“A man has got to do what a man has got to do” is a popular dictum I have heard invoked in defense of the Israeli government’s way of waging war in Gaza. Disregarding the difficulty of going from “a man” to “a government,” I don’t disagree with the dictum if a caveat is added: “within certain moral constraints.”
If strong moral constraints are not clearly proclaimed, bad consequences are bound to follow. Political economy suggests that some moral rules are not only required for the preservation of a free society but that they are also part of a good strategy. The killing of three hostages who had been waiving a white flag by the army supposed to deliver them was one such consequence. (In a previous post, I raised the question of the moral requirements of just wars, specifically in the case of the war against Hamas.)
It is easy to imagine the fear and stress of an Israeli soldier fighting the Hamas thugs. However ethical he may be, his first goal is likely to go back home alive with all his body parts after the war. We have learned from Geoffrey Brennan and Gordon Tullock that to understand an army at war like any other social phenomenon, we must start from the individuals’ motivations, perceptions, and actions (see my post “Methodological Individualism and the Hamas Ruler”). Executions for desertion, as the Wagner group apparently practiced regularly, is a way for an army to cope with the problem; propaganda, esprit de corps, and tribalism are probably poor substitutes. I suspect that waving a false white flag is a trick that Hamas terrorists could use. All that provides more reasons for a civilized government to proclaim its moral principles. It is praiseworthy but not sufficient for the Israeli army to declare after the fact that the soldiers who fired at the hostages violated their rules of engagement (“Israel Says Its Soldiers Killed Israeli Hostages as They Held Up White Flag,” Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2023):
Standing rules in the Israeli military prohibit soldiers from shooting people who no longer pose a danger, said retired Israeli general and former Mossad chief Danny Yatom.
“Whoever raises hands or waives a white flag, it’s prohibited to shoot them. Even if it’s a terrorist,” he said. But “everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.”
A man has got to do what a man has got to do, within certain moral constraints. After October 7, the Israeli government should have proclaimed the principle as loud as the calls for revenge were heard, and should have endeavored to lead by example. The political rulers, I would say, bear more responsibility than the stressed soldiers. Will the lesson be learned?
READER COMMENTS
Richard Fulmer
Dec 17 2023 at 1:14pm
I think it’s best to wait for the results of the investigation before assigning blame. We don’t know the circumstances. Was it dark? Were the troops under fire? Could they hear? What had the troops experienced prior to the shooting? Did the troops have reason to suspect a trap?
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 17 2023 at 3:36pm
Richard: As you suggest, we should be prudent of course, and ready to change our minds if unknown facts come to light. It seems to me, however, that the facts revealed by the Israeli army (combined with the recklessness of the campaign in Gaza), are sufficient for the judgment I proposed.
Peter
Dec 17 2023 at 1:55pm
Sorry Pierre, but I feel you excuse the individual soldiers culpability too much here. It strikes me of every American cops excuse for shooting unarmed people in handcuffs in a police car in the back because they “split second feared for their life”. The “man has to do” idiom applies to thoughtful intentionally, not temporary insanity via panic which fundamentally is what the split second fear claim is.
These soldiers simply killed those hostages out of depraved indifference given a unit command culture which emphasized safety via tactical risk reduction, legal immunity from consequence of action, and dehumanization over accountability, humanity, and empathy.
As for stress, bureaucrats whom, as a trade, engage in activities whose duties could reasonably expose them to a reasonable potential for significant physical harm (i.e. soldiers), receive significant training and more importantly, indoctrination and exposure desensitisation, on how to deal with those situations in a positive manner therefore reducing the stress hence have a higher level of culpability than your average person without said coping mechanisms and yet people, yourself included, handwavium it away under “oh being a soldier sure is stressful”. Except it’s generally not and even when it is, casual stress is not panic.
There are reasonable excuses for killing innocents, deliberately shooting unarmed half naked people slowly coming towards you with their hand up holding a white flag whom look and speak just like you is not that. That’s just straight cold blooded murder under the guise God can sort them all out. And it’s suggestive the IDF has adopted the unofficial official US middle eastern policy of “any male over the age of 10 is a terrorist actively trying to kill you unless proven afterwards after the fact they weren’t at which point, oh well our bad”
As for Israel’s response, don’t over read it, it’s just politics. The appropriate response would be to take no action against the soldiers besides immediate employment termination and releasing their names and home addresses so society can deal with them ala Solzhenitsyn. And in parallel terminating with a lifetime government employment bar and revocation of employment related retirement benefits everyone in their chain of command. Zero percent chance of that happening.
Likewise there is no damage here which could be remedied in a moral manner by enforcing criminal sanctions on the actors. The response simply needs to incentivize future positive behavior by supervisory and training officials and you do that by threatening what matters most to them, their pensions and income for negligence, bad faith, and indifference as it relates to black letter policy.
It’s not “oh the bully isn’t at fault because he was stressed resulting in a mentally diminished capacity state because he worked himself into a hypersensitive hyper vigilant state but it’s all good because his boss shed crocodile tears publicly while eating some crow”
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 17 2023 at 3:09pm
Peter: I agree with the spirit and the brunt of your comments. Note however what I said, after rewriting this sentence many times on my draft:
“More responsibility” does not imply that the stressed soldiers have none.
Walt
Dec 17 2023 at 4:55pm
Whoa. That goes way too far and may be more a measure of your politics than the actual situation. You have zero basis to accuse the soldiers of “depraved indifference” or cold-blooded murder. You don’t know them, you weren’t there, you don’t know if white flags were or weren’t yet another Hamas ruse, and you’ve most likely never been in combat. Also, you’ve most likely never had your sister gang raped and mutilated or your mother held hostage. This was a tragedy—for both shooters and shot—and none of us have enough information to jump to conclusions.
David Seltzer
Dec 17 2023 at 6:43pm
Walt said, “you’ve most likely never been in combat.” I have and my brothers who made it back to the world from Vietnam. The training we received in E and E and SERE addressed fight, flight or freeze that triggers involuntary physical and mental changes a combatant meets in hot situations. Fear causes those responses and fear is designed, for lack of a better term, to preserve one’s life. The My Lai massacre is one of the most tragic examples of unarmed civilians killed by military personnel . A former Marine, 0311 infantry, told of coming into a “ville” that changed hands among the VC, NVA, and ARVN in less than 48 hours. Who’s the enemy, who are the friendlies. The tautology aside, we are brilliant innovators. Can we use our considerable human capital to stop these wars?
Walt
Dec 18 2023 at 5:14am
What way, what use of human capital, would you have employed to stop Hamas from doing its thing on October 7? How, short of war, would you stop them from repeating it? How else would you have stopped Hitler? I’ll agree that not all wars are necessary, but some of them are.
David Seltzer
Dec 18 2023 at 8:32am
There’s the rub!
Matthias
Dec 19 2023 at 6:28am
A well placed assassination could have stopped Hitler without war.
No clue whether it would have stopped a war (depends on when you’d assassinate, too, I guess?) And I don’t know whether a culture of assassinating political leaders deemed evil would be s good idea.
But sending assassins until one succeeds would have stopped Hitler.
Peter
Dec 17 2023 at 11:41pm
Actually I have. I was a direct ground combatant in both Yugoslavian wars, Iraq 1 and 2, and some undeclared operations as well. I’ve hung out at the pool with a Somali pirate warlord in Djibouti, broke bread with known US designated terrorists, and celebrated Christmas in their private residences with Serbian and Albania war criminals and their families. I can tell you first-hand how Srebrenica mass graves smell when they are freshly dug up. And I’ve been in the military, worked with foreign militaries, and received all the fun training that goes with them. And one thing you see in Western line units worldwide is a culture of “safety, ask questions later” i.e. God will sort them all out. We aren’t talking statutory murder, but we are talking moral murder. These soldiers exist in a command environment of immunity from consequences trained to dehumanizes the other and not risk their buddy at all costs hence why I stated willful depravity. They were completely indifferent if the person they were shooting was a legitimate target or not, they just shot because who cares about them, they aren’t us so why risk it. That isn’t moral behavior, that’s cowardness under color of law.
With great authority comes great responsibility and part of that is putting innocents before yourself regardless of legal immunity, de oppresso liber. The soldiers had zero responsibility to engage right then and there, they could have taken time to investigate, call in reinforcements, fall back, etc but simply chose not to out of inconvenience or personal embarrassment. And now you have three innocent Jews, the very people they were tasked to protect and rescue, dead. It wouldn’t have even been OK even if these were three Hamas fighters, they were killed in the act of surrendering. And you only do that when you dehumanize and objectify your opposition. You can’t get more deprave indifference than that.
Nor do you win a war by giving the opposing force whom you so vastly overpower that has no reasonable method of winning force multiplying weapons. Intentionally shooting own your citizens, bombing hospitals, bombing Orthodox churches, shooting disabled people in Roman Catholic churches, etc because you are scared of your shadow and terrified your opponent is a super powered Untermensch who can kill you with the gypsy equivalent of an evil eye who can pierce your body armor while naked with their hands up from a kilometer isn’t how you win a war.
My mother was held hostage and tortured for a little under twelve hours when I was a tween by a tweaked-out meth addict who kicked our door down; I’ve never held a bad thought in my life against that man after grew to understand the world as an adult. I’ve even had dinner with him twice as part of a truth and reciliation effort I initiated some years after he got out of prison as I felt he deserved to know he didn’t harm anyone long term and nobody, not even my mother, held him any ill will and expressed our sadness at how long the state unjustly imprisoned him. He didn’t deserve forty years for a mistake as a young adult when no permanent harm was done.
That said I’d be willing to bet significant money that the soldiers who did the shooting never experienced either thing you mentioned, nobody is alleging this was an act of willful vengeance. If the IDF is recruiting people who have, well that is reprehensible and morally the equivalent of criminal negligence. What I do have is extensive firsthand knowledge of how Western soldiers behave in front line environments where they are effectively free from repercussions especially coupled with a command environment which encourages safety over all else while instilling fear, terror, and hatred of their opponents in its members. Sans a strong moral upbringing, which the military usually screens out during initial entry, or the rare military officer who has the same, soldiers are generally no better than any other faceless risk adverse bureaucrat willing to inflict great harm on others out of apathy, indifference, or for personal gain as long as they can get away with it which ultimate degenerates into a gang mentality given the social tribal nature of military units. That isn’t a critique, you need that sort of fight war but it does belie the need for strong oversight which isn’t being done and it doesn’t excuse them morally for their immoral behavior, legal or not.
PS: Sorry on formatting mostly around white spacing, I can’t find a way to view before submit.
Jim Glass
Dec 17 2023 at 5:10pm
You know, there is comprehensive data on police shootings in the USA. Since you invoke the concept so readily, please tell the rest of us (1) the actual number of police shootings of unarmed people that occur each year, and (2) the actual number of these unarmed people who are shot while “in handcuffs in the back of a police car”.
Instead of weakly flaunting bs emotional imagery like so many do, providing actual hard data to support your claim is sure to make it much more persuasive.
Peter
Dec 17 2023 at 10:36pm
This isn’t reddit Jim so I’m not going to go back and forth, it’s well documented and doesn’t need to get rehashed here the flaws in police accountability reporting and the metrics you rely heavily on; for example they require state level good faith reporting and investigations nor are usage of force reports factored in. I for example have had police pull guns on me on four occasions in my life and by pull I mean directly point them at me with fingers on the trigger screaming at me, three routine traffic stops for going under 5 over and once outside in an alley because an off duty cop in a bar got mad my girlfriend wasn’t interested in him and I told him to bugger off. If they weren’t cops, that would be four people prison for assault with a deadly weapon but you know, cops. Use of deadly force where they don’t pull the trigger for whatever flight of fancy they weren’t having that day don’t show up in your metrics. Recently in my city for example use of force numbers started to get published and 15% of all documented police interactions, including traffic, involved the police assaulting people with a deadly weapon. You want to bet that’s vastly under reported?
But just to bring to light one great recent example, the recent acquittal in the shooting of William Green. At best you can argue the cop intentionally manipulated events in a way to escalate and given him a reason to shoot Mr. Green, at worst it was cold blooded murder. How many is too many? Even one. Police aren’t the judge nor the jury and they have ZERO duty to arrest anyone and the courts including the SCOTUS have upheld that numerous times, they can always retreat to allow due process to run it’s course but you know, ego.
Fazal Majid
Dec 17 2023 at 3:01pm
I don’t know if the Israeli government knows the identity of all the hostages given the chaos of October 7, but I would expect them to make photos of all the known ones to be made available to all soldiers, whether through an app or as the US did in Iraq, a deck of cards with photos of wanted individuals on the back. Then again, it is a big stretch of the imagination to expect competence out of politicians selected on the sole criterion that they would help Netanyahu avoid prison.
Two of the victims were killed immediately but the third one ducked into a building and pled for his life in Hebrew. No doubt Hamas terrorists can also speak Hebrew, but the soldiers could have asked for his name, gotten the photo and done a positive ID when he came out.
An even more egregious incident is the killing of Yuval Doron Kestelman, the Israeli hero who neutralized two Hamas terrorists in Jerusalem, but was himself killed by IDF soldiers despite having thrown down his weapon, opened his shirt to show he was not wearing a suicide bomb vest, and raised his hands”
https://archive.ph/uP2hC
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 17 2023 at 3:31pm
Fazal: I agree with the editorial you linked to except for this part, with which I strongly disagree:
If individuals were truly respected, they would not have to wait for a “distribution” of firearms; each one would buy what he thinks he needs for self-defense. It is the same respect for individuals that dictates that the right of self-defense is not a license to kill.
Craig
Dec 17 2023 at 5:03pm
LOAC impose a duty to target the enemy with distinction and proportionality. Here the individuals waving the white flag apparently turned out to be Israeli hostages, but since Hamas doesn’t actually fully distinguish themselves on the battlefield by wearing uniforms, their failure to distinguish themselves creates ambiguity as to who are and aren’t combatants. Beyond that with respect to the white flag there is a general duty to accept surrender of course, but that doesn’t end the inquiry because as noted above one needs to inquire as to whether the enemy has abused the flag of truce. If so, one now must ask whether the soldiers reasonably believed the flag of truce was a ruse de guerre. Very fact specific inquiry of course into the mens rea of the soldiers here.
Mactoul
Dec 17 2023 at 8:58pm
As an instance of Israeli misdeeds this is less than nothing. Remember USS Liberty and 41 dead US servicemen.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 18 2023 at 2:13pm
I have read many opinion pieces calling for Israelis to obey the laws of war and avoid causing civilian deaths. I have read no such pieces calling for similar restraint from Hamas. Why is that?
There are reports that Hamas fighters shot and killed Palestinians fleeing to the south of Gaza. While there have been many calls for investigations of the accidental shooting of the Israeli hostages, I have heard no calls for investigating Hamas’ alleged deliberate slaughter of Palestinians. Why is that?
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 18 2023 at 4:03pm
Richard: One hypothesis: “we” or some of “us” try to be morally better than “them” thugs. (But I gather the writers you are speaking about are not among “some of us,” or they haven’t thought seriously about the issue.)
Peter
Dec 18 2023 at 4:55pm
Just my thoughts Richard but I think it’s closer to the ground truth that some.
One is a country that parrots the rule of law hence it’s held accountable by the masses to things like following international norms and treaties it’s signature or it’s own internal laws. The other is generally held to be a criminal organization; neither the Mafia, Hamas, PETA/ELF, nor your local ganger banger are obligated to follow the rule of law, that’s what makes them criminals and why Israel arrests people just for belong to them as opposed to holds them as POWs. This isn’t the PLO we are talking about who has a seat in the UN.
The problem here is the West since at least the 1970’s has been trying to PR criminals into the made up category of non-state state actors as that justifies the West using the military against them, foreign dalliances, and ignoring their own due process rules especially around concepts like trials, jurisdiction, etc when in fact they are just plain old criminal organizations. But then how else would Gitmo exist or any justification to invade Panama? I’m sure Mr. Berset is quaking in his boots everyday over Polanski after the Noriega precedence.
You can’t have it both ways. If your local gang banger on the corner isn’t a criminal but his own little unofficial country and you engage in a war against him because you don’t want to be bothered to arrest him, well you are stuck in the situation where you still have to follow the rules of war as a signatory but he does not. On the flipside if he’s a criminal, then why are you bombing him and where are your police and why are you not arresting him (unless you are American ofc)? Last I checked Israel has a little over 100,000 law enforcement officials, are they really so incompetent that they can’t go arrest some criminals whom they outnumber 4 to 1 and outgun as well?
And that is why you don’t hear calls into Hamas’s actions because they simply have no obligation to comply with anything hence behaving with the norms of whatever category you classify them as. If they are criminals, then they can’t be expected to follow the law. If they are government actors, well they didn’t sign any treaties. And given Palestinians either technically fall under the PLO or Israel depending on the politics of the week, they have no obligation to them either.
It’s not even a double standard unlike the US and the ICC. Nobody anywhere expects Hamas to follow the “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora” nor not engage in money laundering and murder, it’s par for the course as a criminal organization. On the flipside, people everywhere do expect Israel to not snipe Christian elderly female “criminals” for the strict liability crime of leaving evening mass; but then again maybe she was in actuality a illegal enemy combatant engaged in holy warfare against the IDF by asking Jesus to forgive them, better put a bullet in her just to be safe. The horror, the horror.
Richard Fulmer
Dec 18 2023 at 7:02pm
I don’t think that cops are geared to handle hundreds of heavily armed attackers arriving by land, sea, and air under cover of thousands of rockets fired at civilian centers.
So, because Hamas didn’t sign any international treaties, they’re fully justified in raping, torturing, murdering, and launching rockets at innocent civilians. But in responding to Hamas, Israel must play nice. Got it.
I searched for the story of the elderly woman killed by an Israeli sniper and found an article in “The New Arab.” Here’s a slice:
Forgive me if I don’t consider the reported testimony of Nassar’s neighbor’s cousin to be unimpeachable evidence, especially since the Palestinians do everything they can to increase and exaggerate the deaths of their own civilians.
Peter
Dec 19 2023 at 11:45pm
Well if you are asking me who is more believable, the current Roman Catholic Pope or the current IDF, I’ll go with the former. You don’t need to take Al Jazeera’s word for it, it was covered by nearly every western major media outlet, for example, the Washington Post
As for Israel inadequately training and equipping their law enforcement officers, that’s not really relevant to the question you asked, the morality of Hamas following the law doesn’t dependent on whether the jurisdictional police are competent or not in executing their duties. A murderer still commit’s murder whether they are ever successfully prosecuted for it or not. Either Hamas is a criminal organization and hence isn’t expected to follow the law or, as you and every one else including Israel seem to asserting, they are not criminals and instead are effectively a nation state actor hence their only obligation is to follow international treaties they are signature too hence once again, I don’t recall seeing them listed as having ratified the Geneva Convention.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say justify but they simply have no obligation to curtail their behavior in any manner. Once again, criminals by their very nature don’t follow the law hence it’s like getting mad at water behaving in a wet matter; governments aren’t required to follow laws they didn’t agree to be bound by.
I’ve never read the official Hamas policy handbook but if it existed, I’m pretty positive it doesn’t have a criminal law against it’s own soldiers killing government designated targets outside it’s own borders; in fact if said law existed it probably says the opposite unlike the lines of illegal failure to follow an order. This isn’t novel, US soldiers routinely “torture” and “murder” innocent foreigners, and sometimes knowingly even US citizens on foreign holiday, in their own country hence if nothing else, Hamas is in actuality following international norms when they conduct said actions. Before you google furiously, Gitmo, Extraordinary Renditioning Program, the entire War on Terror, etc. I mean we killed a US eight year old on vacation to see her extended family because we didn’t like her dad and he didn’t have the good grace to turn himself in for a show trial after we also killed his minor son a couple years before , but yeah Hamas.
Yeah that’s the way the rule of law is supposed to work. I know that recently is a foreign concept here in America that the government is actually supposed to be bound to things it’s signed even if unilaterally. It’s something we used to understand back when we were at least playing lip service to being a beacon of liberty but alas has been regulating to the dustbin of history starting in the 1970’s. For example we treated WW2 Japanese POWs humanely given the US had signed the Hague even though the Japanese didn’t on both accounts.
All that said though rather than me defend Hamas’s actions here, I’d be curious your thoughts on why Israel IS justified morally in either depriving criminals of due process and arbitrarily executing them on whim or, if we decided Hamas aren’t criminals, just firebombing bombing all of Gaza implementing a final solution vis-a-vis Dresden. I mean why not right?
Mactoul
Dec 21 2023 at 11:35pm
As perfect an example of sophistry as can be. Rejoinder is simple. Hamas is an outlaw and thus outside protection of law.
Peter
Dec 22 2023 at 3:57pm
@Mactuol
Except generally in the West, Israel included, outlaws are considered suspected criminals hence afforded due process, even if pro forma, and once convicted, their wardens still must still pretend to follow their own nations rule of law around the humane treatment of their wards. An IDF soldier at for a stroll doesn’t just get to walk up and randomly sexually assault a brown three-year-old whom they, on their own accord, whimsically defined as a member of Hamas and hence able to be ravished as she wishes as part of some self-driven vengeance narrative against outlaws which is what you are suggesting.
While I can’t speak to the specifics of Israeli law, in most Western nations the military is prohibited from engaging in law enforcement in a primary role with some minor exceptions such as military police for facility and personnel under their control hence once again, if the claim is Hamas are outlaws, then why is the military there and where are the Israel law enforcement personnel and what have they been doing all these decades?
You are committing the sin of assigning Hamas magical attributes. They are a criminal organization no different, albeit possibly better armed, that your local inner city street gang or the Sicilian Mafia. But I don’t believe for a second you would support Italy tomorrow just “invading” Sicily and indiscriminately bombing public housing projects killing tens of thousands of Italians with no police in sight under the guise of collateral damage given somewhere in all that rubble just maybe they killed someone that might have possibly been a suspected criminal …maybe, cross our fingers pinky swear. Trump has recently be accused of being a member of organized crime hence an outlaw, maybe we should just dispense with all these trials and Biden just order PFC Smith from the 82nd Airborne to just walk over and shoot him and his dog too. Maybe his minor children too for good measure after all, they may be a problem in future. Maybe nuke Florida just to be sure we get our outlaw, collateral damage happens.
Richard Fulmer
Dec 18 2023 at 7:17pm
The Israelis are fighting for their existence, the Palestinians are not. If the Palestinians laid down their weapons tomorrow, there would be peace. If the Israelis laid down their weapons there would be genocide.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 20 2023 at 11:07am
Richard: Are you sure no Palestinian is fighting for his existence? Are you sure all Israelis are fighting for their existence? A good test for the truth of an argument (technically: its validity) is whether it can be formulated in individualist terms.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 20 2023 at 4:22pm
Do you really believe that Israelis would slaughter the Palestinians if they stopped fighting and disarmed? Do you really believe the Palestinians would not slaughter the Jews if they stopped fighting and disarmed?
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 21 2023 at 10:49pm
I think you put your finger (perhaps inadvertently) on the basic problem, Richard. Some Israelis want to slaughter some Palestinians (as we observe on the West Bank and in the way the army of the Israeli state has been waging the war). Some Palestinians would want to slaughter some Israelis (as we saw on October 7 among other occasions). “Some” is greater than 0% but smaller than 100%. That makes the problem different than how collectivists see it.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 22 2023 at 9:12am
No doubt you are correct. However, “some” is vague enough to hide significant differences. Far fewer Israelis would willingly slaughter Palestinians if the latter laid down their weapons than the reverse.
Moreover, any murderous Israelis would likely be held in check by their more moderate countrymen. By contrast, the more moderate Palestinians would likely be held in check by the militants. Hamas and other Islamists before them have a history of dealing harshly with Palestinians who wish to make peace.
Peter
Dec 20 2023 at 9:10pm
Let me say up front part of the issue I have in responding here is you are using Israeli/Jew and Hamas/Palestinian as synonyms and they aren’t. One is a organization while the other is an ethnic group and contextually sometimes it’s hard to understand which you mean especially as there are Palestinian Israelis.
There is no scenario in the universe where Hamas can conquer Israel nor Jews worldwide go extinct as a result of Israel vanishing hence that’s a non sequitur. This is like the claim the US faces an existential terrorist threat, it’s just false hard stop, it’s simply red meat.
Actually Hamas is, Israel is actively looking to extinct them and has been for decades to varying degrees. Palestinians on the other hand, while not fighting for their existence, are fighting for self governance and to uphold international law via UN mandates.
Well sure if they want to remain in bondage and not self govern. I’d worry about what King Charles III thinks about that but thankful Mr. Washington said I don’t have too.
Neither Israel nor Jews are facing an existential threat here, what they are facing is a perfect storm of international blowback for their decades of an apartheid system which confines a significant chunk of their own wards to ethnic ghettoes as well as condemnation of the brutality of the their overreaction to a bed they made. And Jews worldwide are catching heat for that because of a perception, most likely true, they at least tangentially support a national ethnostate ethnically cleansed of undesirables locals.
My great grandmother was German, nobody for a second thought she supported the Third Reich because most emmigrants have no interest in returning to their homeland nor blindly support it’s modern policies ala blood libel, I’m myself am completely indifferent what’s going on in my ancestral now Swiss homeland. My daughter is a second generation Russian but nobody harasses her at school over Putin but it’s not because they don’t know she’s ethically Russian, it’s because she’s not out there promoting and defending Russia’s current political actions purely as a result of her matrimonial blood.
Richard W Fulmer
Dec 25 2023 at 10:37am
Israel is not an apartheid state. Arabs make up 20% of the population of Israel proper and have the same rights as any other Israeli citizen. Arabs are not disenfranchised. There have been Arab Israelis in the Knesset since the first elections in 1949.
You claim that Israel “ethnically cleansed” itself of Palestinians and imply that this justifies global attacks on Jews who might support Israel (though you condemn attacks on Palestinians who might support Hamas). Israel built walls around Gaza after decades of Palestinian attacks on civilians – suicide bombings, shootings, knifings, rapes. The wall wasn’t “ethnic cleansing,” it was a defense against ethnic cleansing.
You point out that Hamas is fighting for its existence and that the IDF is trying to wipe them out. And you find that unjust? But despite October 7, if Hamas were to surrender, lay down its weapons, and stop firing rockets at Israeli civilian centers, the IDF would stop killing them. Hamas would not return the favor.
You accuse me of conflating Hamas and the Palestinians, but Hamas and the Palestinians do the same as do their apologists. Hamas fighters attack and then melt back into the population, hidden and protected by them – something they could not do without the active participation of Palestinians. A guerilla insurgency is possible only with the help of the general populace.
At their rhetorical convenience, Hamas’ apologists will claim that Hamas is the true voice of the Palestinians and then turn around and claim that Palestinians are unwilling victims of Hamas.
In condemning the IDF’s destruction of so many buildings in Gaza, former IDF officers have observed that every building in Gaza has ties to Hamas, providing the IDF with an easy excuse to destroy it. Yet their accusation includes an admission – Hamas is all-pervasive. How does the IDF deal with an enemy that is pledged to Israel’s destruction and to the slaughter of Jews everywhere but that hides behind human shields? How do you suggest the IDF fight an enemy that locates military installations in or near its own people’s schools, mosques, and hospitals? How would you deal with an enemy that routinely uses ambulances to transport weapons and personnel? How would you deal with terrorists who will try to win global sympathy by murdering their own people and blaming Israel for their deaths?
Hamas weaponizes everything it can get its hands on and turns every concession into a military advantage. Concrete, meant for the sewage system, was used for tunnels. Water mains were ripped up and turned into rockets. Palestinian workers whom Israel allowed into the country were used as spies. Hamas rockets (possibly by mistake) destroyed Gazan power lines and power plants. Palestinians are like a guy who holds a trashcan upside down over his head and complains, “Look how the world is dumping on me.”
Egypt shares a seven-mile-long border with Gaza. Palestinians are desperately trying to flee across that border, and just as desperately the Egyptians are trying to keep them out. They fear that, once in Egypt, Palestinians will kill Egyptians as readily as they once killed Jordanians and Lebanese. Egypt renounced its claims to Gaza and Jordan its claims to the West Bank. Both are happy to leave the Palestinian problem to Israel. Arabs may sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians, but they wisely prefer to do so at a distance.
Peter
Dec 27 2023 at 3:24pm
@Richard
Not sure if you were looking for a response or not but I’ll provide on the off chance.
And the US had a black senator in 1870 so I guess blacks had the same rights as white citizens and zero disenfranchisement after that time /s.
Some of your other points in that post are valid but also one of shifting goal posts ala “why is the world dumping on Israel and not Hamas for similar actions”, not “is Israel justified for its barbarity?”. I’m in no way a Hamas apologist nor an Israel detractor on this particular matter, both sides for all I care could literally ethnically cleanse door-to-door and I wouldn’t sleep over it, it would actually be an effective solution TBH. But what I despise here is the Israeli hypocrisy, criminality under color of law, and the crocodile tears of bullies everywhere, i.e. man beats dog, dog bites man, man cries. Israel has signed various international treaties on how to act; Israel has it’s own domestic laws. It can follow them or it can withdraw / amend them, THAT is my issue here where once again, Hamas is under no obligation to either hence my consistent defense of them in this regard.
Lastly, while you are correct on the Egypt thing and it’s definitely an underplayed point in the West and a narrative Israel SHOULD push more often and louder, that’s a different discussion as it’s effectively a variant of NIMBY with the plight of the Palestinians simply be used for domestic policy reasons along the lines of DeSantis helping the residents of Martha’s Vineyard to finally enjoy their cake and their ungrateful gnashing of the teeth at it’s taste.
Regardless we’ve talked this to death. I’ll leave you with the last word. Have a happy New Years’ regardless.
Roger McKinney
Dec 18 2023 at 7:20pm
Good points! I’m continually amazed at how little people understand war. They seem to think it’s like a football game where players can take their time and pause the game with a time out when it becomes too stressful.
It’s sad that 3 hostages died, buy several Israeli troops have died from friendly fire. We’re they murderer, too?
Anyone who criticizes Israeli soldiers for killing the hostages merely advertises his ignorance of combat.
Roger McKinney
Dec 18 2023 at 7:21pm
That should read, were they murdered, too?
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