(George Bernard Shaw)
Patriotism, in its current incarnation, is about the most over-rated virtue I can think of. And it’s a deeply dangerous one.
The “patriotism” that silences dissent or labels it treason is no patriotism at all. The “patriotism” which demands that we sacrifice our freedoms and liberties supposedly in the very name of freedom and liberty is no patriotism at all. The “patriotism” that declares “my country right or wrong” has no love for this country at all.
And the “patriot” who divides the world into good and evil, black and white, with your country always on the side of righteousness, is at best an ignorant narcissist and at worst an enemy of human rights everywhere.
And its those ideas that lead to posts like this one:
So the UN and the EU believe the Israeli response to the Palestinian and Lebanese is ‘disproportianate’?
To that, we say poppycock!!
Where are the rules for a ‘appropriate’ response written? What exactly is the appropriate response to regimes that pose an existential threat to a free society?
How dare the Europeans, after the Holocaust, deny Jews the right defend themselves with all the might they can muster? How dare the French, with the history of the collaborator Vichy Government, tell the Israelis what is and isn’t appropriate when it comes to their well being? How dare they lecture Israel!
So Israel is immune to criticism because of the Holocaust? I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. The Holocaust was certainly a successful argument in favor of the establishment of Israel in the first place, and I don’t think anyone would deny the fact that Jews have been persecuted for centuries. I don’t think anyone would deny the fact that the Holocaust was a horrible atrocity. That history of persecution is a good argument for a Jewish state. But is it a good argument for allowing that state to do whatever it pleases, regardless of international law and human rights norms?
No.
Israel has every right to defend herself every way she sees fit.
Does she, though? Does every nation have the right to do whatever they see fit in the name of self-protection? That strikes me as a fairly dangerous argument. And if we follow it to its logical conclusion, then we can argue that the Lebanese government has every right to support and fund Hezbollah, in the name of defending themselves. After all, it’s their right to defend themselves in every way they see fit, right?
Day in and day out, for decades, the Israelis and Jews are bombarded with vicious and vile hate from the Arab world. Day in and day out, Israel is promised destruction, violations of the most heinous kind and ‘rivers of blood.’ We are told that thousands of volunteers are ready to bring mayhem and violence to the Israelis.
And day in and day out many people live this destruction and violence.
The UN is up in arms as the Israelis bomb empty building and runways.
Bombing empty buildings doesn’t usually kill hundreds of civilians. I suspect that’s what the UN is up in arms about — the more than 200 Lebanese people who have been killed, plus about a dozen Israeli citizens and a dozen Israeli soldiers. I suspect that the UN is also up in arms because the Israeli army has destroyed all of the escape routes from Lebanon and Beirut, so that innocent civilians can’t get out even if they try.
And last I checked, saying that a country should show restraint isn’t quite the same thing as being “up in arms.” If I understand the UN’s position correctly — and it’s not so difficult to understand — they’ve put the blame rightly on Hezbollah for instigating these attacks. They’ve simply asked Israel to respond proportionately.
No word from the UN on the ongoing rapes and slaughter in Darfur by the Arab Janjaweed. That’s no real surprise. The UN didn’t care when a million were killed in Rwanda, either.
Now, the UN response to Darfur and Rwanda was too little, too late. The organization failed to take proper action, and I’m not going to make any apologies for them. But perhaps we should consider the fact that the UN lacks power, thanks largely to the United States and our attempt to cripple her. If we hadn’t actively debilitated the ICC, maybe something could be done here. If we hadn’t constructed an international dialogue based on force and force alone, perhaps peacekeeping missions would have a snowball’s chance in hell. But the claim that there’s “no word” from the UN on Darfur, and that the organization “didn’t care” about Rwanda? Google is your friend:
Darfur and the UN. Rwanda and the UN.
And if we’re looking for someone to criticize on Rwanda, the U.S. is a good place to start.
But I digress.
When it comes to international conflicts, either there are rules or there aren’t. What I think is particularly interesting about this particular conflict is that one line of reasoning goes, “Well, if Hezbollah and Hamas did it, why can’t Israel?”
You mention that Israel should “do far more to minimize the damage to civilian bystanders.”
Did Osama bin Laden, in his war against the United States, try to minimize the 9/11 civilian casualties? Do Hezbollah and Hamas try to minimize civilian casualties?
Israel is determined to crush Hezbollah, and unfortunately, civilians will be victims.
Israel must do what it did to Yasir Arafat in 1982: Chase Hezbollah out of Lebanon, then turn around and chase Hamas out of Gaza and the West Bank. Then, and only then, will peace overtures be more palatable for both sides.
Because that worked, and now we have peace. Oh wait.
And Israel is supposed to be better than Hezbollah and Hamas, right? And the United States is supposed to be better than Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, last time I checked.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t abhor the techniques of terrorists — we should. That’s why we call them terrorists, right? It doesn’t mean that we can’t respond at all. But responding in kind, or with even more severe actions — killings hundreds of civilians, leveling cities — doesn’t give anyone the moral high ground. Just because the people doing the killing are from a particular ethnic/religious background doesn’t make their actions any more justified. Just because the people doing the killing are from your country doesn’t make them any more righteous.
And most people agree that Hezbollah is bad. Most people agree that they’re a terrorist organization that the world would be better off without.
The Israel/Palestine situation isn’t going to go away anytime soon. But I’m getting sick of hearing that Palestinians and Arabs are all crazy evil terrorists bent on pushing Israel into the sea. I’m sick of hearing revisionist history about how Palestinians were backward, uneducated dirty people before Israel was established. I’m sick of hearing that Israeli soldiers are cruel and bloodthirsty. I’m sick of hearing that neither side has any other choice.
One can support Israel’s continued existence, and one can hope for a peaceful solution, while also recognizing that the establishment of Israel did displace hundreds of thousands of people, and that perhaps those people have a right to be angry. Does that anger justify killing Israeli citizens? Absolutely not. But the hand-wringing over “Why do they hate us?” and the answer of “They hate us simply because we’re Jewish” is getting old. Is there a lot of anti-Semitism in the Middle East? Yes. Are there certainly some people — many people, even — who hate Israel simply ecause Jews live there? Yes. But I suspect that more people dislike Israel because its creation pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and off of the land that they had lived on for hundreds of years — and today, Palestinians are still a refugee population. I suspect that they elected Hamas not to slap Israel in the face, but because they’re acting with rational self-interest: Their primary concerns are having a roof over their head, having running water, feeding their kids and getting medical treatment. Hamas supplied that. I suspect many Palestinians have a deep dislike of Israel because they’re essentially living in shit. They’re treated as second-class citizens in Israel. Their lands are occupied, and their villages are routinely razed. Israel controls the roads, and so any time a Palestinian person wants to go anywhere — work, school, a relative’s house — they have to prepare themselves for the Israeli checkpoints, where they stand in the sweltering heat, often for hours (if they get past the checkpoints at all). Thousands have been detained for indefinite periods without access to legal help. Hundreds of thousands have been killed. And this anger builds through generations.
I suspect that many people dislike the actions of Israel the state, not Jews the people. Even David Ben-Gurion said,
“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs, We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?”
Regardless of whether they should, I do hope that Palestinians and everyone else will accept Israel’s existence. They kind of have to — it’s there, right? And the current violent campaign at the hands of radicals hasn’t worked and isn’t working.
And many Israelis don’t look to kindly on Palestinians and Arabs, either. Who can blame them? It’s terrifying to live day to day wondering if the bus you’re on is going to explode, or if that kid in the coffee shop is going to blow himself up. You watch your country concede some of the occupied territories to Palestine, and how do they respond? They elect a Hamas majority into Parliament, a certified terrorist organization that unabashedly professes its wish for Israel’s destruction. You watch the surrounding nations claim solidarity with Palestinians, and then use them as pawns for their own self-interest. You see and hear Jews being represented as brutal baby-killing genocidal maniacs, from taxi cabs in Egypt to newspapers in Iran. You’re frustrated at the fact that your country has officially been in existence for decades now, and yet entire nations try to make you invisible while simultaneously speaking about your impending fall. You feel like the entire Arab world blames your country for all of their problems.
And now you see Hezbollah firing rockets into Israeli towns, and I can understand the gut-level reaction of, “Go kill the bastards!” What else are they supposed to do? Turn the other cheek?
But that doesn’t make the whole response right. And the Israeli response in Lebanon, like the U.S. response in Iraq (I use the word “response” very loosely here, since I’m not exactly sure what we were responding to in Iraq) has been way overblown. Does taking out Hezbollah necessitate killing more than 200 civilians? Trapping an entire country of people — not to mention the 25,000 American citizens who are there right now — isn’t acceptable. Giving some innocent people a way out because they were lucky enough to be born on American soil, while keeping other innocents in the country because they were born elsewhere, isn’t acceptable.
And I also think it’s fairly obvious that there’s enough blame here to go around here.
Supporting the current Israeli action in Lebanon just because it’s Israel doing it isn’t indicative of love for a country; it’s indicative of blindness so thorough that you’re willing to sacrifice the very values that the country was built on in order to bend over backwards to justify its every action. The same goes for supporting the actions of Hezbollah, and justifying your support because of your identity as a Lebanese citizen or a Muslim or a person who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Good people can do bad things. Good nations can make tragic mistakes. Lord knows I love my country, but I think we’ve seriously dropped the ball on a whole lot of foreign policy and human rights issues. And the current American and Israeli foreign policy, peddled under the guise of patriotism, is doing nothing but turning more people against us. Shaming people from speaking out against it with accusations of treason or unpatriotic behavior doesn’t demonstrate a love for your country, a desire for it to live up to its promise, or a belief that it’s a place that breeds goodness and righteousness. It only demonstrates a knee-jerk defensiveness, an inability to stand up for the actual values of your culture, and a lack of faith in your country to be good enough and strong enough to push itself to be better.
These retaliation campaigns are getting us nowhere. Force is not working, not in the long run (thanks to Chioma for the link). The Lebanese kid who sees his home destroyed when Israel launches a made-in-American missile probably isn’t going to blame Hezbollah for his problems. The current situation is lose-lose; it’s bad for Israel, bad for America, and really bad for everyone else in the world. Israel is threatened, and they do need to work in their own self-interest, just as any nation needs to. But wars, occupations, massacres, and violence have been going on since Israel was created (and long before that). They haven’t worked. Blind support for one’s nation, simply because it’s one’s nation, is not working.
And unfortunately, American foreign policy is only making the situation worse:
Last week, for instance, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel. Vermont’s Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy asked him about the President’s claim that the Court’s Hamdan decision “upheld his position on Guantanamo.”
LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?
BRABURY: It’s under the law of war —
LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?
BRADBURY: The President is always right.
The President’s record in the Middle East and elsewhere tells us otherwise, of course. From Pyongyang to Tehran, Baghdad to Gaza and Tel Aviv, smaller powers — or simply parties, militias, or mass movements — are going their own way, considering their own narrow interests, and exploring just how far force can take them, while ignoring the words of the Bush administration. In this sense, they learned their new religious catechism well: If you can’t impose it on me by force of arms, then to hell with you.
So here we are armed to the teeth in a hair-trigger world with a bevy of angry states happy to declare their own unilateral “wars on terror” and pursue their own armed solutions. They’ve all got the fervor and the faith. As for the rest of us, who knows what we’re sliding into or how in the world to put on the brakes.
I’d like to be able to say that I’m a pacifist through and through, but I’m not. I think that there are situations where war is justified. I don’t buy into nationalism too deeply, but I recognize the importance of the state being able to defend itself against attacks. I think that there are moral justifications for militarism. So I’m not going to get all hippy-dippy, peace is totally the answer, man, on any of you.
But I also think that the existence of justifications for war doesn’t mean that war is the best way. I’m an optimistic person, and I think that if human beings are capable of putting all of this effort into making well-oiled state-sponsored war machines, then we are most certainly capable of directing that energy into finding peaceful, non-violent solutions to our problems. In a world where it seems like war has always been with us, and disagreements from the playground to the international playing field are solved by brute force, non-violence sounds beyond radical — it sounds like a sugar-coated fantasy, an impossibility. But I’ll argue that the human race is perhaps best at doing what all previous generations deemed impossible. And if nothing else, non-violence could bring about the result that centuries of bloodshed has failed to achieve.
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Good post- and thank you for taking note of my post.
There are some things I would take issue with, however.
Firstly, Israel is not above criticism- that is clear. However, what is also clear is that the nature of the criticism is suspect when stadards applied to that country are different from standards applied to other countries.
‘To be sure, Israel, as a nation, is not above reproach. There are policies that deserve renunciation and reconsideration. Nevertheless, to single Israel out from the body of world nations that have for decades and longer have been far more repressive than Israel has ever been as an expression of ‘anti-Zionism’ is patently anti-Semitic.
What comes to mind is the utter hypocrisy and duplicity of those who make Israel the world Uber demon.
Where was the excoriation of Russia considering the atrocities in Chechnya? Where is the boycott of Kuwait after the expulsion of 350,000 Palestinians? Where is the boycott of Syria, after the slaughter of 10,000-30,000 in Hama and the occupation of Lebanon? How about boycotting China for human right’s abuses that are legendary? How about Castro’s Cuba?
Again, criticism of Israel is one thing- that is, a free exchange of ideas, a back and forth. Far too often, there is none of that. There is simply a closing of doors and a cessation of communications.
Why Israel is singled out for such treatment. What is it about Israel that is so special? Why is Israel treated so differently? Simply put, it is anti-semitism. To point to Israel as the worst human right’s offender in the world is laughable. According to the UN, 100 million of women that have suffered FGM- and the world, for the most part, remains silent (SC&A wonder how quiet the world community would be if Jews were committing these atrocities).
Simply because many people close their minds or accept something as truth, is not an expression of democracy. It is an expression of mass prejudice and stupidity. That is clearly the case with those for whom meaning in life is defined by excoriating Israel.
Just because it is au courant to say all criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, does not make it so. It an absurd and skewed look at reality. Criticism of Israel becomes anti-Semitic because there is a different standard of measurement for Israel than there is for any other country (the same applies to the US. When America is criticized, is also by a different yardstick).
Further, Virtually every country in the world was founded on the basis of conflict. Reality. Whatever your country of origin, it’s very existence today, is as the result of conflict.
I could on, but I’ve probably overstayed my welcome.
While I admire your pacifism, the Israelis do not share your reality.
In that part of the world, ITBACH AL YAHUD!- calls to Slaughter the Jews! are a political and religious ideology.
Don’t forget that the Israeli army – which is per Tikkun indistinguishable from the Israeli government at this point – goes and does things which constantly sabotage any hope of peace – like blowing up families on the beach – and insists that this is merely a “regrettable accident”, while demanding that *no* Palestinian hostile response ever be made, as an absolute condition of any “concessions.” They move the goalposts constantly, and never hold themselves to the same standards, and constantly undercut any leaders who try to work for peace, and then act surprised and injured when there’s reaction. As Christians should know too, you can’t coast on past persecution forever – though the Eternal knows we’ve done it! Pretending that Kibyah and Shatila didn’t happen, pretending like the Brits re Australia that the Levant was terra incognita pre-’47 – just like the US and the First Nations.
Of course, Levy’s comment about his own country is equally applicable to the right wing and the US:
In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years with or without a trial – but only we’re allowed to do that. And only we’re allowed to bomb civilian population centers.
When we blow up hundreds of civilians with aircraft and bombs, it’s magically not terrorism…when we disappear people, unlike the Godless Commies, it’s magically not tyranny. When we fight back – even “proactively” with preemptive strikes – it’s okay, but when our enemies do it it’s a sign of how evil and depraved they are.
Total tribalism, which is the root of moral relativism masking as moral superiority.
Stock response to news of conflict in the near middle East:
I don’t care. Let them blow each other to bits, the sooner the better.
Israelis do feel that their country is singled out for criticism. The deaths of 200 Sudanese Christians at the hands of Muslims, the deaths of 200 Chechens at the hands od Russians, the deaths of 200 Iraqi Shiites or Kurds at the hands of Iraqi Sunnis, would never generate the kind of international notice and outcry that Israel’s military actions against Palestinian terrorists, and Hezbollah, generate.
When casualties in other international conflicts number in the hundreds of thousands, the protest at the UN is muted, but when Israel acts against one single avowed terrorist, like Ahmed Yassin or Marwan Barghouti, there is immediate condemnation from the “international community.”
The only thing that is disproportionate in these matters is the amount of protest coming from foreign leaders and diplomats. Israelis conclude, correctly in my opinion, that this is attributable to the amply demonstrated anti-Semitism among Europeans as well as Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli sentiment among the world’s Muslims.
As long as the United States has veto power on the UN Security Council, the UN’s protestations against Israel’s actions have no effect. Therefore, Israel seeks permission or approval from only the United States.
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The whole point of terrorism is to force powerful countries into the situation that the US and Israel are in. Terrorist brazenly slaughter our civilians and then vanish into their own civilian populations. The leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas base themselves in places like Gaza and Beirut where any attack on them will necessarily cause civilian harm.
The terrorists are responsible for all the losses on both sides. Their policy of using their own civilians as human shields is as cruel and barbaric as their preference for civilian targets in their attacks
Tikkun is not a reliable source, though the anti-war movements do love to clutch the token Jew as a talisman against charges of anti-Semitism.
I suspect that part of what’s seen as anti-Semitism in the criticism of Israel is not. It’s more that Israel is seen as a modern, western nation, and expected to behave “better” than nations seen as third world and “backward” are expected to behave. Sigmund notes about that there is not as much criticism of nations which allow FGM, and attributes that to anti-Semitism. In fact, I think it’s that those nations are seen as “backwards” (and there is probably an element of racism there) and better is not expected of them. Russia is still seen through the lens of the Cold War, and the Evil Communists, and thus there is neither surprise nor particular outrage at their behavior in Chechnya, etc.
On the contrary, Israel is seen as western, enlightened, educated, and democratic, so there is an expectation that they will behave “better” than third world nations. When they fail to meet that expectation, there is criticism and outrage, just as there is criticism and outrage when the United States behaves in a barbaric fashion (see: Iraq).
David Ben-Gurion is clearly an anti-semite.
I looked for the context of that quote, and I couldn’t find it in any source other than pro-Palestine blogs and websites.
Obviously, it was never the opinion of David Ben-Gurion that the existence of Israel was illegitimate or that the Arabs had any valid claim to the land. Ben-Gurion was trained as a lawyer, and he was probably merely explaining the Arab perspective as he saw it. Acknowledging the existence of an argument opposing one’s own view does not concede its factual, logical or moral correctness.
I have no idea what context Ben-Gurion made this statement, but it was likely in support of policies that would preserve or build Israel’s military strength by arguing that the Arab perspective on the subject of Israel would likely force Israel into violent conflict with its neighbors (he was correct).
At that point the refugee situation was not evident as the problem it would become, there were no “Palestinians,” and Ben-Gurion’s “Arabs” were the Egyptians and Jordanians, with whom Israel now has peace treaties, treaties that were won, incidentally in the wake of bloody wars proving to the Arab leaders that Israel was a reality that must be dealt with diplomatically, because it could not be destroyed by them through force of arms.
Those who say that peace in the region has never been won through force of arms are simply factually wrong and should examine the history of dealings between Israel and Egypt before they purport to speak authoritatively on war, peace and politics in the Middle East.
“Israel is seen as western, enlightened, educated, and democratic, so there is an expectation that they will behave “better” than third world nations. When they fail to meet that expectation, there is criticism and outrage, just as there is criticism and outrage when the United States behaves in a barbaric fashion (see: Iraq).”
Well, even ‘western, enlightened, educated, and democratic’ nations do not have to tolerate decades of attacks and relentless media, educational and religious provocations.
That said, are you saying FGM, ‘honor killings and tribal barbarism are to be ignored, because they have been perpetrated by ‘third world’ nations?
The Atab world can’t have it both ways. They are either third world or they are moral equals.
Their behavior makes the choice clear.
I’m angrier about Abu Ghraib than I am about Saddam running dissidents through wood chippers. I’m more angry about France’s use of torture and collective punishment in Algeria than Russian war crimes in Chechnya. I’m angrier about Israel’s behavior in Lebanon and Palestine than I am about Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ behavior toward Israel.
Israel is a small-l liberal democracy with a free press, a strong military, and a monopoly on the use of force. They are in no way worse than Russia or Syria or Iraq or the Nazis, and if Hamas were in Israel’s position and Israel was Palestine, I have no doubt that there would be an organized campaign of genocide, rather than a disproportionate military response.
I believe in liberal democracy. It’s the only principle that I feel a sense of patriotism toward. Israel’s behavior, like the behavior of my own country in Iraq and Guantanamo, is more galling to me not simply because it’s unacceptable, but because it deeply betrays my priniples. Israel’s behavior feels more like us, which is to say liberal democracies, than them, which is to say authoritarian governments.
The fact that Israel is a liberal democracy, and in many ways a vibrant, well-organized nation, does not excuse its behavior. It should know better, and its people have both the right and responsibility, just as we do, to demand better. It is unacceptable to target civilian infrastructure, like Gaza’s only power plant, in response to the capture of soldiers. It is even unacceptable to target civilian infrastructure in response to the deaths of civilians: the bar for a nation’s behavior in war isn’t set by the behavior of its enemies, it’s a universal standards. Lip service to just war theory is not enough.
And that goes for us, too.
– ACS
(1) Criticism of a liberal democracy has a point: it can influence the behavior of the electorate. Criticism of extremist militias living amongst civilian populations or authoritarian governments is as close to perfectly useless as anything can be.
The complaint that Israel is singled out for criticism has less to do with anti-semitism than with cause celeb. Certain situations in the world recieve more attention than others, unfortunately.
“I’m angrier about Abu Ghraib than I am about Saddam running dissidents through wood chippers. I’m more angry about France’s use of torture and collective punishment in Algeria than Russian war crimes in Chechnya. I’m angrier about Israel’s behavior in Lebanon and Palestine than I am about Palestinian and Lebanese militias’ behavior toward Israel.”
Right. We have no reason to expect civilized behavior from others who demand they be tretaed as equals.
Not once in your long post, Jill, nor anywhere else that I have seen Israel’s response condemned as “disproportional”, have I seen a suggestion of what would be considered a “proportional” and appropriate response. Please, tell me. How should Israel have responded to Hezbollah’s violation of Israel’s borders, killing and kidnapping of Israel’s soldiers, and bombing of Israel’s cities?
“they’ve put the blame rightly on Hezbollah for instigating these attacks. They’ve simply asked Israel to respond proportionately.”
As Hezbollah has been firing rockets into cities with no apparent military value, wouldn’t the proportionate response to be to bomb cities with no military value?
“But responding in kind, or with even more severe actions — killings hundreds of civilians, leveling cities — doesn’t give anyone the moral high ground.”
I don’t think Isreal is worried about occupying the moral high ground. I think they’re trying to protect their citizens from being murdered by Hezbollah. I don’t blame them.
“But I’m getting sick of hearing that Palestinians and Arabs are all crazy evil terrorists bent on pushing Israel into the sea.”
Me too. We’d probably hear it less if Arab leaders (and terrorists) would stop making such declarations.
“and today, Palestinians are still a refugee population.”
Well, if I were Israeli, I certainly wouldn’t want them in my country (what with the blowing up buses and pizza parlours and all). If the other Arab nations were truly concerned with the welfare of the Palestinians, they’d accept them into their countries. They won’t because the tension generated from the Palestinians plight is good for their regimes.
“And I also think it’s fairly obvious that there’s enough blame here to go around here.”
Me too. But why is so much of the blame dumped on Israel?
“The Lebanese kid who sees his home destroyed when Israel launches a made-in-American missile probably isn’t going to blame Hezbollah for his problems.”
Just like I’m sure many Germans who lost loved ones in WW II blamed the Allies instead of Hitler. So what?
“I suspect many Palestinians have a deep dislike of Israel because they’re essentially living in shit.”
Probably. So why don’t other Arab nations accept them?
I’m the last person to play the racism card, but honestly, I see no other reason for why Israel is catching so much heat for defending its people.
We have every reason to expect it. But I’m wondering exactly which civil authority has the wherewithal to disarm Hamas or Hezbollah? In both Lebanon and Palestine, the wrong people have the guns; the militias attacking Israel are doing so under no authority but their own. The reason that Israel’s behavior upsets me, personally, more than Palestine’s or Lebanon’s (and I make a distinction between Palestine and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah) is that Israel has (a) an understanding of what is and is not acceptable, (b) a system which allows them to control the level of violence their military engages in, (c) the sort of liberal democratic system that’s supposed to reduce behavior like this, and (d) no interest in limiting the scope of their response.
Lebanese civilians are the moral equivalent of Israeli civilians are the moral equivalent of American civilians are the equivalent of Palestinian civilians. They may not be targetted, period full stop, and it is clear that Israel is (a) behaving with a indifference to civilian deaths, and (b) targetting civilian infrastructure, like Beirut International Airport, the Gaza power plant, and Lebanese and Palestinian roads, in order to put political pressure on the leadership of both. This is unacceptable.
How about “not suddenly go bugfuck crazy and start dropping bombs onto random civilian shit in Lebanon?” Is there any indication that even half of the people they’ve killed have anything to do with Hezbollah? Even if they were, is a one-for-one trade-off of Hezbollah militants for innocent civilians a morally acceptable trade to be making?
I think what Eurpoe’s proposing — a UN disarmament mission — is as close to a solution as would be possible. Hucking bombs across the border into Lebanon isn’t going to disarm Hezbollah, just as hucking rockets across the border into Israel isn’t going to crush the Israeli state: both are elements in a diplomatic, rather than a purely military, strategy.
(The Head Heeb, here, does a much better job of explaining my viewpoint than I do.)
– ACS
“Hucking bombs across the border into Lebanon isn’t going to disarm Hezbollah”
I agree. I think you’ll be seeing the ground offensive within the week. They’ll go in and start mopping up what’s left of ‘em. Maybe that’ll do the trick. We all know the Lebanese government won’t do it.
Oh. Great. Remember last time Israel invaded southern Lebanon to disarm hostile militias? Remember how it took them twenty years to get back out? Remember that that’s the reason that Hezbollah is essentially a sovreign state in southern Lebanon?
History repeats itself, but not usually at this Tilt-O-Whirl rate.
– ACS
I think all of Israel’s targets are independently justifiable. It is the standard operating procedure of terrorist organizations to depend on civilian infrastructure and to keep their bases of operation as close as possible to civilians, so that retaliation against the terrorists harms civilians. The very existence of Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Quaeda is that their enemies will be unwilling to inflict the necessary amount of loss on external civilian targets that is necessary to destroy the terror groups, as they are organized. If Hamas based its militants, leaders and weapons outside of heavily populated civilian areas, Israel would destroy them. So they don’t.
Hamas is in a position where its interests are served by civilian casualties on both sides, and accordingly it has organized itself to attempt to maximize civilian casualties on both sides.
Israel can either ignore brazen acts of murder against its citizens, or it can retaliate against the terrorists who take every measure possible to assure that retaliation against them will cause as much collateral civilian loss as possible. That means that anything Israel does to protect the lives and security of its citizens damages the possibility for peace (which terrorists oppose) and harms Israel’s international standing. This is how terrorism works. This is how terrorists hope to achieve their objectives. And by failing to recognize that the losses inflicted by Israel were made unavoidable by the actions of the terrorists is to play into the terrorists’ hands.
If the United States had certain knowledge that, right now, Osama Bin Laden was in a high-rise apartment complex in Kabul, there is no doubt that officials would make the decision to launch an airstrike against the building. Such a strike would be the right decision and would not violate any international obligations regarding the way war should be conducted.
Israel is, to some extent, damned any way it decides to act. The terrorists attack maliciously and intentionally against civilian targets, and then surround themselves with civilians, so that any retaliation against the terrorists will unavoidably have civilian costs.
If you count bodies, Israel kills more Arabs than the Arabs kill Israelis, but the Arabs are killing as many Israelis as they can, and if Israel decided to indiscriminately kill as many civilians as possible, the losses in Lebanon this week would have been in the tens of thousands rather than 200. You cannot equate the actions of Israel with the actions of its enemies because Israel shows restraint and avoids killing civilians to the extent reasonable.
Israel’s restraint is highly commendable; there is no other country in the world that would take such a measured reaction against such malicious and persistent provocation. The French, the Germans, the Russians and the Chinese have committed large scale genocide, recently, for much less. But terrorism cannot be ignored. Murder cannot be permitted. And while all reasonable steps should be taken to prevent civilian loss, the fact of collateral damage should not deter liberal democracies from retaliating against foreign terrorists.
Very well said, Daniel.
Yeah, but intentionally targetting civilians is not morally equivalent to targetting a legitimate military target that hides among civilians, especially when not acting against the military target may result in more civilian deaths in the future.
And the Gaza power plant and the Beirut Airport were totally legitimate military targets. Cutting off power is completely standard in any military operation. It inhibits communication, makes it difficult for terrorists to move personnel around, and generally causes organizational difficulty. If knocking out the power substantially impeded the ability of Hamas to operate, then the power plant was a legitimate target.
As for the roads and airport in Lebanon, that’s a no-brainer. Every flashpoint in the war on terror has been a magnet for foreign militants. Those guys the United States is still flushing out in Afghanistan aren’t FROM Afghanistan, and many of the insurgents the United States is fighting in Iraq are not Iraqi. For example, that son of a bitch Zarqawi, who finally caught a couple of much-deserved 500 pound bombs, was Jordanian before he was splattered all over the fucking pavement.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is supported with personnel, resources and weapons from Syria and Iran, and a number of foreign extremists would probably have flooded into Lebanon to take part in the fighting. Disrupting the abilty to move people and weapons through Lebanon is of obvious strategic benefit. Those rockets that they’re firing at Haifa don’t materialize out of nowhere.
Maybe, before you start accusing people of needlessly attacking civilians, you should consider knowing what the hell you’re talking about.
The issue, Daniel, is not whether Israel is worse or better than the militias it opposes. It’s clear that, on a relative scale, I would rather that Israel have the guns and bombs, rather than Hamas and Hizbollah. But this is not a relative scale: there is an absolute standard, defined by international law, to which Israel must adhere, and to which it is not adhering. When the stakes are human lives, there’s no such thing as ‘partial credit’*.
I’m relatively agnostic about the ethics of targetting missile sites in civilian areas in Lebanon and Gaza. But in the past two weeks, however, Israel has targetted sites that had no reasonable military purpose, and has taken actions that intentionally cruel and geopolitically incompetent. Destroying Gaza’s power grid will have effects on Gaza civilians for years — the sanitation situation in Gaza is getting pretty terrible. Bombing Lebanese transportation infrastructure (highways, ports, airports) did nothing but fuck up attempts to evacuate southern Lebanon, while doing nothing to slow down the rain of rockets. Barring food convoys and Red Crescent aid into Gaza did nothing but make sure that Palestinians were starving.
The argument that they’re overreacting, but not overreacting as much as Europe might, is nonsense that presumes that a nation’s actions are controlled by anything other than its people and its politicians. Israel has the both the capacity and the responsibility to stop bombing civilian shit that doesn’t have anything do with their tactical objectives — which, I might remind you, involve rockets and captured soldiers, not the wholesale dismemberments of quasi-states in other people’s territory.
– ACS
* I apply the same standard to the United States, and there’s a beam in our eye that really needs taken out before we criticize the mote in Israel’s, but this is a thread about Israel, not the United States. So, it’s Israel that gets it today.
There’s a difference between Hamas, which targets civilians intentionally, and Israel, which doesn’t particularly feel it’s responsible for civilians being in the way when its bombs go off. There is a difference between the two, but, again: no partial credit.
With regard to the power plant — which existed throughout the Second Intifada — it’s interesting that Israel didn’t bomb it during a security crisis involving hundreds dead deep inside Israel, but did decide to shut off electricity to sewage treatment, medical services, and fresh water in response to a single captured soldier and Qassems hucked at random across the wall. If this were a major incident, or any conflict between Israel and Hamas symmetrical enough to reasonably called a “war”, then I might buy your argument. But this is one captured soldier. One.
You’re aware that Zarqawi was hiding under the northern no-fly zone for years before we had any reason to take him out? And that the Arab-Afghan fighters in Afghanistan had been hanging out there since, literally, the late 1980s? And you’re aware that the “foreign fighters” trope is pretty much total bullshit?
Hezbollah managed to smuggle huge quantities of ordnance into south Lebanon even in the face of an experienced and thorough Israeli occupation. It’s ridiculous to think that (a) their leadership has forgotten how to smuggle arms or (b) that this conflict will last long enough for Hezbollah to run out of the arms supplies they’ve laid in. Israel’s explanation is little more than a fig leaf: blowing up Lebanon’s sole international airport isn’t a strike against Hezbollah, it’s intended to communicate Israel’s seriousness to Lebanon’s central government. This is unacceptable.
– ACS
It’s not credit, partial credit or no credit; it’s either proportionate or disproportionate. The international law of war acknowledges that civilian loss is inevitable, and attempts to minimize that loss to the extent reasonable. The problem of both the American and Israeli wars against terrorists is that these civilized, liberal states are attempting to act consistently with the law of war against enemies who flagrantly violate it, and who are indifferent to bloodshed on both sides.
But the law of war doesn’t anticipate a war where one side will hide its combatants among civilians, because that side would be in flagrant contravention of a number of international laws. The various requirements that soldiers be identifiable and wear uniforms is a big part of that, and all the terror groups violate those laws. The way Hamas operates is a violation of the human rights of Palestinian Arabs and the way Hezbollah operates is in violation of the human rights of the Lebanese.
The way these groups operate forces Israel to choose between inflicting losses on foreign civilians or enduring losses of its own, and where the loss inflicted is not disproportionately larger than the loss otherwise endured, Israel is permitted to strike at terrorists to disable them, even when such strikes will necessarily inflict losses on civilians.
The refusal of Israel to let ambulances pass unencumbered through checkpoints has been widely criticized by the pro-Palestinian movements, but the use of ambulances by terrorists to smuggle weapons and militants through checkpoints justifies the Israeli action of stopping and searching ambulances. The loss inflicted by delaying emergency vehicles is not disproportionately larger than the loss prevented by stopping the use of emergency vehicles for smuggling purposes. Thus, the action is consistent with the law of war.
As for the power grid, unfortunately, the political decisions of the Palestinian leaders will wind up leaving the Palestinians in a much worse position than they would have been had they accepted the 1999 Camp David/Taba peace deals offered by Ehud Barak. On a certain level, it’s good for the world that the attempts by Palestinian militants to wrest further concessions through the slaughter of civilians has left the Palestinian national aspiration in worse shape than it started, because the successful employment of terrorism toward a political end encourages more terrorism.
However, the continued suffering of the Palestinain people is an unfortunate by-product of their leaders’ horrible mishandling of the entire situation. The benefits of a peaceful coexistence between Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would have been substantial for both sides, but the losses suffered by the Palestinians in what looks to be the ultimate resolution, will be much harder to bear than those that will be borne by the Israelis.
Because there will be no deal and no peace, the concessions on land will be much less favorable for the Palestinians, and the result will be a less viable Palestinian state. But just because unilateral withdrawal behind a unilaterally determined border is bad for the Palestinians doesn’t mean it’s not a reasonable response to the situation by Israel. You’re imputing a very substantial duty to the opposing side in a conflict, and the law of war doesn’t create that kind of burden.
Similarly, if Israel leaves transportation structure intact to facilitate evacuation, then they also facilitate the movement of fighters and weapons into Southern Lebanon. Bombing that infrastructure was a reasonable measure, especially since Syria and Iran are flagrantly supporting Hezbollah and Iranian troops have already been deployed to the region and are assisting in the rocket attacks. There is no international law that would prevent Israel from moving to stop rocket attacks on its cities to allow the Lebanese to evacuate.
What Israel does not do is slaughter civilians for purely malicious purposes independently of legitimate military goals. And, frankly, Israel doesn’t go as far as the rules of proportionality might permit, because Israel, despite the international condemnation of every reasonable step it takes to sustain its existence, does care about its reputation, and as a nation founded by refugees of genocide, it has a deep respect for human rights.
I’m not arguing for partial credit; Israel deserves all the credit there is for its commendable restraint in dealing with extreme provocation from an unrestrained enemy. You’re asking them to be martyrs, and that’s just not reasonable.
Look i’m not going to claim to be an expert on Israel-Palenstine or Israel-Lebanon relations but this:
And this:
is nonsense. Yes civilian losses in war do happen, but you know what helps stop them from happening? Not falling back on brute force as the first option. When you were 10 and some neighborhood kid stole your ice cream was your first reaction to beat the shit out of him? I know mine wasn’t- i preferred to ask for it back and maybe try to negotiate a little first. I wasn’t about to just attack the kid. I think Israel’s response was clearly disproprtionate- and contrary to the democratic ideals that we would hope they display. And all for one soilder- one freaking soilder. I’m not saying that the soilder’s life isn’t important but come on- how many people from Lebanon and Palenstine is Israel holding onto? To unleash the kind of destruction that Israel has on Lebanon is to violates humanitarian law and the spirit behind organizations like the United Nations- not top mention it makes Isreal look like fools to the rest of the world. The same way the U.S. has looked like fools internationally for our “war on terror”. I am NOT defending the Hizbollah response but I think to elevate Israal to some “oh we’ve clearly got the righteous moral highground while those crazy middle easterners have no one else but themselves to blame” status is bullshit.
The law of war may not (in your view) impose a burden on Israel to avoid all incidental civilian death, but i think the law of common sense, compassion, and simple humantiy requires Israel to think of and execute other responses besides outright aggression before the act.
Number of Israeli dead since last week: 24, including 12 soldiers.
Number of Lebanese dead since last week: over 200, almost all of them civilians. (source)
I think that pretty much fits the definition of “disproportionate.”
Negotiate a little first?
There has been a great deal of negotiation. However, Hamas and Hezbollah will not take the necessary step of acknowledging Israel’s legitimacy, and while Israelis would negotiate with Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas and negotiators like Saeb Ereket, or with the Lebanese government, these leaders clearly lack the ability to deal with the militants. These attacks also occured in the wake of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and during a planning of a withdrawal from most of the West Bank.
There have been a number of articles written about Lebanon’s inability to disarm Hezbollah and Israel’s history of negotiations with Palestine. This is not an immediately arising issue. What it is is a provocation to war by terrorist groups backed by Iran and Syria.
Proportionality has nothing to do with counting bodies. Proportionality is a balancing of civilian losses against the value of a military target consistent with the Geneva Protocol of 1977.
The killing of a civilian on one side does not justify the killing of civilians by the other, and though war crimes by one side may justify reprisals that would otherwise be illegal, those reprisals may never be targetted at civilians. The calculation you use to define proportionality would be a war crime if it were used to instruct military policy.
It is reasonably anticipated that, where one side is weaker and is conducting an illegal war, and the other side is much more powerful and acts within the law, the law-abiding side will kill more civilians, and yet its actions will be proportionate and the terrorists’ actions will be disproportionate.
Every one of those rockets launched at Haifa is a war crime. The fact that Israel’s proportionate strikes against infrastructure with properties that makes it legitimate for military targets has caused civilian loss is not disproportionate if the need to destroy those targets is legitimate. Similarly, firing non-targeted rockets at civilian areas is an intentional attack on civilians with no justified military purpose, and is a war crime whether the rocket kills anyone or not.
For example it would be consistent with that protocol to bomb an apartment complex containing Hassan Nasrallah and 500 innocent civilians, and it would be inconsistent to lob a single unguided missile in the direction of Haifa for purposes of intimidating or killing civilians. All terrorist acts are inconsistent with the Geneva Protocols and all of Israel’s actions are against legitimate military objectives.
The proper definition of “disproportionate” is bolded.
As I explained above, the civilian cost of strikes against Hamas and Hezbollah is by their design and necessitated by their insistence maintaining their military assets in areas densely populated by civilians. That is also a war crime.
The civilian losses on both sides are tragic, and the civilian losses on both sides are the fault of the terrorists.
Jill: thank you, and thank you, and thank you, for talking understanding sense that acknowledges that everyone’s been hurt, and everyone’s hands are bloody.
Sigmund et al.: You know, when I criticize Israel, it’s sure as hell not anti-Semitism, and many other Jews do the same without being anti-Semites. We criticize a state and a government’s actions. We don’t criticize a religion or an ethnic group, and if Israel, with its given history and situation and actions, belonged to Lakota or Xiong-nu, I’d call them out on the same sins.
I don’t flash my Hebrew-Card often, but this is an occasion for it.
I do level criticism, and loudly, at China, Russia, Saudi Arabia. But you know what? I damn well hold Israel to a higher standard, the same way that I hold post-Apartheid South Africa to a higher standard. Not ethnically: based on history and the individuals and families involved.
I hold it to the higher moral standard of being full of people who know exactly how it feels to be hurt, oppressed, crushed, ground down, and murdered, and ought to know better. I hold it to the standard of being full of people who were once ejected from their homes, who wandered without a safe homeland, who were refused and shot at and told good-luck-but-no-thanks. I hold it to the standard of people who understand pain as well as a people can and ought to think more than twice before handing more of it out like candy.
I do expect our Arab brethren to be equal moral partners. I do expect them to behave as civilized people. Most of the Arabs I know are, after all. It’s not a contempt for them, or an infantilization, and you insist on imagining it. But I also expect Palestineans to behave as a people who’re hurting right now. And I expect a people who’ve known little but suffering in their long history to be, yes, better behaved. On both sides.
Someday, I can only hope.
Daniel, if Nasrallah is so important to kill, then Israel should wait for him to leave crowded areas, or better yet, send in special ops for him. But if you seriously think that killing (or risking killing) 500 civilians to get to one legitimate target is not “…excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated,” then i really don’t have anything else to say to you.
How many civilian deaths resulting from killing Nasrallah would you find acceptable?
How many civilian deaths resulting from killing Bin Laden would you find acceptable?
How many civilian deaths resulting from killing Hitler would you have found acceptable?
Gah!
Gah? How many is gah?
Excellent post, Jill.
Well done. Very well done indeed.
Nasrallah isn’t surrounded by civilians by accident. All the terrorist targets are strategically surrounded by civilians because terrorists seek to maximize civilian losses on both sides. When they kill civilians with their bombings, they claim they’ve struck a blow for the oppressed, and when retaliatory strikes against their offices and personnel have civilian casualties, they can gnash their teeth and bellow about the atrocities, as can all the parties who are hostile to Israel or the United States.
Photos of dead Arab children on blogs and satellite television are a far more precious currency for the terrorists than news of dead Israelis, and youu have to recognize that the acts of terrorists are done to maximize harm to civilians on both sides. You and I see eye to eye on the tragedy of these losses, but we disagree on who should properly be blamed.
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