Read this letter.
We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He’d been shredded (the hospital’s word) by an Israeli missile attack – apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are – hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.
I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.
Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won’t sign up to it.
We can stand aloof from the events and carry out thought exercises, and we can carefully weigh the pros and cons of war—this side did this horrible thing, that side did that horrible thing, this side has this worthy cause, that side has that worthy cause—and we can attempt to calculate who is slightly better and who is slightly worse, although even there it’s striking how often different people seem to come up with completely different sums, as if maybe, somehow human lives resist being reduced to simple numbers. Let us reason together, you say; if only we could get everyone to look at the situation logically, if only everyone would be a dispassionate observer like me, if only everyone would sit back and coldly analyze all possible actions to arrive at an optimal conclusion that maximizes idealized outcomes…
…and then we arrive at this moment where all the brilliant science and technology of our civilization culminates in this beautifully intricate weapon, designed, machined and assembled by highly educated teams of engineers and executives and politicians, aimed at a small child. One human being, persuaded by the moral calculus of their side that this action is a logical necessity, pushes a button and turns another innocent human being into shredded meat.
We don’t need any more logic. What we need now is more appreciation for the value of life.
What appalls me most is that the same people who use science and reason — principles I hold highly — as the supposed basis for a rational morality can somehow arrive at a justification for sowing injustice and death to achieve their more enlightened world. Shattered lives and stunted opportunities and a lifetime of oppression on one side of the balance can be weighed against greater wealth, happiness, and security on my side (strangely, this equation only works when it benefits my side), for a net gain in human well-being.
All it takes is for someone to pull the trigger on a child.
It’s the only logical thing to do.
Alas, appreciation for the value of life without logic doesn’t take you far either.
I don’t think, barbaz, that anyone claimed it does but we know – see the quote from Bronowski – that pure logic is more easily mistaken for something good and more easily takes us to extremes.
Flechette bombs? Flechette bombs??? In the name of self-defense. Wow.
I think I’m going to go cry in the corner now.
To quote the canny Scot:
Logic is abstract and disinterested. We need it to guide our arguments to correct conclusions, but we provide the premises because things matter to us. Logic can just as easily give a valid argument for destroying the world as it can for doing good.
If you don’t have logic, you have faith. You have intellectual tennis without a net. Anything goes and 2 plus 2 is equal to infinity, or anything that you please.
In this case, it’s simply impossible to do away with logic. People will die whatever happens. If the Israelis do nothing, they will continue to be subject to rocket fire. People will die. But wait a minute — now suddenly logic rears its head, and the body count statistics are relevant. Fewer Israelis die to rockets than Palestinians die to aerial bombardments. That would be a fair point, and you could use it to argue against Israel’s military strategy. But notice — all of a sudden we’re using logic.
Logic is good for the Palestinians, logic is good for separating first degree murder from second degree murder. But somehow when we get into the land where emotion is king, when we wander into the taboo zone, all of a sudden logic is defenestrated.
From the link:
Words fail me.
I can only agree that it is time that the value of life, the here and now, was given it’s proper value. It hurts. It can only hurt. The list of horrible crimes against children in the conflicts of todays world offends any thinking compassionate person.
Ukraine MH17
Syria
Iraq
Gaza
Israel
…… and so on without end or limit.
Handwringing may lead to a solution, but is not a solution in itself.
PZ, what solution do you propose?
@jenny6833a #8
Are you honestly trying to justify bombing children by claiming that there is no alternative?
The world should take Netanyahu at his word. he says this operation is to remove tunnels used by insurgents to gain access to Israel.
righto.
what, do flechette shells have to do with tunnel demolition, exactly?
it’s so much bullshit.
the hard right in Israel thinks they can simply eliminate the opposition through terrorism. Yes, you read that correctly. the use of flechette bombs in a civilian population is a specifically designed terror tactic. they think if they terrorize the civilians enough, they will get rid of Hamas on their own.
yeah, because that technique has had such great historical success. Just ask Iraq, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan.
jenny6833a #8
Stop killing children and excusing the killing of children would be a fucking good start.
The Israeli attacks have hit schools and markets. They’ve taken out the only power plant in the area.
Using terrorist tactics to take out terrorists is not the way of civilized war.
If you have to say, ‘well, our enemy is bad, so we stoop to his level’, you’ve already lost. You’re no longer civilized.
Not killing mums, kids and non-combatants isn’t that hard. The Israelis are running Gaza as a concentration camp, and always pressing in on the edges. They know how to defang Hamas, simply treat the Palestinians as equals and give them space, and stop treating them as sub-human. Israel is the best recruiter Hamas ever had.
The asymmetry between one of the most equipped military in the world and a bunch of rock throwing, home made bombers is astonishing. It’s bullshit to say Israel is just defending itself. If you value life over statist aims, the reason leads you to the conclusion that what the Israelis are doing is wrong. If you value Israel over life of Palestinians, reason leads you to the conclusion that this is inevitable.
Maureen Brian, I think the actual problem is that bad logic is often disguised as pure logic and too few people realize the difference. I also think that of all the problems between Israel and Palestine, “too much logic” is the least.
Logic doesn’t take you to war crimes; hate, supremacism, and not giving a fuck does.
Oh, fuck, I was going to write something clever and incisive, but I just can’t. This is just too sad.
Yes it does. If A then B, If B then C, A therefore C.
Fill in the placeholders….
P: If we are attacked, we must defend ourselves
P: If we defend ourselves then we must commit war crimes (nicely worded as neutralizing the enemy).
C: We must defend ourselves therefore we must commit war crimes (neutralize the enemy).
How you can say that argument is not logical is beyond me. It leads to a true conclusion from true premises. Whether the premises are true, logic can’t give you all the answers, your values come into play….
This cycle of atrocities isn’t the product of uncaring logic because that’s not how cycles of atrocity work. It works because the Israelis and the Palestinians both believe they have the moral right to the land they control and both want revenge for things the other has done to take the land from them. The way out of this is to have enough people from both sides give up on getting even.
Shit. I meant
C: We are attacked, therefore…..
Whatever, nobody will notice anyway.
Logic lets you build a model, and verify that it makes internal sense. Logic can verify if your goals are not contradicting each other. But ultimately you have to take your model to the real world and see how it performs, and you have to come up with a set of goals and values for the logic to verify. You can count angels on a pinhead and stay perfectly logical.
But stabilizing Palestine could take a decade or more — and while I think that’s the only sensible way, I fear that to politicians and illusion of solution that works over a single term is preferable to a solution that takes decades to work. In the essence, I feel that people in power are just more interested in providing short-term catharsis.
And that is logical, if the person’s in charge sole goal is to stay in power, and if the politician doesn’t put any value on a Palestinian’s life.
This is one of those rare cases where I think PZ got the wrong end of the stick.
No, pure logic does not take you anywhere at all. Pure logic has no motives whatsoever.
In this particular case, everyone involved or looking on has values. Those values are different. They all use both logic and emotion to derive places to go. Unfortunately, everyone does it differently, and so the places differ, and so sometimes obscenities like this one happen.
However, when the opposite happens – when, for example, long-time enemies manage to sort out their differences, and a long peace breaks out – the above description still applies. What is different, is what values people use, and where they involve emotion or logic.
But nothing can be fixed in a situation like that war until values change. It’s not the logic that is the problem, it’s the bad (very one-sided) values.
The values that make the extremists on both sides (with rather different success) try to terrorize the other side.
The values that make the US stand behind Israel, no matter what – even if they put pressure on Israel, they are very, very careful to simultaneously apply support.
Stuff like that.
Logic is just a reliable way to find the means to do what your values tell you you want. It’s the want that’s the problem. Better wants, and logic leads you to better outcomes.
For that matter, I strongly suspect that for quite a number of people in that conflict, lack of logic and surfeit of emotion is more of a problem.
So you’re saying that they have an emotional reaction to the previous cycle, but there’s no logic leading to the next cycle? Magic it must be….
This applies to certain famous skeptics as well. At some point, they become so fixated on the trappings of “logic” that they stop being rational people and become rationalizing people. In 2006 Sam Harris wrote a horrible essay in which he suggested – among other idiocies – that liberals need to listen to “sensible” European fascists about the dangers of Muslims. When called on this statement, his defense included something like, “I never intended to ally with fascists, I merely thought their ideas deserved more attention”. Of course he was bullshitting – his neoconservative politics were always cryptofascist – but still he was also showing a strange disconnect between the world of ideas and the real world. People don’t read geopolitics for thought experiments, they’re looking for analyses. To say “I only thought these ideas were interesting” is a cop-out.
I’d say and your comment does up to this sentence, that logic and surfeit of emotion is more the problem.
A screen pop-up on MSNBC read that 30% of Gaza victims are children while I was thinking of a comment. Now there is an asshole talking head blaming the whole conflict on Hamas.
Yes, well, short-term catharsis provided by shredding children is obscene and monstrous.
Clarification. I’m not going after a particular news agency. It just happens to be the one I’m watching after reading this horribly depressing post.
@25
Yes.
war crimes have an actual definition, you know.
you might want to look up how the UN defines the term before you post again.
you can indeed engage in war without committing war crimes as defined therein.
logic is not something you play with in ignorance. now run along.
@barbaz – 31 July 2014 at 8:04 am (UTC -5)
Your statement is naive. The Israeli masscre of the Gazans is part of a clear settler-colonialist strategic logic. This massacre is only the more noticeable portion of that stategy:
It’s unclear whether this settler-colonial strategy will succeed. But it is pure naivete to claim that massacres lack logic. On the contrary they’re expressions of a developed strategy. And the USA is a partner in this strategy.
I said:
So, either you can’t read or choose not to read. Run along.
Brian E.
I’m saying, I don’t think we’re dealing with rational actors who have coldly and logically concluded that killing thousands of Palestinians makes Israel safer in the long run. We’re dealing with hate and a lack of empathy brought on by suffering atrocities. [Israelis/Palestinians] want to kill [Palestinians/Israelis] because [Palestinians/Israelis] killed [Israelis/Palestinians].
Qwints, I think we agree. I’m saing that when you hate / lack empathy with someone, then logically you’ll act in ways that acheive your aims that don’t include empathy and do include your hate.
Unless ways that include lack of hate/ more empathy achieve your aims in some better way that overrides your hate….
@28, Ichthyic
Of course it is. Logic is far older than scientific method.
Oh bugger off, will you?
@31, qwints
Yes we are, it’s just not the Palestinian nor Israeli general public who are them — it’s the Hamas and Israel politicians who are. And they didn’t “coldly and logically conclude” that killing is a way to make Israel safer, they coldly and logically concluded that it’s the way to keep the people supporting them for a little bit longer.
PZ, you didn’t see the photo yourself and apparently didn’t verify that if it exists, it’s genuine. This is a PR war. Are you letting yourself be manipulated?
you equated neutralizing an enemy with war crimes.
my analysis of your statement was dead on.
idiot.
strawman sez what?
You know what this reminds me of?
This
19 years ago, the terrorists used “artisanal” bombs instead: gas canisters filled with bolts and nuts, but both the principle (use the force of the explosion to throw tiny objects and shred the passerby) and the justification (collective punishment after an assassination) were the same.
This is not, as someone already said “uncaring logic”: what we see here are “highly educated teams of engineers and executives and politicians” reasoning like fundamentalistic loons: enthralling themselves to their retaliatory bloodlust and devising elaborate rhetorical arabesques to justify themselves, using wit as an ersatz for intelligence and morality. The Hitchens School of Thought -that is: murderous passions masquerading as high-minded philosophical principles- in all its disgusting glory.
I’m sorry that you don’t understand that an enemy can be neutralized by committing a war crime, and dropping a flechete bomb is committing a war crime and it neutralized enemies, even if they were kids.
But your lack of understanding does not make me an idiot. Are you talking to a mirror?
that might be a part of it… but how would you know?
you don’t.
settlers dumping human excrement on Palestinian homes. that part of the political process you think?
no matter how much you want to, you will not be able to reach a reasoned conclusion about why things are happening over there, and you probably wouldn’t be able to even if you were there.
what you seem to fail to understand is that you can neutralize enemies without comitting war crimes as well.
hence why the term “war crime” was even invented.
are you actually starting to understand my objection to your statement now? or are you going to pretend you haven’t got a clue?
Sadly, logic is at work on both sides. Why would Hamas continue the rocket attacks, knowing they will bring down awful retaliation?
From:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2014/07/14/short-observations-2/
Logic has nothing to do with right and wrong. It has to do with valid and invalid arguments. Valid arguments can be morally wrong.
Also, it’s been well-established by cognitive psychology that emotion plays a major part in what the man in the street thinks of as “logical reasoning”. The reason/emotion dichotomy is a false one.
But none of that is here or there. What we are talking about is politics.
^^ the last Gaza occupation, this worked and Hamas got the support of several Arab nations to put pressure on the US to make Isreal back off.
not happening this time. The silence from the other Arab countries is rather deafening.
nobody likes Hamas (except Iran) any more. there is even a movement in Egypt requesting the government work WITH the Israelis to help finish off Hamas. The Saudis haven’t made a peep.
things are very different this time around. I do believe the Israelis are going to pretty much get whatever they want.
er, that last was directed at 42.
@37, Ichtnyic
Strawman (that would explain a lot) sea that logic is not something to played with in ignorance. There is nothing about logic that requires being actually informed, and logic without grounding in reality can be used quite efficiently to manipulate people. And, as an aside, abstract logically consistent models can be quite fun by themselves.
@40
You can see quite a few interviews with them, and you have to be really trusting if you think that all those IDF spokesmen actually believe shelling a school is an efficient way of defusing Hamas. Or that that other Hamas spokesman actually believes a rocket intercepted by the Iron Dome will one day destroy Israel. Those people actually do have access to all the information they need in this regard, and both seem to be quite a bit less distraught than the people from the streets. So no, I don’t buy the argument that they’re being so highly emotional.
@41
We’re not in the Hague right now, so quit pretending we are. It’s perfectly fine for us to use the expression in a wider sense. But if you really, really can’t deal with it, then I encourage you to get a browser extension that will replace “war crimes” with “atrocities”.
@3 rq – yup, but they’re “precision guided” flachette bombs, doncha know….
it seems that many of these arguments are “think of the children”. I find it suspect as an argument because a child is no more important than any other human being.
are there just wars and injust wars? is it okay to kill human of a certain age and not others?
When an Israeli settler pulls the the trigger of gun (or votes for an extreme settler party, which is the efficient cause of Israeli military excesses) or a Hamas suicide bomber pushes the button, they’re not making anything remotely resembling a rational decision. They are working from presuppositions that are clearly at odds with reality, most often the notion that “complete” victory in the form of ethnically cleansing their enemy is possible.
laurentweppe #38:
Flechette bombs are just the polished-up and marketed version of wrapping a pipe bomb with nails. Hundreds of tiny, high-speed, tumbling projectiles to inflict wounds on as many people as possible in a crowded area… the more crowded together they are, the more damage. The single pipe bomb in 1996 killed one person directly, but wounded over a hundred others. (Note from another link… the pipe bomber phoned in a 30-minute warning, too. It wasn’t out of compassion.)
Source
…where ‘vegetation’ is 30% children. *puking noises*
Not to take away from the main point of the linked letter, but flechettes probably are not that new for Israel. Their supreme court upheld their legality in 2002 (translation: we’ll use whatever the hell we want because we say it’s legal), and the US used them in “beehive” artillery and tank rounds on the Vietnamese in the 1960s.
I didn’t think they were still being fired from tanks (Israel started phasing them out in 2010), but apparently they are, even if they aren’t the most precise weapon available. That article describes them working by exploding in the air and blasting down over a large area, which could easily end up killing a lot more than the “legitimate military targets” (IDF’s term) for which they are intended.
—
@hexidecima #48:
A dead four year old makes a much more compelling case that civilians are being killed than the refrain that Israel is using “restraint” and only targeting Hamas. Still, we should be just as angry that the child was killed at all, not that it was done with a particular weapon (similar to how there was talk that killing Syrians with chemical weapons was somehow more unjust than with conventional weapons).
The reason I’m focusing on the children in this is because I find it difficult to believe anyone honestly thinks that four kids playing footy on a beach were engaged in rocket attacks against Israel, or that a school full of women and children refugees was such a threat that it needed to be bombed before they could get out.
Each death is equally a tragedy, and each one is horrific, stupid, and obscene.
But since the apologists keep insisting Israel is only targeting ‘militants’ and ‘terrorists’ (translation: soldiers from a land without a government), it feels important to point out that this requires believing that four kids with a football were really a rocketeering team in disguise. It beggars imagination to think that this is realistic; thus, it makes the point under consideration, which is “Israel’s not being honest about what they’re actually doing on the ground here”.
It is a reaction to the problem of proving a negative: it is difficult to prove that a given adult is not a ‘terrorist’. It is much less difficult to conclude that an eight-year-old is not a ‘terrorist’.
Hexidecima @ 48
Well, a child of that age is almost certainly not involved in the conflict, and has no power to influence it. Killing civilians in general is pretty despicable, but governments will try to excuse it by saying they could have been combatants or allies. A four year old is a victim, period.
@Brian E, #39:
Permit me to engage in a bit of logic for a moment, perhaps it will be helpful.
1. Enemies are those actively opposed to one (P)
…Enemy => Active Opposition
2. Active opposition requires the power to threaten one’s safety or goals (P)
…~Power => ~Active Opposition
3. 4-year olds, individually or collectively, do not have any significant power or education compared to any national government (P)
…(4-years old AND comparison is to national government) => ~Power
4. Israel is a nation with a government (P)
5. Active opposition to Israel is defined as active opposition to its government’s efforts or policies, including efforts or policies to enforce borders and keep its people safe (P)
6. One not in Active Opposition is not an enemy (P1)
…~Active Opposition => ~enemy
7. If one is 4 years old, one is not in active opposition to any nation-state. (P2 & P3)
…(4-years old AND comparison is to national government) => ~Power => ~Active Opposition
8. If one is 4 years old, one is not in active opposition to Israel (7 & P4)
…(4-years old AND comparison is to national government) = (4-years old AND comparison is to Israel) =>~Active Opposition
9. No 4 year old is an enemy of Israel (8 & P1)
…(4-years old AND comparison is to Israel) =>~Active Opposition => ~Enemy
Therefore
10. Brian E’s contributions to this thread are nauseatingly evil, and precisely the stain upon human morality which this thread was created to decry.
@chimera #35
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/07/09/these-are-the-names-of-13-children-killed-in-gaza/
You couldn’t possibly have googled that yourself, right?
…and bonus dehumanization points for claiming that a real war, in which real people are killed by real bombs is a PR competition.
originalantigenicsin #55
In parallel, it is. Both sides are waging a social-media propaganda battle.
Chimera’s scepticism was lazy, but not completely unfounded.
There is a relentless logic to war that feeds back on itself. It is a tremendously costly enterprise, so once one proceeds down that path, there is a reluctance to quit until one has made gains commensurate with the costs sunk. And as the costs sunk mount, the demands one makes in return for peace climb as well. The decision makers on each side seek to increase the costs to one’s enemy and minimize the costs to themselves, albeit not always on their people and soldiers.
This is the logic that brought death tolls in the hundreds of thousands in an afternoon a century ago. It is the logic that gave us poison gas, landmines, and finds a near apotheosis in nuclear weapons. Israel cannot stop until Netanyahu can say with a straight face that they won. Hamas has no incentive to quit because civilian casualties on their side are the most potent weapon they have in their PR war. We haven’t even seen the end of the beginning yet.
In post 22 atheist writes: “In 2006 Sam Harris wrote a horrible essay in which he suggested – among other idiocies – that liberals need to listen to “sensible” European fascists about the dangers of Muslims.”
A little context is in order. Harris wrote the following:
“The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists.
To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization.”
There is nothing horrible about what Harris wrote. Sam had it spot on.
#55 and #56 Daz and Original
Right, it’s ALSO a PR war, that was not a reduction on my part.
And, comment wasn’t lazy. Couldn’t find the pic on line. Only reference to it so far is the Eno one. It may turn up later. We’ll see.
None of which does anything to address the legitimacy, usefulness and wisdom of reasoning based on shocking photos.
Hamas has fallen out with Iran over the Syrian civil war: Hamas sides with the Islamist (but anti-ISIS) faction of the rebels. They lost the support of Egypt with the (Saudi and American backed) military coup. The most powerful government supporting them is that of Qatar.
Crip Dyke, you might want to go back and reread Brian E.’s posts. I don’t think he’s trying to justify killing 4 year old children in any way other than as an exercise (perhaps wrongly) in attempting to use logic to show the Israeli Government’s mindset.
I’m not sure the Israeli Government is intentionally trying to kill children and could justify it in the way that Brian E. has tried to show, but they are making it difficult not to see it as intentional.
… And to think a hundred years ago they started the war to end all wars.
Guess it never really ended.
Logic and emotions are not independent entities.
That being said, I can wholeheartedly agree that we want the emotionally driven empathy and sympathy for oppressed people, slaughtered children, and more to be part of what drives our choices and conclusions in this situation. Israel can defend itself all it wants, until it’s strategies make it more dangerous and functionally equivalent to terrorism and terrorists itself.
@Thomathy, #61, and Brian E generally:
I’m not going to right now, I’ve been posting a little this morning, but very distracted by kids and we’re leaving the house in about 15 min.
But I’ll just stick this apology to Brian E here and assume Thomathy is correct that Brian E is actually denouncing the same kind of thinking I find sickening.
I’m sorry, Brian E.
chimera #59
Your objection is to the lack of evidence that one particular picture exists, to verify one incident out of a whole slew which are verified? You can’t extend PZ’s point about “this beautiful, intricate weapon” to cover a rifle, a missile? Really?
Here’s another link for you. Enjoy.
Extreme Islamists have carried out a handful of terrorist attacks in Europe killing a few hundred people – far fewer than those who died in the republican/loyalist violence in northern Ireland, let alone the disintegration of Yugoslavia. They have zero political or economic power. The “threat” to Europe from extreme Islamism is almost entirely a racist bogey, which Harris goes along with because he’s a racist. Compared to the threat of economic meltdown due to financial irresponsibility and failed right-wing policies, the growth of fascism in much of Europe, or that of growing antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria, let alone that of anthropogenic climate change, it is utterly trivial.
You’re evidently a racist and an apologist for fascism, just like Harris.
Well it’s better than “reasoning” based on facile excuses for slaughtering civilians.
thomaspaine @58:
Bullshit.
Fuck Sam Harris.
thomaspaine
Thomas Paine is rolling over in his grave.
Funny thing is, that definition, or at least if certain actions fit the definition, is always determined by the winner of the war or the most powerful side if it’s still going on… or whichever side is talking or controls the government you happen to be living under.
Notice how winners never try themselves for war crimes…
Me, I’m one of those people who doesn’t trust authority. Especially at-the-point-of-a-gun authority.
I have my own definition of war crimes.
It’s longer.
@68 Rob: Thank you. Harris could not be more clueless about class and wealth and the power structure of Western European nation states. France kills thousands of Libyans in airstrikes the same week that a printing press at Charlie Hebdo is disabled — who’s threatening whom again??? To say that the disenfranchised and oppressed urban poor of France are unhappy would be a very fair thing to say. Whereas, last I checked, Kwazy Mooslims hadn’t destroyed French society, per Harris’s daily predictions.
Also, to commenters on both sides of the issue, is there any chance we could dispense with this notion of “civilized” warfare? What sort of killing is sufficiently civilized for you? Handing out oxycontin overdoses to the enemy? When was the last civilized battle? Marathon? Salamis? David v. Goliath?
Another reason I reject the “that’s not a war crime” bullshit. Beside the fact that nations commonly execute opponents in wars for “war crimes” and then engage in the same thing and call it legitimate 9waterboarding, anyone?) there’s the simple fact that war is a breakdown of civil society.
Civil society being the thing that defines “illegal” and “legal” and “crime”
So you are left with a choice in that absence of civilization… saying that nothing is a crime, or saying that the war itself is a crime. That abandoning civilization and settling for brute force is crime.
I prefer the latter definition.
“War is cruelty. You cannot refine it…”–William T. Sherman
The Israeli perspective:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/07/israeli-politician-declares-war-on-the-palestinian-people.html
The Palestinian perspective:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/31/its-raining-bombs-and-shells/
Seems like things are going perfectly by plan for Israel.
All that blood, death, and suffering was done with US made bombs paid for with US taxpayer dollars. While congress can’t do a damn thing to help Americans, they fall over themselves to quickly give Israel more weapons paid for by our taxes:
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/americas/12837-us-congress-approves-351m-in-aid-to-israels-iron-dome
Imagine what we could have done to make America better over the last seventy years if we spent the hundreds of billions on our infrastructure and people instead of on Israel:
http://www.wrmea.org/wrmea-archives/494-congress-a-us-aid-to-israel/9748-u-s-financial-aid-to-israel-figures-facts-and-impact.html
Logic is a tool. It can take you a lot of different places, depending on your goal, starting point, and underlying assumptions. For example, if you start with the assumption that your enemy is completely evil and incapable of living in peace with you under any circumstances then genocide is the logical thing to do. If you start with the assumption that your enemy is a human like yourself and capable of living with you in peace then logic leads you to ask questions like, “How has this been achieved elsewhere?” “What can I do to encourage my enemy to think this same way and work with me?” There are models of two populations who have been enemies for a long time coming to a mutually beneficial peace, if not perfect harmony. As I understand it, if you want to get to that point it is critical that you humanize yourself as much as possible to your enemy. Talk to them. Don’t “defend” yourself with aggressive violence (your violence justifies their violence). Don’t insist that you have the right to continue the war because you’re the more sinned against EVEN IF IT’S TRUE. Value peace over the “fairness” of having the opportunity to commit as many atrocities as the other guy. I expect I’m not the first person to suggest this idea with respect to the Palestine/Israel conflict. But I don’t think it’s ever been seriously tried by either side. The politicians have too much to gain by continuing the conflict and the international superpowers have absolutely nothing to gain from peace and solidarity in the region (imagine how hard it would be for the US to exploit the region for oil if Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran made common cause with each other and negotiated as a bloc, for example.) The best outsiders can do is to stop making things worse. The best Israelis can do is to stop insisting that aggressive attacks on random points in the West Bank is the only possible response to terrorism. I don’t even know what advice to give the Palestinians. Would stopping all attacks even help them? Or just make it easier for the settlers to roll over them? Maybe the best they can do is be there and be real people and not straw terrorists to the Israelis. And maybe I’m just confused about this whole thing.
Ever read the Old Testament?
The whole thing is an ode to genocide and dehumanizing everyone outside the tribe.
I don’t know why anyone would think a state specifically founded as a ‘Jewish State’ would behave any differently.
Some. I’ll admit that I skipped around. Couldn’t stomach the whole thing. Nonetheless, there are bits in the Old Testament that would justify an actual pacifist society. These are not the bits that Israel appears to be following.
Oh, I don’t know, maybe because they’re people like everyone else and as apt to follow only the bits of their religion that they like as anyone else. And, as I said earlier, they could choose a pacifistic or truly defensive position. Judaism is no worse than any other religion and claiming it is has worked out…poorly…in the past.
I remember reading somewhere (sorry-don’t have link or reference at the moment, but can look up if anyone’s interested) that during an attack women were turned away from a bomb shelter in Israel because it was a “men only” space. That suggests to me that Israel is becoming more fundamentalist over time, possibly as a response to the conflict and the polarization that results from it. In short, this war is doing Israel no good either and it benefits no one but the very wealthy in the US and Europe and maybe certain Israeli politicians.
The Plebs are outbreeding Us! The Plebs are outbreeding Us! The Plebs are outbreeding Us! Soon they’ll be too numerous and too strong to allow us to treat them like shit anymore! The end is niiiiiiiigh!
This kind of bullshit has been spewed by aristocrats since the days of Ancient Sumer.
hmm, I don’t like this rallying against “logic” stuff. Of course it’s described as “cold logic”. But the problem with “cold logic” isn’t the logic, it’s the facts/premises that are put into it. It’s just a form of “garbage in, garbage out”. (I think?) And also the arrogance and foolishness of thinking that validity is all that matters, and ignoring soundness (with appropriate measures of doubt, and the implications of such uncertainty).
No, it’s not. Not even close.
Peace and compassion are not illogical. They are distinctly logical, and their supporting moral calculus is distinctly sound and valid.
Maybe “not caring about soundness” is what is meant by “pure logic”?
155mm flechette artillery rounds: Made in USA
155mm Paladin M-109 self-propelled gun: Made in USA
M-119 Armored personnel carrier: Made in USA
F-16 fighting Falcom: Made in USA
Arms Export Control act of 1976 says US cannot export arms if they:
“would contribute to an arms race, aid in the development of weapons of mass destruction, support international terrorism, increase the possibility of outbreak or escalation of conflict, or prejudice the development of bilateral or multilateral arms control or nonproliferation agreements or other arrangements.”
Congress authorizes giving Israel another $200+million in ammunition and components for Iron Dome. Now they are asking for artillery rounds for those 155s. Bet they’ll get ’em.
Rule of law, how does it fucking work?
Laws are only for the Plebs, not for the special people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symington_Amendment
@atheist #29,
I never said that Israel used no logic at all. They decided that they want to keep Palestine as weak as possible by any means necessary, and then used logic to find the most effective strategy. The part where they went wrong was not the one where they started applying logic.
Everyone’s ready to accept that pure logic can’t lead to good things. Is it really that hard to imagine that pure logic wouldn’t lead to bad stuff either? By putting the blame on logic, you move it away from where it actually belongs. The ones making these decisions are not cold, neutral computers. They are actual persons with a dehumanizing agenda who are (even if not held) responsible for their own actions.
Seriously, people fighting for land they belief was promised to them by an invisible man in the sky and you tell me there’s too much logic involved…
@ #84 barbaz
“Manifest Destiny” is not a new idea, and the government of Israel didn’t invent it.
In any modern war, people of all ages will be killed. The phrase “people of all ages” includes people of young age. People of young age are often referred to as ‘children.’
The above is especially true when combatants merge with the (allegedly) non-combatant population and when missile launchers and munitions stores are hidden in (allegedly) ‘civilian’ structures.
It is also true that, even in modern war, neither the aim nor the judgment of individual combatants is always without error.
Poo-poo occurs.
That’s the way it is today, July 31, 2014.
It won’t be any different tomorrow.
From Wikipedia under ‘Carpet Bombing’
I’m still interested in a practical plan for solving the conflict permanently on all levels.
Dianne is the only one who has even tried. Perhaps we could build upon that.
So…your argument is “this can’t be a war crime because the victors didn’t prosecute themselves for this other similar war crime, checkmate you Taqqiyah-loving pretend-atheists!”
Or…maybe it is a fact that many of us DO think that the incinerations of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear bombs on Japan, and the Blitz on London, among many other things in that horrific war, were also war crimes? And your point falls flat on its stupid face?
Obvious troll is obvious.
A_ ray @ 57 demonstrates the “logic of war” and if war is the strategy and the process you see yourself in it leads to flechette bombs and carpet bombing, torture and total annihilation of the enemy
it is nothing less than failure written in blood and a tragedy for all involved.
of the corrosive ideas humans have come up with the heroic warrior along with the “just war” are among the worst
These monuments to the noble dead of war we construct these days seldom show the piles of enemy dead that signify victory
The enemy is an idea an abstract not human beings that are indistinguishable from each other when piled in the heaps of the dead.
uncle frogy
Screw the rules, I have a nuke
jenny6833a #88
I can’t. I can say that forcing Israel to treat Palestinians like human beings with human rights would be a bloody good start, however.
Given your scorn for us “handwringers,” I assume that, the practical person, has such a plan, yes? Care to share? Or are you just busy handwringing at our handwringing?
A one-state, secular democracy with a truth and reconciliation committee like South Africa.
Israel would never agree to this of course and could very well nuke western cities if they ever felt like they were on the virge of losing their racist state to the tides of democracy (the Sampson Option).
It would not surprise me to learn that jenny6833a literally believes (as is not-subtly demonstrated by the use of ‘alleged’ to modify ‘non-combatants at #86) that children can reasonably be considered combatants in this war.
_____
jenny6833a, why do you think any of us should offer a solution? I have no solution. I’m not sure there is one. Certainly not one that is tenable and won’t result in further death; something which I wouldn’t consider a solution at all, in fact.
There already is a solution to the problem, and Israel is busy implementing it.
Gaza will be uninhabitable in about a decade–it is already on the verge of catastrophe.
Within a few more decades the Jewish settlers will have colonized a majority of the West Bank, at which point the Palestinians will be unable to sustain an organized society. The Palestinians will probably launch a hopeless campaign against Israel, at which point the heavily armed settlers will commit a little constructive genocide.
By 2050 or so all but a few Palestinians will have died or fled elsewhere and Israel will driven out all the Arabs in Israel and the West Bank (including Israel Arabs, who are experiencing increased oppression even now).
And all Israel needs to do to achieve this is to keep the pressure on the Palestinians so that the latter can’t build an effective state. No one is going to stop them, because no one cares enough to challenge the nuclear armed Israel–the other Arab states don’t even like the Palestinians.
So, yes, there is a plan, an eminently logical plan, that Israel has been implementing for quite some time.
Thank you, Daz (#92). You beat me to it.
May I just add, however, that to be a practical plan it has to be acceptable to the Israeli and Palestinian governments. To be acceptable to those governments, it must be palatable to the peoples. Palatability is created in part by how the plan is presented. Therefore a plan that would work if accepted is not the same thing as a plan that will work.
I look forward to Jenny6833a’s comprehensive and practical plan for permanently solving this crisis, including which personalities will make the best advocates for which parts of the plan in which communities, what any pro-peace media should say and what images should be used, and exactly when this should be rolled out, taking into account how the seasons and the various religious calendars affect opportunities for messaging.
Come on, Jenny6833a. This shouldn’t be that hard. One could add one’s voice to the movement opposed to killing children and creating social and political pressure to move towards peace, but that would be easy.
What is your practical plan, including your plan for making your plan practical?
If you could use the English language to explain your choices of Arabic and Hebrew promotional phrases, that would also help.
@78 dianne
@everyone wondering about the bomb shelter remark
was it at No shelter for you [butterfliesandwheels] or the original Israel’s ‘Men’s Only’ Bomb Shelters [http://blogs.forward.com/sisterhood-blog/]
@93
Christopher
Yikes, really? They would?
Can anyone fill me in if this is plausible or not?
Crip Dyke,
You’re beating on Jenny6833a just because she isn’t a regular. Stop it.
brianpansky, umm …try using that search engine thing and typing in ‘Sampson Option’ …maybe.
chimera #99
Could you teach me your magical mind-reading powers please?
On second thought, don’t. They’re faulty. Jenny is full of shit. That’s why they’re getting called out.
@96
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden
This is silly, CD. We normally don’t expect people to discuss politics at such a level of detail.
But then again maybe you are trying to make a point in a round about way that still works somehow even given the absurdity I noted…
jenny6833a is a semi-regular.
With a one-note range.
One would hope wiser minds would prevail, but they have the means (dolphin class subs with nuclear missiles)
But Israel has a history of putting non-wise minds in charge of things and someone like this could wind up in charge of the button:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
@100
Thomathy, Such A ‘Mo
Ah, it’s an actual term that is used. I thought it had been invented here on the spot.
I’m with you, PZ, on a greater need for appreciation of human life.
Military actions these days are so impersonal, you press a button to fire a missile, confirm that it hit it’s target and move on. You don’t have to stand amongst the dead, wounded, grieving families left in the wake of that bomb. It is important that stories like this one bring the horrors of war to light.
War is and always has been the absolute worst way to settle disputes, it is the grown up equivalent of a childhood fight over the ownership of a toy. Children learn that they cannot use violence to get what they want, and instead should look to resolve conflicts in peaceful ways (Sharing, conceding, convincing other site to give in with discussion, negotiation, etc..).
However, it seems that as adults, if given too much power, it becomes all too easy to use this power to force our will on others.
In other cases, as adults, we are so blinded by hatred for another group of people that we de-humanize them in our minds when deciding whether or not it is OK to use violence.
Irrational (illogical) concepts such as Religious dogma, Martyrdom, honor, revenge, and greed have all permitted the conflict over Palestine to continue in an endless cycle of horrors.
I certainly think everyone involved needs a greater value for human life, but not at the expense of logic. Rather the two combined, will lead to humane and logical decision making. When you value human life above all else, preserving it becomes the logical choice.
Some of those with a plan might be afraid of witch-hunts
A comprehensive solution to this conflict which results in lasting peace will be something that will occur only when the people of Israel and Palestine decide to make it happen. The best the rest of us can do is to try to stay out of the way and not make things worse. Peace and harmony are almost impossible to impose from the outside.
The history of South Africa contradicts this assertion.
Israel needs to become a pariah state under full sanctions from everyone, Uncle Sugar included, or they will continue their slo-mo genocide until they have succeded in their final solution.
I seriously doubt the Samson doctrine will be ever be implemented outside the feverish genocidal dreams of a few fascist pseudo-intellectuals: even if they’ll never admit it in public, the israeli bourgeoisie, like every colonial elite before them, regards western countries as the homeland where they will move back when the levantine party is over. Destroying its safe haven or enraging it’s denizens is simply not an option for the israeli upper-class, even for the sociopaths in their midst.
How so? It seems to me that South Africa’s reformation was the work of South Africans. The international community might have helped–or, perhaps more to the point, ceased to harm–by imposing sanctions, but the actual work was done by South Africans.
The only reason South Africans ever bothered to do the work was because it became economically infeasible to continue on as an apartheid state.
As always, follow the money.
Starve Israel of money and the rich bastards in charge will force change faster than you think is possible. Or they’ll randomly nuke the world. I’m hoping greed is a greater motivator than spite.
Either way, there is no chance that Israel will change course unless forced to and I find economic warfare preferable to carpet bombing Tel Aviv.
Crip Dyke was making a point.
PZ’s observation about logic is a bit simplistic, but I don’t really feel like debating that. It seems too cold, in the face of tragedy that brought that whole discussion on.
I don’t feel like there is anything I can do, except express my sorrow and horror at the attrocities committed against people in Gaza.
If you have a charter like Hamas has it is a metaphorical mirical that Hamas has lasted as long as it has. The destruction of Israeli is their foundational belief. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant.
Now has Israel done some irresponsible things, yes they have, do they border on war crimes, probably do. But how many times has Israel drawn first blood(yes, yes i know about the Lebanon debuckle)? Israel uses it’s foreign aid to build up it’s infrastructure and has developed non-offensive weapons i.e. the Iron Done, while Hamas uses it’s foreign aid to build tunnels into Israeli terrorist to attack and murder Israeli citizens and soldiers, and to buy weapons to attack Israel. Yes, i know both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are blockaded and have been for a while, but why? That’s what you get when you elect a terrorist organization to be the primary political party of your people.
#108 Dianne says
That’s true, Dianne. The problem is, it takes ALL the people — every one. One hothead from either side could and would set it all off again.
IMO, FWIW, I think the Israeli government could and would control its own. There’s no hope of that on the Palestinian side as long as Hamas rules the roost. For that reason, I find it difficult to condemn Israel for trying to wipe out Hamas.
(I certainly don’t condemn the USA for trying to wipe out Al Quada (Sp?), although I don’t like some of the methods we’ve used.)
Israel isn’t blameless in all of this, and some of its actions and methods are as bad or worse than what we’ve done. But as long as the total destruction of Israel remains the stated goal of the majority of the opposition, I see no hope of the mutual resolve for peace that your approach requires.
Israel created Hamas in order to fuck over the PLO
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123275572295011847
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/ZER403A.html
Blowback in action.
Iron Dome is an offensive weapon just like Regan’s star wars wet dream is/was. Having the ability to murder at will and prevent any sort of retaliation is the ultimate offensive weapon. I’m sure Hamas would love to have their own Iron Dome to prevent Israel from murdering them, but then I’m sure you’d spin that as Hamas spending money on weapons to murder Jews.
Second, Israel uses its foreign aid to build up its offensive capability above and beyond Iron Dome. All those cluster bombs killing children were made in the US and paid for by US taxpayers.
Third, Hamas is the only organization working to better the lives of Palestinians: they run the civilian infrastructure from schools to power plants to hospitals. They don’t spend every penny on their defense budget. And that is why people voted for them.
So carpet bombing Tel Aviv is OK then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun
Is it? It’s my understanding that the Hamas covenant doesn’t represent current Hamas policy any more than the 3/5 rule in the Constitution represents current US policy.
I’m not at all fond of al Qaeda and personally wish that we could have dropped bin Laden into an Islamic predominant section of NYC and let his fellow Muslims decide whether they were grateful to him or not, but I don’t just “not like” some of the methods that the US has used. I outright CONDEMN some of the methods the US has used. I see little to chose from, morally, between al Qaeda’s use of airplanes to attack buildings and the US’s use of waterboarding of anyone they think might, possibly, perhaps, be just a little likely to be a terrorist or the US’s invasion of a country that had nothing to do with al Qaeda (and, in fact, considered al Qaeda an enemy), etc. IMHO, if you can’t condemn your own side’s atrocities, you’ve already lost. And the thing that gives me the greatest hope that there will eventually be a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict is that some of the harshest criticism of Israel that I’ve heard has been from Israelis.
Actually I would say empiricism is needed here.
Israel has repeatedly claimed that it is fighting for its right to exist right?
For just under 70 years it has used these same tactics repeatedly.
And what has been achieved through all the bloodshed? Is there peace? Has Israel right to exist been accepted within the region?
No, there is just another set of war-crimes.
And I mean if all existing means is that Israel continues to bomb schools, hospitals and people going the beach, should that country have the right to exist?
#94 Tomathy remarks
In my view, children who are not actively engaged in the war effort don’t qualify as combattants. As far as I can tell, thats’s also the Israeli view.
However, the Hamas view appears to be that children are combattants in the sense of being PR pawns. The more kids that are killed or maimed, the more Hamas can scream. And the more Hamas can scream, the more anti-Israel converts they get — as this thread so clearly shows.
If Hamas wanted to protect children, they’d round up the children and put them in a well-defined area with no missile launchers and no munitions stashes. They’d publicize the location of the area and give Israel the gps coordinates.
Hamas could also do that with every person of every age that Hamas regards as a non-combattant.
But then, of course, Hamas would lose its major goal and selling point. Hamas wants kids to die, bereaved mothers to weep, PZ to post angry stuff, and so on.
That’s how they think they’ll win.
Economic sanctions is the least-bad avenue I can see so far; it helped against the Apartheid régime in South Africa. I don’t know whether Israeli peace campaigners themselves have called for sanctions?
The problem with most peace plans is that they fail to take into account the fact that Israel is winning. They don’t have to make peace, all they have to do is slowly strangle and starve the Palestinians out of existence.
For a peace process to have any chance at success, the Israeli right-wing must be put in a position where they will lose if they don’t agree to peace. But I’m not sure what that would look like.
Some people have suggested sanctions. The problem with sanctions is that it is quite possible that the Israel hardliners would take that as a green light to wipe out the Palestinians.
Think the Israelis wouldn’t commit genocide? Bullshit. They already are committing genocide, albeit as a decades long project.
I don’t have any suggestions, because I can’t see a way out of this that doesn’t require the deaths of a lot of Palestinians and / or Israelis.
Yeah right.
http://www.imemc.org/article/58197
http://www.dailysabah.com/mideast/2014/07/31/idf-sniper-admits-to-murdering-13-gazan-children-on-instagram
Christopher #122:
Do you regard the actions of Lt Calley as defining US policy? If not, apply the ame reasoning to your sniper pic.
jenny numbers
So they indiscriminately bomb women and children….why?
lolwut?
PR pawn =/= combatant.
So, Hamas is evil because they are letting Israel kill their kids? And Israel is blameless, because the kids they kill are getting Hamas good PR or something?
Jesus fuck, your moral compass is beyond repair, isn’t it?
If Hamas wanted to protect children, they would store all their children in one location, without military defenses, and then tell the people that are bombing them where that location is?
No, I’m sorry. The onus is not on Hamas to make sure that Israel isn’t killing their children as “collateral damage”. Fuck you for saying otherwise.
It seems like the apologists for Israel are using an argument very similar to “She was asking for it” to excuse the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Ridiculously similar.
anteprepro @125,
Pretty much. Or the similar “stop making me hit you” routine. The hypocrisy is a bit much.
But it’s our modern day values at work. In the old days colonial powers could annihilate native populations without even bothering to give a reason. Nowadays, though, the world expects some sort of justification for killing civilians.
jenny6833a #123
They shelled a school.
A refugee camp.
How many of these “unsanctioned” incidents do you need to see, before you spot a pattern?
Expanding from children to civilians in general, read that last link. People were shot whilst picnicking, trying to get to their farms, planting trees. Not by mistake, or in the heat of battle, but in cold blood, whilst in plain view, using deliberately aimed weapons, across a border fence.
I guess you missed the quote earlier from a Member of Parliament saying that women and children should be killed?
Here are some more choice quotes from people in power in Israel:
http://972mag.com/nstt_feeditem/israeli-scholar-only-raping-the-sister-of-a-palestinian-can-deter-him/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.U9qrZNb2Vpg
A slew of quotes:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/palestinians.php
Ug, only made it a third down the page and am too disgusted to continue. Enjoy the reading.
I imagine Israel is no different from the United States in the fact that some elected representatives are batshit crazy.
Should foreigners judge US policy on the statements of Michelle Bachman?
I was making a point.
Jenny6833a was complaining that others were complaining without having a “practical plan”. She thought we should come up with a solution before we critique the status quo.
Which is not only fucked in general – critique always comes before formulating a new plan – but “a permanent peace”? You want me to give practical details of the steps involved in getting there?
There are people who devote their entire lives to that question – many people. It is the height of arrogance to believe that a bunch of people kvetching on a blog can come up with a “practical plan”. When Jenny6833a asked for that, demanded that of the participants here, she was making an entirely unrealistic judgement about what is unreasonable to expect. I just laid out a few reasons why it’s unrealistic to expect and then turned the question back on her: what is her plan?
So, Jenny6833a, please admit that you were being unreasonable in your demand OR provide your plan. It’s that easy.
Christopher #28
“I guess you missed the quote earlier from a Member of Parliament saying that women and children should be killed?”
Do you read Ed Brayton? The number of vicious nutcase quotes from members of our legislatures is equally astounding.
Although your list of quotes is extremely impressive, I’d feel better about your being impartial if you’d included quotes from Arab sources.
Are you perhaps engaged in special pleading?
Pure logic my ass. There is no such thing and never has been. Logic requires premises, and that’s where the trouble arises. Anyone who claims that they’re talking about pure logic just means they’ve never examined their premises, which are usually deeply, deeply faulty.
With any set of premises that includes valuing human life, for instance, the course of logic is never a war of aggression.
Even with a ruthless ‘realpolitik’ view that bleats about things like the ‘National Interest”, this sort of thing still isn’t the course of logic, because ‘victory’ is impossible. Permanent victory can only ever mean genocide; any other ‘victory’ is intrinsically temporary and sows the seeds of the next war, and/or ongoing rebellion*
Genocide, meanwhile, robs the future of a vast wellspring of human capital, which otherwise could have contributed an untold amount to the greater food, of which the national good must be a part. Furthermore, it will inevitably have effects on the society which perpetrates it, and these are typically deleterious in the long run. That, mind is the argument without ethics, and which makes no moral demands, but merely recognizes fact. The only way that these atrocities follow from logic is if your axioms include ‘those people are less than human’ and your ethics are so lacking as to allow that axiom to stand.
Put differently, people who talk about the ‘National Interest’ of whatever nation really mean ‘the desires of the most brutal, grasping, and authoritarian elements of the nation’s government’.
On a tangentially related note, for those who care to whinge about ‘what else is Israel supposed to do’ besides bomb random civilians, and who aren’t on board with the real solution (which, incidentally, is for Israel to make Palestinians full citizens with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereunto, and also pay out some fat reparations from the government coffers), here’s what could be done: float a bunch of aerostat drones about the place to track where rocket launches are coming from. Use telephoto lenses mounted on the same drones to get pictures of who launched them. Track the movements of said people with said drones while a troop of squaddies goes out to intercept them and take them into custody. This is entirely doable with existing technology, there’s really no excuse for not doing it, unless of course you’re an evil sod who actually wants more dead people around the place, which describes an unfortunately large part of the Israeli government.
* and this is why I don’t usually bother with moral judgement about the behavior of Hamas; of course it’s deplorable to fire rockets into civilian areas, e.g., but it’s also inevitable. A situation like Gaza will produce a violent resistance movement of some type, and there’s no point getting indignant about it. It’s as predictable as a tsunami after an offshore quake, and the only way to avoid it is to not create/perpetuate those types of situations.
guru#5
See above. Logic based on any kind of reasonable premises dictates that Israel lay down arms and start reparations. But, as I said above, logic per se has nothing to do with this bullshit.
thomaspaine
The usual asshole apologetics from the usual tools. The ‘nym is a big tell, btw.
Jafafa Hots#72
Hear, hear. QFT.
chimera#99
Jenny6833a has been pulling this shit in the last several threads about Israel, not to mention making an ass of herself in a few other threads to boot. She’s more than earned the derision and contumely she’s receiving.
I see this kind of thing all the time with regard to Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Ed may catalog those quotes, but take in US media with circulations/listeners/viewerships over 100k and you’ll find that these quotes aren’t publicized in the way that they should, despite the fact that horribly offensive quotes from Palestinians ARE publicized, and, even worse, when this conflict is Israeli/Palestinian, anchors, commentators and other talking heads will bring up quotes from Iranians like Ahmadinejad, as if the fact that someone in London wanting to kill me has something to do with whether British Columbia can make peace with Alberta.
Against this backdrop, we presume some basic fluency with the issues involved. Palestinians making fucked up statements is well known and part of basic fluency with the issues. Because of how media works, it is not particularly difficult to seek out fucked up quotes from Israeli military, political, and religious leadership, but it is not part of basic fluency with the issues – at least in the US where Pharyngula is based.
Adding these comments is useful. It would be special pleading only if you threw in some Israeli comments and were told that those were not relevant.
Let me help:
Has anyone said quotes are not generally admissible in this debate but that Israeli quotes are an exception?
Your attempt to reduce special pleading to
without reference to any jury-rigged rules of admissible evidence.
Merely putting forward the evidence that favors the argument I’m making without spending any time gathering up evidence unrelated or contrary to that point isn’t special pleading. It’s arguing your case.
=============
On a separate issue, some have said that I might be being hard on you because you aren’t “regular” enough. I don’t think that’s true. I believe that your unreasonable argumentative demands and your self-praise for things I find ethically wrong, combined with your condemnation of people, most recently Greta Christina, without knowing a single condemnable thing about that person, is the behavior of a troll. I strongly dislike this behavior and you’ll get no benefit of any doubt from me as long as it continues, even should you post 50 times a day for 10 years.
Jennynumbers, the Israelis just blew up a school where children and their parents were taking refuge. The people had gone there because the Israelis had warned Gaza that they were going to be firing into a neighborhood. The UN made damned sure that Israel knew where the school was, and that it was a refuge—ten times they sent a clear message, with coordinates of the refuge, and information that it was full of children and parents, so the Israrlis could avoid it. The Israelis just blew it up.
Do you regard the actions of Lt Calley as defining US policy?
Calley’s actions were defined by US policy. The US at the time was running the Phoenix Program through the CIA, which was a program of assassinating civilian leadership. Calling artillery in to flatten entire villages was policy. Declaring a village within a free fire zone and napalming it was policy. Flying helicopters over a village and machine-gunning anyone who ran (because they wouldn’t be running if they weren’t VC, right?) was policy. Calley’s actions were generally supported by his chain of command, which is why it took the army so long to do anything. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, “why should we care about one little date rape, when worse rapes happen all the time” oh, excuse me, I meant to say “why should we care about this one village, when we flattened 10 others this month?” It took an angry and concerned person, with photographs, to jump the chain of command and bulldog the issue until someone decided to make an example of Calley. And by “example” I mean a couple years in prison followed by a presidential pardon after the dust cleared. Sound familiar? That’s because that’s US policy. Guess what happened to SSG Bob Bales, the monster who shot 19 Afghan civilians then tried to cover it up? The wheels of military ‘justice’ (AKA US policy) turned slowly and years afterward he was convicted and got something like 5 years with potential time off because he’s been so well-behaved since he shot those 19 people.
There’s entirely too much defending monstrous actions based on the idea that a more monstrous action ought to somehow – what – ? Provide shade in which these things can take place? What Calley did was wrong, for the same reasons that what Himmler did was wrong and the same reasons what Israel is doing is wrong. It’s all wrong. If you kill 1 civilian, or 19, or 1 million, you’re just wrong – full stop.
saying that nothing is a crime, or saying that the war itself is a crime
If war isn’t a crime, what the fuck is??
Please don’t say “murder” – because, see, a war’s just a lot of murdering going on. What’s worse than murder? War. Is there anything worse than a war?
Marcus Ranum
This sounds like a call for the Master of Ranking Things!
Get The Dawk on the phone, stat!
This is a misrepresentation of Oz’s views. He is a novelist and peace activist, he was one of the founders of Peace Now. He did indeed write these words but as the thoughts of a character in one of his books. And what does his birth name have to do with it?
I wonder how genuine or representative the other quotes on the list are.
jenny numbers:
Why do you put it all on Hamas? Why does Israel not have any responsibility for making sure no civilians are killed? After all, it is Israeli weapons that are doing most of the killing.
If Israel really wanted to protect civilians from being collateral damage they could for example:
Not bomb UN buildings that THEY KNOW house refugees.
Not bomb children at the hospital play ground.
Not bomb children playing at the beach.
Not bomb markets.
And yet your preferred solution would be for Hamas to bring all the children/civilians to a building and give Israel the location of said building. Did you read about what happened at the UN school? If not even a UN school is a safe place then what makes you think that building would be?
Nice catch, Chimera.
@barbaz – 31 July 2014 at 12:42 pm (UTC -5)
I don’t mean to blame logic, nor do I think logic always leads to bad things. I just wish folks would not argue that evil actions have no logic, because sometimes they do.
Off-topic a bit, repulsive as their views are, the dismissiveness of altering their ‘nym in this way is kind of disturbing to me. 6833@a is not an outrageously long sequence, and ‘jenny’ would be pretty clear on this thread as referring to a particular poster.
Would it perhaps be better of us to not alter poster’s nyms in ways that appear meant as a contemptuous jibe? Surely their ideas are disgusting enough to provide fuel for reasoned and reasonable mockery, without lowering ourselves to mocking irrelevancies?
Not asking for or suggesting that this be a rule, but suggestimg it for consideration by those who are interested.
I’m using singular ‘they’ here because I don’t know jenny’s gender, and I prefer it as a neutral or non-gendered 3rdpers pronoun.
Sorry for the off-topic, doesn’t need to be a big discussion, really just wanted to introduce the idea.
Please return to your regularly-scheduled sniny clawing of jenny’s repulsive comments. :)
Crap – sorry, on my phone, missed saying that i was referring to ‘jenny numbers’ as the altered nym. Sorry for being unclear.
@thomaspaine – 31 July 2014 at 10:07 am (UTC -5)
If you really think what the West needs is more fascism, then you’re nuts.
Here is the full quote from Harris:
Harris was not praising fascists: he was arguing that liberal confusion and cowardice was empowering them.
@CaitieCat, #142 & Jenny6833a, +, y’know, generally….
I responded to CaitieCat’s 142 over on ThunderDome.
If anyone else is interested in following up, that’s probably the best place for it.
chimera: He was praising fascists. For doing what liberals ostensibly won’t: Hating Islamic fundamentalism hard enough.
He was not stating, at least in the quotation presented, that liberals are empowering the fascists at home, but is lamenting that it is ONLY fascists (supposedly) who are hating on Islamic fundamentalists, and implies that liberals are enabling that. So….yeah.
anteprepro,
Discussions in Europe about “the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants” is not quite the same as “hating on Islamic fundamentalists”. Unless, of course, you would say that most of the participants on this blog are “hating on Christian fundamentalists”. I don’t think it’s about hate.
chimera,
I will grant your 149. It does nothing to change my point that your 146 is a mischaracterization of what was actually quoted. It is, in fact, about the fascists being right and the liberals wrong. The only party Harris shows concern about liberals “enabling” are the Islamic fundamentalists, not the domestic fascists.
@chimera – 31 July 2014 at 6:20 pm (UTC -5)
He was arguing that liberals’ refusal to act like fascists empowers Islamic extremists (an assertion that does not fit the evidence). He was really arguing for neo-conservatism, a warlike foreign policy and a security-obsessed domestic policy (in his case, obsessed with security from Muslim immigrants). He wanted neo-conservatism to be secular and liberal, unlike the more overtly religious US version.
The past decade has shown pretty clearly that a neoconservative foreign policy was and is a horrible idea. The security obsession in the US has decimated the civil rights of Muslims and other minorities, wasted untold millions of dollars, led to a dangerous culture of impunity among law enforcement, and has not achieved its supposed aim of security. Harris’ dream of taking these toxic policies and wrapping them in secular liberalism seems delusional in the US, and maybe only pernicious in Europe. The combination has led to burgeoning Jewish fascism in Israel.
When someone praises the clear worldview of fascists over the confusing beliefs of liberals it is a sign that person does not have patience for tolerance, dialogue, and civil rights. Such a person wants to dispense with such niceties and get rid of the “bad people”. Sam Harris is such a person.
Fascists do not hate fundamentalism. In fact, I daresay that fascists see fundies as convenient scapegoats behind whom they can hide their hate of secular and well integrated Muslims:
The thing is, left to their own device, fundies will lock themselves up in self-inflicted ghettos: it’s the children of the well-integrated immigrants, who had good grades in school and end up with diplomas, self-evident expertise and successful careers and lives who are the fascists real targets: it’s a cliché to say that it’s “fear” that drives people toward fascist parties, but it’s not the fear that most people think about: far-rightists are not afraid to see their Muslim neighbors turning overnight into clones of Mohamed Merah: they are afraid that the janitor’s children will end up being more hardworking, more erudite, and just plain smarter than their own kids: they fear competition, and what the meritocracy-hating european fascists are doing that liberals ostensibly won’t is brandishing secularism as an excuse to justify planning the disenfranchisement of immigrant populations and more generally the installation of social stratification along ethnic lines, so any competition from smart immigrant can be killed in the cradle.
Well Laurentweppe you seem to reduce everything to matters of class. I think class is almost always involved but rarely a sole factor. Above, you make it sound like the people that “fear” is pushing toward fascism or among the haves when the more grave problem is that this “fear” is pushing more have-nots in that direction. There are a lot more have-nots than haves.
atheist @151
Harris was really arguing for neoconservatism? That’s jumping to conclusions. An enormous leap.
@Chimera
Check out neoconservative Norman Podhoretz’s book “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism”. Read some of the language in it. You can see that it’s pretty much the same stuff Harris is on about in that article. Harris’s need for “hard headed” action against “the religious lunatics of the Muslim world” is the same, so is his worry about the corrosive effect of liberal multiculturalism. Like Christopher Hitchens, Harris is clearly allying himself with the neocons.
Or just take his own statement seriously for a moment:
If the only people in 2006 hard headed enough to fight the Muslim lunatics were “religious lunatics of the West”, then clearly he wants the kind of foreign policy done by these Western religious lunatics. In other words, the Neocons.
Considering that Harris is a self-described libertarian, it isn’t a fair reach for him to adopt various neocon views.
Happens when you adopt an evidenceless sloganeering theology as a political/economic view. You tend to have fascist ideals.
You don’t know what logic even is, and that is pretty damn depressing from someone on the pulpit screaming about it.
Care to elaborate, Chris?
Nerd, al Dente,
Harris doesn’t sound very libertarian to me when he talks about it here.
Have-nots? Where?
The european working-class people who vote for fascists parties, like the blue-collars americans who voted and still vote for the scions of the confederacy are not “have-not“: they are “have-very-littles” and it makes a world of difference:
Lots of far-right voters, either because they’re old enough to remember it themselves or because their elders told them, know that 50 years ago virtually all immigrants from Muslim-majority countries living in Europe were constrained to the bottom of the social food-chain. They were the true have-nots.
Nowadays, children and grandchildren of these impoverished migrants are reaching middle-class status and above often enough to become visible.
Far-right working-class voters are those who decided that challenging the privileged’s unearned and excessive hold over earth’s limited resources is not worth the hardships and the risks, and as a consequence see economic competition as zero-sum game for the scraps of wealth that remain. Immigrants are, simply put, unwanted competition
Sure, in reality, discriminations large and small, prejudice, multitudes of inequities are still making it harder for children of immigrants than for children of White working-class people to enjoy social advancement, but this reality is not going to alleviate the anger and resentment felt by working-class far-right voters toward Muslims: if you perceive life a zero-sum competition for limited riches, you’ll perceive every success by members of the underclass as increasing the risks of your own loss of status.
Sure, no far-right politician or activist will ever candidly state that their goal is to rig the competition in favor of whites, but I’ve heard enough spiteful bullshit uttered by far-right voters in day to day interactions to know that they what the competition to be rigged in favor of Whites because they see keeping the children of have-nots down as the only to guarantee that they themselves will preserve their standing as “have-somethings.
@laurentweppe – 31 July 2014 at 9:19 pm (UTC -5)
Very true. Laurent, may I ask in what nation do you reside? I’m in the US, are you in the UK?
Laurentweppe,
All that has occurred to me, is basically what I think too. But and so. The so part is, to what extent then the haute bourgeoisie allows immigration to continue solely and cynically in order to ethnically divide the working class and thus create optimal conditions for the further accumulation of wealth? The but part is, I don’t think you can reduce opposition to immigration/immigrants solely to not wanting competition.
I am increasing sickened and frightened to the core that I brought a child into this world of grim futures on nearly every level. My son is 4. It’s been the most fascinating phase of his little life so far – watching him put together increasingly complex ideas and being able to share those ideas with increasing complex language all wrapped up in a mega dose of blossoming personality, empathy, and love. The children of Earth, OUR children one and all, deserve better than this pile of evil bullshit we are dumping upon their feet.
From Steven Erickson’s Malazan series:
“Children are dying.”
Lull nodded. “That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.”
Caitie
[cynism]Ah, but you see, there’s a non-zero chance that those kids might have grown into militants. And that the women might give birth to more militants. Therefore, nothing in this defies logic. *puke*
dianne
This, this, this.
barbarz
Nobody is putting the blame on logic. People are saying that “logic” isn’t a magic cure-all solution and that the world would be a place in which unicorns shit renewable energy if just everybody behaved logical
Jenny 6833
Well, you can’t make an omlette without breaking eggs, right?
You’re a despiable piece of shit, referring to children torn aparn as “poo-poo occurs”. You are human, but you have apparently no humanity left.
Apparently it’s that famed Palesitian “self-genocide”
antrprepro
You mean like “UN designated refugees”?
Giliell
Yeah, and that strategy has been working so well, so really, where’s the problem…? *morepuke*
Post at Mano Singham’s.
rq
Ah, you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective and with too much emotion instead of logic:
Why bomb entire neighbourhoods into rabble when you can tell people to evacuate those, thereby demonstrating to the world that you’re sparing civilians, and then just bomb them when you’ve got them all in one location where they sought refuge. Much more efficient.
The Paperclip Maximizer AI is purely logical, and doesn’t specifically wish you any harm. The problem is that its purpose is to collect paperclips. Paperclips are fashioned out of certain kinds of atoms. Unfortunately, you’re also made of atoms, and many of those atoms can be repurposed into making more paperclips.
The kolinahr fallacy is quite widespread.
A complete absence of emotions would mean a complete lack of motivation to do anything or its opposite. Only reflexes would happen anymore. That’s why even amphioxus have a limbic system in their brain “to switch between their handful of behaviors” (source forgotten) – my ass.
Seconded.
It was followed by “the peace to end all peace”, leading pretty straight to WWII and a… few… other things.
Good, but make sure not to get into All Crimes Are Equal territory.
That’s true, but there’s no need to cite the conspiracy theory site globalresearch.ca for it.
Amazing conversation here on this subject. I have followed the same topic on Jerry Coynes blog. Coyne actively culls any and all comments like the ones I read in this thread. He also culls those making the comments. As a result he seems to have selected rabidly Zionist and frankly racist views and rationalizations, just as we read in the piece from Sam Harris.
These atheists have a moral blind spot in full view as they advocate brutal repression and genocide of a people based on their religion. It’s amazing to see how the Palestinians are demonized in the comments of Coynes rabid blogs on the Palestinians and extraordinary how naive and ignorant both of them are about about Israel. I know they consider them “new atheists” but seen from this perspective I think they are just fighting the same old biblical war on a different front. And Harris writes books with titles like “the moral landscape”.
@pick – 1 August 2014 at 7:55 pm
Indeed, guys like Harris, and perhaps like this Coyne you’re talking about, seem almost designed to prove that while religion does not make one moral, atheism does not make one intelligent either.
I’m sorry to see that even PZ can succumb to irrational thinking when his emotions are stirred enough. Many comments have already pointed out that logic and reason cannot be blamed for decisions which are purely based on emotion and illogical to boot.
It is quite obvious that neither the state of Israel nor Hamas deserve any sympathy. It’s one of those situations where the good guys, as in the mafia wars, simply do not exist. It is therefore pointless to discuss who’s right: none is. I guess that’s a difficult fact to digest, because we like to root for the good guys, but our childish desires do not alter reality, I’m afraid.
The war between Israel and Hamas will not end until one of them is effectively exterminated, precisely because there is nothing rational about it. Rationality, as has already been mentioned, is a means to an end: we can rationally determine the best course of action to fulfil our desires. But there is no reason why rationality cannot be applied to desirfes themselves; rational analysis is not condemned to play second fiddle to emotion; on the contrary, it is ethically reckless NOT to subject our desires to rational scrutiny.
In the case of Israel, it was obvious that its physical location was determined by religious beliefs and consented to by the emotionally-laden climate of the post war era. Pointing out that it was a stupid idea would have been surely interpreted as pandering to the nazis.
Is it at all surprising that the situation has become a nightmare of shredded bodies? Each side has opted for a strategy of terror, and terrified people are, like all terrified animals, capable of extreme cruelty. The only way out is the elimination of one side. But it is not easy to complete eliminate the enemy, and so the war will go on at increasing levels of horror and suffering for several decades, at the least. Avoiding this would take an act of rationality on both parts: are we becoming any happier with this war? Why not? What would be a better way to pursue happiness? Maybe our beliefs and desires are to blame, and they should be changed. That will not happen, of course, because, you know, “rationality is cold, callous. How dare you suggest a rational solution to a conflict that causes so much suffering! We need Emotion, not Reason!.” To which I can only say that hatred is an emotion too, and that some emotions need to be curbed by reason. Unless, of course, the annihilation of the species is seen as a desirable objective.
So it
Atheism is the ism that isn’t it couldn’t possible make one either moral or intelligent. I see Harris and Coyne making the same mistake that they criticize other believers of, they don’t know that they don’t know what they don’t know. And, then therefore, they don’t bother to find out. What strikes me is the confirmation bias. Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist for whom I greatly respect otherwise, actively culls his blog of anyone not sufficiently Zionist. As a result, on this topic, he gets no dissent, no negative feedback, and his comments and the comments of his followers grow increasingly racist and morally bankrupt.
The Israelis now have 3-4 generations that have all been through the military. They take the entire population right out of high school. So we see natural selection at work. The entire population has now been programmed for the bias that only a soldier can have. Israel is an ethnocracy, others need not apply.
‘Indeed, guys like Harris, and perhaps like this Coyne you’re talking about, seem almost designed to prove that while religion does not make one moral, atheism does not make one intelligent either.’
Or moral or less tribal. I still don’t understand how otherwise intelligent people can fail so badly to explore their own blind spots. They disgrace the scientific method with their failure to apply it to their politics in advance of opening their large mouths. I note that now, Harris the neuro-scientist atheist is charging special rates to teach followers about “spiritualism”. This is a guy that pays to go to special “retreats” he attends with strangers. I understand that the enrollees spend a week together without speaking. I think that’s creepy new age woo. I think that it’s time that Harris get debunked.
Nope: french guy here: citizen and and denizen of a country where manufactured paranoia regarding religious and ethnic minorities is rather acute nowadays.
***
Harris is especially bad at this, as he has quite clearly built his “moral landscape” upon his own social circle: he has jewish relatives, christian colleagues and buddhist friends, therefore these religions are “inherently different” from Islam and therefore one can do to the later’s followers things that He could deem barbaric if done to followers of one of the formers.
***
As a matter of fact, good guys do exists, it’s just that they’re rather busy being bullied into submission by violent fascist thugs.
You can also read this testimony which summarize Israel’s current McCarthyite atmosphere: the most relevant quote is here (The division in several paragraphs an emphases are mine):
Decides the logical rationalist…
@piero – 1 August 2014 at 9:49 pm
Your belief that “there is nothing rational” about Operation Protective Edge, nor the actions of Hamas, is naive. On the contrary, Israel’s actions in Gaza follow a well-developed strategic logic called settler colonialism. Israel’s actions are rational expressions of that logic.
And while the Gazan side might seem irrational in that they launch firecrackers into Israel and get their city blown into smithereens by laser guided munitions, their actions only seem irrational if you ignore the context in which they take place. Gaza has since 2005 been an open-air prison, a concentration camp in which nearly two million people are crammed into a tiny area with a horrid economy and only tunnels as a means of escape. As if that were not enough, Israeli settlers grab areas of Gaza for their own use, and inflict petty violence and humiliation on the Gazans. It’s a slow-motion takeover. Seen in that context, the actions of Hamas look more rational.
Your assessment that discussion of the issue is pointless since neither side is “right” also strikes me as odd. If you live in the US, your government is joined at the hip with Israel, giving them $3 Billion per year to assist with their colonial strategy. If you live in another area of the West, you’re still connected to the situation.
@laurentweppe – 2 August 2014 at 8:00 am
It must be terrifying to be pro-peace while living in Israel. Wow.
See above. Logic based on any kind of reasonable premises dictates that Israel lay down arms and start reparations. But, as I said above, logic per se has nothing to do with this bullshit.What about reparations for incessant rocket attacks? How about the Palestinians pay reparations for supporting the Nazis and trying to bring the Holocaust to the Middle East? How about they pay reparations for centuries of pogroms by Muslims against Jews?
Logic doesn’t dictate reparations unless reparations are going to be paid for every crime that’s been committed.
That being said, I agree that Israel should pull out of the occupied territories.
@guru – 2 August 2014 at 10:22 am
Define “reasonable premises”. The actual premise, “I’m going to take your land”, may not be moral but it’s perfectly logical.
atheist, apparently I did not present my argument well enough.
Suppose you are a burglar and have a choice of two houses to rob. One is empty, has neither surveillance cameras nor alarms, a gound-floor window is open and you positively know the house contains cash and valuables for over 50 million dollars. Besides, the owners died abroad long ago, had no relatives and nobody knows or cares about the house. The other house is heavily protected, the owners never leave, have trained personnel ready to shoot on sight, and their assets are worth perhaps 500 dollars. Now, you choose the sercond house, and embark in an almost suicidal mission. Sure, your actions are guided by reason: you buy guns and ammunition to kill the guards, ropes to climb to the roof and so on.
In what sense are you being rational? Only in the limited sense of applying reason to accomplish a goal. But I’m sure you’ll agree your goal was irrational in the first place. No amount of reason can make your actions rational after that.
When Israel chose its current location, it was a wholly irrational choice. No amount of reason applied since them can revert that. Only a rational examination of its motivations, or desires, or emotions, can do that. That’s being rational.
Suppose you have a very noisy neighbour. You try to reason with him, ask him to stop, beg him to stop, to no avail. You talk to other neighbours, but they are unwilling to help you. The police have come a few times, but their half-hearted rebukes have had no effect. The noise is driving you crazy, so one day you decide to beat him up to teach him a lesson. Problem is, he is a professional boxer, about twice as big and strong as you. “I don’t care”, you say. “I’ll stop that noise even if it means death”. Would you call your action rational? Sure, you can use reason in order to plan your action, but the action itself is irrational. That’s what Hamas are doing.
No. They are not actors in the conflict.
@piero – 2 August 2014 at 5:03 pm
Thank you for explaining your reasoning, now I have a better idea of where you are coming from. It seems to me you are thinking of rationality like a controlled scientific experiment, where different possibilities can be tested and their benefits weighed. But the problem with that is that the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Americans are all living in history, which is nothing like a controlled scientific experiment. In history, people find themselves in crazy situations (you might say, “irrational situations”) all the time. So I feel that your view is unfair to both the Israelis and the Palestinians (not to mention, the Americans, the British, the Egyptians…)
Your metaphors make sense, but you’re using something called “counterfactual history“, that is, you’re assuming conditions that never existed. In your example of the Israelis being like a burglar who chooses a defended house over one which was undefended, you’re assuming that the Zionist movement would have had no problem with locals had they only chosen another area than Palestine. But that’s a counterfactual, and there is no proof that the state of Israel would have fared any better in, say, a region of South Africa, than in the land it occupies today. Also, remember that the exodus of European Jews into Palestine was done to escape oppression that ended up as a genocide.
Your example of the Palestinians being like someone who chooses to fight a professional boxer is also strange. Actually, since 2005 the Gazans have been almost completely hemmed in with only tunnels as a means of escape. So since 2005 Gazans could not leave even if they wanted to. And even before 2005, they were a people being ethnically cleansed from their land. It is absurd to believe they had a choice in dealing with Israel. To alter your scenario, they aren’t like someone who chose to fight a professional boxer. Rather, they are like a person who was already being pummeled by a professional boxer who chose to punch back. Perhaps they should have meekly allowed Israelis to beat the crap out of them, but that wasn’t your decision. I don’t think you are in a position to judge them.
It is one thing to argue that the logic used by Hamas, Likud, the Democratic party, and/or AIPAC is flawed. Indeed such arguments can be valuable. But in order for your criticism to be relevant, you have to take the actual situation of these groups, the actual choices they face, into account. Otherwise, it is as if you’re telling a troubled person to “just shape up” and “stop acting irrational”. That’s not empathetic and frankly, it’s not useful.
Hi, atheist. Of course the Zionist movement could not make a rational decision, because their motivation was irrational. Judging someone’s past actions from the point of view of rationality is not “counterfactual history”. I’m not making an exercise in “what if”, but just pointing out that the territory was chose on the basis of irrational motivations. I’d go as far as characterising them as “idiotic”.
Yes, Gazans are hemmed in. But why are they? Could it have something to do with their suicide attacks on Israeli civilians, perhaps?
And no, I’m not telling either the Israelis or the Palestinians anything at all. How could I? And even if I could, there’s, nor reason to expect being heard. I am perhaps excessively empathetic, sometimes to the point of somatisation, but there is nothing I can do to alleviate the suffering.