.
Pros: It’s politically easy to work towards compared to the moral answers. The settler right loves this and it welds the right into a manageable electoral block. In the long run it offers a solution that is cheap and easy.
Cons: All this plan costs is Isael’s liberal soul. But the economic dynamism of the Israeli state lies on the left side of their political spectrum. The settlers and Jewish fundamentalists blocks are agrarian or, to put it starkly, welfare bums. At some point there’s a genuine risk that the economically productive part of the Israeli polity will decamp for a non-theocratic state and Israeli will become an Israeli Iran on the Levant.
Reading back over this I noted that these outcomes mostly rob the Palestinians of agency. I think that accurately reflects the reality that Israel is the overwhelmingly dominant actor and the Palestinians only options are perpetual low level violent resistance and implacable passive resistance. If I were a Palestinian the only sensible option I can see would be the peaceable option.
>Moral Palestinian option: Call it the Gandi option. Abbas gets turfed out of the Palestinian Authority and their new political leader eschews political violence and levels a threat to the Israelis: “Negotiate a withdrawal or else we will dissolve the Palestinian Authority and begin demonstrating against Israel’s “apartheid” behavior and demanding civil rights within Israel. This basically is demanding a Sharon++ strategy and threatening to force the moral liberal option if the Israeli’s refuse to play ball.
Pros: It’s moral. It would play spectacularly well with the developed world and with the liberal portion of the Israeli polity. It’d strike at the heart and core of the Nu-Likud strategy and genuinely threaten their grip on power. A negotiated withdrawal of Israel from the territories would mean the Palestinians could bargain for more land, possibly some accommodation in East Jerusalem and a lot of financial aid for the new Palestinian state from the world and Israel. It offers the fastest path to independence and prosperity for the Palestinians in the West Bank. Also, for what it’s worth, a leader who pursued this path would have international celebrity and, likely, a Noble Peace Prize in hand in short order.
Cons: Not only would such a strategy be facing a right-wing Israeli government that’d be spitting livid over it but it’d also face fury and outrage from the Palestinians. A leader charting this path would need to be a true persuader to try and get the masses to follow along and would remain at great peril of being murdered by fanatics from both the Israeli right and the Palestinian revanchists. The charisma and discipline required of this political movement would be immense.
But, realistically, that’s it. Alas, in my jaded middle age I fear that the only realistic path is going to be the Nu-Likud one and I shudder for Israel’s future if I’m right about that.Report
They kinda had the moral conservative answer. If October 2023 is what happens following the moral conservative answer, then we’ve demonstrated that that answer fails and fails hard.
As for the moral liberal answer… I’m not sure that would be possible. Or, if it’s possible, there will have to be a pile of bodies first. I don’t know how large the pile would have to be but I know it ain’t small.
The Ghandi option strikes me as the right one as well… but I imagine that the Palestinians might say “WHAT DO YOU THINK WE’VE BEEN DOING SINCE 2005?!?” and, yeah, that resulted in October 2023 as well.
Immoral neo-likudnik it is.Report
They only implemented the moral conservative answer on Gaza. For it to have been “the answer” they’d have had to implement it where it was hard- the West Bank. Has a blood clot ever been more consequential in modern history than the one that felled Sharon? I honestly can’t think of one.
I’m confident that the moral liberal answer would work but you are absolutely right that there would be violence and death in the near term. As long as the state held fast- that the murderers were swiftly and justly punished, that the rioters were dispersed and violence discouraged and punished then in time- quite possibly with surprising swiftness- the violence would peter out. But, again, it’d be incredibly hard.
But, alas, I agree with you. Water follows the easiest course and, absent the rise of an Israeli or Palestinian politician of remarkable vision and capability, I also predict that neo-likudnikism is the likely future for Israel.Report
You know, when I was first writing this, I had a section talking about how we should make some serious distinctions between “Palestinians”. “The Gaza Strip” and “The West Bank” are, like, two different countries. The West Bank is urbane and cosmopolitan. Sure, they can get rowdy but they’re practically Jordanian.
I’d say that, at worst, they need a bit of reform.
But that section didn’t work and the essay is better without it.
BUT! SINCE YOU BRING IT UP!!!
We should make some serious distinctions between “Palestinians”. “The Gaza Strip” and “The West Bank” are, like, two different countries. The West Bank is urbane and cosmopolitan. Sure, they can get rowdy but they’re practically Jordanian.Report
I… honestly… don’t know enough about the Palestinians in these two locations to honestly be able to judge. On paper, for instance, what you are saying seems backwards because the West Bank is far more territory whereas Gaza is literally a single city and a postage stamp of land. So you would thing the Gazans would be more urbane.
But it does make sense to view them as distinct because, by now, their histories have significantly diverged and their geographic circumstances are really different.Report
If you told me that you and your fam were going on a trip to the West Bank, I’d make some small noises about “are you sure” and “where are you flying into and out of” and I’d do some light research for you, no charge, on where you should go AND WHERE YOU SHOULD AVOID.
And then I’d ask for pictures and an essay when you get back. We’d post it. I’d talk about how I was jealous.
If you told me that you were going to Gaza, I would beg you not to go.Report
Heck I’d have that reaction too! But I don’t, honestly, know beyond general understandings of the politics of the region whether there’re actual cultural differences between Palestinian Gazans and Palestinian West Bankers. I don’t have the personal or social circle knowledge of what their culture is like.Report
One assumes in the moral conservative scenario Israel has redeployed at least some of the forces currently policing the West Bank. There are reports that where they had some warning and the wherewithal armed Israeli civilians were able to defend themselves without any help from the authorities. Real soldiers would have made short work of Hamas had there been enough around. Leaving the border that lightly defended was a very un-Israel military debacle.Report
Yeah, there probably needs to be an inquest and there are people who need to be retired, others that need to be fired, and maybe even a handful that need to be imprisoned. (Do they have Canadian Health Care over there? Maybe even one or two needs Canadian Health Care.)Report
I kind of wonder if this isn’t the beginning of the end of Netanyahu. It seems like the whole point of having a hard right government is the theory that only it is willing to to be cut throat and get its hands dirty enough to prevent this kind of thing.
No idea on the Canadian Healthcare.Report
I think he’s making a MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying- aka Gov Assisted Euthanasia) joke.
One would THINK this would be a deathblow to Bibi. Golda Mier didn’t survive something half as horrific. It will depend A) on if the Security Services have the receipts and B) just how far down the lunacy path the Israeli right and right-of-center has gone.Report
A non-violent Palestinian movement would have an enormous popularity in the West and a lot of pressure would be put on Israel. The problem with it from the Palestinian standpoint is that it won’t get rid of Jews and many of them still want desperately to get rid of Jews.Report
Indeed and I noted that very bleak fact obliquely in its cons. I suppose I could have dwelled on how a brutally high % of Palestinians polled express eliminationist rhetoric but my comment was verging on article length already. I do, however, think that no small amount of that sentiment is rooted in the frustration and powerlessness of the situation that Palestinians find themselves (and have put themselves) in. If you can do nothing to exercise a preference and have no consequence for expressing it then that trends towards extremism.Report
This was really a great comment, North.
I think one of the under explored areas is how the settler movement has seemingly been able to take over Israeli politics while being a long term drain on its economy and dynamism. I have to wonder at what point the secular Israelis that pay the bills say ‘enough.’Report
Thanks!
I view the settler movement as example one million of how a passionate and driven minority can steer policy in their direction in the face of an indifferent or even mildly hostile electorate at large. When I first became aware of the Israeli political scene in the early aughts the vibe I got (and actual Jewish folk or people deeply engaged in the Israeli political scene can correct me) the settlers were viewed as kooks and nuts- at best ideological and harmless, at worst murderous religious fanatics (let us not forget that a pro-settlement Israeli murdered Yitzhak Rabin in ’95!). The have followed a trajectory somewhat like the kooks on the right in the US. First mocked and ignored, then cynically used by one party for political gain and then exercising increasing clout until they’re an 800 lb gorilla in the room.
In the case of the settler movement this phenomena is magnified by the fact that every additional household they plant creates more inertia against moving them and more political clout in their corner. They’re a self reinforcing movement in the way other elitist well funded minorities (like the wealthy low tax low regulation contingent in the US) can only look at in envy.
As to when the masses say ‘enough’? I’d guess it’ll be when the settlement movement impacts them: either by provoking so many endless conflicts that the masses get fed up or, more ominously, by allying with Jewish fundamentalists to the point that they begin imposing social regulation on the masses.Report
The Palestinians (Jaybird is right, we should make a distinction, so to clarify, I mean the Gazan Palestinians) already tried protesting peacefully, back in 2018. It was called the Great March of Return, where they went to the Gaza border and just marched at it, to try to show the world how heavy-handed Israel’s response would be. Not trying to cross it, just marching, right there.
Which it was, soldiers on the border (And let’s remember, Israel pretends Gaza is a separate nation) killed 489 of them, with the UN’s human right’s commission saying that _maybe_ two of those killings were justified as a threat. The IDF just…shot hundreds of people standing around almost entirely non-violently (Oh no, a few people threw rocks or whatever), exactly as the Palestinians had expected, well documented, condemned by the UN.
In fact, it’s worth pointing out that, as tis happened _inside_ Gaza, which Israel asserts it is not in control of, this seems especially egegious. Gaza has no laws against public demonstrations, so there’s not ‘legality’ we can talk about, and if we do pretend Gaza is its own country, governed by its own people…that was just a military firing across a border at protestors of that country. Weird that that is somehow okay. I somewhat suspect we’d have a problem if a mass of American lined up at the Canadian border to protest Canada, staying on the US side, and Canada shot 500 of them…even if a few of them threw rocks.
You know what part of this plan wasn’t a success?
Raise your hand if you’ve heard of this event. Raise your hand if it has even _vaguely_ impacted your understanding of this issue at all.
Explain to me how peaceful protest by the Palestinians is supposed to work when the US media literally does not cover it or the response by Israel.
Don’t worry, Israel pretends Hamas was ‘behind’ this. Which…they weren’t, but…why would that make a difference anyway? Hamas isn’t allow to peacefully protest? What?Report
Gaza is a bleak subject, sure DavidTC, but in this scenario we’re talking about the West Bank PA especially. More specifically we’re talking about them threatening to dissolve their entire state apparatus. That includes police, security services etc. The PA does a LOT to tamp down on Palestinian violence against the Israelis and you can be sure that the PA threatening to dissolve their national state and dump it in the Israeli’s laps would be a monumentally different affair then what happened in Gaza where the Gazans marched up to the border and pitched their bog standard Israeli eliminationist rhetoric. The Israelis would have to pay attention and, no, they couldn’t just shoot them. You can’t shoot people into operating a separate state for you.Report
…it really is astonishing how people just make up things.You have to come up with some reason that the peaceful protest was bad, because otherwise it is _way_ too clear that Israel is a bad actor.
The thing being demanded was a Palestinian Right of Return. It was not ‘Israel must cease to exist’. There was a very clearly stated goal, there was huge amount of protestors, almost nothing that could vaguely be called violence at all (Certainly nothing organized or out of place at an American protest, I think someone threw a molotov, once.) , and there’s even evidence that Hamas sent in undercover operatives _to keep things from getting violent_.
Yes, really. _Hamas_ worked to keep the violence down and make this a peaceful protest.
Because, and I feel I should point this out, this entire thing was a PR attempt to point out how peaceful resistance doesn’t work for Palestine. On purpose. They deliberately set out to do that.
Or to put it in American terms, it was a version of the MLK-style protests of ‘Let’s have Black people peacefully march down the street for our rights and televise the police assaulting us’. Or, if you want, what happened in India, with Gandhi, you know, the thing you said they should do?
It worked in those instances, because the media actually reported on it and peopel got outraged.
It didn’t work here, because no only did the media not bother to report on it, but also has published propaganda about Palestinians for so long that you just _assume_ the march was chanting some sort of eliminationist demands instead of ‘Let us live freely in the places we used to live’.
Maybe you need to step back and think about how you actually view this issue.
…except the obvious thing for Israel to do is to just let the West Bank, outside the settlements, collapse.
Which normally would produce some sort of moral outrage, but LITERALLY NOTHING ISRAEL DOES CAN PRODUCE MORAL OUTRAGE IN WESTERN MEDIA.
They are, right now, bombing people _as they try to evacuate_ Northern Gaza.
You think the current Israel government does not want violence against Israelis, whereas I think it’s rather obvious they literally _need_ violence against Israelis to stay in power. That is the entire point of the settlements, it is literally the purpose of everything they do.
Now, they didn’t quite want it at _this_ level, but at the normal low-level? Yes.Report
I have no sympathy for the Israelis regarding the incident you’re talking about but “give us back our land and let millions of Palestinians from all over the middle east move into Israel where their grandparents/great grandparents lived” doesn’t really… umm… translate into MLK style messaging. It’s a message for the dissolution of the Israeli state and it is, fundamentally, eliminationist. Moreover, it’s just talk and talk is cheap.
I agree the Israelis behaved abhorrently towards the protesters because, whenever the Israelis have an opportunity to reduce the risk to their lives at the expense of greater violence and peril against the Palestinians they generally choose to do so. The only mealy-mouthed defense I’d offer of the Israelis in the example you cite is that Hamas has a justified reputation for using civilians as shields and protests as covers for attacks. But that doesn’t excuse how badly the Israelis treated the protestors
I don’t think the Israeli’s want the entire Palestinian population on their hands. They certainly don’t want anarchy and Palestinians running willy nilly everywhere in the West Bank. The PA serves a very important function for keeping things quiet and peaceable there for them and threatening to cease to perform that function would present a very serious problem. It wouldn’t be violence at the normal “low” level, it’d be anarchy and violence at a much higher level from the revanchist actors compounded with mass protests from the more peaceable majority would present a critical challenge to them.
Likewise, I think you misinterpret the settlements. The settlements aren’t being made to provoke the Palestinians- it’s nothing so elegant or Machiavellian. The Israeli settlers quite literally want the actual land. Like I said in my original comment it’s basically slow-motion ethnic cleansing.Report
Just like the Israeli hardliners really want the land in the West Bank, the Palestinian hardliners keep clamoring for the Right of Return because they want the land and dissolution of Israel. They keep saying this. There is no reason to doubt them. If both sides demand unilateral surrender nothing will be done. The difference is that plenty of Israelis and Israeli allies and critics are telling them to be sensible. The Palestinians have none of their alleged allies Muslim or not telling them to see the facts of life but encouraging them in their radicalism.Report
Imagine how much the GDP will go up, though. Better restaurants, too.Report
Why not? ‘Give us back the stuff you took from us’ seems entirely reasonable as a demand. You can disagree with doing it, but it’s not some absurd demand.
Israel, right now, is in charge of its own constitution and method of government. And Jews, strictly speaking, would probably end up as small majority in any sort of unity government. And even if they barely missed, there’s not really a good reason it couldn’t build a system of government that respected minority rights, with a lot of safeguards in place. Or even one divided in representation by religion, that’s an odd concept for the US but other countries do that. Or by ethnicity, which I don’t think is a good plan but could be done.
Of course…it has failed to do so the entire time it existed, just asked the non-Jewish Israeli, (Or, hell, ask the Ethipoian Jews, who manage to not quite fit into the ethnostate despite being Jewish.) and has no intention of doing that. It doesn’t _want_ a secular state, where everyone is represented, operated by compromise.
It is amazing how much people have talked themselves into nonsense, asserting ‘Israel has a right to exist’, and by ‘Israel’ they mean ‘A Jewish ethnostate’. Ethnostates don’t actually have a right to exist and are Bad Actually. We want them to go away. We actually work against them literally anywhere else. We don’t want any country to prioritize any group of people over another, to treat anyone different just because of who they are. That is a bad thing. (I suddenly feel like I’m teaching ‘Things America Claims to Stand For 101’.)
The people _within_ what we call Israel currently have a right to a government that they have selected and to live freely, just like the people do within what we call Palestine. Countries do not have rights. People do.
And I know what the next argument is, that the history of Jewish people makes the situation fairly unique, they need a homeland to remain safe, which is why I’d like to introduce my plan for the Romani people to seize Connecticut.
I’m not disagreeing with the motives of the settlers.
I’m saying that is why the government is on board with such obvious lunacy.
Not slow motion enough, it seems.Report
Why not? I mean I don’t think MLK’s organizations ever said anything in their charters like:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him”
Not exactly a stirring paen to convince the Israelis’ to let you ship millions of Palestinians into Israel proper and saying “you might be a strong plurality or slight majority in the country, but we’ll write a couple rules saying the new masses have to be nice to Jewish people so you’ll be fine” is probably also not going to be persuasive. It’s not like Arabic peoples don’t attack Jewish people the world over even when they’re a very small minority.
Now I could go into a long discussion with you about the Palestinian/Arab history, their endless missed opportunities, their enormous runs of ill luck and, of course, the myriad ways the Israelis have been harsh and unjust with them but why? I am sure we could go around about how, after several wars launched, by the Arab world, to try and eliminate Israel, the lands the Palestinians lost could be argued to be morally lost or contrast how the Arabs treated the Palestinians who fled the war vs how the Israeli’s treated the Jews who fled the same violence but, let’s be real, it’s pointless.
Israel exists, it’s a Jewish ethno-state and, unfortunately, it’s been getting even more ethno-statey in the last couple decades. While the Israelis bear the primary responsibility for that it’s unserious to pretend that the Palestinians haven’t played a major part in the death of the peace process and the evisceration of the Pro-peace Israeli left. The idea that the millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees would ever be allowed back into Israel proper was nonsensical twenty years ago and it’s so utterly insane now, as a practical or political matter, that I don’t see the point in litigating it. You might as well demand we ship the population of North America back to Europe and leave the whole continent to the descendants of the First Nations.
As to the settlements? Yeah I’d agree the current Israeli government is entirely on board with them. It is horrible.Report
It seems to me that people with some sympathies towards the Palestinian people need to consider whether indulging that kind of rhetoric is remotely useful for those living with the facts on the ground. If anything it is more likely to work in favor of the worst actors in Israeli politics and the settlers themselves. Ideally what you want is for all of the Israelis in Tel Aviv and Haifa and the other parts of the country on the right side of the partition, and maybe those just over it, to start to believe they can get a better deal for themselves by selling out the crazies setting up shop deep in would-be Palestinian territory. I would imagine that’s what the settler movement and other Zionists committed to the cause of a greater Israel fear most.Report
From what I can tell Pro-Palestinian Westerners are so into the entire Zionism is settler-colonialism/Israel is Apartheid South Africa narrative that they can’t even conceive of telling the Palestinians to get something of a clue.
The debates on the other blog regarding Israel’s military actions after the Simchat Torah massacre. There are vague claims that Israel’s aerial bombardment campaign in Gaza is against international law without any citations to the relevant treaty or what other authority. So they want Israel to do something that has literally never been done before and which no other country doing a military action would do and totally evacuate Gaza of everybody not Hamas before doing anything.
They are also making these arguments using language designed to piss of Israelis and Jews because rather than appealing to any sense of justice or mercy from the Israelis, it is all Israel has to do this becasue they are wrong headed colonial-settler pigs. This is not what I call a persuasive argument.Report
This is not what I call a persuasive argument.
Persuasive *TO WHOM*?
May I suggest that you (and those who support Israel in general) are not the target audience?Report
They seem to sincerely want Israel not to do what is doing, so they are either very stupid or really need to make their arguments better. Either that or they are just engaging in righteous fantasies online.Report
I’d suggest that, instead, there are three groups of people.
1. People who, pretty much, will support Israel and come up with excuses for any “excesses”.
2. People who, pretty much, will support the Palestinians and come up with excuses for any “excesses”.
3. People who look at this thing and think “man, what a swamp!” and don’t know what to think.
They’re not appealing to you, certainly.
But there are a *LOT* of people out there who think “what a swamp!”
And there are benefits to joining the side that believes that apartheid is wrong. Historical precedents, even. There are benefits to joining the side that believes that killing native brown people is wrong. Historical precedents even.
What’s the argument that the Pro-Israel people are making, again? “White People Deserve Their Own Country, Lest They Be Outvoted By A Coalition Of BIPOCs?”
If you don’t learn how to argue in such a way to convince group number three, you’re going to find yourself looking at charts like this one only with a lot less teal and a lot more tangerine:
Report
This is why the best move for Israel at this juncture is probably what North designated ‘moral conservative’ answer. The Palestinians are too degraded for anything like a negotiated settlement but that’s not going to convince anyone rightly horrified by Israel maintaining jurisdiction over a huge group of stateless people on territory it controls. The passion goes out of all of this the moment the Palestinians have some reasonable chunk of territory, whether they’re happy with it or not.Report
They did that in 2005.
It got us here.
I suppose we can say “18 years ain’t nothin'” and do it again.Report
They left the West Bank in 2005?Report
The West Bank isn’t a problem.
All of the horrors and atrocity we’ve seen over the last week ain’t the West Bank.
I’m not saying that the West Bank is perfect or anything like that…
But the situation with the West Bank could exist indefinitely.Report
I’m not sure that’s true unless there’s some plan to eventually go to ‘moral liberal’ answer. Or just expel everyone that isn’t an Israeli citizen and accept the consequences of that.Report
I’m a fan of the three-state solution, myself.
Or a two-state solution where The West Bank becomes its own state. Hey. They’ve earned it.Report
No, Jay, the West Bank is the problem and Sharon’s death and failure to deal with the West Bank is why the Gazan withdrawal didn’t “fix” the issue (it merely helped). But if you followed the matter closely, you’d have noted that the Israeli’s reaped enormous goodwill when they dragged their settlers out of Gaza. The Palestinians, likewise, harvested enormous bad will when the Israeli’s withdraw and the Palestinians burned down the buildings they vacated and showered the Israeli’s with missiles.
What it boils down to is this. There’re three ways Israel perishes:
A-Demographic destruction (which is why Palestinians are so stuck on the right of return) wherein the Jewish population can’t sustain the political, economic and military force necessary to maintain the state.
B-Global Pariah status since Israel is a trade dependent country or
C-Selling out their own national soul and becoming an illiberal theocratic state (which then makes A and B follow on in short order).
If anything, the outcomes from the Gazan withdrawal, from a cold-eyed perspective, strongly endorsed the viability of the conservative withdrawal option. Israel withdrew from Gaza and they earned enormous global goodwill (threat B) and removed 2 million Palestinians from becoming potential citizens of a future Israel state (threat A). Global goodwill was so strong, in fact, that the Israelis got near carte blanche to do whatever they needed/wanted to contain further threats originating from Gaza. A complete chokehold on trade and movement? Sure! Vicious reprisals for attacks? Absolutely! Assassinations? You betcha!
You keep fixating on the Palestinians, themselves and I agree that withdrawal from Gaza didn’t help the Israeli’s with Palestinian attitude. But Palestinians have no ability to destroy or even seriously threaten the survival of the overall Jewish state. It is only the world at large or the people within Israel itself who can do that. Had the Israeli’s dragged their settlers out of the West Bank the global goodwill would have been larger, the demographic benefit would have been geometrically larger and, while Israels geographic exposure to attacks might be larger the world would be even more firmly lined up in support of the Israeli States’ survival and the Palestinians, worst case scenario, would be beating their heads bloody against a brick wall. Would they be able to kill some Jews? Yes, from time to time. But to threaten the overall state? No, never.Report
The West Bank issue is bad, sure. The West Bank should be allowed to govern itself and become its own country. Absolutely.
But it wasn’t the West Bank engaging in mostly civil decolonialism against non-combatants over the last little bit.
They’re two entirely different territories with two very different experiences of the world and a solution that would work in Gaza would not work in the West Bank and vice-versa.Report
Fatah and Hamas are very different birds. But the West Bank is the only region that presents an actual mortal threat to the Israeli state. What we saw come out of Gaza was abhorrent, granted, but was it an actual threat to the survival of Israel? No. Heck, it was only even as terrible as it managed to be because Bibi basically left the Israelis pants down due to internal politics.Report
The question is whether the West Bank is still a scorpion, I guess. (Allusion to the whole Frog/Scorpion thing.)
The West Bank has not made documentaries about how they’re dismantling water pipes in order to make rockets.
Gaza has.
If Israel withdrew entirely from the West Bank tomorrow, we wouldn’t see synagogues burned down and hydroponic farms looted.Report
If Israel dragged their settlers out and withdrew from the West Bank maybe we’d see the blooming of a flourishing civilized state, maybe we’d see a repeat of what happened in Gaza, maybe they’d start eating the pavement and shooting babies from catapults at the Israeli border. From the standpoint of the Israeli’s survival It. Wouldn’t. Matter.
A positive outcome would be nice. But even if the Palestinians attacked or shot missiles the Israelis could do just about anything short of re-occupying the West Bank to respond and the world would be fine with whatever it was. The Israeli state would be secured in both the short and long term. Eventually the Palestinians would either come to terms with that or not but the Jewish state would survive (and likely thrive) regardless of whether the Palestinians did or not.Report
I mean, this just showed up:
An organization in Gaza that we won’t name has kinda liberated a bunch of stuff from the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees.
The UNRWA tweeted about it and then deleted the tweets.
It’s almost funny.
Anyway, this sort of thing is a Gaza thing. Not a West Bank thing (at least since Arafat died, anyway).Report
Sure, but nothing the Gazans do can threaten the actual survival of the state of Israel. Nothing.
It is quite the reverse in the West Bank.Report
Okay.
I kinda think that Gaza qua Gaza can’t threaten the actual survival of Israel.
But Gaza as catspaw? I think that they’re doing a heluva job threatening Israel right now.
See it as a suicide bomber kinda thing. Their main goal is not to kill Israel but to give a great big hug to Israel’s Moral Authority. Let go of the dead man’s trigger and get your 72 Incels.
As Israel engages in some light punishment/prevention/vengeance against Gaza over the next couple of weeks, the option to engage in a little light genocide will be there.
If Israel succumbs to the temptation…
Well, the last thing we want to do is normalize genocide but, hey, even Israel agrees that sometimes you gotta engage in genocide against a particularly odious buncha people who threaten your identity, right?
These things happen.
And WHAMMO. Moral authority *GONE*.
At that point, the actual survival of the state of Israel is threatened.
Woo doggies.Report
Even in your, lamentably plausible, scenario it isn’t the Gazans actions that threaten the actual survival of Israel, it’s the Israeli’s actions (having a lil nip of that genocide coffee). And the Gazans are succeeding in provoking this much only because of a preceding Israeli action (pulling security off the border of Gaza so they can try and land grab in the West Bank) so, again, it’s the Israeli’s actions that are threatening their survival. Gaza- disengaged from and distinct, isn’t capable of presenting a mortal threat to the state by itself. The West Bank, intertangled with increasing numbers of Israeli settlers and deeply entrenched Israeli occupation, is quite the opposite.Report
Here’s what I am going to look for over the next two weeks.
If, by November 1st, Important People are saying “we need a ceasefire”, we will go back to the old status quo and Israel just knows that, hey, it is the nature of the kibbutz to get redistributed.
Maybe we can get another 18 years.
If Israel, instead, says “NEVER AGAIN”, then we’re going to see Israel get irrevocably closer to destruction.
And you’re not going to believe what the college campuses will look like in the meantime. (Small upside: “Loan Forgiveness” will evaporate.)Report
Heh, I disagree somewhat.
The various powers that students actually, truly, give a fish about- employers and peers, are making it clear that being unabashedly and publicly pro-Hamas is not the hallmarks of an employable or popular future employee. I suspect you’re going to see campus’ get a lot more sedate on the subject. I also suspect that university admins are going to suddenly “remember” that they can manage this kind of behavior when it suddenly becomes fiscally and reputationally negative to not do so.
As for the Israelis and Hamas, I think your think your summation is probably more correct than not. Lord(Lady?) knows the Israelis have a suboptimal administration in place to manage the situation. But perhaps Bibi will agree to a unity government. They’d have to go pretty far for it to be too far, but they certainly could do it.Report
Okay. AOC does not count as an important person.
But the road to important people wanders past her.
(Yes, I know it’s Fox. That’s not the relevant thing. The relevant thing is the Ceasefire Now Resolution. Which exists.)Report
It does exist just like the Green New Deal exists. Probably has as much odds of passing too- well, once the House picks a Speaker that is.Report
Oh, I’m not suggesting that it’ll pass!
That’s not why I’m seeing it as relevant to my prediction that actually important people for real will be using this language by November 1st.Report
Another hint that we’re getting closer…
Report
For what it’s worth, history has never demonstrated that anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and all hate are connected. Conceptually, we can understand how hatred of groups is similar to hatred of other groups. But what has history shown us? I guess I can grant that the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099 displayed both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim characteristics. But it’s more like history has shown us again and again that sieges often lead to massacres.
There is such a thing as irrational hatred of Jews. I don’t think there is an equivalent toward Muslims, at least on any scale.Report
I think the linkage is that if one doesn’t accept that “human rights” apply to all humans, then they cease to be rights and just become privileges enjoyed at the whim of whoever is in power.Report
On the other blog a poster I usually disagree with made a great point that there is a tension between the idea of universal individual human rights and the tendency of humans to self-organize into distinct communities and engage in tribalism.Report
This is true in a sense but it’s also where I think people could stand to learn a little history. I mean, to get started, there was this guy named John Locke who despite some attitudes that would feel a little medieval to us in 2023, developed some insights that influenced quite a few other people you may have heard of.
Anyway we in the West have been muddling to a much better place on this subject since around the 17th century, always imperfectly and sometimes in fits and starts, but these aren’t issues that no one has ever grappled with, including to a lot of success and prosperity. In fact the world we know exists in large part because of it. The middle east has never gotten there in modernity for a number of external and internal reasons we could endlessly debate. However at a certain point people need to get passed this ‘everything is tribalism always has been always will be’ stuff. It isn’t all that profound, and eventually just sounds like whoever is saying it slept through all of their classes.Report
I don’t know; there could be tension, but there doesn’t have to be. There can be tension between universal individual human rights and only one slice of pizza left, but there shouldn’t be.
ETA: Ooh, I should have just said, “what InMD said a minute ago”.Report
This is also how I see it. Had it happened that way and Palestinians continued down the path they have in Gaza the world would look at them and say ‘what else are we really supposed to do? you have land, you have sovereignty, it’s up to you what to do with it, and if that is perpetually provoking your richer, heavily armed neighbor, then you own the results of those choices.’Report
Yup, I agree. Looking back in time from the present my mind reels at how shocked my younger self was at Sharon’s actions. His unilateral withdrawal without negotiation or agreement to impose final boundaries on the Gazans seemed astonishingly right wing at the time. Now? My goodness how the changing of times changes perspectives!Report
Somewhere Sharon must have understood the actual dynamics, that admittedly were a lot less clear at that time. However I think as incalcitrant as Fatah (at the time) and the Palestinians have been it is Israel that has the power to unilaterally just cut bait and end the whole thing. The longer they don’t the worse it gets.Report
Indeed Sharon clearly had a particularly prescient vision. I never liked him but in hindsight I cannot help but respect the man.
Agreed entirely. Israel has functional dominance and thus the preponderance of the moral and practical need to act falls on their shoulders.Report
Hmmm on further thought maybe Sharon, being so close in with the Israeli right, could see where his own side was headed and tried to head that off.Report
That is certainly possible. It’s also possible that his military background led him to better understand the practicalities of unending occupation. It reminds me of Colin Powell, certainly no liberal, and Iraq, even though he ultimately went the other way and lost his reputation for it.Report
Yes! Maybe a near perfect contrasting example.Report
Here you go. I’ll just do the entire section:
Protocol I of the Geneva Convention:
Art 51. – Protection of the civilian population
1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
2. The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.
4. Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;
and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and (b) an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
6. Attacks against the civilian population or civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited.
7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.
8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided for in Article 57.
—
Maybe we should count which one Israel is violating. The aerial bombardment campaign is, of course, violating #4 and #5.
But also, fun fact, they’re explicitly said they’re violating #6. They’ve straight up said they’re doing attacks against Gaza in reprisals. Most people point out this is illegal under ‘protected people’ part of the origina Geneva Convention talking about them as occupied territories, but it’s actually just generally illegal in war under protocol 1.
There is also the aforementioned Article 57, but this is long enough, so here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Geneva_Convention/Protocol_I#Chapter_IV._Precautionary_measures
I await the response you’re going to have, because, there is a giant problem with my argument, but it make Israel look _really_ bad. And also doesn’t work, legally speaking.
And, before anyone tries to argue that Hamas is violating #7…please read #8. The opposing party violating the rules does not mean you do not have to observe them. They went ahead and explicitly stated it.Report
I mean, let’s be real, we’re talking about a huge disparate set of people scattered across the globe. There’re almost as many reasons for Palestinian sympathy/support as there are supporters. I agree with your point but there’s no way to coordinate and orginze that disparate support. They don’t all agree on their reasons. Some are coming from moral or humanitarian sympathy, some simply want to use the Palestinians as a weapon against the Jews, some see them as totems of decolonization or the end of capitalism, some see the Palestinians as an instrument of Gods’ hand for Christian end times and many many more. You can’t organize them- they don’t agree with each other.Report
The Israeli right would be a lot less powerful if the Arab parties in the Knesset would start joining coalition government with Jewish moderate and liberal parties with than doing the Sean Finn routine of not joining because that would mean recognizing Israel.
And as to your first paragraph, many Pro-Palestinian activists in the West seem to be just as deluded as what can and should be done as the Palestinians and Muslims themselves. They really believe that a right of return could and must happen and that Jews must assume secondary citizen status or go back home.Report
The organizer of the march was not Hamas. It was apparently just some Gazan journalist Muthana al-Najjar.
Hamas took over the march, but…it wasn’t planned by it, and they actualyl still kept it mostly civil.
As Jaybird said, you are not trying to convince the people you are marching against who are shooting at you and/or ordering police to shoot you, you are trying to convince the people watching on TV who sees the peaceful march being shot at.
Maybe a bunch of people representing themselves as a Jewish state should not have kicked 700,000 of them out of their homes? Because…that (or, rather, the decades leading up to that as Zionists made it very clear that was the plan.) is what started that.
You know, Wikipedia actually has this covered pretty well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Islam#20th_century
“The origins of modern antisemitic trends in the Islamic World can be traced back to the ideas of the Syrian-Egyptian Salafist theologian Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935 CE), who turned highly antisemitic after the British imperial designs on the Arab World after World War 1 and their co-operation with Zionists to further British objectives.”
Arabs and Jews _mostly_ lived in peace in the middle east before that, Jews actually tended to get treated _better_ there than Christian areas. Note the word ‘mostly’ there, I’m not saying it was always great, in fact, there were occasional displacements and a massacres, but generally speaking, if you were Jewish between the 200 AD to WWI or so, the place you wanted to be was the Middle East, not anywhere Christians were in charge (Which became smaller and smaller even in the Middle East due to colonization)…and preferably not in Jerusalem or between Jerusalem and Europe, or the Crusaders might kill you.
And then…’the Jews’ did the thing they did, starting after WWI, a deliberate plan to seize a area full of Arab Muslim and displace the population, and it end up exactly like that, with hundreds of thousands of Arab Muslims kicked out of their homes. That actually did happen, no matter how much everyone wants to pretend it didn’t.
That…caused some reappraisal of Jews in Arab and Muslim countries.
And you can argue that wasn’t actually ‘the Jews’, but specifically Zionists, but that argument looks particularly weak when you’re using the behavior of a bunch of Arab people who are not Palestinians to condemn the Palestinians! Either we should judge entire ethnic groups by the action of people who seem to represent them, or we should not. (Hint: We should not.)
It is an amazing form of evil to say ‘Syria Jews were kicked out of Syria and welcomed with open arms in Israel, Palestinian Arabs were kicked out of Israel and were not welcome with open arms in Syria’ and think this somehow reflects poorly on, and justifies abuse of, _Palestinians Arabs_, the people who were treated the worst in those facts you just laid out!
We actually should care _more_ they don’t have anywhere to go, in fact, a large problem in Palestine is that, while it is theoretically possible for Palestinians to leave in general, it dooms them to a stateless exile. They have no passport, they have no country.
Unless the idea is we are operating entirely via judging people by race, so what Syrian Arabs do is somehow relevant to how evil Palestinian Arabs are. Which does seem to be the premise here.
Although…considering that _no one_ will let them in, I have to suggest even if accept the idea of racistly judging people by the actions of people who are the same race, we have no evidence that ‘will not accept Palestinian refugees’ is linked to race in any manner, considering the entire world seems to operate that way. If Syria is evil for not accepting them, so is the US.Report
mostly civil
YES!
New descriptor just dropped!
“Mostly civil decolonization effort against the kibbutz”Report
There it is. The lesson is that you can be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Semitic, and still be immoral.Report
…are we going to relitigate what it means for a protest to be ‘mostly civil’?
Most people protested peacefully, a few people deliberately broke ‘rules'(1) in non-violent ways, and a very small amount attempted to assault people.
It was as civil was any large protest in the US. And the IDF thought that it was appropriate to snipe people during it. Not just the violent people, but those non-violently ‘breaking rules'(1)…who they mostly maimed instead of killing, but accidents happen, and also what the hell?
Imagine if the US put snipers on buildings and shot (to maim) at protesters who deliberately trespassed.
1) Although, again, Israel does not have authority to set ‘rules’ for a protest in Gaza to start with! And Gaza doesn’t really have any laws about protesting, not that Israel should be enforcing those even if they did. So actually what the IDF were doing is just ‘shooting and maiming thousands of random civilians they didn’t like across what is theoretically an international border’.Report
Not at all!
We can use “mostly civil” for our protests.
We can use “riot” for theirs.
It’s great.Report
“Yes, I’d like a club sandwich, mustard instead of mayo, and a cup of the mostly non-urine soup.”Report
Here are some acts of mass violence against Jews in the Middle East before Israel was created:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_anti-Jewish_riots_in_Tripolitania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_anti-Jewish_riots_in_AdenReport
Me: Antisemitism really took off after WWI when because Zionists, backed by the British, were attempting to seize Palestine and remove Arabs to create a Jewish state. Before that, it was…fairly limited. Certainly better than it Europe.
You: Here are three examples _after_ WWI of Middle Eastern antisemitism, one of which involved another British-controlled area and was stated as due to what was already happening in Palestine, and the other which was a riot that happened out of a protest against Zionism. And the third was indeed a response to the creation is Israel, not to the Declaration of Independence but to the UN partition plan that said it was going to be done.
Did you not look into these? Literally all of these were very explicit responses to the _plan_ to create Israel. Saying ‘But they happened before it finished’ is nonsense…the plan was very clearly laid out and stated, there was openly a movement doing it, lobbying of the British government to make it happen.
You know, there actually _was_ violence against Jews in the Middle East that wasn’t a response to Zionism, right? In fact, a previous massacre happened in Baghdad, in 1828! My claim was not that this didn’t happen, my claim was that this happened much much less often than this happened in Europe. There’s only about four instances that got big enough to be recorded by history(1), whereas Europe just constantly did antisemitism.
1) This is not counting the rather large massacres that happened in Spain and Morroco under Muslim rule, as that was not the Middle East. In a very odd way they proves my point, in that Middle East was much more tolerate of Jews than the rest of the world, who were horrific…including, weirdly, Muslims when they were located outside the Middle East. Spain killed Jews under Muslim control (More than the entire Middle East killed combined), and later when Muslims lost control, the people…kept killing Jews. (Again, more than the entire Middle East killed combined.)Report
Heh, I appreciate you making me feel so young DavidTC, this is a grand throwback to the arguments over the moral merits of the foundation of the Israeli state from when I was in my twenties. But these arguements can go in circles forever and elides my core point. The Israelis will never agree to a right of return into Israel proper no matter what anyone does. It will never happen. It was vanishingly unlikely to happen twenty some years ago and conditions for it to happen now have gotten far worse. They will never, ever, do it and it’s a waste of breath to inveigle that they should do it. The Palestinian diasporas best bet is to hope to return to an eventual Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza or else integrate into where they were born or migrate somewhere else.Report
Like I wrote below the strategy seems to be not making Israelis accept a right of return but somehow getting the world powers to force it upon Israel by an unspecified mechanism.Report
The underpants gnome strategy of Palestinian liberation.Report
A true underpants gnome strategy would involve not knowing what step 2 was at all. The Pro-Palestinians faction know what Step 2 is but have the issue of Step 2 being plainly unrealistic.
Hamas step 2 might be all the Muslims in the world rise up and former a mighty army of jihad to liberate Palestine while the West stays by and does nothing about it. This is equally unlikely.
There is a lot of anti-Semitism in the Pro-Palestinian movement. They also tend to believe that every non-Jew has the same opinions about Israel and Jews as they do and is just being polite about it.Report
LOL, that’s rich on this board, where it appears half the pro-Israel side thinks exactly the same thing…literally exactly the same thing! Although they just think it Muslims, not non-Jews in general. That all of regional Muslims hate Jews and motives solely by a desire to destroy them all, instead of just Palestinians…sorta wanting their country back.
Or Lebanon disliking this weird colonial state propped up by the US next to them.
Or even..,we do understand that Iran basically cares about none of this except to how it can be used to its advantage as a regional power, right? Palestinians aren’t the same race and they aren’t the right kind of Muslims. Iran mostly cares how the support for Israel weakens US support in that region. Israel is a _giant_ gift to them, and love the fact that we are absolute morons about it.
A significant chunk of low-level Hamas just wants to shoot Israelis because Israelis soldiers killed their sister or something. Or they had to make money to support their parents. The higher-ups are likely just running a grift, I doubt there are many true-believers up there.
They are indeed the underpants gnomes, if we assume that ‘winning’ is their goal, which it really isn’t.Report
I don’t know anything about this, and maybe Israelis have captured the editing process, but the Wikipedia article gives a very different impression than I get from your account.
First, it isn’t true that 489 Palestinians were killed. The article actually gives several different fatality counts, the largest being 223. That aside, this was the result of several skirmishes occurring over the course of several months. The IDF didn’t just fire indiscriminately into a crowd, massacring hundreds, which is what I assumed based on your description. Furthermore the actions of (a minority) of Palestinians are described with phrases like:
Granted that the casualties were heavily lopsided because the Israelis were much better equipped, but according to this, the violence on the Palestinian side went far beyond throwing rocks. In fact, several of the dead on the Palestinian side were killed when their own “rocks” exploded. Sounds like this was the original fiery but mostly peaceful protest.Report
You’re right, I misread that.
They…did, actually. Fire into crowds, that is.
6106 people were injured from live ammunition being shot at them. Often by snipers, it should be pointed out, who claim to be aiming at arms and legs, and it appears they were mostly correct. So I guess the firing wasn’t ‘indiscriminately’.
You know what an interesting fact is about snipers? They operate from far enough away that there actually is no danger to them. Indeed, that was a constant repeated refrain of everyone watching ‘Israel keeps shooting people who are not even vaguely posing a threat but that they have decided are too close to Israel(1)’.
This is Israel, deciding to maim and occasionally kill, a bunch of protestors. Again, _within_ Gaza.
They also shot 19 military personal. Only one or two fatally, which implies snipers are aimed carefully at the…clearly marked medical personal. Huh.
You even get nonsense like this ‘Israeli defense sources claimed that a large fraction of those killed were members or otherwise affiliated with Palestinian militant organizations.’
I mean, Israel is lying about that, because the position of Israel is that _everyone_ in Gaza is members of or affiliated with Hamas, there’s literally a quote in the article about that: ‘On 8 April, Defense Minister of Israel Avigdor Lieberman said: “You have to understand, there are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip. Everyone has a connection to Hamas. Everyone receives a salary from Hamas. Those who are trying to challenge us at the border and breach it belong to Hamas’ military wing.”‘
But taking it at the face value: Oh…the ones killed, huh? Any justification for shooting the 6106 people you didn’t kill?
1) It actually is an interesting point that Israel has somehow decided that part of _Gaza_ is no-man’s land instead of part of _Israel_. You don’t actually get to do that, under international law. North Korea couldn’t say ‘We’re going to shoot anyone in South Korea who comes within 500 feet of the border with us’, they have to say ‘We have cleared off 500 feet on our side and will kill anyone who crosses the border and thus enters that area’. A military deliberately shooting _anyone_ over a border is an act of war.
But somehow Israel gets to decide that parts of Gaza (We all remember, that’s the place they aren’t supposed to be in charge of) are off limits to the people there.
That might sound like a technicality, but only if you are unaware of how thin and small the Gaza strip is, which means that Israel has rendered it even smaller.Report
Sorry, that obviously should be ‘They also shot 19 medical personal.’ Again, mostly non-fatally, which sounds good at first until you realize that probably means it was done via sniper, which…raises questions about why snipers were shooting clearly labeled and unarmed medical personal.
Granted, if we started asking why Israel keeps attacking medical personal, we’d be here all day. Cause they do. All the time. Often under the guise ‘They might actually be terrorist’, which might work as an excuse at checkpoints or whatever (We pretend), but somewhat falls apart with airstrikes against ambulances.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/12/war-crime-gaza-medics-say-israel-targeting-ambulances-health-facilities
Note that URL is misleading…by ‘medics’, they mean ‘Doctors Without Borders’ and ‘Red Crescent’…you know, Red Crescent, part of the Red Cross, the people legally supposed to be providing medical care in a war zone and supposed to be untouchable.Report
“[the shooting] was probably done via sniper”
zero evidence for this, but you’re gonna believe it anyway and construct an entire identity around being angry about itReport
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/tarek-loubani-shot-gaza-1.4663694
Literally linked from the Wikipedia page where it talks about that.Report
“I saw a bunker. I was shot. Therefore I was shot from the bunker.”Report
What the hell are yammering about?
Here is the Jerusalem Post announcing that the snipers will be there: https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-deploys-100-sharpshooters-on-Gaza-border-for-Palestinian-protests-547332
Do you think someone there are some other, different Israeli soldiers who might be at the border who are shooting but cannot be seen? What, hiding under tarps and shooting blindly?
All _I_ did was point out that snipers-that-we-know-existed-and-almost-certainly-did-these-the-shots have to deliberately select their targets, and medical personal were wearing high visibility vest explicitly to indicate they were medical personal, and it’s hard to figure out how snipers wouldn’t have noticed that.Report
Do you know why the Israeli version of the Red Cross uses bulletproof ambulances?Report
I do know why, it’s actually trivially easy to look up. It’s because Hamas and other terrorist groups operating in that area, in violation of about a dozen international laws, committing multiple war crimes, often target ambulances and other medical personal.
So, if I follow what you’re saying, I think you’re trying to point out that…Hamas is as bad as the IDF, as they both target medical personal?! Wow, okay, sure. I mean, you didn’t need to convince me, I already thought Hamas was worse, they literally attacked a music festival and killed a bunch of civilians the other day, but, sure, both bad.
But I am glad the US government has now banned funding of the IDF in addition to Hamas. We can’t be a party to war crimes!
*hold finger to earpiece*
What that? The exact opposite, you say? They _themselves_ are funding it? With our tax money? Well…is the US funding the actual bullets being fired at medical personal? We can’t know that? Okay, well, as long as we don’t know that detail, it’s probably fine.Report
“I think you’re trying to point out that…Hamas is as bad as the IDF, as they both target medical personal?!”
…yes?
Like, you clearly think that’s a really bad thing for people to do, and it happens, so, shouldn’t someone take action to stop that happening? Or do we just have to let Hamas do it because they’re wild beasts driven insane by all the oppression, and the Israelis have to be Double Good to make up for it?Report
…did you not read the rest of my comment, which was very clearly a tongue-in-cheek comment about how we should stop funding Israel?
You know, a thing that we could actually do, as Americans. There’s not a whole lot of things we can do to enforce laws of war in a conflict we are not in, besides our general soft power of ‘Do X and not Y, or we will not help you’.
This is literally the only thing I’ve said in this entire discussion about what is going on, I’ve repeated it over and over: We absolutely must put conditionals on our support of Israel (And just immediately yank the funding until they agree with those.), and urge other nations to do the same.
I don’t know who you are, but I’m an American sitting in front of my computer, and Hamas hasn’t asked me for permission to do anything in month, not since last April. (That is also a joke, in case you miss it.) I have absolutely no ability to stop Hamas from doing anything. Even Israel, which has a military and is right next door, doesn’t seem to be able to stop Hamas…I was going to say they don’t seem to be able to stop Hamas without committing atrocities, but…they don’t actually seem to be able to stop Hamas at all. The atrocities are not working.
What I do have, as an America, is theoretical control over my own government in a very indirect way, and thus I can urge it (and urge other Americans to urge it) to do the thing I said earlier: Put conditionals on aid to Israel. Like ‘No war crimes like attacking medical personal’, and it’s weird we would even have to say that specifically and it wouldn’t just be assumed. That should probably be boilerplate in our foreign aid.Report
We absolutely must put conditionals on our support of Israel
Such as, and to what end?
I’m not disagreeing, I’m just trying to figure out where we want to end up.Report
No violations of international law as a basic premise, and I know, a lot of that is war stuff which is hard to enforce, but some of it isn’t.
The stuff that isn’t:
No more settlements, and all of them removed fairly quickly. (Let’s say six months.)
Stop operating their blockade. (I find it hilariously dumb when people refer to the recent attack as unprovoked… technically, blockading a country is an act of war. Palestine has an entirely agreed-to-be-legal-under-international-law casus belli to start a war. Weird Israel forgets that, that’s literally why they started the Six-Day War, under that exact justification.)
Allow construction of civilian infrastructure, although that’s kinda covered under the last.
As for violations of international law that happen during combat, aka, war crimes…they have to stop doing things that are clearly ‘reprisials’, which are illegal against civilians or civilian infrastructure under international law. If they shoot into Gaza, at minimum we are going to need an explanation why and who they were shooting and why they did that.
Things not required under international law generally but we should require:
Allow Palestinians in Gaza to relocate to the West Bank. In fact, set up a travel corridor between Gaza and the West Bank. I’m not saying no controls or security, but it should be possible for Palestinians to move from one to the other.Report
Does that include the water pipes that Hamas uses for rocket attacks?
The concrete that is used to make military tunnels?Report
First, wiki thinks 223 people were killed total.
2nd, the protests were mostly peaceful. The US reported the “majority of protesters acted nonviolently” on two days (no clue why they picked those two days).
3rd, “The demonstrators demanded that the Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to lands they were displaced from in what is now Israel.”
That sounds a lot like “undo the war of 1949” or “Israel must be destroyed” for short.
4th, 189 Palestinians were killed between March and December of 2018. The US claims 29 of them were known militants, other sources claim 40.
5th, You are correct, the US thought that of the 489 cases of Palestinian deaths or injuries they analyzed, only two were justified as responses to danger by Israeli security.
6th, Israel and Hamas both agreed on what was happening.
The Israeli military accused Hamas of using the protests as a guise to launch attacks against Israel, and warned about further reprisals… “[they] condemn leaders and protestors who call for violence or who send protestors – including children – to the fence, knowing that they may be injured or killed”.[274]
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar stated in an interview with Al Jazeera: “when we talk about ‘peaceful resistance’ we are deceiving the public. This is a peaceful resistance bolstered by a military force and by security agencies, and enjoying tremendous popular support.”[275]Report
And I heard of these protests while they were happening.
Someone was trying to use non-violent means to destroy Israel.
That’s showcasing just how far apart the two sides are and where the Palestinian’s heads are at.Report
RE: the US thought
the UN thoughtReport
I just want to acknowledge that I appreciate North’s comment; it’s plausible under a whole set of meta-assumptions that I don’t think pertain. But not something I’d gainsay other than to say that.Report
Very kind of you.Report
From my Jewish perspective, the issue I see is that everybody wants the Jews in and out of Israel to bite the bullet and do the right thing varyingly defined but not expect the Palestinian or wider Muslim world to do anything. Maybe they think all or most blame falls on the part of Israel. Maybe they don’t think the Palestinians or wider Muslim world are ever going to reflect and do the right thing but don’t want to come out and say it. Maybe they just think getting 7.6 Israeli Jews and 16 million Jews total to bite the bullet is easier than getting 1 billion Muslims to do anything.
Like on the other blog and through reading Leftists there seem to be people who think that what Israel should do in this situation is come out and say “”We were wrong. We will create a Palestinian state, not commit any military action, and provide reparations. Can we have the kidnapped civilians back please” as my brother would put it. Right after the biggest single day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust and Hamas brutally murdering 40 plus Jewish babies. This is ridiculous.Report
Israel holds an overwhelming and historic degree of dominance, as a practical and military matter, which means that the larger onus of acting and deciding naturally falls on their side. That being said anyone who pretends the Palestinians or larger Arab world are innocent or don’t have responsibilities or must not make concessions in any final settlement is not morally or intellectually serious.Report
Other then Iran, I think “the larger Arab world” has come to accept Israel’s exitance, even if they aren’t undertaking normalized relationships. Its probably a bridge too far for them to erect Billboards calling for Israel’s right to exist, but even Syria seems to have settled on allowing Israel to be.
And the Palestinians have way less agency then anyone cares to admit. They are in two distinct enclaves, separated administratively and militarily. They can not enter into independent trade or relational agreements with other nations; they have at best weak UN representation; they lack freedom of movement even within their own “borders” and to my knowledge no Arab state is really advocating for them anymore. They deserve a seat at the table and all the responsibilities that go with it – but expecting them to build the table without nails or wood is a bit much.Report
I don’t disagree at all. Beyond the weaknesses you laid out the Palestinians ability to force project is piteous, barely over the level of the IRA. That being said, the Palestinians have cards they can play and concessions they can make. What is more most of those cards and concessions are ideological in nature which has the virtue of having very little meatspace cost to trade away.
The Israelis will mostly have to make material concessions in terms of removing their boot from the collective Palestinian neck; dragging their settler loons out of the eventual territory of the Palestinian state; relaxing their iron grip on the borders of the eventual Palestinian polity etc…
The Palestinians will mostly have to make ideological concessions in terms of acknowledging that Israel exists and will continue to exist, defining its borders, accepting that Palestinian resettlement into that territory will not occur and agreeing that attacks on the Israeli polity should be not just be eschewed by themselves but also prevented by them against outliers within their polity.Report
Israel holds all the power but that doesn’t mean they are the only ones with agency. The Imams who spent decades poisoning the well against Jews and Israel in mosques can just stop. The governments do not have to promote anti-Semitic propaganda. A situation where Jews bear all the responsibility for good relationships between Jews and Muslims will not work.Report
That’s just an expanded version of the last sentence of my comment so I entirely agree.Report
“From my Jewish perspective, the issue I see is that everybody wants the Jews in and out of Israel to bite the bullet and do the right thing varyingly defined but not expect the Palestinian or wider Muslim world to do anything.”
I personally would prefer both sides to stop killing people. Does that count for anything?Report
You get an approving Paula Abdul clap from me for it! That’s not nothing.Report
I personally would prefer both sides to stop killing people. Does that count for anything?
Take a look at this perspective.
(passive voice) Rockets are fired into Israel.
(active voice) Israel protects itself with the iron dome and bombs some buildings that contain weapons depots AND CIVILIANS
“STOP STOP WE SHOULD HAVE PEACE!!!”
(passive voice) Library patrons are shot in one of the University Libraries in Israel
(active voice) Israel sends soldiers into occupied territory to arrest alleged compatriots of alleged shooter. Israeli soldiers murder civilians in the process.
“STOP STOP WE SHOULD HAVE PEACE!!!”
(passive voice) Hippiechicks raped at festival. Infants incinerated.
(active voice) Israel bombs the ever-living itshay out of Gaza.
“I JUST WANT US ALL TO GET ALONG PEACEFULLY!!!”
Do you see why some people might experience the debate that way?
It’s never the passive voice stuff that inspires speeches about the importance of peace but only the active voice stuff?
Not whether they’re right to see it that way. Can you imagine *THAT* they see it that way?
I mean, let me ask you an exceptionally pointed question.
Last week, Hamas dropped into a music festival and killed participants and then went on to take hostages and then, from there, went on to kill unarmed people including children and infants.
Do you think that we would be having pro-Palestinian marches and demonstrations at American University Campuses if Hamas had not dropped into a music festival and killed participants and then went on to take hostages and then, from there, went on to kill unarmed people including children and infants?Report
I have thoughts beyond this but if Lee genuinely thinks “everybody” has no expectations for Palestinians/Muslims in de-escalating the situation, he’s flat out wrong.Report
I mean, Hamas isn’t asking for land in exchange for the hostages, just the civilians that Israel kidnapped.
Sorry, I don’t mean ‘kidnapped’, I mean, uh, detained without charge. The 1200 Palestinians they have detained without charge, many for years. Including 170 children. (Although a lot of those are from Gaza, which theoretically they don’t have any authority in, which…sounds like kidnapping to me!)
I mean, it’s only literally what Hamas asked for: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/8/why-are-so-many-palestinian-prisoners-in-israeli-jails
“As Israel’s fighter jets bomb the Gaza Strip in retaliation against the surprise Hamas assault, the Palestinian group has said that it plans to use the captured Israelis to strike a deal for the release of Palestinians in Israel’s prisons.”
I mean, surely this offered prisoner exchange is all over the newspapers, and we all know that this is what Hamas wants and the entire reason they took prisoners?
*holds finger to earpiece* Oh, apparently American media does not even vaguely thinks this is important and has decided to pretend that Hamas kidnapped Israelis for literally no reason. *holds finger to earpiece* Oh, sorry, correction, Western media has decided to pretend Hamas kidnapped Israelis to rape and kill them. Got it.
..I think maybe people should pause and reflect as to how we had a discussion about as group of people were kidnapped by an organization that has made pretty clear and explicit demands, in a story that has massive coverage, and yet somehow we don’t seem to know those demands.Report
“shooting teenage girls at a dance party was part of a rescue mission“Report
No, I didn’t say killing a bunch of people was justified, I’m not even sure taking civilian hostages without killing would be justified, even assuming zero risk, which cannot be assumed. You can’t fix crimes against civilians by committing more crimes against other, different civilians.
I said it sure is weird how people who are talking about this issue literally do not seem to know what Hamas’s demands are, despite them being very clear about it.
You do understand that that’s weird, right? We knew the 911 attackers demand immediately. We pretty much know the demands of every hostage taker immediately. But here we have a hostage situation that has literally led to a war, and on a board of people discussing it, only I seem to even have the slightest inkling of their demands. There are people literally trying to _guess_ what those demands are, instead of knowing what they actually have been stated to be.
Because the media has not mentioned them. And the reason it hasn’t is that the demand makes Israel look bad and shows mistreatment of the Palestinians. Which, again, is not a _justification_ of Hamas’s actions, but it is a _motive_ and we should probably _know_ it when talking about those actions!Report
On the other blog, people who loathe and despise Sandy Hook trutherism are engaging in Kfar Aza trutherism. “Well the babies weren’t literally decapitated, just shot in the head and brutally mutilated so that’s different” or “pics or didn’t happen and if it did happen that is just an elaborately staged propaganda shot by Mossad.”
I can’t stand the Pro-Palestinian campus protestors but at least they have the courage to come out and say what they mean rather than decry disproportionate force in a mealy mouthed way.Report
An Israeli embassy worker in China has been stabbed by a foreigner and a French Jewish high school teacher has been killed in France by a Chechen Muslim screaming Allah Akbar. This and the anti-Semitic antics of Pro-Palestinian students in the West will certainly make the West more sympathetic towards Gaza.Report
There are apparently Pro-Palestinian protests happening today. Some rather big. I am not especially inclined to look on the favorably in light of the Simchat Torah massacre. At many levels holding Pro-Palestinian events in the wake of Simchat Torah massacre seems to be approval of it and wanting to see more of it. They apparently believe that Israel should do nothing in response but if a bunch of Israelis killed one thousand or more Palestinian Muslims during Ramadan or some other Muslim festival they would be screaming bloody murder and calling for war against Israel or even all Jews rather than demanding an immediate ceasefire.Report
If you want to base morality not on some foundation like a shared moral language but, instead, on moral fashion… you’d best hope the moral tastemakers have good instincts.
Oh, hey. We’re going to need you to help pay off the college debts of the kids at those protests. Thanks.Report
Or, even more terrifying a thought, there are no tastemakers. Just winds.Report
By the way, “From the River to the Sea!” now means “that’s where they want peacefulness”.
I imagine that any accusation that it’s a “dogwhistle” is racist.Report
The problem with Pro-Palestinian Westerners face is that the Palestinians keep coming out and saying “No Jews” pretty clearly and they have to find a way around this. On the other blog a British poster tried arguing that “From the River to the Sea” doesn’t signify genocidal intent despite this attack and the plain language in the Hamas charter, both the 1988 version and the 2017 version. Both say “No Jews” pretty clearly.
There is another poster on the other blog who said he hated Israel’s policies his entire life but is kind of becoming more Israel now because the Simchat Torah massacre shows that Hamas is at least literal in their genocidal statements. He referred to it as the worst sort of ethnic cleansing possible and seems to believe that if they could, the Palestinians would murder every Jew in Israel.
These types of explaining away convince nobody but the choir and don’t convince Israeli Jews and most Diaspora Jews at all.Report
They don’t have to convince the Israeli Jews and most Diaspora Jews.
They just have to go around them.
Hey, do you enjoy going out and protesting? A little “recreational outrage”? We’re going to have a get-together in the quad on Sunday! We’re going to be chanting “From the River to the Sea! Palestine will be free!”
It’ll be fun! That girl you like will be there. We’re going out for drinks afterwards.
Be there or be square!Report
The entire Pro-Palestinian movement from the Palestinians themselves to their Muslim and Western allies seem to be filled with magical underpants gnome thinking.
1. Do this action, big massive terrorist action or big endless rallies and recruit drives or whatever.
2. XXXXXXX
3. Palestine is free from the river to the sea.
As far as I can tell 2 is something causes all the nations in the world to swoop down on Israel and take away all the Jews and it all goes back to the Palestinians and this will happen because reasons. At very least force Israel to totally leave Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. They are all essentially cargo cults.Report
“We want all the Jews to die…et, because a harmonious society begins on the dinner plate!”Report
The majority of Israelis including people who support the coalition want Netanyahu to resign for his failures in the Simchat Torah massacre.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-767880Report
Dude would be getting off easy.Report
Before last week very few people but Jews took Hamas’ genocidal anti-Semitic pronouncements literally. Then the Simchat Torah massacre happened and to many people it become clear that Hamas was serious. Their goal is to drive Jews out of the Middle East or even kill them all. This created a big issue for the Pro-Palestinian Westerners. They either had to re-examine their beliefs or they could just go on pretending that Hamas isn’t how they say they are despite demonstrating it.Report
“Before last week very few people but Jews took Hamas’ genocidal anti-Semitic pronouncements literally.”
That’s just not true. You just need to hang out with a better, more right-leaning class of people.Report
Hamas continues to throw the Palestinians of Gaza under the bus:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-17/hamas-fighters-no-plans-target-civilians-basem-naim/102988812?fbclid=IwAR2yc2BDuBhXWD_qR_VgWLxMbgzRxSmDbbXTpr77Ylf7Rpg7VL87WLj2AMIReport
Hamas is making a very good case against taking in Palestinian refugees.Report
Note: I linked above to the Wikipedia page for Al-Shifa Hospital. There is currently an edit war going on about that page. The wikipedia page has been changed more than 100 times since this essay was published.Report
The war has ended and the uncertainty has been resolved.
Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital#Accusations_of_misuse_by_HamasReport
War. War never changes.Report
My point is wiki is listing that stuff.
BTW it’s an interesting read. That Doctor who claims Israel is lying about all this is also on record saying the US deserved 911Report
Oh, good. It’s got its own section at the bottom of the page now. Including it at the top violates the NPOV.Report