Chris Dierkes:
There's simply no way to understand this conflict without understanding history. It's funny that you say you don't want to discuss history and then you continue by discussing history. Do you mean that you don't want me to discuss history, but that you can? I don't get it at all.

I'd like to say that we agree on the fact that the "[peace] process was ultimately flawed from the get go." But this was hardly Clinton's fault. He's a politician and politicians will want to broker deals and so forth. Everyone else does it. If the president announced that the process is flawed, he'd come in for opprobrium from all sides. So we're stuck with it, even if we know it's flawed and will never come to anything.

What I don't understand is the "coup" you say Clinton engineered to bring Arafat into the negotiations. When did this happen? From what I can remember, after Arafat renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist, he was in, no matter what Clinton could have done. That was the idea all along, anyway, so it would have looked bad for Arafat to do this and then still be locked out. But you seem to know more about it than I do, so what's the deal?

In the 90s, Arafat signed the Oslo Accords and got the Nobel Prize, remember? If Clinton, or anyone else, had said what you're saying here, they would have been laughed out of town.

I must differ with your idea (well…it's not really your idea. It's a meme) of appealing the the "cycle of violence," shown when you say, "a nearly infinite number of errors on all sides." I know that you're not interested in hearing me discuss history, but if anyone else reads this, they should know that this is not supported by any evidence at all. In every case (or almost, anyway) Israeli violence has been in retaliation to Arab or Palestinian attacks against them. Palestinian/Arab/Hamas ideology is such that the mere presence of a Jewish state in Palestine is in itself an attack, to which they respond. You can take their position if you want to. It's very popular, so I don't think you'll get into a lot of arguments about it. It helps people maintain the facade of moral righteousness by blaming both sides, but it has the effect of blaming Israel because, as Freddie himself has said over and over, we expect more out of Israel.We don't expect anything like this of the Arabs. Tell me why this isn't racist.

Of course it's true that Ross and Clinton want to cover their butts. Who doesn't? But what's your explanation for the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks, other than generalizations about "a flawed process from the get go?" I thought they had a good deal and, if Arafat had signed it, today there'd be a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.

Kath: "time and again you wrote stuff making it clear that you thought that Israelis were worth less than Palestinians. "

Put up some examples here. I bet you can't because I don't think that. If it was implied in anything I said, I'll repudiate it once you post it. This would only be a matter of sloppy writing on my part. But for you to say the above is a matter of sloppy reading.

ED Kain:

Dennis Ross:

In the Clinton ideas, which are also presented in the book, the Palestinians were offered the following: 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank. The principles that guided the way the borders should be drawn and determined by the two sides, based on the percentages were: Contiguity of territory for the Palestinians, non-absorption of Palestinians into Israel.

The following is scanned from his book, The Missing Peace: [URL=http://s388.photobucket.com/albums/oo323/roquenuevo/?action=view&current=05c156b6.gif][IMG]http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/oo323/roquenuevo/th_05c156b6.gif[/IMG][/URL]
Why is this a vague offer? Seems like a good deal to me, especially when you consider the offers of compensation that were extended to the refugees. Since then, they have defended themselves against suicide mass-murderers.

In 2000, I was sure that Clinton would be able to get a deal. I thought that that was going to be the beginning of the end of the conflict. I really had no position as to how much land Israel should cede, or on anything else. When the Israeli proposals were announced, they seemed like a good deal to me, but what do I know? When Arafat refused categorically, my position changed. I saw it as definitive proof that the Palestinians were not negotiating in good faith. If they had been, then why not make a counter-offer? Why just refuse and start a violent suicide-murder campaign?

Back in the '80s I was almost completely on the Palestinian side. Who wouldn't be after the invasion of Lebanon and the Intifadah? But those days are over. Israel is not the same state today as it was back then. Critics have not considered this development of actual events in their critiques. They act like its' still the '80s with some religious zealot in charge of Israel talking about Judea and Samaria instead of leaders committed to the two-state solution by law. That changed my own political calculus.

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?

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.

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