Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

there are 3 things acc to the Torah considered so important that you can't do them to save a life - murder an innocent, gilui arayot (sexual immorality), and idol worship. everything else can be transgressed to save a life.

In my orthodox Talmud Torah, they taught us about the martyrs who gave up their lives rather than bow to an idol, but told us that things were different in Torah times, and that we students should bow to the idol if someone credibly threatened to kill us should we not comply. The fact that we were explicitly instructed about best practices for this contingency tells you something about how our community sees itself in contemporary America!

i'm kinda shocked they told you that. i know that there's a rambam about when it's permissible to convert to Islam (iirc?) under particular circumstances. but i always learnt that this was still relevant in 2014 and if someone credibly threatened to kill us if we didn't bow to an idol -- we should!

we should let them kill us, i mean.

Well I should say this was definitely a "modern orthodox" shul whose constituency at the time was mostly families whose level of observance and relation with Torah were a much better fit for conservative Judaism, but who wanted a traditional service. Still, it was definitely an orthodox synagogue and not some other kind!

yeah, it's pretty interesting. obv my background is much more charedi.

hamas says gaza cease-fire imminent (again)

re our conversation about torah + war, a friend sent me this this morning:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r95l6r6urvdyev3/NormsofWarinJudaism%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0

i can't vouch for all the interpretations but it's replete w/ relevant passages

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/08/26/do_the_uae_s_airstrikes_in_libya_mean_the_united_states_is_losing_influence.html

duh

is that really a bad thing. clean up their own messes for once? Probably in a method I would not approve of and with discouraging end results, but so tired of the US playing global cop in the worst sense of the word.

Yeah, we should sit more shit out. It's better for everyone. Between this stuff and how, say, France handled/is handling Mali, the not-USA seems to be doing OK. Of course, there are also lots of countries historically and recently adept at doing nothing, which leads to the moral conundrum of when we should intervene, where and why. Which in turn leads to a "red line" mentality, which is dangerous.

i think it's fine for the US to sit out this bombing campaign, but it's a little troubling that Egypt + UAE trust US so little that they didn't even coordinate the bombing (tho i've read that the US def knew it was going to happen bc of intel)

and by a little troubling - i mean that mostly in the sense that it seems like moderate middle east countries no longer trust the US to be on their side when it comes to fighting radical islam

NYT reporting the cease fire now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-strip-conflict.html

hamas of course declaring victory. if this is what victory looks like i'd hate to see defeat.

I have no problem with Egypt not being sure if the US is on their side, honestly.

details on the truce agreement:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4564456,00.html

idk that it's ever in the US's diplomatic interest to have countries not trusting them, esp on something like radical islam which obama appears to be making a priority at least re ISIS - you don't want to alienate potential allies unnecessarily.

is there any faction you can support in MENA that doesn't have you supporting one kind of radical islam or another somewhere

You also really shouldn't want to alienate people in the region by allying with murderous dictatorial regimes, imo. I know it's plague or cholera, but the fact that Egyps is mistrustful seems to speak well of Obama.

xp c'mon, egypt + UAE are demonstrably less radical than qatar or ISIS

How many demonstrators did Qatar execute last year?

I find the political philosophy that guides the Egyptian military something of a mystery. Inclined to think it's all just driven by self-preservation/cronyism and some sort of old fashioned commitment to a broader nationalism but idk.

ok, instead they fund ISIS + Hamas

Egypt's executions not driven by Islamic radicalism, is the thing. UAE's isn't either afaik.

Oh it seems to me that they are. The threat of Islamic radicalism seems quite clearly to be the excuse the autocrats are using to kill their opponents.

Also, x-post: Didn't Saudi Arabia also fund ISIS, and weren't they on your list of moderates a few months back?

I meant that the Egyptian regime is not Islamic radicals themselves

it's far less clear if Saudi Arabia has been funding ISIS, and they've definitely had tensions w/ Qatar over the latter's funding of ISIS. whether they've secretly been sending money or not, i don't know. i do remember OBL complaining about US relations w/ the Saudi royal family around 9/11, which suggests that the government at least is more moderate. still - i think it's pretty well known that Saudi Arabia exports young radicals abroad so that they don't cause trouble at home - NYT op-ed page wrote something on that topic a few days ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/opinion/isis-atrocities-started-with-saudi-support-for-salafi-hate.html

are not

argh

xo

they're definitely more complicit in islam radicalism than Sisi's government which is violently antagonistic to Muslim Brotherhood

Well, they are more complicit than Sisi, who's only been a leader for a short time. But being violently opposed to radical Islam does not really absolve anyone of blame. Assad and Maliki seems to me to be the biggest culpits, and they are opposing it.

but blaming assad and maliki for being heavy-handed and encouraging fundamentalism is still a step removed from countries that are directly piping funds and weapons to ISIS. even if you're unhappy bc you feel they radicalized islamists when they had an opportunity to moderate them (a similar charge lodged against Israel re Gaza, or the US re Al-Q), they still couldn't have succeeded to this level w/out actual institutional support. and when we fight ISIS, which Obama seems pretty committed to doing, the US is going to need al-abadi and sisi. assad the US will need to indirectly support (at the very least bc if the US starts bombing ISIS in Syria they'll be indirectly helping him).

G fuckin' Greenwald:

It seems pretty clear at this point that U.S. military action in the Middle East is the end in itself, and the particular form it takes – even including the side for which the U.S. fights – is an ancillary consideration. That’s how the U.S., in less than a year, can get away with depicting involvement in the war in Syria – on opposite sides – as a national imperative. Ironically, just as was true of Al Qaeda, provoking the U.S. into military action would, for the reasons Fishman explained, help ISIS as well....

The U.S. “is sharing intelligence about jihadist deployments with Damascus through Iraqi and Russian channels,” the Agence France-Presse reports today, citing one source as saying: ”The cooperation has already begun.”

From The New Hitler to U.S. Partner in less than a year: an impressive feat for both Assad and U.S. propaganda.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/26/fun-empire-fighting-sides-war

conspiracy always rests on an illusion of competence. really feel like obama, kerry et al are p much just winging it w/o much coherence or clue.

between libya and syria and even maidan it really looks like if they think they have a shot to oust a bad guy on the cheap (ie no "boots on ground") they'll take it, w/o any consideration of aftereffects or even the chance of success

Not sure what is the answer: ousting bad guys on the cheap w/out consideration of afteraffects is problematic; ousting bad guys on trumped up charges with boots on the ground and declaring mission accomplished is very problematic; isolationism may make some feel good but I worry about those affected by possible genocide or just otherwise suffering human rights abuses at the hands of bad guy dictators...

http://www.newsweek.com/16-french-citizens-support-isis-poll-finds-266795

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

A recent Ifop poll placed French president Francois Hollande’s approval rating at just 18%.

It's not that strange that the country with by far the biggest extreme right party, that grew so big by bashing Muslims, also has the biggest group of IS 'sympathizers' consisting especially of young adults.

i mean, i think it's strange that any country would sympathize with IS

Well yeah, obv.

wiki tells me: France has the largest number of Muslims in Western Europe. The majority of Muslims in France belong to the Sunni denomination.

But the support for Isis is still troubling.

Meanwhile here's what the US is now contemplating re ISIS in one part of Iraq re another minority group:

(AP) — The Obama administration is considering launching a humanitarian relief operation for Shiite Turkmen in northern Iraq who have been under siege for weeks by Islamic State militants, U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.

The mission, if it went forward, would be the second recent U.S. military humanitarian intervention in Iraq. U.S. cargo planes dropped tons of food and water to displaced Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq earlier this month, supported by U.S. airstrikes on nearby Islamic State fighting positions.

The administration is now focused on the imperiled town of Amirli, which is situated about 105 miles north of Baghdad and just a few miles from Kurdish territory. An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people are estimated to have no access to food or water.

The head of the United Nation's assistance mission in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, earlier this week called for urgent action in Amirli and described the situation as desperate.

Given that only between 5% and 10% of French people are Muslim, even if 100% of them were favourable to ISIS you'd still need an equal number of non-Muslims to agree with them. Neither sounds particularly likely, though the sample size was only 1000.

A senior Hamas official, who also served as a Cairo negotiator on behalf of the terror organization, had his two legs broken in what is likely an internal faction dispute related to the ceasefire, Channel 2 reports.

The details of the incident are unclear.

finally a voice for us self-hating Jews

http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-wake-of-war-leftist-self-hating-jews-find-a-voice/

Shakey, do you ever slap yourself around, or keep it to verbal innuendo?

morbz, have u seen this flick?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalags_(film)

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119244/2014-gaza-conflict-part-hamas-long-effective-war-israel

Their success isn’t measured by death toll but by psychological impact.

That New Republic article wants us to sympathize with the Israeli-based author based on the psychological toll the threats of rockets have and for his belief that even a Palestinian state will keep shooting rockets, but this (self-hating?) Jew is not won over by his argument as he never offers any real sympathy in the piece to people different than himself. Its the same predictable arguments that we have rehashed here re the Hamas military and Israel.

False alarm, not dire enough. Western taxpayer dollars saved and us human rights softies don't have to worry either I guess:

The U.S. military was prepared last weekend to aid besieged Turkmen residents in Amirli, a Shiite ethnic minority. But the latest military assessments are that the situation there isn't dire enough to necessitate direct American intervention. wall street journal

from two posts ago: "he never offers any real sympathy in the piece to people different than himself"

I've been trying to understand Mordy's posts about Torah war ethics, along with his (yes, measured) support of Israel's latest Gaza incursion. I thought Mordy held that assaults of Gazan non-combatants were justified (yes, in a measured way) because they were implicitly complicit in Hamas' actions, including their violence against Israel, simply by virtue of being Gazan under the Hamas regime. & I was thinking of that when thinking about the phrase I quoted above. according to the Torah war ethics you're appealing to, Mordy, what weight should "real sympathy...to people different than [ourselves]" play in our moral deliberations concerning the justice of violence against enemy non-combatants?

no Mordy, I don't remember ever knowing about it.

The images of Israeli dislocation are hardly as heartbreaking as the images from Gaza. But the psychological consequences of the repeated if temporary uprooting of large segments of the Israeli population—and the implications for Israel’s long-term viability—are profound.

The New Republic article writer did say this, and ocassionally paid lipservice to other aspects of Israel's response, but his largely single-minded focus on the psychological toll on Israelis will only draw suppport from those who are already in agreement with him.

I don't have an easy answer to that question, Euler. While I do use the Torah as a [loose] basis with which to understand morality in general (and war morality in particular), it's not the final word for me. I think the Torah advocates a kind of war that sees an oppositional military as the representation of its civilian population. War against that army is war against that people. Even within this there are graduations, though. The Torah says that war against Amalek is total, and it doesn't just advocate but commands complete genocide against that people. (Nb every legitimate Torah scholar believes that this commandment no longer applies, and many believe the original command was more of a homiletic about symbolic nationalism.) Against the seven nations that lived in Canaan during the occupation (the ORIGINAL occupation; "When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations--the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you--") the Torah says you must "destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show no mercy." (Deut 7:2) There's an explicit commandment not to intermarry with those people (and I don't remember the exact details but I know there's a lot of discussion about who and who isn't allowed to convert to Judaism from those tribes - and how many generations later). Then there are discretionary wars, which I quoted a little bit about above.

But in 2014 as someone who considers himself a broadly liberal humanist, I accept with the rest of the modern Western world the distinction between targeting civilians and targeting legitimate military targets. I don't believe an army should try to commit genocide against a civilian population, even one that fully supports the leadership against which you find yourself as war. As such, I think Hiroshima and the bombing of Dresden were moral errors (though mediated somewhat by the circumstances of that war). I think this is all even more complex with the Palestinian people of Gaza (who I'll limit this too, although I think West Bank and Lebanese Palestinian also complicate these questions). First of all, because it is unclear to what extent Hamas represents the civilian population of Gaza (there haven't been elections since 2006 so they don't represent them in any kind of authentic democratic fashion - and even in 2006 a lot of people were making the claim that the population was signing onto Hamas' social programs but not necessarily their political ideology). There are polls that suggest war against Israel enjoys a tremendous amount of public support, but also polls that said the majority of the Gaza population wanted a ceasefire at the very beginning of this most recent conflict. Even more complicated is that Hamas intentionally blurs the lines between civilians and militants - not just because they don't wear uniforms and fire rockets from civilian areas, but also because their very institution blurs the lines. Their police force, normally what one might consider a civilian institution, participates in war hostilities. They have leadership for the military and some separate civilian leadership, but there is lots of crossover there too.

I'm putting this on a separate line because I think it's important:

Despite all these considerations, I do not hold that "assaults of Gazan non-combants were justified... because they were implicitly complicit in Hamas' actions." I don't hold them responsible for voting for Hamas and I don't hold them responsible for any kind of support (tangible or otherwise) they give to Hamas now. I think the IDF should make every effort to distinguish between military targets and civilian targets. However, I do believe that because of the complications I mention above it isn't always easy to distinguish between those two.

I think this is especially true with Hamas, but really every modern army has to deal with this problem. In contemporary asymmetric warfare it is difficult to tell combatants apart from civilians. This is not just true of popular resistance movements (which tellingly accept implicit consent from the population they supposedly represent), but also first world armies - I notice Russia has been using lots of this kind of obfuscation in their campaign in Ukraine.

I'm not sure if this really answers your question at all. Regarding "real sympathy" I would suggest that as individual humans we have a tremendous capacity with understanding the Other - even with our enemies. Sympathy seems to be an affect that exists within the individual - when we talk about political bodies we generally talk about justice, or mercy. Sympathy or empathy are methods of personal, subjective association. I don't think on that count the Torah's laws of war are super applicable. I think the Torah accepts that war is destructive to the cause of sympathy - that to some extent sympathy undermines war itself. But I also think on other occasions the Torah talks about how we should think about our enemies - there's a famous Talmudic passage where Reb Meir (iirc) is chastised by his wife Bruriah because he prayed for a sinner to die - she tells him that he should pray for the sinner to repent. Similarly by the splitting of the Red Sea God chastises the angels for celebrating the drowning of the Egyptian army in the sea because after all, aren't they also His creations? So the Torah definitely believes in a level of sympathy, but whether it should temper an army, I don't know. Probably because I'm split between my faith in Judaism and my faith in liberalism I fall somewhere between the two - I maintain the sympathy for myself and ask that the army make an effort to distinguish between civilians and combatants - but I don't foreclose war as an option entirely and I understand that war itself troubles these humanistic notions.

(I have a complicated relationship to other highly problematic things in the Torah as well - basically though I'm not much of a textual literalist and additionally I believe that revelation can be a Historical process so it doesn't bother me so much that the Torah advocates for things that I believe to be morally wrong. Times change, texts are complex, and I don't feel wedded to any particular interpretation. Still, the document itself, flawed as it might be, still holds a position of prominence in my life.)