First Things Defends Consequentialism
Consider this a follow-up to yesterday’s post, about how comfortable the American right is with violence. First Things is a magazine that seeks to “advance a religiously-informed public philosophy”. I suppose that religiously-informed public philosophy encompasses consequentialism. Someone tell the Catholic Church. Someone tell Pope John Paul II, who wrote a strong encyclical denouncing moral positions like consequentialism.
What is this about? The title says it all: “Israel’s Gaza Boycott Saves Lives“. The author, Shmully Hecht, claims that “The actions Israel has taken aimed solely to prevent attacks on its civilian population” and that “The blockade of Gaza represents an inconvenience ..but not a humanitarian crisis”.
Not a humanitarian crisis. Only if you refuse to look. I talked about this a few days ago, but Yousef Munayyer has a nice piece in Foreign Affairs that summarizes this little “inconvenience”:
- Severe electricity shortages, as Israel refused to allow the reconstruction of Gaza’s only power plant after bombing it (from 140 to 80 megawatts in 2006, 60 megawatts in 2009, 30 megawatts in 2010). Most have power cuts from 8-12 hours a day.
- Serious water shortages. Israel refuses to allow the sewage system be repaired, so that 95 percent of drinking water is contaminated and unfit for consumption.
- Industry decimated. Almost all (98%) of industrial operations have been shut down. Exports are practically banned. Unemployment is 42 percent. Fishing catch down 47 percent, given Israeli restrictions.
- Healthcare in crisis. 15 of 27 hospitals, 43 of 110 of primary care facilities, and 29 of its 148 ambulances were damaged or destroyed, and not rebuilt of replaced. 21 percent of permits to leave for emergency medical treatment were denied or delayed, sometimes resulting in death.
- Severe food shortages. Chronic malnutrition has reached 10 percent. Over 60 percent of households are food insecure. 80 percent depend on humanitarian aid.
Catholic social teaching tells us that all people have right to food, water, employment, and healthcare. These rights are non-negotiable and cannot be taken away for any reason, especially not to collectively punish a population. But First Things seems strangely silent about such matters. And then there is the usual neocon brigade condemning Obama for daring to use the word “tragic” when talking about the loss of life from Israeli action (I have my own issues with the Obama administrations overly-cozy relationship with Israel). But this says it all. Do they equally condemn the pope for decrying the loss of life? This really is a pagan mentality, isn’t it? What was that about a “religiously-informed public philosophy” again?
Comments are closed.
I’ve seen it many times. Somehow over the years the questions surrounding Israel and Palestine have reached such a primal level of reaction that it seems impossible to look at facts straight on. There is always a filter, and a pre-conclusion. I’ve seen it on both sides. But more often on the Israeli side, as they are convinced that any criticism is an attack that threatens their existence. In the meantime, one people lives under the yoke of oppression, and the other under a shadow of mounting paranoia.
If people have a right to food, water, employment(!?) and healthcare, don’t they also have a right not to be blown up by rockets and mortars fired into their cities?
Oh wait, they’re only Jews. Nevermind.
Fr. Vincent – well said.
I’m going to single out the comment above by wolskerj as an example of how people can so easily take the wrong path when it comes to moral actions by Israel.
First off, Israel is secular state. Just because it has descendents of people who suffered in the Warsaw ghetto does not mean they get a pass to create a new ghetto, to lock people in based on ethnicity and deny them their fundamental human rights.
And these rights are fundamental. The commentor questions the right to employment. Here is what Church teaching says about that: “Work is a good belonging to all people and must be made available to all who are capable of engaging in it. “Full employment” therefore remains a mandatory objective for every economic system oriented towards justice and the common good. A society in which the right to work is thwarted or systematically denied, and in which economic policies do not allow workers to reach satisfactory levels of employment, “cannot be justified from an ethical point of view, nor can that society attain social peace”.” (Compendium of Social Doctrine, 288).
To defend Israel’s immiseration of an entire people simply because it makes them safer is an exercise in consequentialism. It is an exercise in denying the fundamental human dignity of the Gazans…or does this apply only to Jews?
I don’t beleive that you are being fair, MM.
While it may be true that in some sense that Israel is a secular state. They are certainly not seen as such by Hammas.
Why don’t you accept the challenge of wolskerj, instead of resorting to polemics? He does not defend Isarael so much as just point out that none of these things happen in a vacuum. Israel has been the subject of terrorism and unjust wars of agression in the immediate past and its entire history as an independant nation.
Instead of dismissing the desire of israelis to live in peace, why not discuss alternative means whereby they could garantee their security without also harming the legitmate aspirations of the palestinian people?
There really are two sides in this conflict and both have suffered. Can’t you at least acknowledge that?
What nobody–now including the lady herself, apparently–wants to face is that what Helen Thomas said was essentially right.
No Rodak, what was clear to nearly everybody was that Ms. Thomas’ remark was antisemetic.
She may be anti-Semitic, I don’t know. But unless you can read her heart, it wasn’t made clear that she is from what she said in that video clip. Her words were anti-colonial and anti-Zionist. She didn’t say anything anti-Semitic. If you think that she did, please quote it to me and set me straight.