the USA, Israel, and national interest

On a similar tip, an Israeli I vaguely know posted a video to his facebook labeled "Hamas using children as human shields." All that could be seen in the video was an armed, masked person pulling a child across a street and a bunch of other people standing on the sidewalk. It was in no way clear that there was any human shield-usage going on or any sense of what the situation was. But unfortunately a lot of Israelis are very ready to believe such things right now, and further as soon as one video appears to "prove" the use of human shields, it becomes taken for granted that such things must be general Hamas policy and not isolated actions.

At the same time, it is true that Hamas fighters regularly fight from and use homes, schools and other civilian buildings. I don't know if they have much choice, given the nature of Gaza, but I think this ought at least to be taken into account. I find it a little disturbing that some seem so eager to ascribe to Israel some kind of sinister desire to maximize civilian casualties; if such a desire truly existed the death toll would be much higher.

"Hamas using children as human shields."

This kind of claim has to be made, constantly, in order to work around the gut-level dissonance of this stuff -- the fact that Israel responds to actions that might harm or kill a handful of Israeli civilians (like rocket attacks) with actions that routinely, "collaterally," harm or kill many, many times that number of Palestinian civilians. The only way to mentally defer a sense of responsibility or blame for that fact is to say that it wouldn't have to be that way if only the enemy acted differently. And in some cases this might not even be a bad argument! But so many of the repetitions of it seem to have something else at stake, like it's this ritual truism that's necessary to absolve other stuff you know to be true.

Israeli propaganda = "stop hitting yourself", basically

Exactly -- "you leave us no choice but to do something that of course we do have a choice about, choices we should probably consider given that the old reactions aren't really getting us anywhere."

This kinda goes back to the arguments upthread claiming that some of us put more responsibility on Israel, or excuse the Palestinians from responsibility just on the basis that it's a fractious group. A lot of the Israeli stance on this involves the country putting itself in that position of responsibility, positing itself as this entity that must react certain ways, and therefore You Are Bringing This Reaction on Yourself -- but this is only vaguely politically true inside Israel, not some kind of unchangeable fact of life.

(We talked upthread about the problems of parent/child metaphors, but from the very definition of an occupation onward, there are a lot of Israeli positions here that seize that kind of dynamic in and of themselves.)

imo that argument got shifted a bit with the democratic election of Hamas.

plus longer range missiles from Iran being able to reach Dimona .

This kind of claim has to be made, constantly, in order to work around the gut-level dissonance of this stuff -- the fact that Israel responds to actions that might harm or kill a handful of Israeli civilians (like rocket attacks) with actions that routinely, "collaterally," harm or kill many, many times that number of Palestinian civilians. The only way to mentally defer a sense of responsibility or blame for that fact is to say that it wouldn't have to be that way if only the enemy acted differently. And in some cases this might not even be a bad argument! But so many of the repetitions of it seem to have something else at stake, like it's this ritual truism that's necessary to absolve other stuff you know to be true.

― nabisco, Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:53 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is unbelievably evasive bs imo, kind of ma-level critical theory. i mean fortunately one loses the patronizing italics in my quoted version.

I wasn't gonna put it so harshly as that, but I don't think the dissonance nabisco describes here is in any way unique to the Israeli situation. It's called going to war with a relatively weak enemy. I can't imagine any modern military power reacting any differently to the present situation, or handling the long-term back and forth any better. And, yeah, maybe that means I need to demand a lot more of my modern military powers, but that's a much bigger issue than what goes on in Gaza.

xpost - Please explain how that's remotely bullshit, or remotely evasive.

I don't think it should be remotely controversial to point out that (a) the average Israeli knows IDF actions affect and kill Palestinian civilians, (b) the average Israeli is a human being who is going to consider this somewhat unfortunate, and thus (c) arguments are going to be made and repeated that there was No Other Choice, that it's not what was desired, that it's what Palestinian militants forced the nation to have to do to defend itself -- this is not a complicated or controversial idea.

But so many of the repetitions of it seem to have something else at stake, like it's this ritual truism that's necessary to absolve other stuff you know to be true.

Part that might be hard to prop up w/ evidentiary support.

Not that I thought it was particularly patronizing in the first place.

xpost - Please explain how that's remotely bullshit, or remotely evasive.

evasive:

- does hamas use children as human shields?
- what's *really* at stake here?

or

- does hamas use children as human shields?
- the rockets only kill a few people

i mean, is it a 'ritual truism', or might it have some truth-content? it wouldn't necessarily 'absolve' israel, because in a place as densely packed as gaza there would be substantial collateral damage anyway, but the question is pertinent. as are other questions, like, what does israel think will be the outcome of this, etc, etc: it's still a legit question that can't be wafted away with a bit of discource analysis.

xpost -

It's an observation, not a lawsuit! Look, this just strikes me as flat-out mechanically true: what great practical reason is there to make strong claims that Hamas uses children as shields, except to explain why it is that you wound up killing children when you attacked Hamas? Which is sometimes a perfectly reasonable explanation! But it can become a claim that you have a stake in that goes well beyond dispassionate truth -- it can become a general claim that other people's actions are responsible for Bad Results you don't want responsibility for. It can become a larger stance, true at times and maybe not at others, that's somewhat similar to saying "I am just punching the air right here, and if you put your head in that space, it's not my fault I hit you."

xpost - ok, so by "evasive" you mean "you are talking about something other than what I feel like talking about" -- congratulations

Especially funny since I was not responding to anything you said, or remotely attempting to waft anything away

no, you were evading the question that your post started with: "Hamas using children as human shields"

of the two possible options talk about it or don't talk about it, you chose 'it's not real question, its symptomatic of something', etc.

That's not a question, that's a claim someone was making, and I was interested in some of the ways such claims operate.

I am not investigating whether or how often Hamas uses children as human shields because I am sitting at a desk in Manhattan, and have no expertise with which to affirm or deny the claim. If you want to evaluate the truth of the claim, feel free to work around my posts.

Meanwhile, I might make an observation about something else, which is not bullshitting, it's a thought/observation.

I did not say it wasn't a real question.

ugh ok, not a question but a claim.

if you do get interested in the truth of claims rather than 'how they operate', this dude seems to be talking from 1st-hand-knowledge in re human shields:

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/01/the_worlds_pornographic_intere.php

Eh, whatever, please get interested in biting me

no, feel free to go about manhattan with your head up your arse.

the Israeli army (and I say this from personal experience) can be a big, rough bulldozer

unfortunate choice of words

it would be difficult to go around anywhere with a head up an arse

goldberg owes us his definition of pornography, because his must be pretty fucked up.

When you barely have a military and a completely non-functional infrastructure and society, human shields are kind of all you have left. It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

This is a pretty compelling argument not to declare that you're going to end the prior cease-fire. The quixotic position, militarily, of Hamas is being shown to be as irresponsible and fuzzy-headed.

When you barely have a military and a completely non-functional infrastructure and society, human shields last resorts are kind of all you have left.

― Tracer Hand

^^ Would be a little easier to swallow. But only a little. Last resorts come in more flavors than "human shield".

When you barely have a military and a completely non-functional infrastructure and society, human shields are kind of all you have left. It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, January 7, 2009 3:25 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

look i think this assault is disgusting and depressing in the extreme but this statement is just nuts. is a qassam rocket cheaper than someone else's kids?

I mean the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aside, this, as usual is also about Israeli doemstic politics and internecine Palestinian strife (aka Palestinian politics). Did Hamas win the last elections because they're 'push the Zionists to the sea' platform carried them or were people tired of the corruption and arrogance of Fatah? Whichever, they took over Gaza by force and they seem to be seeking some kind of legitimacy and esteem in the manner of Hizbollah, without the weaponry, foreign support or materiel that the latter had. Did they really think they could appeal to their hardcore base by lobbing missles, however fecklessly, into Israel and never see a response? Israel impio is trying to assure southern Israelis that they are being defended and also trying to show Gazans that support for Hamas isn't paying much in the way of dividends.

that said, in jeffrey goldberg's example, arranging bodies for western media seems like a secondary kind of evil to me than creating dead bodies in the first place

xp to myself

It's galling to think that Hamas is being taken to task for the last resort of the totally defenseless.

It's galling to think someone's trying to come up with a moral argument for human shields.

I am generally opposed to moral highhorsemanship and okay w the Tracer Hand, but yeah.

It's galling to think someone's trying to come up with a moral argument for human shields.

cf moral argument for bombing children

as usual I am totally disgusted by both sides in this never-ending, mind-numbingly pointless conflict

i hope youre talking about nabisco vs. enrique

sadly, no

How the hell are these two things equivalent?

1) Hamas rocket transportation blows up accidently and kills a whole bunch of Palestinians - someone takes a video and claims that it is an Israeli airstrike.

2) Israel claims that Hamas regularly takes human shields, and it's unclear whether their evidence is sufficient.

The first is an example of Hamas literally KILLING PALESTINIANS. You know, that thing that everyone has a problem with Israel doing. And then exploiting that manslaughter for PR purposes. It's totally mindboggling.

I see how they're comparable in terms of misleading video footage being used to make arguments that the video footage doesn't make. But the fact that someone posted a video claiming this was the devastation in Gaza from Israeli air attacks, found out it was a fake, and then people said it didn't matter (!!!) blows my mind. Seriously, wtf?

Did anyone read this article? It's really fucked up. Also, I really liked the 'stop hitting yourself' analogy used upthread.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123136613816062175.html
Israelis Watch the Fighting in Gaza From a Hilly Vantage Point
They Come With Binoculars and Lawn Chairs; Nurse Znaty: 'I'm Sorry, but I'm Happy'
...
Jocelyn Znaty, a stout 60-year-old nurse for Magen David Adom, the Israeli counterpart of the Red Cross, can hardly contain her glee at the site of exploding mortars below in Gaza.

"Look at that," she shouts, clapping her hands as four artillery rounds pound the territory in quick succession. "Bravo! Bravo!"
...
When a plume of smoke -- the result of an Israeli attack -- rose from what appears to be empty farmland Monday, Mr. Danino shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "We should be hitting the greenhouses."

makes me want to vomit

how is that article fucked up? did you not realize these two populations actually want to kill each other?

I guess more importantly the thing that article makes clear to me is that even if 90 percent of both the hebrew and arab populations in any part of israel/palestine agreed that coexistence was a-okay and fine and something they wanted, the outliers will ruin it for you every time. And I'm sure, every time, that when the outliers start blowing stuff up and killing each other, more and more of the middle get that If You Can't Beat Em Join Em feeling, which most of the quotes in that article seem to illustrate.

One of the biggest failures of Israel has been to allow those "outliers" to gain increasing power and legitimacy over time. In Gaza, the outliers actually threaten you with violence for dissenting. In Israel, on the other hand, I'm never clear whether they're indulged for short-term political gains without any further motives or if there's a larger strategy at work.

uhh Rabin?

outliers support each other. we've seen how effective fear-mongering politics have been over here, just imagine it in that environment.

media writing about nurse znaty shit doesn't really help/reveal anything. you really think finding Palestinians celebrating horrible things would be that hard to find?

outliers support each other. we've seen how effective fear-mongering politics have been over here, just imagine it in that environment.

totally. I don't know if letting wingnuts hijack national policy is so much of a "failure" as it just seems like part of the democratic business cycle, if that makes sense.

and in a kind of lol but mostly sad non-coincidence, the books I've been reading about the rise of wingnuts in the GOP culminating in the last eight years trace a lot of their starting points back to 1973.

uhh Rabin?

Rabin should have provided grounds to target extremists, not to indulge them.

Yeah, of course they want to kill each other, often in ugly ways, but one side has billions in U.S. military support and a relatively large, well-trained army, and the other is a big refugee camp that's being humiliated and starved. Just by the crude measurement of a body count of how the "war" is going, it's up to around 700-3. For me, the power dynamic between the two sides is central to understanding what's happening (well, that, and race and religion and a dozen other things).

What's fucked up and sad about the article is how nonchalant the Israelis depicted are towards real suffering while living in relative comfort and wealth.

(xps)

that's not just israelis. you may find that in fact the entire developed world is nonchalant towards real suffering while living in relative comfort and wealth.