Thoughts on Gaza

20 Comments

1. Charles says:

   January 4, 2009 at 4:47 pm

   Absolutely man. Why is it hard to accept that sometimes, there isn’t a ’side’ to be on except the victims?
2. EV says:

   January 4, 2009 at 5:45 pm

   Agreed.
3. Richard Marker says:

   January 4, 2009 at 6:07 pm

   Well said and carefully articulated. we are on the same page on this. A painful dilemma.
4. Aaron Freeman says:

   January 4, 2009 at 6:41 pm

   Hamas may not accept Israels “right to exist” but they negotiate deals and honor them. As I understand it, during the lull, between 19 June and 4 November of this, year a TOTAL of 38 rockets and mortars were launched by Gazan groups, virtually all of them in response to the IDF killing some member of the launching group. None were fired by Hamas. As opposed to the preceding 6 mos wherein an average of 380 per month were fired. When Israel killed 6 Palestinians on 4 Nov, the IDF didn’t even claim they were involved in any rocket launching activity. With Israel seemingly unwilling to negotiate or to stop killing people or to open the Rafah crossing, what alternatives to violence do the Palestinians have?
5. Mobius says:

   January 4, 2009 at 7:14 pm

   Hamas may negotiate and honor hudnas but they will not honor deals made by their predecessors in the P.A.. When you’re seeking to negotiate, you cannot proceed when your partner rejects the previous 20 years’ work.

   I won’t defend Israel’s extrajudicial assassinations and I agree that they are violations of the ceasefire agreement. But if you’re looking to make the case that Israel is violating its international agreements and that they’re unwilling to negotiate and stop killing, you don’t demonstrate the righteousness of your case by indiscriminately killing and refusing to negotiate yourself.

   It’s hypocrisy. You’re either for international law and honoring international agreements or you’re against it. If you’re against it, you can’t hold your opponent responsible for disregarding the law as you do.

   As to “what alternatives to violence [...] the Palestinians have” — if Hamas had renounced violence and amended its charter to recognize previous commitments between Israel and the P.A., there never would have been a blockade or a siege. And were it to make those changes now, in a matter of months peace negotiations would resume and the blockade would be lifted.

   But you know, never that, because that would be an affront to Hamas’ “dignity,” or otherwise result only in apartheid.
6. chachi says:

   January 4, 2009 at 9:26 pm

   Hi Dan,

   Good to see you’re back in the game. I had a hunch you wouldn’t stand still in the midst of a crisis – we welcome your insight.

   This escalation was pretty much a foregone conclusion after Hamas’ election and then takeover of the strip. While I too empathize with the Palestinians daily suffering and oppose the economic blockade – I just don’t have another answer for safeguarding Israeli lives and interests. Sustained violent Palestinian resistance to the blockade reveals an utter misapprehension of reality and serves nothing except the doomed martyrdom ideology you describe. I don’t know what could possibly knock people out of their closed narratives. Perhaps an eventual melt towards conciliation, economic improvement and reasons for people to make less extreme choices.
7. Jesse Cohn says:

   January 4, 2009 at 10:32 pm

   Dan–

   I don’t have any snap responses to the question “Well, what would _you_ have Israel do?” — and even if I did, it’s unlikely they’d be listened to — but it seems to me that there are a few real problems in this (albeit limited) defense of the IDF’s attack on Gaza.

   You say: “Hamas may negotiate and honor hudnas but they will not honor deals made by their predecessors in the P.A.. When you’re seeking to negotiate, you cannot proceed when your partner rejects the previous 20 years’ work.” <–The problem with this is that the previous 20 years of negotiations that you are referring to were done, on the Palestinian side, by a fairly corrupt and unaccountable agencies that accordingly had very little credibility as representatives of their supposed constituents, and that the results for those constituents were continually dismal, and that when said constituents used their votes to throw said agents out of power in a more or less standard democratic fashion, the latter refused to go quietly, such that civil war ensued. All in all, I can’t blame Palestinians for regarding all previous negotiations as a sham and a travesty — “peace process, beast process,” as they say.

   How should ordinary Palestinians choose between Fatah, which Israel can (sometimes) trust to honor bargains but which Palestinians can’t trust to bargain on their behalf, and Hamas, which at least has a reputation for dealing fairly with the Palestinians even if it can’t (supposedly) be trusted by Israel? Which party, indeed, is their “worst enemy”? (Shouldn’t even more unaccountable, ideologically-driven parties like Islamic Jihad be considered as contestants in the Worst Enemy sweepstakes? And how about the State of Israel itself, surely a strong contender?) Are ordinary Palestinians to be charged with “hypocrisy” for failing to cast out of power a party that refuses to “hono[r] international agreements” made in their name, and against their best interests, by another party? To my ears, that sounds like mishegas.

   It’s true that Hamas has an ideological commitment to the destruction of the Israeli State, refusing “recognition” to Israel as an entity. The government of China, too, thinks that Taiwan is properly part of China, and doesn’t “recognize” its separate nationhood; that’s been the case for decades now. Real and effective peace negotiations don’t ordinarily require that all parties involved agree to metaphysical “recognitions” of this kind, and the insistence of Israel and the U.S. that this should be a non-negotiable prerequisite to any negotiations with Hamas has been perceived by almost everybody else, I think, as an indication that it is the Israeli government that isn’t serious about peace, that it wants to maintain the status quo (bizarre as such a wish might seem). Meanwhile, Hamas gets to look principled (which, remember, is their one claim to credibility — at least, unlike Fatah, they mean what we say!) for refusing to bow in the face of U.S. and Israeli pressure. It really might have been wiser for the Israeli government to take a chance on negotiating with Hamas, dropping the precondition; maybe Hamas could have quietly ignored its own platform plank for some sixty years, time enough to lay the material foundations for lasting peace . . . we’ll never know now.

   I agree strongly that Palestinians have other options than violent ones. It would be dishonest, though, to pretend that Palestinians have not also engaged in nonviolent forms of resistance, or that those doing so have not also been targets of Israeli bombs and sanctions. From a Palestinian perspective, the choices must look equally futile: violence isn’t alleviating their suffering and terror, and nonviolence isn’t doing it, either. They can choose to be brutal or sweet as doves — but that won’t stop the rockets going in either direction right now.

   I don’t know what Israel “should” do, even given the pretense that I am in a position to dictate shoulds to governments of other countries, or that anyone is listening, or that I “recognize” the “rights” of any government whatsoever to govern, to wage war, and so on. I don’t know what a fractured Palestine “should” do, either. All I can say is that when two parties are in a violent conflict that is dramatically asymmetrical — i.e., in which one party is much stronger than the other — it seems to me that the stronger party is obliged, both by moral and by practical considerations, to take the first and most potentially painful steps toward ending the violence, not the weaker. This may mean being the first to make concessions. It may also mean, up to some point, _not hitting back_ when one is hit.

   In the asymmetry between Palestine and Israel, Palestine is clearly dramatically weaker, not only in conventional military terms, but in terms of what Hannah Arendt called “power” (as distinct from mere “violence”): “the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.” Hence Palestine’s fracturing into two tiny, embattled enclaves and four or five armed factions. A large part of the problem facing Israelis who want not to perpetuate the violence is precisely that the Palestinians remain too _weak_; bargains with one faction may not be kept by the others. However, it could also be said that Israel itself is fatally weak, that Israelis, too, have failed to muster the necessary consensus of wills to stop their own government, in its successive administrations, from doing the same stupid and cruel things over and over again in cycles (violence, then half-hearted negotiations, then betrayals of agreements, then more violence . . .). A polis chronically afflicted with military and political weakness confronts another weak polis that happens to be bristling with arms.

   Arguably, the party with the greatest power in this situation (in both the military and economic as well as Arendtian senses) is the U.S. government. With that power, it has the greatest responsibility to intervene, especially by making a credible threat to withdraw its support for the State of Israel unless certain conditions are met (and by cutting off its support for the settlements without any further qualification, unless it is to support the relocation of settlers within Israel’s territory, à la Brit Tzedek v’Shalom). It will only do so, though, if Americans show that they are no longer willing to accept excuses on the order of “What else could we do but retaliate?”

   Dan: you, with your great heart, with whom I share such important principles — you, too, should deny the generals and apparatchiks of the State of Israel that excuse.

   B’shalom v’ahava–

   –Jesse.
8. Mobius says:

   January 4, 2009 at 11:44 pm

   Jesse, I sympathize with your view, generally, but I’m conflicted by the following:

   All in all, I can’t blame Palestinians for regarding all previous negotiations as a sham and a travesty.

   While that may be so, just as it was illegitimate of the Bush administration to invalidate U.S. commitments to the Geneva Conventions and NPT, I don’t think Hamas is in a position, without democratic legislative action, to decide on behalf of the Palestinian people to invalidate the previous commitments of the democratically elected Palestinian Authority.

   I also think that Palestinian public opinion has been more-or-less adequately represented in these negotiations, as the positions put forth by the P.A. have been consistent with independent polling in the Palestinian territories. That the Israelis will not concede the Palestinian position is another story all together.

   Are ordinary Palestinians to be charged with ‘hypocrisy’ for failing to cast out of power a party that refuses to “hono[r] international agreements” made in their name, and against their best interests, by another party?

   No, and that was not my charge. Rather I charge the democratically-elected government of Palestine and the international community which sympathizes with it of being hypocritical for demanding Israel adhere to the very humanitarian laws which Hamas itself contravenes. It is hypocritical to blast Israel as “war criminals” when you are firing 100 rockets a day into civilian communities and refusing to honor the same agreements you chide Israel for violating.

   Real and effective peace negotiations don’t ordinarily require that all parties involved agree to metaphysical “recognitions” of this kind, and the insistence of Israel and the U.S. that this should be a non-negotiable prerequisite to any negotiations with Hamas has been perceived by almost everybody else, I think, as an indication that it is the Israeli government that isn’t serious about peace.

   I did not state that Hamas ought to be obligated to “recognize Israel.” I stated that it must honor the previous commitments of the government body which it heads should it wish to resume negotiations.

   It would be dishonest, though, to pretend that Palestinians have not also engaged in nonviolent forms of resistance, or that those doing so have not also been targets of Israeli bombs and sanctions.

   As a first-hand witness of non-violent resistance against the occupation and Israel’s brutal military response to such actions, I would never dare make such a claim. However, one cannot say that non-violent resistance has been completely ineffectual. It has resulted in some small victories, and should it become more coordinated and popular, it could win many more, and greater ones at that.

   I don’t know what Israel “should” do, even given the pretense that I am in a position to dictate shoulds to governments of other countries, or that anyone is listening, or that I “recognize” the “rights” of any government whatsoever to govern, to wage war, and so on.

   Look, ideally speaking, I do not recognize the rights of governments to govern, wage war and so on. That, however, is not the world that Israelis and Palestinians inhabit, nor is that the world in which the international system operates. Idealized solutions rooted in non-actualized political philosophies will not help move this matter towards resolution, but add only further distraction from addressing the present reality. I would rather address this conflict from within the framework of international law and thus from within the framework of rights allotted under the rubric of self-determination, which presently includes the right to manifest that self-determination in the form of statehood.

   All I can say is that when two parties are in a violent conflict that is dramatically asymmetrical — i.e., in which one party is much stronger than the other — it seems to me that the stronger party is obliged, both by moral and by practical considerations, to take the first and most potentially painful steps toward ending the violence, not the weaker. This may mean being the first to make concessions. It may also mean, up to some point, _not hitting back_ when one is hit.

   I find that argument very difficult to stomach. If I were to concede such a point, than I would be forced to concede that every government everywhere ought to be required to capitulate to any aggressor smaller in size or less well-armed than itself. That seems ludicrous to me. Especially when asymmetric warfare is a proven military strategy.

   This is the idealization of the underdog and has nothing to do with upholding universal principles of justice.

   Arguably, the party with the greatest power in this situation (in both the military and economic as well as Arendtian senses) is the U.S. government. With that power, it has the greatest responsibility to intervene, especially by making a credible threat to withdraw its support for the State of Israel unless certain conditions are met (and by cutting off its support for the settlements without any further qualification, unless it is to support the relocation of settlers within Israel’s territory, à la Brit Tzedek v’Shalom). It will only do so, though, if Americans show that they are no longer willing to accept excuses on the order of “What else could we do but retaliate?”

   Hamas is a sworn enemy of the U.S. that has targeted Americans and which is allied with militant factions currently at war with the U.S. Under such circumstances, why on earth would the U.S. place pressure on Israel to go easy on them?

   Again, I want this conflict to end. I want Israel out of the territories. I want Palestinians to have a state. And I want the U.S. to get its nose out of the Middle East. I just don’t think the Left’s proscriptions for resolving this conflict are any more realistic or any less lopsided than the Right’s.
9. Shimstu says:

   January 5, 2009 at 1:49 am

   Praise Hash’allah!
   The favorite son has returned, and this time with a moving level-headed expression of reason and realism, stating the case simply, beautifully and fairly.

   they need to send you over to slap some sense into all those fools out there.
10. Jesse Cohn says:

    January 5, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    Dan –

    please don’t misunderstand me: I know very well that Hamas has done some horrible things; suicide bombings against civilians are abominable. I do not believe that victimhood confers righteousness on the victim, or that military losses must somehow equal moral victories, and I don’t think I am “idealiz[ing] the underdog.” The principle that I’m appealing to is better stated like this:

    Just as power entails responsibility, one’s degree of responsibility is proportional to one’s degree of power in a situation — such that we tend to blame most those who do harm gratuitously, and we tend to excuse those who do harm under conditions extremity, e.g., under duress or in self-defense. (I think this is pretty uncontroversial — do you disagree?) The simplicity of this moral rule of thumb doesn’t make reality any less messy; it can be hard to judge just how much freedom to act particular people have in particular (and changing) situations, and that degree of freedom is (almost?) never exactly zero. Nonetheless, as a general rule, I have a hard time judging harshly those for whom most or all available options are more or less equally horrible. For those less moved by the spirit of compassion, this moral rule of thumb also works pretty well as a practical rule of prudence (at least in its negative form: although you can’t always expect good behavior from the relatively privileged, all things being equal, you’re better off expecting the worst from the worst-off).

    That is why, for both moral and practical reasons, it seems to me that the responsibility for peacemaking always weighs more heavily on the stronger party in a dramatically asymmetrical violent conflict.

    To put it another way: breaking a cycle of violent revenge requires somebody to be the last to take revenge, and somebody must be the last to suffer revenge. In the ideal world of playground scuffles, the last act of vengeance is to be suffered by the one who “started it”; in reality, this is almost never clear or agreed on. That means that one party has to be strong enough, must have enough control over itself, to restrain itself from taking revenge one more time. (This is not the same as “capitulating.” Not every cessation of fire is due to surrender.) When neither party is strong enough to do so, the cycle is endemic, unless some third party intervenes. Right now, the only third party that really has the power to stop the meaningless cycle of death multiplied by deaths is probably the U.S., due to its unparalleled military and economic influence, particularly over its ally, Israel — an influence that, for a number of reasons, has heretofore served mainly to support Israeli settlements and Israeli military/diplomatic initiatives. In short, we could have been doing more to make peace all along, and we can do more. Do you disagree?

    All of my caveats about my difficulty in saying “should” here are not to be taken as meaning that I don’t recognize the reality: States exist, an international order (such as it is) exists, and whatever is likeliest to happen, for ill or for good, will happen in that framework for the forseeable future. Still, I don’t want to lose sight of the huge gap between that framework and the kind of morality that is meaningful to me (and to you, I think).

    I don’t think we are all that far apart in our views. I just want to insist that those with the most power are the most responsible for stopping the violence — and to deny them the right to shrug their shoulders and declare themselves helpless to do anything different.

    –Jesse.
11. Small Blue Thing says:

    January 5, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Sorry. I do see a difference. 3000 thousand people dead and dying under combat cars.

    I do see a wall of shame and poverty.

    I do see tortures in supposedly democratical prisons.

    I do see a supported-by-elections Government erased by a foreign force.

    I do see refuzeniks arrested, violated, prived of their freedom to choose peace.

    And I wonder what do you see and what you don’t and will never see. What for having have a Palestinian State? To forget them the hell ever _as czecks did with Slovakians? Why not a federal solution with free, equal citizens?

    My protest is not against jews, nor even israelis. My protest is against an Army which conculcates International Laws every single day. Not the only one? That’s a lame of thought.
12. Aaron Freeman says:

    January 5, 2009 at 6:39 pm

    Hamas and many Israelis, including Pres. Shamir believe previous PA agreements, like Oslo, have not benefited the Palestinian people. Settlements have expanded, land has been seized, the wall has gone Palestinian democracy has been undermined and don’t even talk about Hebron. Oslo and Annapolis and the Road Map have failed. Is it really hard to understand why Hamas ignores them just like the US and Israel do?

    If tomorrow Hamas swore on a stack of Korans, “We accept Israel’s right to exist!” who would believe them? On the other hand if they said, “We despise Israel and Jews and Americans too but, in exchange for implementation of the Beirut Accords, we will not attack any Israeli targets for twenty years and we’ll enforce the agreement within our community.” The events of the past five months give us solid, historical reasons to trust that they would.

    One who makes tough, specific deals and honors them is my definition of a partner, in peace or anything else.
13. Mobius says:

    January 5, 2009 at 11:44 pm

    Beirut + Geneva + a 20 year truce, with incentives for sticking to and real penalties for violating the pact, sounds like a plan to me.
14. Mobius says:

    January 6, 2009 at 1:38 am

    I agree wholeheartedly that Israel is in a greater position to advance peace and that out of stiffneckedness and haughtiness they have squandered one opportunity after another to bring about a resolution to the conflict. And I agree that the United States has not been a responsible actor, and that the policies of the U.S. towards Israel and Palestine are misguided, unjust and need to change.

    I also absolutely believe that by pursuing meaningful negotiations and reaching lasting agreements that Israel will go far greater ways in preventing rocket fire than in bombing targets in densely populated neighborhoods.

    But I don’t believe that Israel should be required to stand still as hundreds of rockets rain down on its cities because it’s supposed to be “the bigger man.” No “man” anywhere is that “big.”

    In Israel’s eyes, it cannot strategically afford to appear weak lest it wishes to embolden greater force against it. And in light of the present situation in the greater Middle East and the status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a chess piece in the broader conflict between Sunni, Shia & the West, I find it difficult to argue with that assumption, as undesirable as the results of its ensuing policies are.

    I actually think there are “better,” less noble, romantic or humanitarian reasons for Israel not to respond to provocations from Gaza in the manner in which it does. Strategically speaking, the Palestinian liberation movement appears to be succeeding in portraying Israel as the ultimate force of evil in the world (if not successfully in North America, pretty much everywhere else). This perception has led to very undesirable outcomes for Israel: The lionization of Israel’s enemies as defenders of justice and the ever greater demonization and isolation of Israel. I believe this downward trend may ultimately result in a successful divestment and sanctions campaign against the country. By attacking Gaza, I believe Israel is playing right into it.

    I’m not saying that that’s why I’m against Israel’s siege on Gaza. I’m just saying, you’ll get much farther in convincing Israel to refrain from attacking within civilian areas with that line of reasoning than you will with appeals concerning either the suffering of Palestinian innocents or “the responsibility of the greater power.”
15. moshe says:

    January 6, 2009 at 9:39 pm

    Dan dan— this is a good healthy discusstion. Let us pray for the welfare of our brothers and sisters in arms. Too many thoughts..
16. shaul says:

    January 6, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    its’ not really gonna sound right to just say that “israel makes mistakes.” Everybody with open eyes knows that. Israel makes mistakes in its TRYING to deal with a rather daunting enemy. Some governments with more force, some with less etc.
    but there is no excuse for not standing out against Hamas’ sacrificing Palestinians for a PR victory. dan said it- but if there is a war crime going on- in addition to sending rockets into civilian population center for now 8 years running- ESPECIALLY after Israel’s pulling out of Gaza…. But there is something radically disturbing about firng out of schools, or bringing mothers and children into ones strategic command… And why is the left silent?
    I know the critiques of Israel are real, many and deep on our consciounce. But there is no progress being made in this conflict without somebody really addressing and not ignoring the ideological world that Hamas lives in. Without understanding what a “culture of martyrdom” means and thinking realistically about dealing with it- all the critique on Israel would be better off phrased in some form of constructive criticism for facing an impossible challenge.
    The strategy of not hitting back is hard to keep from just being seen as weakness over here in the middle east- Don’t delude ourselves about who we Jews and Muslims or maybe rather Israelis and Palestinians are- we are not intellectual philosophizers, we are people whose families are being killed and feel threatened in our land. We both believe our dead are headed to a better place– I know for Judaism that this world is seen as holy and perhaps more worth Living for than dying from. I hope the voice in Islam that honors life over death, this world as much as the next will prevail and there will be here two religions believing in doing the work of fixing ourselves and relating to each other. As an Israeli, I can say my people have come many steps forward in having accepted a Palestinian narrative- how do we deal with an ideology that violently refuses us?
17. shaul says:

    January 6, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    and i can say that i am dedicated to working within my people to grow the space for acknowledging the other side. But I can’t argue to make space for a culture of shaheedim…. Even the Jewish extremists don’t take on death wishes.. There is a little nekuda tova (good point) in a terrorist who values their OWN life, and something a little extra scary about one who doesn’t.
18. Small Blue Thing says:

    January 7, 2009 at 11:54 am

    Left is not silent _we are with the victims of decades of blockade, opression, tortures, and now massacre.

    Wish all of us refuse you, as it would be easier for you, guys. But this is not the truth.

    Just open your eyes, and bring your soldiers home safe. Collapse the wall, sign in the International Convention against Children Soldiers and the IC against Tortures (1996)… or if you cannot, just vote.

    If you’re about call me antisemite and blablabla, why nobody here has spoken about last 16 refuseniks?
19. Jesse Cohn says:

    January 7, 2009 at 10:14 pm

    Hey Dan– there’s no “reply” button under your last post (Jan 6/1:28 AM), but briefly: Fair enough. Israelis who are first and foremost scared and angry are not likely to respond to the particular arguments I’m making, and appealing to their rational self-interest is at least likelier to succeed (though scared and angry people are not usually all that great at calculating what is in their rational self-interest — which is one more reason why the U.S. is likelier to be the agency here). But the compulsion to strike back, to return vengeance for vengeance yet again, is not evidence of Israel’s political strength; it is reactive, not active, and it produces the discourse of helplessness rather than power (“What else could we do?”). That’s what I mean by saying that while Israel is relatively stronger than Palestine, it is still fatally weak — much the worse for the Palestinians.

    Horrible paradoxes.

    –Jesse.
20. Small Blue Thing says:

    January 9, 2009 at 7:56 am

    O comeon! I guess you haven’t read Glucksmann lately.

    If I feel I MUST reject Al Qaeda’s latest “communication” in public, in order not to be called a fanatic terrorist, shouldn’t you people say STOP to the termination?

    If nobody values your own life, if your fate is living without water, work, schools, no passport, no identity, no rights, would you valuate yourself?

    This is not about being jewish or muslim or israeli or arab either. This crap is about what makes us humans.

    Anyway. I guees I’ve already won my “antisemite” tag and nobody here will ever read this.