E.D. Kain: Remember the 2000 Camp David talks? Israel offered to "do something" about the settlements. They offered a "just solution" for the refugee problem. The Palestinian response was the so-called second intifadah (I say "so-called" because intifadah means "uprising" and this was no popular uprising, like the first intifadah was—it was planned and operated by Arafat). How does this factor into your scheme?

Like I said to Freddie, I'm not interested in discussing morality. I'm interested in defending Israel against spurious charges of war crimes. So you go ahead and consider the morality all you want to and you won't hear a peep out of me.

It's funny that I was subject to Freddie's yelling over at C11 before I even looked at his blog. He's confusing sarcasm with yelling and name-calling. He's been the one calling me names. I've responded with sarcasm. My policy is to respond to people's insults in this way, not to plug up my ears and call them names. Does he have the self-critical mechanism necessary to ask himself the question, "what if it's me?" Because that's who it is. When he says, "I do know that if you’ve arrived at a place where you have abdicated your responsibility for moral action, you are in bad faith, and in the wrong," how am I to interpret this other than being yelled at, insulted and sworn at? I've told him over and over again that there's a difference between law and morality. If I defend Israel against spurious charges of war crimes, based on spurious interpretations of the doctrine of proportionality, how does that imply any position whatsoever on the morality of the conflict? I have never even mentioned as a side issue my position on morality.

A case in point: Now he "doesn't know if proportionality is the best philosophical prism... etc." but that's only after C. Auguste Dierkes's offhand comment. On his blog, I was saying this over and over again and being called dirty names by him and others. That was when you said that I (and anyone else who shared my position) placed a lower value on Palestinian life than on Israelis. In other words, that was back when you called me a racist. I respond with sarcasm. You plug up your ears and hide. Fine with me.

OK. Sorry. But as to the substance … what?

C. Auguste Dierkes

Your point on propotionality to me, in its correctness, shows why the whole concept itself is now meaningless in an era of low-intensity conflict.

Finally! It's amusing that this is exactly what I've been saying at Freddie's blog and at C11 for months, while being subject to real "ad hominem, name-calling, etc." not just sarcasm, like I do to Freddie.

Now then, C. Auguste Dierkes, how does the correctness of my point on proportionality relate to my larger point in the debate with Freddie?

The Ottomans did not have an Islamist ideology. In fact, they were attempting to liberalize for a century before WWI caught up with them. If the prevailing ideology in the Islamic world was similar to theirs, there would not be a problem today. Although their "moderation" should be put in ironic quotes, like I just did because they were one of the most warlike empires in history.

Mark Thompson's post is a classic example of imposing a familiar template on an unfamiliar problem. This will be comforting, but it isn't a good idea if you really want to understand things.

So, essentially you’re saying that they will not negotiate their Islamist world view any more than we would our Western–and we cannot dialogue with them until they have given that up.

Correct

They live in their world, and we in ours. We can meet at the same table with two world views and find either common ground or not.

You can say this because this is part of your Western, liberal worldview. They don't share this belief. According to Islamic law, any negotiation with the infidel is carried out by deceit and its goal is just to buy time for rearming and reorganizing. An example is the use of the word, "cease fire" to describe the situation in Gaza. Western sources translate the Arabic term, hudna, as cease fire because this benefits Hamas. They never talk about a cease fire, which is… ceasing to fire, a truce, etc. They only talk about a hudna, which is a "lull" in the fighting.

But what would this "common ground" consist of? Something like freedom of trade? How about respect for individual rights? How about just simply "live and let live?" None of this can be acceptable to the Islamist worldview. In fact, it's practically the same situation as what existed before they declared war on us by their suicide attacks and fatwahs. Before that, we were just buying and selling stuff over there in a peaceful way. The point is, they have a globalizing worldview and so do we. There's only one world. Therefore someone's got to lose. I want it to be them.

As much as countries like Egypt and Jordan can provide legitimacy in the Palestinian street

Voices from the Palestinian street, courtesy of Reuter's:

The gains and losses of Hamas's policy are a major point of discussion among Gazans, many of whom instinctively support Palestinian resistance against Israel, but question the cost in lives and destruction of the past three weeks.

"Rockets must end. What did we gain from them?" said Lama, a secretary for a Gaza company, who would not give her full name.

"Now Hamas is negotiating a truce. They were given an offer to renew it in December but they refused. Now after thousands of casualties, how does Hamas explain that?" she asked.

Hamas has fired around 8,000 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2001, killing 21 people and causing widespread disruption in southern towns. Israel has said stopping rockets is the chief objective of its offensive.

For Hamas, the ability to fire rockets up to 40 km (24 miles) into Israel was a progression in tactics from the suicide attacks that were a hallmark of the early part of the second intifada (uprising) against Israel that began in 2000.

But given the amount of death and destruction Israel has wrought on Hamas and Gaza as a result of the rockets, even those who initially backed the tactic are now questioning it.

"I have always been a supporter of rockets and all forms of resistance," said Aziz, the taxi driver. "But maybe Hamas needs to renew martyrdom operations instead," he said, referring to suicide attacks.

Hassan, the father of five, said there was little point in firing rockets if they were not effective.

"Rockets -- I think this issue needs to be stopped for sometime and restudied," he said. "Once we have a missile that can reach the heart of Tel Aviv and blow up a building, maybe they can resume fire."

The piece I link to is by one of the most prominent proponents of dialogue with Hamas and of the thesis that we should negotiate with them. Roy is an established scholar of the world of Islam, and this article was published today, which is why I chose this article to link to.

I don't know if you've ever read any of his books or are otherwise familiar with him. But it's interesting that you're repeating his thesis here: "there is a major distinction between jihadists waging war for a global caliphate and nationalists like Hamas." The point of my critique is that this is a distinction without a difference. The call for the global caliphate is nothing but a propaganda ploy by al Qaida. I don't know if any other Islamist groups adhere to this, or even if al Qaida does. What I do know—and supported by referring to Bassam Tibi (another established scholar of this problem) is that Islamists want to establish "the realization of (Islamic) peace … for the entire humanity." This does not mean some kind of world government, i.e., the "global caliphate." Roy is wrong. You are wrong. All Islamists are… well… Islamists. They cannot be negotiated with insofar as their Islamicism—just as we cannot be negotiated with insofar as our Western values. The point of Roy's piece and your agreement with it is to legitimize Hamas. This cannot happen as long as they adhere to their Islamist world view.

Sharing our values, after all, involves respecting the right to self-governance of the (presently, and for 40 years) dispossessed people of the Palestinian territories, and the preference for just war theory which renders the kind of disproportionate response to Hamas’s terrorism untenable.

With the phrase, "dispossessed people of the Palestinian territories," you're merging a hundred years of conflict into one, politically-correct phrase. The fact that this kind of dishonesty supports the Palestinians against Israel belies the even-handed morality you're trying to promote. Why don't you read something about the conflict, instead of simply being up-to-date on what other bloggers are saying.

A case in point of your partisanship, in spite of everything you say, is your insistence on the "disproportionate response" meme. Again and again I've explained this to you but you don't want to hear. I'll give it another try, but you're making me suspect that your writing is not just ignorant partisanship (where people repeat the meme because other people repeat it), like I've assumed, but that you're fully conscious of what you're doing.

Claim: NGOs such as Oxfam, Gisha, and B'Tselem, claim Israel has used "disproportionate force" highlighting the number of Palestinians killed especially children with emotive "testimonies" and anecdotes from Gazans in their reports. These claims frequently compare Palestinian casualties with Israeli casualties.

Analysis: While every civilian death is regrettable, casualty ratios are not relevant to the standard for evaluating proportionality. Pursuant to article 2(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, an attack is "disproportionate" if it causes damage or loss of civilian life "which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated" and as Israel's former UN Ambassador, Dore Gold notes, Israel "is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it." "Just war" theorist Michael Walzer has also remarked that the concept of proportionality cannot be applied "speculatively." He points out that the test of proportionality is in relation to the future expected military advantage, not in relation to past events or civilian deaths from previous attacks. In his view, those leveling the charge of "disproportionate" do so only when it is "simply violence they don't like, or it is violence committed by people they don't like." Therefore, "Israel's Gaza war was called 'disproportionate' on day one, before anyone knew very much about how many people had been killed or who they were."

So, in conclusion, your sanctimonious even-handedness and constant reminders of your enlightened liberal morality are only playing into the hands of the enemies of this very enlightened liberal morality. In other words, you're acting like a Hamas partisan and providing an echo chamber for Hamas propaganda. Is this what you want to do? If so, at least be honest about it.

Islamists you can talk to - International Herald Tribune by Oliver Roy

This would be the "essential distinction" that Roy is pushing:

There is nothing to negotiate with the global jihadists, but the Islamo-nationalist movements simply cannot be ignored or suppressed.

The "war on terror" during the Bush years has blurred this essential distinction by merging all the armed opponents to U.S.-supported governments under the label of terrorism. The concept of a "war on terror" has thwarted any political approach to the conflicts in favor of an elusive military victory.

Roy wants us to believe that Bush is responsible for assuming that Islamists share the same goals, while correctly criticizing Bush for using the label, "war on terror." Yes, we all know by now that "terror" is a tactic and that war cannot be waged against a tactic. But Roy uses this observation for an unusual bait-and-switch. Not all Islamists advocate the violent jihad—terror. Not all terrorists are Islamists. But how does he get from here to the idea that Hamas will negotiate in good faith? He says,

Hamas is nothing else than the traditional Palestinian nationalism with an Islamic garb.

There is no further support for this assertion in the rest of the article. We're supposed to believe this is true just because Roy says it is. He continues to obfuscate the issue:

Where a political approach has been tried, it has worked. The relative success of the surge in Iraq is based on the implicit rejection of the official doctrine of the "war on terror": Local armed insurgents were recognized as political actors with more or less a legitimate agenda, thus separating them from the foreign-based global militants who did not give a damn about Iraqi national interests.

Aside from the snide qualifier, "relative," to describe the pacification of the world's most violent region, Roy assumes that the Sunni tribe in Iraq are Islamists, who turned against al Qaida because they "did not give a damn about Iraqi national interests." Where is the evidence that the Sunni tribes share the Islamist ideology? All the evidence shows that they do not—they are Muslims but not Islamists.

So… the basic mistakes of mislabeling the war and of thinking that all Islamists are terrorists leads to the unwarranted labeling of Hamas as a nationalist movement. Roy's audience will jump at this so as to legitimize Hamas. Nationalism is a foundation of Western values and it is integral to Western globalization, so it goes without saying that we should negotiate with nationalist movements. But Roy is pushing his own false "merging," which is much more dangerous than Bush's: he is "merging" Muslim nationalists with non violent Islamists. Of course we can and should negotiate with Muslim nationalists—we negotiate with the PA, don't we? But Muslim nationalists—like the Sunni tribes—are not Islamists.

But is it true that Islamists can be divided into globalized vs. nationalist movements?

Here's a scholar who says "no:"

Islamists state "al-Islam huwa al-hall/Islam is the solution." In this context the nominal nation-states in the world of Islam stand in conflict with the inherited dichotomous religion-base division of the world into the house/abode of Islam/dar al-Islam and the house of unbelievers/dar al-kuffar or house of war/dar al-harb. This dichotomy is based on a Weltanschaauung/worldview not supported by political structures. But now these states are also exposed to the demand of Islamists to be replaced by a divine order of an "Islamic state" consonant with the Islamic worldview. […] The call for global jihad is not simply terrorism. It is a call against the nation state in current world affairs. In Qutb's book Islam and World Peace we read that the goal of political Islam is "to defeat any power on earth that prevents the mapping of the world under the 'call to Islam/da'wa.'" This is the contemporary definition of Islamic global proselytization. Jihadism attaches this da'wa to military action heralding the context of religion and world politics in a bid for a remaking of the world.

The succinct phrase by Qutb for determining the Islamic uprising reads:

Islam needs a comprehensive revolution … being a jihad prescribed on Muslims to lead this revolution to success for establishing the 'Hakimiyyat Allah/rule of God' In short, jihad envisions a world revolution/thawra alamiyya… for the realization of (Islamic) peace … for the entire humanity … These are the outlines for world peace in Islam … This does not mean to avoid war/qital at any price … Islam is a permanent jihad which well not cease until Allah's mission rules the world.

In fact, this declaration of an Islamic world revolution is tantamount to a declaration of war on the present world order an is therefore, regardlss of what it claims, most definitely not a message of peace, eneither of global Islamic-Western relation nor for Europe's relations with its Islamic diaspora.

Therefore, not all Islamists are violent jihadists, i.e., are not terrorists. But all Islamists share the goal world revolution to establish the so-called rule of God.

Even if Hamas wants control over Palestine, and so can be confused with a nationalist movement in the Western style and even if it does renounce violent jihad/terror, they will never renounce their most basic goal because this is part of their worldview. Nobody will ever negotiate their worldview—we won't do it either. This is why there's a war on: there are two globalizing worldviews and only one world. The Islamists must be defeated or we will be.

Sharing our values, after all, involves respecting the right to self-governance of the (presently, and for 40 years) dispossessed people of the Palestinian territories, and the preference for just war theory which renders the kind of disproportionate response to Hamas’s terrorism untenable.

Your summary of a hundred years of complex history in the phrase, "dispossessed peoples of the Palestinian territories" just shows your ignorance and your reliance on other "opinion-makers" for your opinions. Why don't you first find out what you're talking about before you go on line with this kind of sanctimonious drivel? You may think you're staking out a moral position, which allows you to criticize both sides in the conflict (although your criticisms of Hamas's many war crimes is hard to find), in fact, by becoming an echo-chamber for the above "disproportionate response" meme, you're taking sides with Hamas. Is this what you want to do? If it is, then be honest enough to say so and forget about pontificating about your rights to "legitimate criticism," while doing the exact opposite: repeating Hamas propaganda claims as if they were some established fact.

While every civilian death is regrettable, casualty ratios are not relevant to the standard for evaluating proportionality. Pursuant to article 2(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, an attack is "disproportionate" if it causes damage or loss of civilian life "which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated" and as Israel's former UN Ambassador, Dore Gold notes, Israel "is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it." "Just war" theorist Michael Walzer has also remarked that the concept of proportionality cannot be applied "speculatively." He points out that the test of proportionality is in relation to the future expected military advantage, not in relation to past events or civilian deaths from previous attacks. In his view, those leveling the charge of "disproportionate" do so only when it is "simply violence they don't like, or it is violence committed by people they don't like." Therefore, "Israel's Gaza war was called 'disproportionate' on day one, before anyone knew very much about how many people had been killed or who they were."

The exploitation of international law by NGOs as seen in the Gaza conflict, according to Washington attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey, reflects an effort to “criminaliz[e] traditional warfare” rather than promote universal human rights.The NGO Front in the Gaza War: Exploitation of International Law