his series is about Israel’s policies in Gaza. I think they’re so unconscionable that I can’t believe they’re up for debate even among Jews — and yet they are. Instead of criticising Israel, I invite you to explore the basis and consequences of a pro-Israel’s-policy view. I’m not naive about changing minds but gotta try. This is for you if you: (1) support Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank (2) consider Palestinians and Israelis to be equally human, their lives equally valuable and (3) don’t consider Jews to be a superior race.
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One of the more bizarre parts of the “debate” is that criticism of Israel’s latest bombings in Gaza are often countered with “well, what would you do?”. An appropriate label for this might be the provide a full, referenced, strategic policy report for Israel to follow for a long-term peace solution or STFU defence.
Now I agree that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most intractable ones today. Even if there were genuine good-faith bilateral attempts to reach a long-term agreement, it would really really hard. But let’s just think how such defences would play out in other cases where state authority was being criticised for brutality:
- “Well, what would you have me do, NOT shoot the teenager who was charging at me?” -a cop in Ferguson
- “Well, what would you have me do, NOT take every opportunity we can to destroy the LTTE?” -a general from the SRA
- “Do you really expect me not to bomb the shit out of a wedding when I get a report that there’s an al-Qaeda operative there?” -a US army member remotely operating a drone flying over Yemen
- “Do you really expect us not to put Dresden and Tokyo to the torch when we’re fighting a war for our very survival?” -some WWII generals
You really don’t need to be sympathetic to al-Qaeda or the Nazis to think the above tactics as brutal and you don’t need to provide the various counterparts with what they should do. They’re the experts, as they keep saying as they collectively receive billions of dollars worth of funding. And it’s not like there aren’t cases in military history where armies in similar situations made very different decisions. After all, the IDF has not — as of the date of publication — nuked Gaza or dropped as many bombs on it as on Dresden and Tokyo. (Although some of the calculations I’ve seen give the recent bombing of Gaza a run for Dresden+Tokyo’s money.) So we’re already talking about choices.
Let’s look at a non-Israel example: US drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia which have killed 571-1225 civilians (possibly many more since I believe men of combat age seem to be automatically classified as civilians). Of course the drone “solution” is not the only way of targeting al-Qaeda operatives. It does however take less effort and less cost. The fact that there are other solutions is obvious because the US government would never do this inside the US. As someone said on Twitter, reversing actual news: “terrorists from Yemen massacre wedding party in US”. It’s only an option to the US government because they’re attacking the Other. Which also expands the concept of collateral damage, BTW.
I now invite you to think of a similar substitution for Israel. I know about the geography and demographics of Gaza thank you very much. But the point is that those pro-Israel people who aren’t explicitly racist have been claiming that the civilian casualties are a necessity, because Israel needs to protect itself and Hamas uses civilians as human shields.
If so, I invite you to call your own bluff. If that were true and you think Protective Edge is Israel’s least bad option given the circumstances, you would have the same opinion if all the “civilian human shields” were Jewish instead. I mean if it’s not about them being Palestinian then it shouldn’t matter, right? So imagine if halfway through the bombings all the Palestinian civilians got teleported out of Gaza and the same number of Jews got teleported in. And as the pro-Israeli side claims for the Palestinian civilians, they were unable to leave, being forced by Hamas to stay.
Do you really think the operation would have continued as is? Would the bombings still have been an acceptable solution? If you demand alternatives from people who oppose the operation, do you really think the IDF would have shrugged and said “this is still our only alternative” instead of looking for other options?
If you do claim that, I simply don’t believe you. I don’t even believe that you believe yourself.
Part 1|Part 2|Part 3|Part 4|Part 5|Part 6|Part 7|Part 8|Part 9
Yep, comments are closed. There are plenty of other venues to respond that don’t involve me paying to host pro-IDF rhetoric. I must be a coward and an enemy of Freeze PeachTM. What am I afraid of???
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