Nothing I could say about Palestinians forcing open the Gaza-Eygypt border at Rafah could possibly measure up to that action’s power.
Egypt is already trying to close the border. Maybe by the time I wake up tomorrow this relief will be shut off again, but maybe the Egyptian government will find it hard to shut people back in. It’s the world’s biggest prison break and should remind everyone of the possibility and power of resistance.
For more Raising Yosuf, brownfemipower has a great collection of links, and Al Jazeera is always good.
Egypt had a big wall up keeping people from leaving Gaza? I thought only Israel was building walls to keep Palestinians out of their territories.
Egypt has a formal relationship with Israel in which they agree to maintain this border crossing. So they are obligated to shut it off because of previous agreements with Israel. And they need to heed these agreements to keep the US happy.
Who gets the most US aid? Israel. Who gets the second most US aid? Egypt.
Many Middle Eastern countries will talk Palestine up and down, but they don’t want Palestinians either.
By the way, my understanding is that Palestinians are trying to leave Gaza. They just want to go shopping. Many folks are going into Egypt to buy, for example, concrete, so they can go back to Gaza and build houses.
“Shopping” and “concrete” are things that have come up regularly in US media descriptions of the situation (I’m looking at you, NPR & NYT). In reality, people are taking collective action to get a hold of food and fuel and the other necessities which they are otherwise being collectively denied–probably some concrete is involved, but I’m guessing oil, grains, cans of things, and fuel that can run generators or lamps and stoves in the absence of electricity are nearer to the top of the list. The fact that people are apparently paying for these necessities strikes me as among the least important features of the situation.
I think those who are going back to Gaza are brave. Many places in the world would likely be more pleasant right now than that besieged place, but leaving means the possibility of being unable to return home or having no home to return to, and abandoning those who remain.
In my second comment, I meant to say Palestinians AREN’T trying to leave Gaza permanently, just re-stock and re-supply some really basic essentials. And at much lower prices than they can get them in Gaza (though of course now Egyptian merchants are hiking their prices as well). I certainly didn’t mean to diminish the situation by calling it shopping. What’s another way of saying they’re stocking up on necessities? This whole thing was precipitated by Israel cutting off supplies and Hamas pushing the fence over so people could get supplies. This wasn’t/isn’t about escaping Gaza.
By the way, the headline at English Al Jazzera online reads, “Gazans continue to poor into Egypt: Palestinians buy much needed goods as Israeli blockage enters seventh day.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B0C0B1F3-0315-4279-AC94-FB329CDB0AF1.htm
The headline of Daily News Egypt is similar, though it links to the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7205668.stm
Ms. Four, you state that Egypt has an agreement with Israel to maintain the border crossing. What does “maintain” mean? If this is all about Israel blocking off supplies, what was Egypt doing? Apparently there are plenty of supplies across the Egyptian border. Was Israel preventing the Gazans from going into Egypt, or was that Egypt doing that? If there is a border crossing, why haven’t the Gazans been using it to get supplies?
RonF,
Israel blocked off the border between Egypt and Gaza to stop the flow of arms into the Gaza strip. Since it was walled off there have been numerous attempts to smuggle arms across the border through tunnels. I think there was a dual purpose in Hamas using explosive resources to open the wall. Firstly, they gain political power in the strip through being seen as the saviors. Secondly they gain an opportunity to smuggle in more arms to further aggravate Israel.
As much as I’m sympathetic towards the individuals stuck in the situation, my sympathy for them as a people was tempered somewhat when they chose to elect an aggressive, violent organization as their government.
Desipis,
given that the U.S. populace also elected a thuggish, violent, aggressive government that’s responsible for many, many more deaths globally than Hamas, unless you’re not an American, I’d hesitate to be critical of the Palestinian’s elective choices. It’s the proverbial people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
The glass house analogy would only be true if we expected people in other countries to ignore the effects of our elections, which we don’t.
Did we elect Bush? Yes (well, not me personally, but ‘we’ as a country.) Did he make bad decision; do others hate us for that? Yup: which is part of why, I hope, we will not elect someone like Bush in the future.
I don’t know the republican candidates all that well, but surely there’s some fringe lunatic out there. Let’s say there’s someone with a strong anti-china bent, who spends a lot of his campaigning attacking China. Let’s say that the news coverage made it quite apparent that China hated this guy, for good reason.
Now, let’s say China-hater dude gets elected. Do you think I, or you, would stand here plaintively wondering why China isn’t willing to sign treaties with us if we elected him?
Sailorman: “hate us” and “sign treaties” are not the same similar to ‘deprive us of life’s basic necessities, freedom of movement, health care, basic legal rights, and dignity’. Unlike Palestinians, no body is in a position to collectively punish Americans (Or Israeli Citizens) for our “poor electoral choices” to that extent, although a strong, (and in my view correct) objection to the tactic of terrorism is that it aims to do precisely that.
To Ms Four, on “shopping”; I think i was more annoyed with NPR than with you. Sorry for my harsh reply.
Desipis: Your analysis that Hamas will benefit politically from the siege of Gaza strikes me as plausible enough; why is the Israeli government pursuing security strategies that strengthen Hamas?
curiousgyrl,
The reasons behind the actions of Israeli the government are never quite so clear, they certainly have a degree of sophistication. However, I’m assuming they’re similar to the rational behind the warmongering in the states.
Politics: Security theater gets votes.
Religious: Fundamentalist Jews probably have the similar influence to the evangelical Christians.
Military: Continuous ‘training’ environment, reason to continue high levels of funding
[snark]
But what about the rockets?
[/snark]
My solution: Israel should pay the government of Egypt some obscene amount of money and give its Palestinian residents citizenship in Egypt. That gives the Gaza residents a state with a government that can actually enforce laws (and which may actually be capable of stopping the rocket fire, by doing the kind of dirty work that Syria got away with).
Doug, that would work… if Egypt was willing to deal with Palestinians. Which they’re not. For all the sympathy towards Palestinians in the Middle East and North Africa, nobody wants ’em.
Doing that wouldn’t work, if you think, as many Palestinians do, that status as an eternal refugee is unjust. Lebanon as a positive example is pretty repulsive.
On voting rights for Palestinians, Olmert had an interesting quote in 2003:
“Israel will soon need to make a strategic recognition… We are nearing the point where more and more Palestinians will say:We’re persuaded. We agree with [right-wing politician Avigdor] Lieberman. There isn’t room for two states between the Jordan and the sea. All we want is the right to vote.’ On the day they reach that point,” said Olmert, “we lose everything. … I quake to think that leading the fight against us will be liberal Jewish groups that led the fight against apartheid in South Africa.”
Nobody in the Arab world wants the Palestinians for a few reasons, one of which is that they’re looking for the Palestinians to wipe out Israel for them.
Ron;
I think thats a very odd way of looking at things. I don’t think the issue is “who ‘wants’ the Palestinians” the question is about whether Israel has the right to expel Palestinians from their homes and restrict their freedom of movement and whether people have a right their own homes livelihoods.
Your question made me imagine a situation in which all white Texans (my people) were ‘told’ by military force “you can live anywhere, just not Texas!”; its hard to imagine the question revolving around whether Oklahoma Arkansas or Louisiana would be willing to have us, now that Houston is free of its white Texan problem.
As for the danger of Palestinians “wiping out Israel,” I don’t believe this is a realistic possibility, and I doubt that the strategists in “Arab states” do either. Do you? How would that happen?
By making Israeli life essentially unlivable; by raising the danger of living there to unreasonable levels; by managing to smuggle in a nuclear device and detonate it; by managing to kill or injure enough people in Israel’s government; and/or by other acts of terrorism which are either identical or substantially equivalent to those which are committed or attempted right now.
It’s a funny calculus. Obviously, terrorists make up a very small percentage of Palestinian and Arab society. But the number of terrorist attacks which a country is willing to accept in furtherance of open borders and/or better relations is also quite limited.
For a random example: Imagine that 1 out of every 10,000 people* is a willing and capable terrorist who would commit terrorism if they could, and who won’t respond much to Israel’s political stance. Good odds, right? Well, not so simple if you want to open the borders and let in 500,000 comparatively unsupervised people every year.
That example would suggest approximately 50 such incidents. That may not seem like so many if you think of them as being spread out through the entire land mass and population of the USA. But Israel is smaller than NYC population wise, and land wise as well if you include the metro area.
If you ask for very open borders, what that translates to is that you’re asking Israelis to accept a probability of random violence which nobody in the U.S. would accept as a trade-off. If you ask for limitations on inspections and limitations on how Israelis monitor shipments, you’re really asking Israelis to accept that said random violence is even more likely to be extraordinary (bombs) instead of smaller (gunmen).
*this is just a hypothetical example. I’m NOT saying that 1/10,000 Palestinians, or Arabs, or anyone else, are terrorists. I’m trying to use a hypothetical number that is low enough not to be incredibly insulting buy high enough to illustrate the point.
Danger of intolerable levels of random violence is not the same as “wiping out” Israel, neither are political assassinations. This is not to say that i find either acceptable. A suitcase bomb, I suppose, could wipe out Israel, but seems like a completely nonsensical and unlikely tactic given the aims of Palestinian groups and the geographic density of the land under dispute.
I now live in New York City and was a resident of lower Manhattan on 9-11. I understand the devastating impact that random violence can have on city life and the fear it creates, and I get that 9-11 was a one-time thing (so far), while Israelis face an extended pattern of random attacks.
That said, Arab and Muslim terrorists do not create most of the unjustified random violence in the world, or most of the political instability based on assassination etc. That conditions prevails in many parts of the world, not only in Israel. Populations subject to occupation, as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine face a much higher degree of daily random violence at the hands of occupying armies and the chaos of occupation than do Israelis as a result of random attacks.
I’m not “asking” any of these groups to accept a higher probability of random violence than currently exists in the U.S. I think all these populations deserve the same level of security I have in Brooklyn, or better. In all cases, I think ending the occupation and applying the same standards of human rights to land, self-determination etc. to everyone involved.
I am not advocating “open borders;” a framework which doesn’t make very much sense to me given that the territories are not a state and state power on either side of the “border” is in the hands of the Israeli state.
I think it is strange that focus on the possibility of the extant state of Israel being “wiped out,” the question of whether Israel has a “right to exist,” or the idea of Israelis being driven out is strange given that none of those things are or are very likely to be happening, while a Palestinian state actually *does not exist* and remains out of reach and unlikely, while Palestinians are currently being driven out the territories.
If something is intolerable and is beyond your control to change, then you generally have to leave. That’s what intolerable means, right?
I’m not ignoring this, but I’m going to stick to Israel in this discussion. If you thought I was talking about the world in general, that’s my miscommunication.
Let’s stick with Palestinians for a moment: I read you as saying that the Israeli army is subjecting Palestinian civilians to random violence. In the context of my post and your reply, I also take this to mean said violence to be fairly high-level, of the sort that we would equate with a terrorist act.
Is this a correct reading of your post?
Actually one border is with Egypt, not Israel. A goal of statehood would, obviously, include the ability to have some control over their own borders.
But I’m glad to hear you’re not advocating open ones. Nobody seems to disagree that there are arms currently flowing into Gaza along with everything else. To put it mildly, the military and political results of the breach are yet to come to light.
Why? Because it’s a precondition for solving the Palestinians’ other problems. Palestinians are unlikely to get Israeli support for a state which appears, morally, to be at war with Israel, which has its own border control, and which would be right next door. If such a state DID exist, then the chances of Israel continuing to exist would be significantly diminished.
The negotiation question of whether Palestinians are enemies, neutrals, or friends has a lot to do with how Israel (and everyone else) responds to them. Right now, it seems pretty clear that they have the status of enemies. I suspect there is not a single country in the world who would willingly cede adjacent land to an avowed enemy who had taken, and continued to take, military action against them.
This makes sense everywhere else in life; why do we ask the Israelis to act differently than we would?
Would you cede political power to a radical prolife group and trust that they would respond to the majority of the electorate? Would you be comfortable living near a sex offender who stated that his prior rapes were “justified” in response to feminism, and who refuses to promise not to rape again? I wouldn’t.
Here’s a possible scenario. Years of terrorism leave Israel impoverished, weakened, isolated, and demoralized. An aggressively anti-Israel government comes to power in Syria or Egypt. That government invades, wins, and tells the Jews “leave or die”.
I think that would qualify as destruction, don’t you?
This sort of scenario is by no means impossible. Look at what happened to the Kurds, or to the citizens of Homa. For that matter, look at the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem after the Israeli War of Independence, when the Jordanian military forcibly expelled –ethnically cleansed–the Jewish population. Ditto most of the Arab-governed Jews of North Africa and the Middle East.
“As much as I’m sympathetic towards the individuals stuck in the situation, my sympathy for them as a people was tempered somewhat when they chose to elect an aggressive, violent organization as their government.”
Do Americans deserve sympathy, then?
How about Israelis?
For any serious discussion, it is impossible, NotACookie.
Israel has already faced decades of terrorism. Has that left Israel “impoverished, weakened, isolated, and demoralized?” Or has Israel emerged with by far the most powerful army in the region, as well as a nuclear power? And is there any indication at all that the US would fail to side with Israel in the case of Syria or Egypt invading? (Not that Israel needs our help.)
You’re making a case just as honest as the neocon case that Iraq six years ago presented an existential threat to the USA. I suppose it’s “possible,” but only in the “any ridiculous thing, no matter how far removed from reality, is possible” sense.
The point of the “Israel is fighting for it’s very existence!” argument is to suggest that any abuse 0f Palestinian human rights at all by Israel, no matter how inhumane, is justified by the threat to Israel’s existence — even though that threat is considerably less plausible than a “Terrorists Nuking New York unless we allow torture” scenario.
Who are you arguing against here, by saying that? And where do you get your certainty regarding nuclear weapons, torture, Israel’s survival, or anything else?
It seems there are two arguments.
The moral argument makes no presumption that Israel has a right to exist at all, and analyzes things in that light. The realistic argument asks “This exists, how is it to be fixed?” I can’t say that the moral argument is wrong exactly, but it does seem unlikely to result in productive results to change the situation.
Like it or not–apparently not–Israel’s willingness to respond to the Palestinians requires as a first step a supportable premise and belief that the Palestinians don’t want the Israelis dead and gone, and that they won’t use any additional power to damage Israel, possibly severely.
Your arguments appear to be that
1) The Palestinians can’t damage Israel.
Great. Of course, it’s sort of a guess on your part, unless you’re a closet military intelligence buff. I agree that it’s unlikely, but what degree of likelihood would be acceptable to you?
2) Even if they did, Israel would be OK.
Great. What degree of damage, exactly, is acceptable to you? Are you hunky dory with only a “few” more bombings a year? Pretty much anything that doesn’t result in Israel’s destruction? 100 civilians, max?
3) But nobody will try anyway because of the scary U.S. ally. The U.S. is not all powerful. Would you mind informing the terrorists fighting in Pakistan and Iraq that their mission is hopeless? Do you think that the U.S. would attack a group of its major oil producing neighbors? I’m not saying that we’d twiddle our thumbs, but it’s not clear how much the U.S. would do.
Say that Israel gets simultaneously attacked by the Palestinians, Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Those countries are backed by many of the OPEC nations. Would we go to war with those three countries? Would you, personally, support it if we did?
I agree that Palestinian terrorism, so far, has been largely ineffective. I think in large part that’s because Israel has been conducting large scale and effective military operations to suppress it.
Saying “Israel’s current strategy has left them at little risk of national destruction” is a weak argument for a radical change in strategy. If Israel followed the course of action you seem to be urging, and absorbed thousands of deaths from rocket fire, without mounting an effective military response, I think the result would be flight of capital and inhabitants, and would be a largely demoralized population.
As to American intervention — suppose a radical regime in Egypt makes common cause with Syria and a nuclear-armed Iran. I don’t think we’d be willing to commit serious combat power if it meant massive disruption to the world economy, and the risk of mass death here or in Europe due to weapons of mass destruction. What, by the way, could the US actually do, in concrete terms?
I think there’s a good chance we’d do no more for Israel than we did for Darfur or Rwanda.
Decades of terrorism have certainly left Israel with less money that it would otherwise have had been able to put somewhere else besides their military and rebuilding damage. And it’s certainly changed the morale and other aspects of their civic life; it leave it to you to consider what the effects of such attacks have been on the populace’s mind. Imagine if we had been attacked and were on a war footing since 1948. Isolated? Israel has one big friend. But most of the rest of the world seems to condemn it, and do everything they can to isolate the State of Israel and it’s citizens. The Middle Eastern regimes in particular do whatever they can to harass and isolate it.
Israel has strength. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t also have scars.
The word “seem” in there is carrying a lot of weight. I’ve urged no such strategy; I just deny that collective punishment of tens of thousands is an effective route to Israeli security or is preventing thousands of Israeli deaths. And I think the people in favor of continuing the anti-Palestinian bloodbath, like yourself, have a burden to prove that the current strategy is actually preventing a plausible, realistic danger before supporting it.
Out of curiosity, why do you think there have been so few Israeli civilian casualties from Gaza rocket attacks? (Fewer than ten in the last two years, iirc. In contrast, hundreds of Palestinians including dozens of children have been killed in Gaza by Israelis. It’s tragic that a handful of Israeli citizens have died; but it’s likewise tragic that hundreds of Palestinian civilians and dozens of children have died. The lives on each side are equally valuable; a policy that ends hundreds of Palestinian lives to save ten Israeli lives is not justifiable, nor the reverse.)
I can only see three possible explanations for why so few Israeli civilian casualites:
1) There are almost no Israeli civilians living in rocket range of Gaza.
2) The Gaza Palestinians have never had the weapons needed to kill Israeli citizens in large numbers.
3) The Gaza Palestinians are targeting soldiers.
Which one of them of these options do you think is true? (I think mostly #1).
The current policy involves killing hundreds of civilians — again, including children — but it’s not necessary to do that. It’s vindictive, not preventive or protective. All the Israelis have to do to protect their citizens from attacks with Gaza — which they have every right to do — is maintain a no-man’s zone between Israel and Gaza, in which no civilians live. And that’s pretty much already happened, as far as I can tell.
The collective punishment and the ongoing Israeli rocket attacks are an attempt to break the spirit of the Palestinian resistance, and to make the Israeli government look strong, and about anger and hatred that has festered on both sides for many years. But it’s not necessary self-defense.
Yes, because all Arabs countries are the same (even if some aren’t arab at all), and they’ll all obviously support each other. Right?
And in this theory of yours, does the US (which is controlling Iraq) step aside to allow Iran to march freely through Iraq on the way to Jordon, and then Jordon steps aside and allows Iran to march through as well? Or does Turkey suddenly allow Iran to march through Turkey to Syria, which will have no trust issues at all in allowing the entire Iranian army to march through to Israel in your scenario — since we all know that there is no limit to how much a Sunni state trusts a Shia state?
Why not ask what happens when Mars invades Israel, while you’re at it? Boy, we’d be in trouble then.
Do you really think there are no significant differences between our historic relationship and alliance with Israel and our historic relations with Darfur and Rwanda? Or are you saying there are differences, but such differences makes no difference to what actually happens?
Not that it matters. Because even without the USA, Israel has a stronger army than all its neighbors combined. You could as reasonably argue that Mexico and Canada could invade the US successfully if they combine forces.
Defeat their armies. Were you paying attention when we invaded Iraq a few years ago, and when we kicked Iraq out of Kuwait before that? Right-wingers generally vastly exaggerate what armies are able to accomplish; armies cannot remake a society, or build a democracy, or keep the streets safe, or stop terrorism forever. But one thing the US military is extremely capable of is defeating other armed forces.
I think that’s a reasonable formulation. I would have said, though, that the answer is a combination of 1 and 2. The Gaza Palestinians lack weapons with the range and power to kill large numbers of Israeli citizens.
Weapons, of course, can be acquired. The Lebanon war last summer showed that irregular guerilla forces (Hezbollah) were able to acquire enough rockets, from Syria and Iran, in order to paralyze much of Northern Israel, and were able to maintain their fire for an extended period in the face of major military operations.
Syria, Egypt, and Iran are different countries. However, Syria and Iran are openly allied against Israel, and it wasn’t too long ago that Syria and Egypt were part of the United Arab Republic. A Syrian-Iranian alliance makes sense, since they’re both non-Sunni governments, both anti-American and anti-Israel, and both with tense relations with Turkey and Iraq. At present, I don’t see Egypt joining them; a change of regime in Egypt might change that. If an aggressive and anti-American government takes power there, Syria and Iran are natural allies.
If you think back to last summer, you may recall that Iran was able to funnel arms and technical assistance to Hezbollah, despite Iraq and Turkey being in the way. I’m not worried about Iranian armies marching across the middle East. As you point out, the US and allies are well able to prevent that.
I’m rather more worried about Iranian-made rockets smuggled into Gaza. How many rockets per day would it take to shut down commerce and normal life in Tel Aviv? How many rockets can be smuggled into Gaza and cached, given Iranian funding?
Imagine Israel allows air and sea traffic into Gaza without tight controls and inspections. I think it would be fairly easy for Hamas to build up a large cache of weapons in a period of less than a year.
Suppose then that a rocket bombardment of Tel Aviv is launched, timed to coincide with hostile gestures and military mobilization by Syria. If I were an Israeli official, I would be willing to take very harsh measures to avoid being caught in such a squeeze.
And I don’t think the US would be able to do much. What could we do, short of carpet-bombing Gaza?
Amp hits the nail on the head right here. Sorry I cant engage more in this debate; i have a lot to say, but the semester started yesterday am having to go cold-turkey on reading and commenting on blogs.
Amp,
It’s your blog, but… what the fuck? I’d like to respectfully request that you stop using this attack.
I can only see three possible explanations for why so few Israeli civilian casualites:
I can see a fourth. The rockets have little to no targeting capability; they are launched in a general direction. Also, I’m guessing that they don’t have huge payloads. So they are shot into Israeli territory in the hope and (probably literally) prayer that they hit something. The odds are that they’ll miss hitting someone. But, even if they don’t, it’s definitely a weapon of terror.
Sailorman, regarding your “what the fuck,” you’d have more credibility if you weren’t the person who recently said “It’s unreasonable because it makes no freakin’ sense unless you place an extraordinarily low value on Israelis and/or israel. … which I have to admit I’m beginning to think is the case.”
But you’re right. Just as you were wrong to write the above writing, you’re right to criticize my writing something similarly wrong.
I withdraw the “in favor of the bloodbath” language, and apologize for using it.
RonF, this is an unimportant point, but I don’t see the difference between the “fourth” possible explanation you point out and my second explanation (“The Gaza Palestinians have never had the weapons needed to kill Israeli citizens in large numbers.”)
The main factor is #2; the Qassam rockets are inaccurate and don’t have heavy payloads, so the damage they do is limited (though there’s been a huge number of near-misses). However, while the area around Gaza is lightly inhabited, it’s not a no-man’s land; there are still Israeli communities in those areas. Also, a no-man’s land is impractical given that the Palestinian organizations are attempting to get longer-range rockets; are we supposed to evacuate cities as their available range grows?
Incidently, this is why a lot of Israelis are leery of a withdrawal in the West Bank nder current conditions; Qassam rockets from the WB can do a lot more damage, as they’d have Israel most populous regions as targets (and the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem metropolitan areas are lage enough that you can hit the city even with extremely inaccurate rockets.
Yeah, I reconsidered that after thinking about it for a while. I suppose you’re right.
Amp, you’re right–please accept my apologies for my own post.
(FWIW, I don’t think you want more dead Israelis–the “beginning to think that was the case” part was meant to modify “no israel” part. But it was badly written, and that’s not apparent.)
That would be “the lives on each side” of the Palestinian/Israeli divide. The lives on one side of the “civilian/combatant” side don’t appear to be of any value at all, given their complete omission from your analysis.
Daran;
I’m confused as to what lives you think Amp doesnt factor in.
I see a moral distinction between killing an armed participant in current mutual combat or warfare and the killing of unarmed civilians (including off-duty fighters); it is for that reason that I focused my comment on civilians. However, my basic point — the vast number of Palestinian casualties compared to Israeli casualties — would be the same if we looked instead at all casualties.
I don’t think that soldier’s lives are valueless, of course; those deaths are tragic too, as you’re right to point out. I agree that the language of my comment didn’t make that clear, although I don’t think that justifies your accusation that I believe soldiers’ lives to be valueless.
I see a moral distinction between killing an armed participant in current mutual combat or warfare and the killing of unarmed civilians (including off-duty fighters);
This matches pretty closely my working definition for the distinction between “insurgent” and “terrorist”.
curiousgyrl:
I haven’t checked the figures, but I’m pretty sure that there have been more than a handful of Israelis (civilians soldiers) killed. So when Amp, having identified fewer than ten civilian casualties says “It’s tragic that a handful of Israeli citizens have died”, that suggests that he attaches so little significance to soldier’s deaths that they don’t factor into his conceptualisation of “Israeli citizens [who] died”.
Ampersand:
The unstated assumption here is that it is possible to draw meaninful distinctions between armed participants and unarmed civilians. But what about these women? They appear to be unarmed, but they are not just participating in the conflict, but actually mounting a successful military operation.
By the way, two of the five women killed by the IDF were male, which indicates that the Israeli explanation of their decision to shoot is more credible than the newsreport suggests.
I’m not disputing this.
I chose my words carefully, which is why I said “don’t appear to be” – a reference to the appearance your words gave. As for your actual internal mental state… Didn’t we agree that intent was irrelevant?
Mandolin:
Individuals caught up in something they aren’t significantly responsible for? yes.
But as a country they need to have a good look at themselves and realize why there’s such deep hatred of them in certain corners of the world. I’m not American but if the actions of my government resulted in an easily foreseen reaction that harmed my country, I’d lay the blame on the people who voted them in.
In this conflict, the distinctions between armed combatant and civilian, citizen and soldier are hazy indeed–on the one side, its the classic problem of guerrilla warfare, in the other compulsory military service and armed settlement make threaten the distinction.
All loss of life is tragic; Palestinians suffer disproportionately from this tragedy.
Daran, you appear to be using the word “appear” to make hateful, accusatory statements while avoiding taking responsibility for your hateful, accusatory statements.
Good think I used the word “appear” there — now you’d be entirely mistaken to take offense, right?
“In this conflict” implies that this is a characteristic of this particular war, rather than of war generally. But even in those wars in which two regularly constituted armies fight against each other – the exception, rather than the rule – the nonmilitarised population doesn’t stand passively by.
Compulsory military service doesn’t really threaten the distinction been combatant and noncombatant. A conscripted soldier is still a soldier after all. It does, however undermine the moral valuation which views the killing of a soldier as less significant than the killing of a civilian.
I’m not offended, Amp, just mildly frustrated that your mistaken inference about my motive is preventing you from apprehending my actual point, which is that how issues are framed – in particular who and what are excluded from framings – are affected by, and in turn affect, how we perceive those issues. While it is true that the human cost of the conflict to the Palestinians greatly outweighs the human cost to the Israelis, it is not true that the cost to the latter is fairly characterised by the statement “a handful of Israeli citizens have died” unless the value you put on soldiers killed is zero.
Now you’ve said that you do in fact value them, and you’ve acknowledged that your language was inadequate. What’s left to discuss?
Daran, I comprehend your point perfectly. I can also see my specific error — I should have used the word “civilian,” which is what I meant, where I instead wrote “citizen.” You were right to point out my error.
[Stuff thought better of and deleted by Amp.]
As for the rest, I don’t agree with you, but I think you’re right that continuing the discussion of it is pointless.
But as a country they need to have a good look at themselves and realize why there’s such deep hatred of them in certain corners of the world.
Because we stand for freedom of religion, speech and information. We stand against discrimination on the basis of sex, race and ethnicity. We stand for the right of people to participate in their own government. All these things threaten the methods and ends of despots and tolitarian rulers everywhere, secular or religious. So what faults we have are blared through their media. Where that is insufficient, lies are made up and told again and again until people believe them. They actually have little choice, since their governments make sure they are told little else – certainly nothing about the good things we have done and the freedoms we have and defend. And finally, in order to preserve their position and to distract their subjects, they are not told that all their problems are due to the great evils being done to them by their rulers. No, they are told that all of their ills are due to the Great Scapegoat.
Of course they hate us. All they are told about us are hateful things. Read your copy of 1984 for the details of how and why.
Ron, it seems to me that you missed at least half of the point of 1984.