Interesting Thought Experiment
Following from today’s post on Gaza, consider this interesting and enlightening thought experiment from Stephen Walt:
“Imagine that Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had won the Six Day War, leading to a massive exodus of Jews from the territory of Israel. Imagine that the victorious Arab states had eventually decided to permit the Palestinians to establish a state of their own on the territory of the former Jewish state. (That’s unlikely, of course, but this is a thought experiment). Imagine that a million or so Jews had ended up as stateless refugees confined to that narrow enclave known as the Gaza Strip. Then imagine that a group of hardline Orthodox Jews took over control of that territory and organized a resistance movement. They also steadfastly refused to recognize the new Palestinian state, arguing that its creation was illegal and that their expulsion from Israel was unjust. Imagine that they obtained backing from sympathizers around the world and that they began to smuggle weapons into the territory. Then imagine that they started firing at Palestinian towns and villages and refused to stop despite continued reprisals and civilian casualties.
Here’s the question: would the United States be denouncing those Jews in Gaza as “terrorists” and encouraging the Palestinian state to use overwhelming force against them?
Here’s another: would the United States have even allowed such a situation to arise and persist in the first place?”
Indeed.
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Here is a more realitic Thought experiment. What if the Cathlolics and others would besides paying attention to John Travolta son’s death, the USA election actually paid attention as thousnads of rockets rained upon Israel and did not seem to carewhen Israel reacted.
I am curous when “liberal” and “conservative” catholics start to realize they are held like slaves to the news cycle here in the USA where what was earth shattering a week ago is so easy forgotten
To answer your question I expect Americans Christian or not would be horrified if Israeli Rockets were going off like Hamas were
There
Imagine that a million or so Jews had ended up as stateless refugees confined to that narrow enclave known as the Gaza Strip.
That’s not realistic either. If Israel had lost the Six Day War, there wouldn’t be a million Jews living in the Gaza strip, and if there were, they certainly wouldn’t still be living in refugee camps.
My guess, though, is that if we ignore all the implausibilities for the sake of the thought experiment, that American reaction would be along the lines of American reaction to the IRA. Unless one thinks that American reaction to the IRA was generally proper, however, I don’t see how this makes the Palestinians come off looking any better.
I just wish people could be realistic. I mean lets be honest know one really cared about what happening in Israel till Israel reacted.
The fact is when Clinton proposed a soultion that gave the PA 99 percent of what hey wanted it was rejected. THere is no PA version of the opposition as we see in Israel.
I rarely see Catholics urging Catholics of Arab orgin on the region to come forward and make the tough choices to be mediators in this buisness
It seems Americans are too far interested on the right and left of making of saying who is right or wrong in whom they support.
If VOX NOva or Inside Catholic or various other Catholics voices were interested we would be engaging this problem 24/7/ We don’t engage it on either side till there is a crisis and then dress it up as some high morality
Then imagine that they started firing at Palestinian towns and villages and refused to stop despite continued reprisals and civilian casualties.
Imagine that they were several thousand mortars and rockets at Palestinian civilians without discrimination.
Imagine that they sought shelter among civilians — used schools synagogues as ammunition dumps and cover to fire upon the Palestinian State.
Imagine that they raised their infants from birth to hate the Palestinians, dressing them up in toddler-size explosive suicide vests and later, rejoicing when they fulfilled the mission their parents established for them.
Yeah, we could go on with this thought experiment.
Actually, Christopher, I’m not sure that the extremist Jewish settlers are any better than Hamas in this regard. I’m thinking specifically of the case a short while back when the Hebron settlers tried to burn a Palestinian family to death inside ttheir house, cheered on by children.
And forget the extremist settlers: the whole state of Israel is currently engaged in gravely immoral behavior, in violation of international humanitarian law.
Honestly, I really don’t understand positions like yours that seem to be based on justifying the actions of Israel because Hamas do not have clean hands. It would be far better to push for peace, and there is no peace without justice.
MM
The question is not some wacko Israel settler . THe question is as to Govt. As I see numerous threads every where about the funding of Israel no one seems to care that These rcokets are doubling their range and who is funding that. Imagine if they got to their full capability and starting killing people in dorves. What would have been the Israeli reaction them.
I am ready for some concrete reactions. What must the Israelis do and give up and what must Hamas do and give up
I’ve got a thought experiment: the Muslims of the region are willing to accept a Jewish presence in their midst (and Christian too while we are at it…..the drive of Christians from Lebanon and Syria and Iraq is a grave tragedy, of which my grandparents were a victim.) Second, the Muslims develop a functional economy and civil society, ending the hatred that is instilled from the crib (and if you doubt this, go to the MEMRI sites(s) for the direct translations. This is the necessary foundation for peace and justice in the region.
To suggest “well, Hamas is bad and extremist but the other side has their extremists too!” is to allow ideology to blind, probably willfully and almost laughably if the subject were not so deadly serious. Mormons and evangelicals have their extreme fundamentalists too – would we really compare them to the Muslim extreme fundamentalists? They are not anywhere close to the same.
Islam is undergoing a civil war. I hope the saner side wins. But in the meantime, let’s be more realistic about Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood ect ect and the population that supports them. I hope Israel is as successful as they can be in these operations and that the many thousands of rockets and other weapons that reign down on Israel (thousands just in the past 12 months alone) are stopped.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MEMRITVVideos – why not start here…..this sort of vileness (of which there are many more examples) is hugely popular among the Palestinians – one of the reasons why the rest of “Arab world” wants nothing to do with them, and why many seek to escape to Israel (by far the best place, by the way, to be any manner of minority in the region). There is a very deep sickness that is rife among the Palestinians, and this is the “root problem” of the conflict.
I have great sympathy for the children stuck in this mess, but we need much more criticism of their adults.
I’m not clear what the point of the thought experiment is. That Americans like Jews but hate Arabs?
Also, you’d have to make one other change in order for the thought experiment to work: Imagine that Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon etc. were all majority Jewish countries with very similar ethnic and cultural make-ups to those of the Jewish Gazan remnant — and that these countries had for the last forty years refused to take in the Jewish refugees in Gaza, yet consistently encouraged them (and funded them) in attacking the sole Arab country in the world: Palestine.
I suspect that in that case, people might indeed be saying that Arab Palestine was well within its rights in losing patience with the constant harrassment from the Jewish Gazan terrorist government.
I’ll go out on a limb. If we had not beaten the Germans in WWII and there would have been no holocaust, Americans wouldn’t care about Jews. Your typical American doesn’t even know about the anti-Semitism that was rampant before WWII. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh would be two examples, but there were many. We have built a national narrative that we were enlightened about the Jews. We were on the right side of history, etc. Self-righteousness seems as good of an explanation as any. It also explains our silly fascination with the Eastern Block, Ukraine and Georgia (the country). In that case, our triumph over Communism.
This is like the “let’s imagine that Obama is not pro-abortion” post. It’s pointless and lets people feel good and kind of intellectual, you know, kinda thinky. Everyone nods their head and says “Like, wow, dude… that is SO TRUE.” Then John Belushi comes around and smashes their guitar.
MM — what JH said. I thought the subject was about the Israeli government responding to Hamas’ terrorist attacks on civilians since they pulled out of Gaza.
Now, if I were defending the actions of Israeli settlers such as you described, I’d expect you to call me on it.
I’ll go out on a limb. If we had not beaten the Germans in WWII and there would have been no holocaust
The Wannsee conference was in January of 1942. If Allied defeat in WWII would have avoided the holocaust, then presumably it would have had to occur before this date. Given that Hitler had only invade Russia in the summer of 1941, this seems unlikely.
I wasn’t speaking of cause and effect in those two events. The first condition was that we had to be the victor. The second condition was that the other party had to be the abuser.
MM
The Jews would leave the area and be successful elsewhere…anywhere. I wish they would all come here. To theorize that they too would send amateurish rockets through the air for 8 years with a terrorist success rate of 15 kills out of 11,000 attempts is not to know the Jews and is the worst hypothetical I will endure today. Perhaps this is part of my Friday penance in the form of a satis passio. The Palestinians apparently are unwanted by other Arabs who have land vacancies that are immense and that could allow them to have a land within a land….but since Islam wants Jerusalem as the place where Mohamed is said to have journeyed to heaven momentarily,they…those who are muslim… are there as strategy.
To theorize that they too would send amateurish rockets through the air for 8 years with a terrorist success rate of 15 kills out of 11,000 attempts is not to know the Jews and is the worst hypothetical I will endure today.
From Reuters, “The Palestinian death toll reached at least 784, according to medical officials. U.N. officials say many of these were civilians.” On the one hand, Israel certainly has a right not to have rockets fired into it. On the other hand, a response that has killed 784 men, women, and children so far and is not over might seem disproportionate if Israel has suffered only 15 fatalities in 8 years.
It seems to me futile to attempt to figure out who is right and who is wrong in this conflict, when both sides have behaved so badly. They both have a lot to answer for. I think it is also extremely difficult for Americans to judge the situation objectively, particularly because (and this is a cliche, but true, I believe) Americans, or at least American Jews, are much more sensitive to criticisms of the Israeli government than the Israelis are themselves.
It’s actually two questions. I don’t know what the US would do, but I would answer Yes as to the first question (denounce the Gazan Jews as terrorists) because they are using terrorist methods; and I would answer No to the second (using overwhelming force) if by overwhelming you mean morally impermissible means. I would not deny the ersatz Israeli Palestinians from using morally permissible means to defend themselves.
But as for what the “US” would do, not sure.
David
Your 784 palestinian death toll includes combatants…and who will we trust for the right proportion of soldiers/civilians. Were you to winnow that down to innocent civilians, your figure would still not be comparable to the 15 israelis who were not only innocent civilians but were the object of the rockets per se as is not the case within Palestine wherein civilians have been killed but have not been the object of the firing.
Renato Cardinal Martino, on the subject of Zionist state-terrorism:
Look at the conditions in Gaza: more and more, it resembles a big concentration camp,” Cardinal Renato Martino, the president of the Council for Justice and Peace, said in an interview published Wednesday in an online publication.
He defended his comments in the center-left daily newspaper La Repubblica on Thursday. While noting that Hamas rockets into Israel were “certainly not sugared almonds,” he called the situation in Gaza “horrific” and said conditions there went “against human dignity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/middleeast/09vatican.html?_r=1&em
Despite the Zionist caterwauling against what he said, it seemss to me like the Cardinal is exactly correct. As a matter of fact the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights is saying tonight that it looks as though Israel has committed “war crimes” in the Gaza, in killing Palestinians civilians who obviously WERE “the object of the firing”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gaza-israel
Not only that, but a large number of the first victims of Israeli rocket fire were the POLICE, who, though employed by Hamas, are not necessarily Hamas members or supporters at all–just civil servants employed by Hamas to keep the peace–the “peace” that, when broken by unruly rogue elements of Hamas, endanger the very Israeli citizens whom the Zionist say they are “protecting” in Southern Israel.
Face it, supporters of this massacre: it’s all about Israeli pre-election political posturing, about “boxing” Obama in so that he cannot re-start Oslo, about lessening Iranian influence in the Arab World and about forcing the Palestinians to take back, as their leaders, the corrupt Fatah politicos whom they despise. It is NOT about the security of southern Israel, which cannot be maintained or enhanced this way. The murderous means are disproportionate, the ostensible goal is a futile one and the immediate motivation is selfishly and viciously demagogic.
bill,
I know the EPA puts a price on a human life, but I don’t really know how to come up with a formula for comparing the value of the lost lives of dead Israelis who were deliberately fired at and dead Palestinians who were “collateral damage.” A dead Palestinian child killed as “collateral damage” is just as innocent and just as dead as an Israeli killed intentionally. Fortunately, it’s not necessary for me to sort out the whole mess, but if I had to, I can tell you that I am sure I would not absolve the Israelis of all blame and put it all on the Palestinians. Terrorism played an important role in the creation of Israel (the Irgun and the “Stern Gang”), and several important Israeli leaders got their start as terrorists. I can remember watching films on network television of Israeli soldiers deliberately breaking the arms of Palestinian boys who they caught throwing rocks. And of course there’s the blowing up of homes to punish entire families for the wrongdoing of one member. It’s brutal and ugly, as is this current war.
This is not to say the Israelis are evil and the Palestinians are good. It is not even to say that it’s wrong to be on Israel’s side. It’s just to say that I think it would be a daunting task to tote up the wrongs of both sides and compare them.
Once upon a time “enlightened” opinion in the West had not yet fallen victim to the Israeli propaganda machine. Once upon a time Zionist fascism was recognized for what it is by JEWS. Once upon a time such luminaries as Albert Einstein were able to correctly characterize the Likud descendants of Irgun (the right-wing faction that most likely will contribute Israel’s next “ethnic-cleansing” Premier) as the racist terrorists which the are:
Even if we accept the harshest portrayal of the tactics and motives of the Palestinian movements against Israel after the Six-Day War, at what point did that terrorism represent a serious challenge to the survival of the Jewish people or the state that claims to speak in their name? Yet that survival is invoked to justify the vastly excessive use of force by the Israeli war machine, with frequent allusions to the Holocaust previously visited upon the Jewish people, a holocaust that had nothing to do with Palestinians or Muslims, and everything to do with Central Europeans claiming to be Christians.
The high moral claim of the Israeli occupation rests not on the objective reality of a Palestinian threat to Israel’s survival, but rather on the non sequitur cry that “never again” should harm come to Jews as it did in Central Europe seven decades ago.
The basic argument is that Palestinian terrorists represented by Hamas are given to an irrational hatred of Jews so profound that it invalidates their movement, even when they win elections. That was not the view of the Israeli security service when it earlier supported Hamas as the alternative to the then dreaded PLO. Also, history is replete with examples of terrorists becoming statesmen, even within the early ranks of Jews fighting to establish the state of Israel.
One of those was Menachem Begin, who went on to be an elected leader of the new state. But before Begin attained that respectability, back in 1948 when he visited the United States, a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals including Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook and Hannah Arendt wrote a letter to The New York Times warning that Begin was a former leader of the “Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.” The letter urged Jews to shun Begin, arguing, “It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.”
Begin’s new party was then participating in the Israeli election, and Einstein and his colleagues, many of whom like the physicist had been victims of German fascism, stated, “Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character.”
Those actions were then detailed in the letter. They included the systematic terrorizing of innocent Palestinian men, women and children in an effort to force them to flee the territory that Begin’s party claimed for the new state of Israel.
Clearly Begin and his political heirs, who include Benjamin Netanyahu, the most likely victor in the next Israeli election, evolved in their behavior. But I bring it up now to highlight the one-sided reporting of the current phase of this interminable conflict and to wonder: Where are the voices that reflect the uncompromising morality of Einstein’s generation of Jewish intellectuals willing to acknowledge fault and humanity on both sides of the political equation?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090106_why_do_so_few_speak_up_for_gaza/
Those prophetic “voices” have been stilled—have been, effectively, drowned out—by the constant drone of justifications and exculpations of mass murder that can be read here and in many other venues where racist, colonialist and religiously exclusive thought predominates.
However, the “developing” and the Muslim worlds are watching, and they are not soon going to forget this.
Watch the Israeli atrocities on YouTube:
The Jews in Israel not only know that they have lost the PR battle for world public opinion; they know why they have lost the battle:
The question the foreign media really wants answered is invariably not “who’s in the right?” but “how will this round of fighting improve the overall situation?” And on that point, Israel never has a convincing argument. Given the country’s long history of engaging in wars that kill many more of its enemies than its own citizens but only buy a few months or years of calm, it’s a tough call to explain how this latest escapade will change the strategic balance, bring peace and prevent the need for another such bloodbath further down the line. Often that’s because there is in fact no good reason: Wars are fought for short-term gains. And it doesn’t help that with the constant competition for power within Israeli coalitions, it’s easy to interpret this war, like many others, as a political imperative, not a strategic one.
And so when the question the world is asking is not “who’s right?” but “what works?” the consistent impression Israel leaves is that it kills people because, at best, it simply doesn’t have any better ideas, and at worst, because some Israeli leader is trying to get the upper hand on one of his or her rivals. And no amount of hasbara can make that look good.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053605.html
They also know that Obama is coming and that Obama, unlike Bush, is not going to stand for this genocide to continue:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1053404.html
Olmert brags about controlling Bush foreign policy regarding the Gaza catastrophe:
http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/israeli-pm-ehud-olmert-claims-to-be.html