David Rieff on Israel and Gaza

Rieff's flawed argument can be found when he says:

"And frankly, as long as the Israelis effectively --- I am not concerned with their intentions, though of course I know defenders of Israel consider this a crucial point --- make a decent life in Gaza impossible, I can't see sympathizing with their actions."

Wrong. It's not up to the Isrealis to make life in Gaza decent, it's up the inhabitants. And they've shown repeatedly that they're culturally incapable of doing so.

I don't think the political strengthening of Hamas (by weakening it militarily) is something Israel is concerned about. If Hamas were to lose its political support, it would likely be because a more radically jihadist and more heavily armed group stood to take its place.

Democratic processes gave us Hamas after all.

Why is it racist to observe what is plainly true: that the Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves by any standard we'd regard as successful? Culture is not the same thing as race.

I mean, look, I'm a Louisianian and I can tell you that we're culturally incapable of governing ourselves as well as, say, Minnesotans do. If you want good government, and efficient government, don't look to Louisiana. If you want to eat well, hear good music, and have a good time, well, there's a reason folks would rather go to New Orleans on vacation than Minneapolis.

Same with Italy and Norway. One has better government, the other has a better time. The Italians are famously incapable of good government. It's not because there's anything wrong with their genes; it's their culture.

"Culturally incapable" would have to be culturism, not racism. If it's not nature or nurture what's left?

Nice try Rod, but CB didn't say that the Gazans couldn't govern themselves; he said they were culturally incapable of making a decent life for themselves.

What's the difference, really? Most people might prefer to vacation in New Orleans, but most people I know would rather live in Minneapolis.

EXcellent points. Why do so few ‘get’ what the day-in and year out reality is in Gaza (where my cousin Kathleen taught)? Proving anew that (firsthand) knowledge is power over knee-jerk dogma.

Thank you to Rieff and to you for posting his larger view when it is automatically seen as un-Biblical (per Christian TV)/ and/ or anti Semitic to question (per Jimmy Carter) the ongoing Israeli positions.

Palestinians wants Gaza. Israel pulls out and gives it to them.
A
merican donors (many Jewish) donate $14 million worth of productive greenhouses to Palestinian government. Gazans loot and destroy greenhouses. Gazans complain about hunger.

Palestinians from Gaza send suicide bombers into Israel so Israel closes border. Gazans send thousands of rockets into Israel.

Gazans complain about hunger. Gazans break through border into Egypt. Egypt closes border. Gazans send more thousands of rockets into Israel specifically targeting civilians.

Israel makes productive country out of desert and malarial swaps. Palestinians build rockets and bombs. And complain.

Israel bad- Palestinians good. ??
Please explain.

There is something incongruous in Israel attacking a non-state entity like Hamas in a non-state like Gaza. My published view is that there really is no such thing as non-state terrorism. Syria gives support to Hamas and refuge to its military wing. I urged Israel to intiate full-dress war against Syria last April, when war seemed imminent. It's hard to fight with a vicious dog; better to shoot the dog's master dead when circumstances allow, by which I mean the total destruction of Syria's military. An alternative would be an attack on Iran's nuclear weapons development capabilities. That said, Rieff is out of date on the demographics. The Palestinian territories are headed for the same catastrophic demographic decline that makes the Muslim world the fastest-aging part of the human family. That is not the problem, particularly as Israel's (Jewish) birth rate continues to rise. The problem is that there shouldn't be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza living off UN relief to begin with, and Israel should not have left the place in 2005. There is no way to make such a population viable, and the best thing for the international community to do is to withdraw refugee status and phase out aid, forcing immigration out of and eventual depopulation of that miserable strip of sand. The second-best thing to do is resign ourselves to a multi-generational war of attrition. That is not a catastrophic outcome, merely an annoying one.

Gaza is "threatening" to Israel in the exact same way that Cuba is "threatening" to the US or Taiwan is "threatening" to Red China. I.e., it isn't threatening at all, except in the feverish imagination of those who would love nothing more than to see the Israelis exterminate the Palestinians.

Gaza has 1.5 million plus people living in an area somewhat smaller than Philadelphia or Detroit. There is no visible modern industrial economy and the region survives on handouts.

The notion that Gazans cannot govern themselves because of some genetic or culutral incapability is belied by the fact that no one (Turkey, Britain, Egypt, or Israel) has ever allowed them to function as a modern city state.

Gaza obviously has no army, no air force and no navy. It has no ability to produce arms and armarment, and no ability to purchase them since its economy is essentially a nullity. If Israel wanted, Gaza could be flattened and decimated in a day.

If Israel REALLY wanted to coexist with the Palestinians, Gaza would seem like an ideal candidate for Israel to attempt to foster its neighbor to modern statehood to show how the two peoples could coexist and live side-by-side. Obviously that will never happen as it has not happened in 41 years and Israel shows no interest in doing anything but maintaining a status of blockade and seige.

Without getting into the morality of the situation, it is always unwise to create or allow the creation of a large group of people who have nothing to lose, because people like that will do absolutely anything.

Not the kind of state anyone wants on their borders. The situation in Mexico, while not anything as bad, veers in that direction, to the great danger and discomfort of the United States. The problem there is to determine what we can do about it.

It is hard to believe that the Israelis, who are said to be intelligent, would deliberately create such a situation in Gaza, apparently without foreseeing the inevitable result.

Israel response might not be the best, but it's the only one that makes sense

Unless you live in an igloo in the antartic sea you won't have missed the news of this week end: Israel strike on hamas. What looks like a disproportional response is i believe close to the only option left to Israel digesting 2000 rockets launched blindly at its citizen for 3 years.

* Can Israel negotiate? no. Hamas does not want. They do not want to recognize israel, They do not want a truce. They do not want peace.
* Can Israel put pressure on the international community?no. No one really cares. Everyone talks. But no one dares to pressure Iran seriously, the only reason why Hamas has still financial ressources to maintain its power
* Can Israel involve arab governments in the process? they tried with Egypt, but that was a vain effort. And honestly looking back i think that beyond street demonstrations and media declaration arab countries don t give a damn about palestinians. They never did actually. But they need to show otherwise. This is good for image
* Can Israel stop the rockets? no. there is no technology able to do that. if you do let us know.
* Can Israel stay quiet? no. If your country was in the same situation there would be demonstrations in favour of a war.

So what is left? War. The worst answer possible. But probably the only one given the context. Until hamas stops ruling in Gaza there won't be peace with Israel. Fatah, the other party, is trying to take the power back but it does not manage. At this day peace would only be possible with the Fatah.

Maybe this will actively motivate the international community and arab leader to put pressure on Iran and stop and support to Hamas and give to palestinian a chance for peace. Honestly i doubt it. I think those extremists are ready to sacrifice any of their citizen and children: they already put all their militar infrastructures in the heart of civilian zones. On purpose. Why would they care?

Martin thinks Israel attack is immoral
and could lead to worse. i disagree on the first part (immoral is when
you have a choice) but agree on the second. I am worried about where
this could lead. I am worried about where this could lead.

Anyone care to see how well Israel governs itself without US aid?

Why shouldn’t we give them aid? We have the same mortal enemies.

Gaza obviously has no army, no air force and no navy. It has no ability to produce arms and armarment, and no ability to purchase them since its economy is essentially a nullity. And yet it has thousands of rockets to throw at Israel, as well as plenty suicide bombers – if the borders were open. Go figure.

IIf Israel wanted, Gaza could be flattened and decimated in a day.

Perhaps they should. If Israel does nothing, they’re hated. If they go to war, they’re hated. They’re Jews – they’ll be hated no matter what.

If one accepts a Huntingtonian analysis, why are the Israelis placed on the side of the West? Judaism is a horrid Middle Eastern hate-cult, with far more in common with Islam than with Europe or the USA.

You’re a sick person Rombold. Get help.

Pliplup,

Two sets of questions:

1. Did you even bother to read my comment above? The question of proportionality is not whether Israel's response is proportional to the damage that Hamas has inflicted upon it, nor to the nature of the attacks that Hamas has perpetrated. The principle of proportionality is not, repeat, NOT cousin to the principle of retributive justice, where the punishment must be in proportion to the crime. You will find absolutely no support for that interpretation of the proportionality principle in any authoritative international law treatise. (And even if it were, one would have to compare, not the two sides' conduct over the past several days, but the attacks by Hamas over the last several years with Israel's response in the past few days.) If you object to Israel's conduct on other grounds, then say so: Stacking up the relative damage each side has inflicted upon the other over the past week may be indicative of something, but it's certainly not relevant to the question of whether Israel's response has been proportionate to any legitimate military goal it might have. Is that concept really so difficult to understand, or are you, like Glenn Greenwald and many others, just so convinced that the underlying cause is unjust that you would find any response by Israel to be immoral? If so, again your problem is not with the principle of proportionality but with the existence of causus belli. But again, if that's your position, come out an say so.

2. What response by Israel would be proportional? And is that a rule that you would apply to other conflicts, such as WWII or, say, the Civil War? Should the North have merely responded tit for tat to aggression from the South? Was it immoral for the North to pursue total victory against the South? (Ditto for the Allies in WWII.) Can you not see that a tit-for-tat definition of proportionality is not only erroneous but also disastrous, in that it's likely to result in the prolongation of war and violence, turning it into a long-term conflict of attrition? Can you not see that this just doesn't make any sense?

P.S. I have to admit that the anti-Zionist (and borderline anti-semitic) Guardian is rather smooth in how the contextualize the conflict. One would almost think they had an agenda or something.

tsc,

Thanks for responding, but I think you miss the point of my question. My purpose of asking about other conflicts was to determine whether there's a consistent principle of proportionality that folks like Greenwald and some commenters here would be willing to articulate, not to attempt to draw a parallel between those conflicts and the current unpleasantness in the middle east. As I understand your response, you question either the justice of Israel's cause or the wisdom of its current strategy. Those are legitimate questions, but they are distinct from the question of proportionality. If Israel's cause or military goals are unjust, by definition, no military action would satisfy the proportionality principle; if its strategy is misguided and wrongheaded, that may be help answer the question of proportionality but it is by no means determinative (i.e., it's possible for a policy to be strategically and politically wise but fail the proportionality test; it's also possible for a response to be proportional but militarily, politically, or strategically disastrous).

I apologize if I come across as obsessive about this, but I'm convinced its absolutely essential to maintain the meaning of terms - especially terms that purport to express legal concepts that are binding upon civilized peoples.

This debate never ends, because the debate is based on what I consider a flawed premise...

That you can judge the merits of the action by using a bullet list of plus and minus items. Instead of making any attempt to understand the whole of the situation, Israel is judged on the basis of the "results" of its actions, and Hamas, et al, gets a pass on their continuing role of being a terrorism sponsor.

While Israel's critics continually harp that they are "disproportionate", they never, ever look at the continuing saga, they completley ignore how things got to where they are. A willful and deliberate blindness.

Everyone, even Hamas, knows exactly how the Palestinians got to where they are. They attacked Isreal and were defeated. NO Arab country will do anything but sponsor terrorism against Israel. They won't take the Palestinians as refugees, they won't take over the country, they won't even support them humanitarily.

To expect Israel to do anything but treat them as a national enemy is insanity. This requires little but knowing the facts up to now.

To pretend that each "event" is to be viewed solely in the light of that "event" is to be willfully blind, deliberately ignorant, and to promote a complete lack of critical thought and judgement.

Reiff's commentary fits in that mold very, very well. Sadly, though an apparently educated person, his depth of thinking rivals that of the stature of supine copy paper.

If Mexico declared its ultimate goal was the death of the US, and rained rocket attacks and other military actions on our borders, while at the same time declaring the justification for doing so was various short wars in our common past, you can bet your last dime that Reiff would not be calling for "proportional" responses of indiscriminate killings of Mexican citizens. Rather, he'd be calling for the lopping off of whatever government was behind it, and a re-establishment of a ( well, at least semi ) civilized government, one with legitemate goals to replace it.

You can bet, however, that there would be a certain segment of our so-called "intelligentsia" that would side with Mexico, and call for our disssolution as a "solution". Or, perhaps that we give Mexico "reparations" for "past wrongs" and our "racist policies".

There is no end to the depth of the "Hate America" ideology that motivates a large segment of this left-leaning smattering of idiots.

If we really cared at all about the Palestinians, there are ANY number of "solutions" that would be better than the grinding poverty and hopelessness they now endure, and have for a couple generations.

One, would be to simply declare there to be NO legitemate governemnt of the Palestinians (there simply isn't anyway) and put Israel in charge of the entire land mass and let them weed out the bad guys and go on from there.

While that might seem somewhat counter-intuitive, Israel has absorbed a lot of Palestinians into Isreal by immigration, and on average, they live much better lives than those who have gone to any other Arab or Muslim country.

The needs and interests of the Palestinians are not met by being subject to the terrorist machinations of Hamas, nor the utter incompetence and lower key terrorism of Fatah. And no other option to them is any better. Perhaps the "Status Quo is God" liberals will have a fit, but in practical terms, the Israelis are probably the best choice of administrators and educators to exist in the region.

This means putting aside all the religious and "ethnic" baggage and just taking a clear eyed look at the interests of a large group of people who have not had a free breath, or personal or corporate control of their destinies for their entire lifetime.

The Palestinians do not have any real "right" to be "ruled" by muslim extremists, nor has any muslim extremists any "right" to rule them.

Rather, they need a whole new generation of being exposed to the realities of what CAN be, rather than what they're force-fed daily. It would change the entire equation for the better. Nothing else has done anything but worsen things, especially for the daily lives of the Palestinians, who were best off when they were actually governed by the IDF.

"Anything they do to rage against their plight is completely understandable (if not forgivable) and most people would do the same in their place no matter what their religion."

So, terrorism is justified. Nice...

"You might consider, when evaluating whether the Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves by any standard we'd regard as sucessful, when they've had an opportunity. "

They have opportunities every day. There's an old saying, "Palestinians have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Like most people in this country, I don’t keep close watch on the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict. Why? Because both parties are intractable, making the problem insoluble. So, the better-informed outsiders are, the more numbers they can identify to the right of the decimal point in pi, and that’s as useful as the information will be.

Some observations:

– Israel’s founding rationale, as a homeland for European Jews who were persecuted and ultimately slaughtered en masse, is losing its relevance as the generation of Holocaust survivors and the original Zionist settlers die off. The country’s status as a refuge from persecution and/or genocide now applies to Sephardim from Islamic countries and Ashkenazim from the former Soviet bloc. These groups, plus ultra-Orthodox émigrés, mostly from the U.S., form the core of support for the Israeli hard right, which populates the Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory and opposes any meaningful Israeli concessions in negotiations.

– Continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t just contribute to the growth of radical jihadism, but is its critical life-support mechanism, at least as far as conflict with non-Islamic countries is concerned. (How many suicide bombers would line up to do battle with Western pop culture and multinational capitalism?) The only other promising targets for a jihadist mass movement would be corrupt and oppressive Arab states such as Syria, Egypt and Pakistan, which have failed to build economies that can productively employ their young men, who subsequently vent their frustrations and testosterone in jihad. (Once oil wealth dries up, you can add Saudi Arabia, the gulf states, Iran and the Central Asian “-stans” to the list of regimes that don’t answer to and deliver for their people.)

– Israel’s pre-1967 territory will be majority Arab within a generation or two; these Arabs are not Palestinians but Israeli citizens. The growth of this population, and its representation in the Knesset, accounts for the unwieldy coalitions that Israeli politicians have to form in order to govern, and the policy stalemates that have plagued Israel’s recent governments.

– The real solution to this, and most of the other crises in the Middle East, is a systematic redrawing of the map of the region that would provide secure, contiguous homelands for groups that currently are oppressed or endangered minorities: Jews, Christians (Catholic-Maronite, Orthodox, Armenian and Coptic), Kurds and Islamic religious/ethnic subgroups such as the Alawites and Druze. A peaceful, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society being inconceivable for the forseeable future, the Mideast needs a Congress of Vienna- or Versailles-style settlement to replace the botched Anglo-French map drawn after World War I. (Remember, Egypt, Syria and Persia/Iran are the only historically real countries in the region – every other state is a colonial construct.) Close call, I’d say, as to whether such a thing would be harder to pull off than an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

Sorry about the bungled italics...

The first sentence only... should be a quote.

Another Believer -

I know this is sort of off topic, okay entirely off-topic, but I am wondering what you think of the role of chaplain in the military? I ask because, I'm interested to know what benefit our soldiers are getting out of the chaplains (from your experience out in the field). I'm also probably going to be one (yes, the third or fourth Buddhist chaplain in the US military, and as I understand it the first one in the NG) - after my packet is approved by the chaplain board.

please educate youselves ,who could govern or live like that?

http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/