the USA, Israel, and national interest

I'm simply not willing to grant that Hamas, as policy, intentionally and directly murders Palestinian children in order to achieve its aims.

I feel fully entitled to come to a moral judgment of Hamas wrt the deaths of Palestinians (including children) regardless of whether it is their policy to kill them or not. What do they expect to come of missile attacks? What has Israel warned would happen in the case of suspension of the cease-fire? Their stubborn insistence on macho sword rattling when they haven't the means to actually win militarily may assuage their battered egos but it serves practically no other purpose. One can argue that Israel's response is disproportionate to the provocation and may actually impel more people to support them, but Hamas's stand is the umpteenth in Palestinian error and delusion and I won't excuse it for a second. Not because I think Israel's case is so great but because I think it's absolutely fucking tragic, and predictably so, for Gazans.

I'm simply not willing to grant that Hamas, as policy, intentionally and directly murders Palestinian children in order to achieve its aims.

And it's not as if both sides don't have a vested interest in putting their own people in harm's way. The bloodthirsty types are always secretly pleased when something bad happens, whether the bombs show up on foot or via air -- they WELCOME it -- because it gives them a pretext to do what they want to do anyway: engage in more mayhem, destruction, and violence upon an enemy who, by dint of their recent atrocities, are no longer human.

I mean, I really don't think one can talk about this conflict without making it clear, at every step, that each side is trying -- intentionally or semi-unintentionally -- to provoke the other into doing something so horrible that, from the world's perspective, "they have no choice" but to escalate matters and hit back ten times as hard. Every indignity imposed upon the Palestinians, every anxiety inflicted on the Israelis, contributes to this end.

One might say that only a small percentage of the population wants to escalate, of course, but it's usually that way anyway.

The thing is, for Israel, ramping things up seems like a losing strategy. They're outnumbered, not only from without but from within: as many people have said before, the #1 winning strategy for Palestinians would be for their brethren who have Israeli citizenship to reproduce like mad, get the majority, and either change the rules or force Israel to engage in mass deportations. It's a long game, but it beats the hell out of blowing yourself up.

Even failing that, Israel's biggest advantage -- nuclear weapons, with which they'll presumably incinerate Tehran and Damascus if they're ever invaded again -- isn't exactly going to last forever, you know?

Now, there are legitimate arguments about both the efficacy and ethics of using such weapons. To my mind, they have very little going for them as a tactic of resistance. But the apparently widespread belief that Qassam rockets are the vindictive and jubilant response of sneering Palestinian jihadists to Israeli mushiness is not justified by any evidence....

Legitimate arguments WHICH I WILL NOT BOTHER TO MAKE while creating a strawman to knock down.

Their stubborn insistence on macho sword rattling when they haven't the means to actually win militarily may assuage their battered egos but it serves practically no other purpose.

It keeps them in business, like the Bush family. Biggest mistake dubya ever made was letting them hang Saddam, you know.

I mean where does "myth" enter the picture of whether it's right to deliberately launch rockets at exclusively civilian areas or whether a government can be expected to respond.

There were few such rockets fired during the six-month ceasefire, even though Israel didn't respect its terms, but their use was increased again as Israel broke the truce on November 4th (burn that date into your brain and remember it next time someone tells you that those nasty Hamas thugs wouldn't renew the ceasefire). Now, there are legitimate arguments about both the efficacy and ethics of using such weapons. To my mind, they have very little going for them as a tactic of resistance. But the apparently widespread belief that Qassam rockets are the vindictive and jubilant response of sneering Palestinian jihadists to Israeli mushiness is not justified by any evidence....

― Dr Morbius

That is some heavy-duty, high-spin, one-sided bullhsit, Morbs.

They're outnumbered, not only from without but from within: as many people have said before, the #1 winning strategy for Palestinians would be for their brethren who have Israeli citizenship to reproduce like mad, get the majority, and either change the rules or force Israel to engage in mass deportations.

This is hilarious. Yes, the Arab genome comes with a dominant HATE JEWS allele. They all have it.

As if both sides haven't broken innumerable cease fires.

WTF? It's not about "HATE JEWS" at all. It is, however, about the question of what Israel's going to do when it's no longer a majority-Jewish state, or how it's going to keep that from happening.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/12304045985t78.gif

That girl's head looks like a thumb.

not...linking...Perrin's...Gaza jokebook

feel fully entitled to come to a moral judgment of Hamas wrt the deaths of Palestinians (including children) regardless of whether it is their policy to kill them or not. What do they expect to come of missile attacks? What has Israel warned would happen in the case of suspension of the cease-fire? Their stubborn insistence on macho sword rattling when they haven't the means to actually win militarily may assuage their battered egos but it serves practically no other purpose.

― Michael White

Agree with this, but still don't condemn Hamas for its failure to surrender, or consider them more responsible than Israel for the consequences of Israeli actions - even if they have provoked those actions. And they have. You have to consider the sorts of voices and leaders that will likely come to the fore in a place like Palestine. If Israeli hawkishness is excusable, Palestinian hawkishness must be moreso, no matter how pathetic and suicidal it seems.

http://bestmessageboardever.com/uploads/av-579.gif

Some days I feel like carpet-bombing the Middle East with bios of Gandhi.

Some days I feel like carpet-bombing the Middle East with bios of Gandhi.

But, in fairness, the British could go home.

Nabisco's posts way upthread (which I criticized), where he talked about the need for symbolic representations of evil on the "other side" in order to justify the potentially troubling consequences of one's own actions.

Just to clarify, this isn't at all what I was talking about -- it wasn't about symbolic representations of evil in the least. It was about taking rhetorical stances wherein you can (often plausibly!) justify unfortunate things you've done as being the result of other people's tactics. E.g.: we are going after Hamas, and if they use innocent children as human shields, and those innocent children get killed, this is a direct result of Hamas's actions. E.g.: we must go after Hamas over rocket fire, and if this involves destroying your home and killing one of your family members, do not blame us; blame Hamas for firing the rockets. It's a rhetorical stance that says you're forced, by other people, to do certain unfortunate things, and therefore the whole thing is someone else's responsibility.

In a lot of cases this is not an untruthful position to take; in a lot of cases it makes concrete sense; but I think if you sink too far into it you're not just abdicating responsibility for your actions -- you wind up abdicating any sense of control over the future, any sense that you too can play a role in improving your own situation. This is something I think Tipsy was addressing upthread -- the way that saying "well, we must naturally respond this way" stop making as much sense when there are good arguments that responding that way doesn't help you accomplish what you want to.

(While we're handing out blame, we should remember to give the Brits a share, inasmuch as they did their best to sow seeds of discord while they were in charge. They're not "responsible" for the whole shebang, but they do get a seat at the table.)

xpost

ok what m. white just said about gandhi bios is ridiculous and I know it's meant in levity out of exasperation but really thank you for bringing it all back to my point regarding the narcissism of westerners who all feel entitled to tell israel what to do when right across the continent the exact same shit is going on, yet nobody feels it's their place to tell Hinduism what to do.

E.g., I think Michael is maybe trending in the direction I'm talking about with this:

What do they expect to come of missile attacks? What has Israel warned would happen in the case of suspension of the cease-fire?

... which is a way of saying "we're not doing these things, Hamas is doing them; we're just an unthinking mechanism that's responding to a stimulus." I have a little bit of trouble with the moral logic of this, but that's beside the point -- I have more trouble with the idea that Israel's sometimes casting itself as this "unthinking mechanism" is, in the end, helpful to Israelis.

and dovetails nicely as well with charlie's "don't forget the UK!"

you wind up abdicating any sense of control over the future

yeah, this reminds me of BOTH bush prezs and iraq - they both were like "saddam hussein is the one responsible for our invasion - the iraqi people should blame him" as if military invasions were some kind of dead-man's switch on a train that activates automatically and it's like wow, saddam's in charge of the us military?

Nabisco: that's fair. I added the "symbolic representations of evil" bit to your original argument (which I didn't go back and look at - my bad). But I do think it belongs there. Symbolic evils aid the construction of the rhetorical stance, and help assuage guilt associated with one's own actions. I.e., it's much easier to say that your enemy has forced your hand if you assert over and over again that their behavior is depraved, evil, beyond the bounds of decency. Common tactic, goes hand-in-hand with what you were talking about.

Still, sorry for mischaracterizing your statements.

http://news.webshots.com/photo/2298296970103726530OBKYUv

And in the case of U.S. invasion of Iraq, special case depravity was used to make the "they've forced our hand" arguments stick.

Btw: I wasn't making the argument that Hamas' depravity excused any Israeli crimes. I was simply saying that condemning Israel more than Hamas made no sense. Hamas is at least, if not more, indefensible and morally corrupt. But I have no problem with condemning Israel. Personally I think this strategy is counter-productive. But I understand why they are doing it.

If anything, I think I'm humanizing Hamas more because I'm holding them accountable for their actions instead of claiming they are some poor animals that don't know any better.

That's fair, as long as we point the finger in both directions, evaluate the claims and actions of both sides with equivalent cynicism.

No problem, contenderizer, just feel a need to be clear after the snit about that upthread. Tipsy and others beat me days ago on the results of this thinking, too, this bit from Tracer --"and it's like wow, saddam's in charge of the us military?" -- and how taking tnhis kind of unthinking switch reaction gives power over everyone to exactly the "outliers" that were just discussed; it puts power over the whole thing in the hands of anyone with a bomb or a rocket, puts the fate of all in the hands of anyone who can reach the switch. (This goes for both Palestinian militants and the political pull of Israeli extremist factions.)

I was simply saying that condemning Israel more than Hamas made no sense.

I'm not sure anyone's trying to have this argument in such bald terms. Right? "Who deserves more condemnation" is an argument very few people seriously want to have (and many find themselves falling into along the way).

bcz the answer to "Who deserves more condemnation" is so bloody obvious.

very few people seriously want to have it after freshman year of college, you mean

but they can still watch The Real World

that shows boring, no rockets

salient point Morbs

total tangent but it is somewhat distressing to realize that "The Real World" has been on TV longer than my college-aged cousin has been alive

(There is some new "Confessions of a Teen Idol" reality show on VH1, and Eric Nies from the first one is the only person on it where I know who he is. This is not because they're too young for me, it's because they were never teen idols.)

well now we know who deserves the most condemnation at least

guys take the real world talk to the thread i started

REAL WORLD: brooklyn

lol nabisco is too young to remember "The Blue Lagoon" mania

and dovetails nicely as well with charlie's "don't forget the UK!"

I've reread this several times and can't figure out whether you meant "It was partly 'our' fault so we should STFU" or "It's not about us so we should STFU".

Though I suppose the S-ing TFU is really the key bullet point, there.

Haha Dan you beat me to it. Not to mention that flick where Christopher Atkins is a lol college student/male stripper who nails his teacher, Lesley Anne Warren:

http://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/night-in-heaven.jpg

i have friends who have been protesting at the israeli consulate in los angeles and my gf is the daughter of a holocaust survivor and the latter issue has made me very wary of getting into it with the former, which i have been sorely tempted to do (not in a "fuck you guys" kind of way but in a neutral ground kind of way, but i worry it might get less diplomatic than i would like).

charlie I was just saying that the india/pakistan situation also has a similar history as regards the UK's involvement

My problem generally is that everybody is eager to condemn. Each side seems far more interested in leveraging their victimhood than in actually trying to find a real solution. Hamas are hallucinatingly crazy and the Israeli settlers alone have done far more to damage Israel than Hamas has ever done. I've debating this all over the planet with Israelis, Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians, Algerians, American Jews, leftists, rightists, etc..., and as usual (and I'm not proud of this) I am left with the urge to shrug, throw my hands in the air and walk away.

well yeah, you're not a stakeholder in this. none of us are except Mordy.

The unthinking switch reaction is a. partly due to whoever the crazy decision makers are in Israel at the time and b. due to the collective psychologies of the Israeli masses who vote for the bastards. Basically, I'm curious as to how a non-unthinking switch group could realistically gain control of the country? Change the attitudes and perspectives of a majority of Israelis? Okay... how?

I am left with the urge to shrug, throw my hands in the air and walk away.

I understand this impulse, because I've had it about other foreign affairs, but for some of us this isn't an option with this particular affair.

iatee, read the thread before you post

oh sorry, we're talking about MTV now?