The question was raised in this thread, and partly continued in this one, but it seems to me that the discussion drowned in all the name-calling and fuss about legalities. Diogenes claims that the settlements are clear-cut illegalities (cites would be nice), and Bryan Ekers and John Mace disputes this (cites would be nice). Legalities aside, the real question remains unanswered - how does one defend these settlements, frowned upon by most of the world as they are? Even if it’s not illegal for individuals to settle, it’s still morally relevant that it’s illegal for Israel to allow the settlements. This would be a very interesting debate, if we didn’t just keep arguing about why not debate this.
The trouble is you are assuming that ‘illegal’ has some sort of meaning when applied to Israel (just as you are assuming, without a cite, that it IS illegal…even though you conceded that you haven’t seen a cite on it yet). What does ‘illegal’ even mean, wrt a nation state?
You are assuming ‘the rest of the world’(s) opinions really matter…they don’t. What matters is how this impacts the citizens (voting citizens in the case of Israel) involved, namely the Palestinians and Israelis. Whether Joe Euro thinks its a good idea or not (or Joe American for that mater) is militantly inconsequential in the greater scheme of things.
Personally, I think it’s the wrong move at this time to be pushing this, but I can see the Israelis side…just like I can see why it makes the Palestinians so unhappy. The trouble is that the Israeli PUBLIC (the voting public), by and large, supports the settlements, so in the end that’s going to be the key.
Perhaps if the Palestinians had been more willing to come to terms a decade…or two…or even three…ago, things would be different, and a better settlement would have been possible. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and so we have a whole big mess, with issues that date back over half a century, with tons of complexity that people simply want to wave away and boil down to some sort of moral right or wrong.
Thanks for starting this thread. It’s not possible to cite that something is not illegal. The onus is on those claiming it is illegal. And note that we are talking about individual citizens, not nations, here.
My own position is that Israel should refrain from settling in the disputed territories as a gesture of good faith by the entity which, by all objective measures, is the senior partner in the peace negotiation process.
Sorry, got to be clearer, so we don’t make the same mistakes again.
Should have written it’s still morally relevant if it’s illegal for Israel to allow the settlements. And the rest of the world’s opinion doesn’t really matter, except that when you disagree with most of the world, you should at least be able to write a cogent defence - especially, IMHO, when you start an “ask the ‘crazy’ settler”-thread. But lots of people have disagreed with most of the world and still been right, so I’m all ears.
I’m sure you could find some more or less authoritative discussion of this to back it up, if you wanted. I agree that the onus is on Dio, but references to drive the point home are always nice.
Also, I tried in the OP to shift the focus to ethics, not legalities, just because we’re dealing with individuals not bound by international law, but hopefully with some capability for moral judgement.
The point of debate here is whether or not the private, Israeli citizens are criminals, as you have claimed. You’ve been requested to provide a cite. If you can’t, then you got nothin’.
And please, don’t give us a link. Give a cite that is the end authority on the subject, and quote the key section(s) here for us to see.
I’ll cheerfully stipulate that any number of international organizations or bodies or assemblies or what-have-you have made various declarations on the settlements, maybe unanimously declaring them to be crimes against humanity or whatever.
My stance is that an individual settler is under no obligation that I’m aware of to care.
Being a settler is not illegal, and so far, no-one has produced anything but argument by assertion that it is.
It is, in my opinion, unethical except in the area of Jerusalem itself - and I’m generally an Israeli supporter.
Here’s my reasoning:
It is generally accepted that, at some point in the future, Israel will relinquish control over territory in the WB to obtain some form of comprehensive peace settlement. Assuming this is true, the existence of settlers and settlements in areas which will, very likely, be the subject of negotiations, makes those negotiations that much harder to achieve successfully; in other cases (such as Gaza) settlers have had to be removed more or less forcibly by Israel. Settlers, whether driven by “greater Israel” ideology or by a desire for cheap digs, are putting their personal interests above those of the nation as a whole and of the cause of peace. Doing so is, I think, unethical.
I make the exception for those in Jerusalem itself because no-one can seriously believe that Israel would voluntarily give up control over Jerusalem.
That’s wrong on more than one level. It’s certainly wrong on an ethical level; ethics don’t magically stop at borders. And in a thread on whether or not something is ethical, “you can’t do anything to stop it” is an irrelevancy even if true. Nor is it correct on a practical level, since Israel has both trade with the outside world and receives military aid; offending the ethical standards of outsiders can impact those so their opinion most certainly matters.
If it was a hotly debated issue that I cared about, I’m sure I could find a link to someone with a semblance of authority claiming it wasn’t (Unless it was).
If we’ll just not discuss legalities here, it’ll be all the much easier. I don’t really know much about the issue (which was my reason for following the threads), but I understand the settlements are problematic and highly provocative. I would like to see some arguments on how they are ethically defensible, legalities aside.
But does the OP of the original thread have some capability for moral judgement? It seems that God’s mandate is trumping any ethical, moral, or legal concerns here:
The OP is unconcerned with moral judgements. It would be “hypocritical” to remain in the US when there are portions of Palestine in need of Isreali occupation.
You won’t get one. The people who support the settlements and the idea of Israeli expansion are either part of the movement which is religiously motivated and thus irrational and not worth wasting breath over; or the sort who boil their ethical system down to legalities. We have more than a couple of those on the boards here, and any debate over ethics with them will always result in: " If it isn’t illegal then there’s nothing wrong with my doing it." Or to be more exact: “Anything that isn’t Illegal is perfectly ethical. If it wasn’t then we’d have made a law against it.”
Ya know, the big problem here is that Israel is too nice for it’s own good, in a very bloody sort of way. They have had the capability to pretty much exterminate the Palestinians for decades now. If they had committed genocide, by now few would give a damn or blame modern day Israel. Well, their neighbors would, but their neighbors just lost a war with Israel so it’s not like there was a lot of goodwill there anyway.
Lets look at other genocides for example. Nazi’s being the infamous one, but how many people seriously hold Germany as it is today responsible for that? These days, people argue over if there even was an Armenian genocide, nevermind holding Turkey today responsible for it. There are some diplomatic issues around Japan’s WWII actions towards conquered civilians, but mostly they’ve been forgiven/forgotten about. Cambodia went through a huge mass cleansing just 30 years ago, but no one gives a shit. One of the more depressing aspects of humanity, once the corpses decompose so does anyone’s concern for what happened.
So before we all get too happy about condemning Israel and calling them criminals and all the rest, just keep in mind if they had no morality then they wouldn’t be having the problems they do currently. After all, back when this started, no one would have stopped them. Their neighbors just lost a war. The US supported far worse actions in it’s opposition to the USSR. The USSR wouldn’t have risked starting a shooting war over it all. Besides, honestly, with the amount of hate dumped on Israel, I’m not sure some people’s opinion could actually be more against them even if they did commit wholesale genocide.
As for the illegality issue, it ain’t illegal. It’s against what the majority of nations want, it’s against the idea of basic human rights for all, it’s against what I think Israel should do, but it isn’t illegal. For those who say it is, I want to see a cite of the judicial decision by a court that has jurisdiction over Israel finding them guilty. The closest thing to that is a ruling by a court who’s opinion is not binding, and on one specific part of the issue rather than on the issue in general. Which basically means about as much as the random people ranting on web boards does.
The trouble with going the ethics route is that there isn’t a universal ‘ethics’ yardstick that we can measure stuff against. It’s going to vary from person to person, and from subject to subject. You’d need to define what ‘ethics’ even means, because the very definition is going to vary from person to person.
Basically, there are multiple conversations going on in this thread. Some are talking about the ethics, some are talking about the legality (or lack there of), and some are mixing both together. The OP itself seems to go from ethics to legality and back again, so it’s not wonder there is some confusion.
I don’t see that the Israeli government is doing anything that most every country hasn’t done at one time or another. When all the other countries give up land they acquired “immorally”, and when Israel is the last man standing, then I’ll get all hot and bothered about it.
Now, from a practical standpoint, I would like the Israelis to halt settlements because I think it is an important part of the peace process, and the entire world is affected by what happens in that tiny corner of the M.E.
Are Ethics situational? Sure, but nearly every modern society agrees on a few basics. Stealing, killing, violence (generally speaking) are all frowned upon and considered unethical. The Settlers are not third world illiterates, or 16th century Monglian tribesmen, they are modern day, first world, primarily culturally western people. Our standards of ethics can be generally viewed as having sprung from the concept that anything that does another harm is unethical. Many times these actions can be justifiable, but that is what we have law for, to draw bright lines of ethical limits. Most people would also agree that the law is not, and should not be the ultimate limit or definition of ethical.
There really is no logical, ethically justifiable argument for settlements. If there is I’d love to hear it. It is theft, ethnic aggression, and aggressive, violent expansion of borders based on religious fiat, only indulged in because the Israelis have the biggest dog in the yard to back them up. If Israel wasn’t useful to the US we’d be out of there faster than greased shit. We also don’t tolerate that type of aggressive behaviour out of any other first world nation.