when the status quo frustrates.

Doesn’t Israel have a right to defend itself?

No.

Nations don’t have rights. Sorry.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 2:44 am and is filed under murder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

30 Responses to “Doesn’t Israel have a right to defend itself?”

  1. Stacy says:
    January 5, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Just curious if you also consider it ‘murder’ for Hamas to fire missiles at nonmilitary targets in Israel.

  2. Antigone says:
    January 5, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Yes. Duh.

  3. violet says:
    January 5, 2009 at 3:30 pm

    See Antigone. Palestine, like Israel, does not have rights.

    That said, the appropriate response to someone murdering to get their way is not necessarily, “lalalala I can’t hear you and certainly won’t talk to you until you give up violence.” The appropriate response must actually have some chance of stopping murder, preserving life, and changing the underlying situation. Which disengagement does not. (And which it should be said, military engagement also does not).

  4. James H says:
    January 6, 2009 at 11:31 am

    Nations do have ‘Rights’ – they’re established in the International laws that govern sovereignty, trade, territorial limits and jurisprudence (to name but a few). Neither the League of Nations nor the UN could have been established without that principle.

    In any case, it’s generally best not to leap too wholeheartedly to the defence of the Palestinians. After all, today’s “Freedom Fighter” (TM) is tomorrow’s Terrorist (just ask Ollie North, or the thousands of Americans that contributed money towards blowing up innocent kids and civilians in the UK). There are an awful lot of Arab national leaders that don’t like or support Hamas, for very good reasons, and exactly how much provocation are the Israeli people supposed to sit back and take?

    Equally, Israel seems to have been attempting to provoke a reaction from Hamas throughout the ‘ceasefire’ (which neither side fully observed) and they’re certainly not an innocent party to this, no matter how much they try to push that view. It is truly disgusting to see the humanitarian crisis they’ve directly caused, but perhaps Hamas could have used all those Egyptian tunnels to smuggle in more food and meds instead of rockets and bullets?

    Perhaps if the US would pull back some of the funding it gives to Israel, whilst putting pressure on Egypt and Syria to rein in Hamas, we might start to see some real progress in settling the dispute.

    I’d like to think that Obama will commit himself to the problem, but he’s got enough to do domestically and I can’t see Hilary being particularly impartial given her support from the Jewish lobby (and especially not if she still fancies her chances of following Bill).

    Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but the way I see this playing out is that Israel will be given another two or three days to keep bombing. They’ll then be forced into indirect talks which will inevitably stall after a month or so. Hamas will attempt to rearm in the intervening time and Israel will probably keep on assasinating any Hamas members it can target. Then the ceasefire will collapse again (with both sides blaming the other) and we’ll be back to square one.

  5. violet says:
    January 7, 2009 at 11:46 am

    1. Nations have legal rights. When:

    1. a nation’s leaders decide to blow up a refugee center and
    2. everyone tells them, “That’s horrible! You’re doing a horrible thing! Stop it right now!” and
    3. they respond, “We are just exercising our right of self-defense,”

    then that nation’s leaders are asserting that their nation has a moral right. Which nations do not. (I’m presenting this as a given, but there’s an argument. It goes like: Nations are not good in themselves; unlike people, they are means, not ends. Thus they are morally different from people, in this particular way, etc.)

    2. I don’t think the west should be giving guns and money to Hamas, Israel, or anyone else. I think the west should be working towards ending immediate violence (as best as possible), getting effective humanitarian aid into Gaza, and building a lasting peace. I do not think that any of these things ought be conditional on whether those people or their children will at some point in the future be shooting at U.S. citizens.

    3. The Hamas leadership has done many terrible things. These things do not subtract from the horror of what Israel’s leadership is doing, because moral calculus doesn’t work that way. (So: Feel free to talk about Hamas’ complicity in the humanitarian crisis, and specifically, what role Hamas and interactions therewith ought to have in ending it. Feel unfree to talk about Hamas’ complicity as if that makes what Israel is doing any better).

    4. I think the actual cynical position is: Israelis have a problem similar to that faced by white colonial settlers—all their pristine land has people on it and stuff. And Israel’s leaders are going to solve their problem in much the same way. Increasingly, I find myself this kind of cynic.

  6. James H says:
    January 7, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    Hi Violet,
    in the same order:
    1. I don’t agree with you that the right to self-defence is being presented as a MORAL right by Israel.

    They (the Israeli State) have an obligation and a right under their own domestic law, as well as under International precedent and law, to protect their citizens from harm.

    That doesn’t give them a carte blanche to do anything they like, and their actions in this incident are grossly disproportionate.

    2. I couldn’t agree with you more.

    UK arms sales to Israel from the start of ’09 have already topped 18million Sterling. Last year we ‘only’ exported 7.5million worth, so our PM’s calls to Israel to stop the incursion look more than a little hypocritical.

    As an aside, it’s funny how ‘we’ (the Brits) are supposed to be ‘your’ greatest allies (and we play along as if that were true) and yet ‘we’ get shafted by ‘you’ at every opportunity (WW2, the development of the atomic bomb, supersonic flight, Suez, support for the IRA, the Falklands, Afghanistan, Iraq and criminal extradition procedures).

    Israel, on the other hand, does nothing tangible for the US (other than give it a chance to test out its weapons technology) and causes the US massive PR problems in the Gulf and yet ‘you’ throw money at the State like it’s going out of fashion.

    3. I agree – both sides play to the crowd, and both have a lot to answer for.

    4. I don’t think that the Israeli State has a grand genocidal scheme to rid the world of Palestinians. In fact, I don’t think they have much of a plan full stop, which is one of the reasons that the conflict hasn’t been resolved to date.

    I don’t think it’s fair to lay all the blame for the problems in the region on Israel either. There is a comprehensive lack of goodwill on BOTH sides. Too many vested interests (Syria, Egypt and Iran) don’t want peace in the region. They don’t really give a monkeys about the Palestinians (just as the US didn’t care a jot about the South Vietnamese), and they’re quite happy to pump money and weapons into the territories if it keeps the conflict simmering.

  7. artdyke says:
    January 7, 2009 at 3:06 pm

    “3. The Hamas leadership has done many terrible things. These things do not subtract from the horror of what Israel’s leadership is doing, because moral calculus doesn’t work that way.”

    EMPHASIS!

  8. violet says:
    January 7, 2009 at 4:58 pm

    Right—these conflicts are rarely truly two-party affairs. Even saying, “Hamas and Israel both have much to answer for,” nicely erases all the other interests that helped start and stoke the violence. Starting, hell, with the Brits going, “You know what would be a great idea?…”

    Re: 4. You’re probably right. It just looks that way at times.

    As to the first, I really don’t think Tzipi Livni—or any of these writers, for that matter—would say, “Oh, no, of course, we agree that what Israel is doing is wrong. We just wanted to clarify that it’s legal.”

    If that is what they’re trying to say, then I’ve no quarrel (save, y’know, “so if it’s wrong, maybe you’ll stop?”).

  9. Stacy says:
    January 8, 2009 at 11:42 am

    Why is Israel’s action in Gaza “disproportionate?” I’ve heard that word thrown around a lot, without any effort to explain what it’s supposed to mean. What would be a proportionate reaction?

    In the absence of any such explanation, I’m somewhat forced to assume the speakers are influenced by the Marxist notion that – to paraphrase – the relatively powerless are not responsible for their actions because they’re forced to live by the rules of the powerful, and the powerful in turn are responsible for everything that happens, whether or not they’re the ones actually did it.

    If that’s the background to the argument, then ‘disproportionate’ is simply a misnomer that some people are using to describe what seems on its face to be an unfair mismatch of tanks and helicopters versus rockets and rifles. But that doesn’t deal with the reality that the rifles and rockets (and suicide bombs) are and always have been thrown indiscriminately at noncombatants, while the side with the tanks and helicopters has always had more of a care for innocent bystanders than most anyone else in the world. It’s intellectually dishonest to just dismiss that because some innocents have inevitably been killed anyway. Intentions matter.

  10. Froth says:
    January 8, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Stacy: I think the ‘disproportionate’ has something to do with the 100:1 ratio of Palestinian and Isreali dead.

  11. Stacy says:
    January 8, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    Stacy: I think the ‘disproportionate’ has something to do with the 100:1 ratio of Palestinian and Isreali dead.

    So to take a different example, the ratio of German and Japanese to Allied (including Soviet) dead (civilian and military) in WW2 was much closer to even – does that make the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the firebombing of Dresden proportionate? Note that I’m not saying those things were or weren’t right or proportionate, I’m asking if you really like body counts as an overall standard.

    Also consider that in the current conflict, essentially all the Israeli dead are civilians, while 80% or more Hamas dead are combatants.

  12. Antigone says:
    January 8, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    I need some links on both the 100:1 death ratio, and the 80% combantants.

  13. James H says:
    January 9, 2009 at 7:09 am

    “Also consider that in the current conflict, essentially all the Israeli dead are civilians, while 80% or more Hamas dead are combatants.”

    Whoa – sources please. 80% are Hamas combatants? Really?

    What about the NYT’s (Jan 8th 2009) reporting:

    “The Gaza authorities said that the death toll passed 750, with women and children making up about 40 percent of the dead.”

    They go on to report:

    “Israel held its fire for three hours Thursday afternoon, the second day in a row, to allow in aid. It was during that pause that local ambulance crews and the Red Crescent found dozens of bodies under a collapsed building.”

    As for the Israeli death toll:

    “Three Israeli soldiers were killed in combat; seven other soldiers have died during the military campaign, which is aimed at stopping Hamas rocket fire, and three civilians have been killed by rockets.”

    So that’s approximately 300 Palestinian women and children DEAD (and 3 times that many injured) in three days versus 10 Israeli soldiers (3 of which were due to ‘friendly fire’) and three Israeli civilians dead.

    Bear in mind that the civilian deaths reported by the NYT are ONLY for the women and kids that have died. Plenty of the 1500 male casualties to date will have been civilian too, and that was just at the end of the third day of fighting.

    Disproportionate? Damn right.

    The bible says “an eye for an eye,” not “100 dead and 300 seriously injured for an eye.”

    Have you seen the reports on the UN school that was targeted (4 dead, many more injured) – one of several UN facilities that seem to have been (deliberately?) hit?

    Or last night’s release of news that Israeli soldiers rounded up civilians, forced them to stay in one building and then shelled that building (30 dead, the other injured forced to cross a conflict zone to try and get help)?

    Or the Red Cross / Red Crescent’s protests at civilians (including very young children)left injured and dead/dying from their wounds and lack of food or water whilst Israeli soldiers nearby do nothing to assist them (breaking International conventions on the treatment of non-combatants in a war zone)?

    Israeli actions, certainly in this phase of the ‘war,’ have been simply inexcusable.

    They have a very VERY poor record of prosecuting their own people for war crimes (they certainly don’t chase after their own citizens/soldiers with the same zeal they chase after Nazi war criminals), and the Israeli ambassador’s promises that these incidents will be investigated ring very hollow to me.

  14. James H says:
    January 9, 2009 at 7:44 am

    Some more on the death toll from the Daily Mail (UK right-wing leaning newspaper) on their website this morning (11.17am UK time):

    “The accusation came as a ‘credible’ report from Gaza claimed one third of the 760 reported killed in the conflict have been children.

    As of Thursday, 257 children were among the approximately 760 reported dead in Gaza. There were another 1,080 children among the 3,100 injured in the conflict, according to statistics from Gaza’s health ministry.

    The UN’s top humanitarian official, John Holmes, described the numbers as ‘credible’ and deeply disturbing. UN officials say about half of the casualties were civilians.”

    Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it Stacy?

    The article (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1110212/UN-accuses-Israel-herding-110-Palestinians-house-shelling-leaving-30-dead.html) goes on to list some of the other incidents I described above.

  15. Chris says:
    January 9, 2009 at 9:05 am

    “Disproportionate? Damn right.

    The bible says “an eye for an eye,” not “100 dead and 300 seriously injured for an eye.”

    Quoting the Bible on punkassblog as an authority? Not a good idea.

    So, I guess under the James theory of ethics and proportionality, Israel needs to wait for Hamas rockets to kill maybe 4 or 5 Israeli villagers, and only THEN can they go and kill 4 or 5 Hamas soldiers.

    That’s proportionality, I guess, but it’s also unusually stupid.

  16. James H says:
    January 9, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Right… So you’ll completely ignore all the evidence of human-rights abuses to focus on the fact that I’ve made ironic use of a parable to illustrate a point. Way to make your point there Chris.

    And as for “unusually stupid”?

    Is that as “unusually stupid” as thinking that this incursion will succeed in doing anything other than creating more matyrs, more tension in the region and more bloodshed in the future perhaps? (after all, this pattern of incursion and slaughter has worked so well for the past 60-odd years hasn’t it?)

    Or is it as “unusually stupid” as believing that Israel has any sort of ethical basis for slaughtering women and children with very little restraint shown, regardless of how many or how few of its citizens are dead? (amongst so many other examples, using unguided rockets and artillery to attack the most densly populated region on the planet shows admirable concern for avoiding non-combatant deaths – and yes, please DO take that as sarcastic).

    Do you think that German soldiers were being exceptionally clever (rather than “unusually stupid” of course) when they rounded up villagers in France and the Balkans and shot 10 or 20 for every German soldier killed by the Resistance? Do you think that they had a moral, ethical (or even legal) right to do that?

    Israel may have a right to defend itself (as I pointed out in earlier comments) but defending your citizens doesn’t require you to target schools and universities. It doesn’t give you the right to instigate an 18 month blockade of a neighbouring territory and slowly starve the population of food, fuel, medicines and electricity (not to mention those little insignificant things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.. do those ring any bells for you btw?)

    That is called an indiscriminate attack on non-combatants. They also call it a War Crime and/or a Crime against Humanity. Those phrases should DEFINATELY ring bells in Israel.

    Nobody should be under the illusion that Hamas (and its backers) are innocent in this situation. I’ve already made it clear that I don’t believe that to be true. However, it IS true to say that of the 257 dead and 1,080 injured children mentioned in the articles I quote above.

    Hamas’ rockets will have a lot of catching up to do before their hands are quite as blood-soaked as Kadima’s. Let’s hope they’re never able to achieve proportionality.

  17. violet says:
    January 10, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Stacy: I don’t like the “disproportionate” language either, precisely because it implies that there exist some n and m where if (in this instance) Israel kills m people in response to the murder of n Israelis, then that’s okay. Even a much more complex formula accounting for other factors—the injured, the living conditions of people in Gaza and people in Israel, the long-term effects of war—would still be ridiculous.

    The only reason it might (might) ever be acceptable (not right, but perhaps understandable) to inflict suffering or death is to prevent or at least mitigate the same in very immediate terms. That by itself does imply some kind of proportionality principle: if torturing this one child would, say, bring about universal freedom, justice and an end to suffering—you torture the kid, right?

    The objection to this is basically pragmatic: The world isn’t such that we know that torturing this one kid is going to do anything but cause her immense harm. These situations generally don’t exist—24 notwithstanding.

    And, in this particular case, we know something else: not only is Israel’s current attack exceedingly unlikely to end anyone’s immediate suffering, it is in fact likely to make it much, much worse for everyone, including Israelis, in the long run. (The same is more or less true of Hamas’ rocket attacks, though I’m not really sure they made things very much worse in the long run. Their aggregate policies, perhaps.)

  18. Chris says:
    January 10, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    “And, in this particular case, we know something else: not only is Israel’s current attack exceedingly unlikely to end anyone’s immediate suffering, it is in fact likely to make it much, much worse for everyone, including Israelis, in the long run. (The same is more or less true of Hamas’ rocket attacks, though I’m not really sure they made things very much worse in the long run. Their aggregate policies, perhaps.)”

    How do we KNOW this? You make the assertion that Israel’s attack on Hamas will make things worse, but not only do you not support your assertion, you don’t even present an argument. You state your opinion as if it were somehow irrefutable fact. Who knows, you may be right, but you sure as hell should bother to at least make a case for it.

    ***

    However, since Hamas has always had in their founding charter the complete destruction of Israel, and Hamas has continually fired rockets in furtherance of this aim, it seems a bit rich to assert that they are going to make things worse. How much worse could it get?

    Reminds me of this a bit…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks

  19. violet says:
    January 10, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    I said that we know it’s likely to make things worse. And you don’t have to believe that. Instead, you could choose to believe that this time, murdering hundreds of civilians will not increase the militarization of the survivors, will not incite their anger, and will not drive them to pursue violent escalation. I don’t know why you would believe that, but you can.

    The relevant point is that it isn’t going to make things better. Note: “going to.” Not, “likely to.” Not “possibly will.” I happen to think that it’s nigh-inconceivable that this violence will produce any positive outcomes. But the burden of proof for Israel’s hawkish leaders and their supporters is the inverse of that: they have to show that they are using force to halt immediate, ongoing violence, and that it is nigh-inconceivable that this application of violence will fail to make things better.

    How much worse could it get?

    Um, they could be more powerful, have more support, and command more resources?

  20. James H says:
    January 11, 2009 at 10:51 am

    “Who knows, you may be right, but you sure as hell should bother to at least make a case for it.”

    Hmm… not too difficult, but it would be easier (and a far shorter post) to ask for examples of when this type of violence against an indigenous population has worked out well or produced a ‘better’ situation for the aggressors?

    Assuming that you accept that Israel isn’t going to be able to genocidally ‘cleanse’ the Gaza strip (whether it wants to or not isn’t relevant here, only that it couldn’t achieve it for any number of reasons), please cite one instance where a policy like Israel’s has worked?

    The Brit’s tried a similar (although less violent) policy in the Boer conflicts. It didn’t work.

    They tried to stop the terrorism perpetrated by the original Israeli founders in ’46 by the use of force. It didn’t work.

    They tried a number of ‘aggressive’ policies against the IRA (not helped by all the private American money going towards the ’cause’ of course) including violent confrontation (although let’s please note that they didn’t see fit to employ artillery, helicopter gunships, tanks, white phosphorous or even ‘errant’ mortar shells against the civilian population harbouring the butchers). That didn’t work (peace was only achieved when they, in effect, caved in and rolled back the army presence whilst sincerely engaging in talks).

    Look at any of the (many) simmering regional conflicts around the globe. I can’t think of a single one where overwhelming violence (unless it’s involved the near-genocide of the resisting population) has achieved the peace it was trying to achieve.

    Can you?

    When you have a popular and well-supported insurgency, direct violence has no chance of succeeding, especially when you’re not too picky about who your targets are.

    If Israel REALLY wants to achieve a long-term resolution to the conflict then they have to show that they’re willing to allow the Palestinians a future. That means that they have to destroy the illegal settlements, find some way of linking the West Bank with Gaza, and allowing the Palestinian State access to a seaboard.

    None of that is easy, but Israel won’t get the peace it (says it) wants until they prove to the Gazan population that they’ve got a better alternative to Hamas’ vision of the future. They’ll probably never be completely free of Hamas (after all, the IRA lives on in Sinn Fein), but if Hamas no longer enjoys the support of the Palestinian people then it’ll become marginalised and wither away.

  21. Stacy says:
    January 13, 2009 at 2:42 pm

    Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it Stacy?

    No. “The Gaza authorities” are Hamas, whom I think we can agree has some motive to misrepresent its media reports.

    As for the effectiveness of popular insurgencies, they’re effective in denying the occupier control of the countryside, as far as that goes. The problem is that unless the occupier gives up or is defeated by an external force, the situation reaches an equlibrium where each side can prevent the other from administering the country, but neither can administer it themselves. So nobody wins, and the population loses.

  22. Stacy says:
    January 13, 2009 at 3:33 pm

    Also meant to add that the lose-lose nature of an insurgency makes it illogical for a population to support the insurgents, since the choice becomes to have some kind of life under occupation, or no life at all. And that’s before we get to the fact that the occupier in this case is an objectively liberal, secular state and the insurgents are promoting an illiberal theocratic form of government.

    To take a fairly similar example, the Nazis at the end of WWII proposed to fight an insurgency against allied occupation. The German people chose not to take them up on it because they foresaw the kind of result that Gaza has gotten with theirs.

  23. James H says:
    January 14, 2009 at 6:14 am

    Well I guess we’re unlikely to share too many points of view on this subject, Stacy, given what you’ve written to date.

    The “Gaza authorities” are Hamas, as you pointed out, but the UN (who have personnel in-situ too) described them as “credible.” Unless you’ve chosen not to switch on coverage of the ‘conflict,’ you should have seen plenty of television news reports showing the wounded women and kids in Palestinian hospitals.

    “Also meant to add that the lose-lose nature of an insurgency makes it illogical for a population to support the insurgents, since the choice becomes to have some kind of life under occupation, or no life at all.”

    So you wouldn’t have supported the aims of the ‘Founding Fathers’ then Stacy?

    Were the Boers wrong-headed to fight the British in South Africa? Were the Afghans? Were the French, Polish, Russian, Balkan and Spanish resistance members all just “blowing in the wind” prior to VE Day? Should the Indian people have just calmly accepted their fate and not sought independance? Were the North Vietnamese just being “illogical” in resisting US occupation? Have the Tamil Tigers got the wrong end of the stick in Thailand?

    ..etc etc etc ad nauseum

    Let’s take it a little closer to the topic:

    Were the Jews who fought in the Warsaw ghetto uprising more or less “logical” than those of their brethren that went to the camps without a fight?

    Would you have been supportive of Lehi or Irgun’s actions in Palestine prior to 1948?

    How you, an American (I assume), can type “since the choice becomes to have some kind of life under occupation, or no life at all” with a straight face is, frankly, completely beyond me. If you’re Jewish or an Israeli citizen, then that makes it even harder to credit.

    As for:

    “the occupier in this case is an objectively liberal, secular state and the insurgents are promoting an illiberal theocratic form of government”

    Well that’s just indicative of your ignorance on the subject.

    For a start, the “objectively liberal, secular state” is nothing of the sort. It may be MORE liberal than some regimes, including most of the States around it, but it isn’t liberal in a European sense – not even close.

    And describing Israel as a “secular state” is like calling Russia a Democracy.

    Talking of Democracy, how did you imagine that Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in the first place? In case you didn’t know, they won a popular vote – one that was at LEAST as legitimate as the way George W won his Presidential seat (hanging chads anyone?).

    As for “illiberal,” I think you’ve fallen a little too hard for Israeli propaganda. Men and women are educated to a similar standard in Gaza. They’re both eligible for, and attend (when their buildings aren’t being destroyed of course) University in Gaza. Women work in the professions and have careers. The best High school in Gaza is a Christian (Catholic) run institution.

    Gaza is NOT Saudi Arabia or Iran, and it’s not a Theocracy.

    Finally, your example at the end is just rubbish. The Hitler Jugend and members of the German equivalent of the Home Guard fought very hard to stop the Allied advance into Germany and through to Berlin. The average German was (rightly) terrified of the prospects of Soviet ‘liberation.’

    Most of the fighting-age male population had either died or been captured by the time Berlin fell, and the POWs lucky enough to have been taken by the Western Allies were screened and drip-fed back into the population, precisely to avoid a situation where a large group of men could take it upon themselves to resist.

    Add to that the fear that the Russians provoked, (better to be ruled by the West than overthrow them and face Communist domination), the financial stimulus that was injected into the country together with a swift transition to home rule, and the appeal of Nazi ideology pretty swiftly vanished.

    Now, if Israel could just see the lesson to be taken from that…

  24. gnaddrig says:
    January 16, 2009 at 4:32 am

    Stacy, I’d like to add the following to James’ comment:

    It is too simple to reduce the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to a choice between a stable Israeli administration and the insecurity of an insurgency that has no chance of ever succeeding.

    The choice the Palestinians have is between living under the administration of a state that has done them wrong again and again, that has humiliated them, in many cases taken their houses, their jobs, their future from them, denied them basic rights, killed many civilians, a state that they are convinced will not leave them alone, and living under the administration of their own people, of the organisation that fights the oppressor. They don’t feel Israel would provide a stable, just administration, but would go on harassing and humiliating them.

    Even though I guess that many Palestinians originally didn’t care and just wanted to live in their country in peace, Israel has wasted the chances they had to establish a peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It is not Israel’s fault alone, Palestinians and other Arab countries did their bit to keep the conflict alive. There is no black or white in this story, everyone has blood and mud on their fingers.

    The problem is: Can the Palestinians in Gaza possibly accept living under Israeli administration? Can they trust Israel to do right by them after all the bloodshed inflicted by the Israeli army over the decades, all the injustice done by Jewish settlers, the sealing of the border, the travelling restrictions for Palestinians and other humiliations? I can’t blame them if they can’t.

  25. James H says:
    January 16, 2009 at 10:00 am

    “Perhaps I’m overly cynical, but the way I see this playing out is that Israel will be given another two or three days to keep bombing” (Jan 6th).

    Wow… was I ever not cynical enough.

    10 days later, and the latest news has Bush signing a ceasefire agreement with the Israeli rep on his last day in office.

    Another full WEEK before the US administration puts any real pressure on Israel to stop killing civilians.

    It ALMOST makes me proud of Gordon Brown’s efforts…. well, maybe not.

  26. Stacy says:
    January 16, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    gnaddrig: “I can’t blame them if they can’t.”

    I can’t blame them either for finding Israeli rule hard to swallow, but I can blame them for electing Hamas, knowing full well what would happen, and then illogically acting like it’s all Israel’s fault (when in reality it is, as you point out, just partly Israel’s fault)

    The thing is, the Palestinians have been offered peace and autonomy several times, and each time their unelected leaders turned it down. When elections were finally held, the people voted those same leaders into office. Usually when people elect a politician, we consider it reasonable to assume they’re in favor of that politician’s policies.

    The basic problem, though, is that peace is a two-way street and therefore a collective action problem. Everyone has to collaborate on maintaining peaceful relations, but it only takes one entity to decide to be violent – once they do, the rest don’t have a choice anymore, unless they consider slavery an acceptable way of life. Philosophical issues aside, though, we know that if Hamas stopped firing rockets and sending suicide bombers into Israel tomorrow, there would never be another Gaza campaign. While if Israel stopped bombing Hamas, Hamas would not reciprocate by stopping the rockets. That makes Israel the (relatively) righteous actor, and Hamas …something else.

  27. James H says:
    January 16, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    “Philosophical issues aside, though, we know that if Hamas stopped firing rockets and sending suicide bombers into Israel tomorrow, there would never be another Gaza campaign”

    We don’t KNOW any such thing. Israeli agents were assasinating Hamas leaders all the way through the period of the ‘ceasefire.’ They shut down the border crossings as soon as Hamas was elected.

    “The thing is, the Palestinians have been offered peace and autonomy several times, and each time their unelected leaders turned it down”

    ‘Peace,’ maybe (peace under Israeli terms at least, meaning they get to carry on assasinating Hamas and other ‘terrorist’ members without repercussion), but true autonomy? Not yet.

    Probably the closest to that came from Rabin who seemed sincere in wanting to end the conflict and set up a viable Palestinian State. Of course, that was immediately before Jewish extremists assasinated him (for, you know, actually being serious about making peace).

    The one thing that would stop it all tomorrow would be the US saying “no more.”

    They merely have to grow a backbone (or a conscience) and threaten to withdraw funds and weapons technology if Israel doesn’t come to an amicable settlement.

    If they wished to, they could insert US troops onto the border and force a mutual ceasefire that would hold.

    George Bush professed to want to end global terror. The ONE thing that would have done more to achieve that, (and which would have been far cheaper, longer lasting and given further reaching results than any number of illegal invasions), would have been to ‘solve’ the Palestinian problem.

    He never had any intention of doing that, however, (although, to be fair, neither did his father or Clinton, and nor will Obama) preferring to keep using it as a proxy conflict with Iran.

    We (because unfortunately you’ll drag us Brits into it too) are rapidly heading down the road to military conflict with Iran. The US needs Israel to be the one taking the shots (at least initially), and the quid pro quo for that is giving them free rein in Palestine.

    It genuinely wouldn’t matter WHAT Hamas ends up doing – later today, tomorrow or next year – they will NEVER get a fair settlement from Israel whilst the US Government’s policy remains to turn a blind eye to the situation.

  28. Chris says:
    January 16, 2009 at 4:46 pm

    It speaks volumes about “James” that he spends so much time and effort in apologizing for a theocratic, terrorist organization like Hamas who has as its founding mission the extermination of the Jews.

    Why is Hamas so attractive to you, Jimbo? Which plank of their platform, exactly, excites you the most?

    There is a word for people like you. But it’s not a nice word.

  29. James H says:
    January 17, 2009 at 2:53 am

    Exactly where, above, have I “apologised” for Hamas “Chrissy?”

    Providing a balanced POV, and pointing out some facts that go contrary to your blinkered view of a nuanced and desperately tragic situation, doesn’t make me an “apologist” for Hamas.

    I am fully aware that they have committed atrocities against the Israeli people – they’re just not quite as efficient at killing babies as the IDF and Mossad are.

    Hamas do, indeed, have a charter that calls for the end of Israel. It was a document produced by a cleric at the foundation of Hamas. It has never been ‘ratified’ by them, was not a part of their political platform when they won the seats they did, and is pretty irrelevant other than as a convienient smokescreen for Israel apologists (ring any bells?) to throw up when the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of world public opinion decries what they’re doing in the territories.

    There may well be a “word for people like (me)” in your view, but if that’s the case then it’s one that could be applied to the majority of the World’s leaders too. Just because your country’s foreign policy has been deeply racist and blinkered when it comes to the Middle East (the Palestinians are, after all, just “ragheads” to people like you, aren’t they Chris?), doesn’t mean we’re all going to jump on the bandwagon behind you.

    Want a simple illustration of that fact? Just look at how many UN Resolutions Israel are in breach of compared to the Palestinians.

    As for “which plank of their platform, exactly, excites you the most?” – I didn’t vote for them, not being a Palestinian national.

    However, if I had to guess why they appealed to the majority of the citizens of Gaza, I would say that it was probably their anti-corruption measures, their promise of progress in achieving a viable independant state separate from Israel, and the fact that they were different from the sorry, corrupt, powerless and sycophantic mess that is Fatah.

    To echo Stacy’s earlier comment in reverse. Israel has had plenty of opportunities to come to a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians, but they don’t actually want it (I’m not saying that some moderate Israeli citizens aren’t sincere, but they don’t have the political clout of the hardliners, Orthodox Jews and settler groups) and assasinated Rabin when he actually looked close to achieving it.

    It is in Israel’s power, not the Palestinians’, to settle the conflict peacefully. They have all the power, all the resources and are, after all, the party of first fault. They know what needs to be done to resolve the problem long term, but they’ve chosen instead to aggressively expand their territory, starve and humiliate the Palestinians and deny them any prospect of a viable state.

    People “like you” are always ready to jump to Israel’s defence, but I ask you to put yourself in the position of a Gazan refugee. Given everything that Israel has done to date, are you telling me that you wouldn’t fight against them? Your Nation’s ancestors were prepared to fight not only the British but, later, amongst themselves with far less justification.

    “Land of the Free?” Only when it serves your strategic interests.

  30. Also. « Bloggity Blog Blog Blog… says:
    January 26, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    [...] not that I haven’t been reading about it. It’s that, on the one hand, it seems so simple and, on the other hand, online discussions around it seem so huge, complex, historically fraught [...]

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