One could say the same about the IRA bombs targeting civilians. It doesn’t mean that the discrimination against the Catholic minority, the key factor in the Troubles in Northern Ireland, wasn’t immoral.
If deep and ongoing injustice cannot be resolved through peaceful and legitimate means, then violence is near-inevitable.
Anyway, I hope for your safety in what must be a difficult time.
No, but that doesn’t immediately mean it is not a valid military target. The laws of war do not preclude attacking something just because civilian entities might be there, they require that your targeting not be deliberately at the civilian entities. I do not believe Israel has offered much of an explanation yet, so I’ll withhold judging if they have a valid justification. However otherwise civilian buildings are frequently utilized by the weaker side in asymmetric conflicts due to them being an impediment to the stronger power retaliating. In this particular case we do know the Israeli military phoned the occupants of the building one hour in advance and that everyone reportedly had time to evacuate, which suggests they were not deliberately targeting civilian persons.
I’m probably about as pro-Israel as it gets, and I do hate how the left in the United States frequently does distortionary shit like Noah does here. I’ve written many posts in the past explaining the reasons and justification for many of Israel’s actions.
That being said, at the same time, and I hope you remain safe–from the perspective of the Palestinians, especially younger ones, they live in abject poverty and misery and are told every day it’s the Jews fault. To reinforce this sometimes the Jews kill them with bombs and demolish their homes with tanks. Israel won the 67 war, you guys are the powerful party, they are the weak party. Do you really believe if you were in their shoes you would “follow the laws of war” and valiantly walk out to engage tanks with your 40 year old rifle? Or would you consider behaving outside the bounds of the laws of war?
Hamas is corrupt and evil, but it should at least be considered how the world looks from the eyes of a young person who h as grown up in Gaza or the West Bank. Also at the end of the day, Israel is the powerful party here, most of the keys to ever fixing this conflict are held by Israel.
I don’t know what solution would be best, but I do know that much of the Israeli ruling class has always adhered to the idea at least of a two state solution, and by embedding hundreds of thousands of settlers into the West Bank it has made such a solution absolutely impossible.
Sometimes I wonder if Israel should just annex a large segment of the West Bank around the settlements and just evict all the Palestinians in the newly annexed land to the remainder, and then forcefully close off any lingering settlements in the rump West Bank, and be done with it. This would carry with it the cost of broad international opprobrium and likely years of economic sanctions, but it would likely be “cleaner” than what is going on today, and if Russia and China offer any lessons it’s that you basically do get away with shit like that on a long enough time scale.
I 100% don’t think that’s the appropriate thing to do, but it would honestly have more intellectual honesty to me than the current status quo of an Israeli government that says it wants a two state solution (at least depending on which day of the week you ask) but does much to make such a solution a non-starter.
Thanks for the very intelligent and thoughtful post, but I keep going back to the idea of how you deal with another party that believes you don’t have a right to exist at all. That seems to me to be a deal breaker and why if you are the first party, you must keep your power over that other person.
Imagine if Indiana had the stated goal of wiping Ohio and its people off the face of the planet, but Ohio had control over Indiana. Indiana has no stable government and people from Indiana continually fire rockets into Ohio and the press in Indiana says that is a good thing. Is Ohio at fault for not just granting Indiana its fully sovereignty?
It’s worth recognizing a number of Israelis do not believe the Palestinians have any right to live “between the river and the sea.” There’s lots of religious fundamentalists on the Jewish side, and to some degree Netanyahu has secured his political career based on their support.
This recent article in the Atlantic is actually really well done and covers a lot of this:
There are plenty of times when Israel may be wrong but at what point does it sink in for Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. that armed action against Israel always goes nowhere? Do they really think, “okay, the last 50,000 rockets didn’t get Israel to change its mind but these next 200 ones that we’re firing will?”
Hamas in my opinion is primarily interested in its own power and influence within Palestine. These events likely strengthen Hamas within Palestine, while doing nothing to help the broader cause or suffering of the Palestinian people. The interests of Hamas and of the Palestinians is not synchronized, but Hamas is able to peddle its ideas to a desperate and angry people who feel they have few options, and Hamas is at least “on their side.”
Surely you can see how poorly Israel’s policy of killing civilians has advanced the nation’s interests. At this point, the leaders of neither side want anything but the current situation.
So all in all, children got to die until the adults get tired of digging graves.
This strikes me as very similar to Thomas Jefferson’s view on justifying enslavement in the USA.
“But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear , and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
Surely, giving the Palestinians a viable option to affect their material conditions through political action (e.i. voting rights) is the only way to 1. justifiy Israel’s existence in their minds (by making Israel a controllable tool to their salvation) and 2. delegitimize violent terrorist groups like Hamas (who gain influence and wield power through violent terroist action).
Voting rights where? They already can vote in Palestinian elections–that is nominally how the political leadership of the PA is selected. Of course the PA only chooses to conduct Presidential elections roughly once a decade or so and often “extends” the period between them, I don’t think they’ve had one in over 10 years now; but they had local elections in 2017.
Voting rights in a viable state, not through the former PA; which is not an independent entity as policy they enact is ultamately controlled with Israel’s acceptence and efforts.
So are you advocating a one state solution then?
2,300 since Monday. Israel-Hamas conflict rages as Israeli strike demolishes .... Not GPS targeted. Just hurled, killing civilians, including children. But that is Israel’s fault. We can sit on our ivory tower over here, but none of us would grant sovereignty to neighbors who do that. I get mad at the neighbor because his dog pisses in my yard. Rockets are right out.
Black South Africans had plenty of voting rights in the Bantutastans.
Sure one state, there are real problems with one state, but for simplicity sake lets say this.
*For complexity sake any solution that empowers Palestinians to enact effective policy with autonomy should be sufficient, as this gives people an ability to peacefully change their lives without needing to appeal to terrorism. This state can be an independent Palestinians state if that state is viable and has relations with Israel but… I don’t think its viable. It can be though.
OTOH Israel is a fine viable state already with robust laws, political structure, justice system, Arab minority, etc. It’s already there fully functional, modern, and could swallow Palestinians so that they don’t have to try setting up (what could possibly be) numerous failed states and unstable revolutions until achieving a good stretch of political dynasties that is able to create an Israel-like state…
To be real, 2-state or 1-state any Palestinian state is going to have difficulties. However I don’t see ANY option that doesn’t give Palestinians real agency and political power (except staus quo).
I’m as left wing as it gets, but the more I see the discussion of this I’m my WhatsApp groups with Pakistani former classmates and coworkers the more I understand Israel’s position.
As for the AP strike, I am guessing someone in the area intelligence HQ fucked up. They thought it was only Al Jazeera in that building and then correctly surmised that westerners would not give two shits about them being hit. Forgot about AP until it was too late.
You’re just making up shit now, aren’t you?
The solutions are either 1 state, 2 state or denying people democratic rights.
I sense you are being ironic but in case you are not. Black South Africans had their citizenship stripped from them with Aparthied. They could not vote, work, recieve government aid, nor could they freely move/travel.
They also were removed from their land and placed into the Bantustans.
Not sure how that is Germaine, I was asking @orcenio for clarification of his position (which he has subsequently provided.) It is materially different if someone is talking voting rights as part of Israel or something different.
I don’t disagree with any of this as a stated goal. I personally have shifted to being in favor of the one state solution with robust rights for all–but my vision of it is it would required Israel be a secular democracy, I don’t think it’s viable otherwise. The issue being a huge number of Israeli Jews are against it. The other issue being a huge number of Arabs are vehemently opposed to the one state solution, this is markedly different from the situation with South Africa that @AK84 glibly referenced. Black South Africans wanted equality in the properly constituted/unified state of South Africa, not in little enclaves carved out for them by the white ruling government.
A significant portion of Palestinians do not want the equivalent of this, many of them advocate for the removal of Jews “from the river to the Sea”, and do not view any Jewish presence there as appropriate but as invaders/colonizers. So while it’s nice to think one day they could be happy in a secularized Israel that constitutes all the land and people in equality, a huge portion of the people living there (on both sides) do not want that, and even with the rights and privileges offered by such an equality scheme, a huge portion of Palestinians would still view it as a “territorial loss” as it would mean the destruction of the promised Palestinian state. There’s a huge number of Palestinians who are manifestly not willing to accept any territorial losses from the 1947 UN green line, and many who are not even willing to accept those borders because the green line still dispossessed some Palestinians (it also dispossessed some Jews, in interest of fairness.) But one of the core issues with the one state solution remains–the Palestinians do not want political rights at that cost, they mostly either want their own state, or a one state solution that excludes Jews.