‘From the River to the Sea’
When the obvious is controversial.
An exchange on Twitter substitute Bluesky Social this morning demonstrates the degree to which it has become nearly impossible to have a productive conversation on the Israel-Gaza crisis.
In a new-deleted post, a scholar associated with the Harvard Kennedy School asserted that pro-Palestinian protestors who have no desire to see Israeli Jews harmed were carrying signs with the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
I responded, “Is there a version of ‘From the river to the sea’ that doesn’t end the existence of a Jewish state?”
To which he immediately replied, “I am not going to engage in this kind of convo.”
Even though we’ve followed each other at the other place for years and this place for a few weeks, I figured it was quite possible he didn’t understand where I was coming from. So I quickly responded, “I think it’s possible to agree that Israeli policies have contributed to the radicalization of its enemies, that Israel is usually disproportionate in its retaliation, that the settlements are illegal, etc. while acknowledging even non-radical Palestinians oppose a Zionist state in the region.”
Crickets.
I don’t think my initial assertion was antagonistic, or even controversial. Any search for a history of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is anti-Zionist. Most are from Jewish-leaning sites, where it’s painted as an eliminationist slogan. The most forgiving, pro-Palestinian accounts portray it as a call for a single Palestine in which Arabs and Jews can live together in peace. But, even if we take that version at face value, it, by definition, means the end of a Jewish state.
Now, I don’t much care about this particular exchange. I follow lots of experts on these platforms and often forget who they are or where they’re coming from on a given issue. Most people who follow me don’t read OTB, much less everything I post here. He may well have gotten a ton of abusive commentary on this issue over the past few days and is just over it.
But I have gotten a general sense that this is just a topic where it’s pretty much impossible to have a productive conversation outside one’s narrow niche. So, it’s quite possible for Ezra Klein, Spencer Ackerman, and Peter Beinart to sit down and discuss the matter for an hour within the safe space of “the Jewish left.” Or even Ross Douthat, Michelle Cottle, and Lydia Polgreen to be civil in a conversation with Thomas Friedman in which they defer to him as an oracle of Middle East wisdom.
Mostly, though, calls for Israel to be constrained in its attack on Gaza—even, perhaps especially, when it comes from American Jews—are dismissed as antisemitic, if not a wish for Jews to die. Similarly, defenses of Israeli’s right to retaliate against a massive attack against its civilian population, even if it results in the collateral death of innocent Palestinians, is seen as a call for genocide.
Indeed, it’s a longstanding if entirely anecdotal observation of mine that, at least within the broader political science-international relations space, Middle East scholars writ large are the least dispassionate group in the academy. It’s not just Israel-Palestine. I’ve heard lily-white American academics express their hatred of the Kurds. And I’ve given up hosting panel discussions on Middle East topics because, even when the invited scholars are truly accomplished, the discussions are more rants than conversations.
Obviously, there’s a lot of history and bad blood in the region. But, hell, that’s true in most areas of IR scholarship. Americans were in shooting wars with Germany, Japan, Italy, Korea, and Vietnam in living memory and we can have civil conversations about those conflicts, even with opposing combatants in those wars. The Middle East is just a different animal.
On another thread, I said that I would be okay if Israel wiped out Gaza and the West Bank. I took some flak from some posters.
But as another person posted, the USA dropped two atomic bombs, killing over 120,000 civilans almost immediately, and who knows how many died from the long term effects of the bombs.
It ended the war.
How would this be any different? Why was it not genocide in 1945, but it would be today?
Do you know what the term “sealioning” means?
@Stormy Dragon: I do, although I don’t know how a single objection to a rather obvious flaw in an argument qualifies.
@EddieInCA: The dropping of the atomic bombs wasn’t genocide because there was no aim to eliminate the Japanese people, simply terrorize their government into unconditional surrender. There’s a pretty broad consensus within the scholarly community at this point, though, that doing so was a war crime.
Many issues tend to be tribal, but this issue is almost entirely tribal. For most who are stridently supportive of one side or the other, this extreme tribalism leads to a lot of double standards and cognitive dissonance that debate, much less discussion, seems to be worthless. Especially with those who don’t actually have any skin in the game.
Based on personal discussions with Palestinians and other adjacent folks, I believe that for a not-insignificant portion of them “From the river to the sea” is not calling for the destruction of Israel. And I’ve talked to Jews who agree with the possibility of that interpretation.
I also acknowledge that for another significant group of Palestinians, it does in fact, mean the elimination of Israel.
I think to some degree, it’s a case where any slogan can be infused with a LOT of different meanings (see a wide range of American versions of this, from “Defund the Police” to various ones on the Right that we have been told to take “figuratively, not literally.”).
I also think, keeping with advice from a Jewish colleague who falls into the “it doesn’t necessarily mean elimination of Israel group” that folks in the West, who are not Palestinian, should acknowledge the competing interpretations and not use it due to the anti-Semitic interpretation.
@EddieInCA:
And although it is still a somewhat controversial debate, the alternative of a land invasion of Japan, sieging and seizing Japanese cities, etc. would also have killed tens if not hundreds of thousands.
War is a terrible thing. It’s something that should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Was it absolutely necessary for Hamas to go to war? Opinions vary.
Hamas is not trying to establish a multicultural, multinational polity. Actually, what would happen to Fatah in a Hamas dominated land? Probably the same as happened in Gaza. Likewise, Hezbollah is not a friend of Hamas. Jews are to be eliminated if Hamas takes over, but they are not the only ones.
The slogan reminds me of another. Von die Wolga bis der Rein wirt unsere Heimat sein.
Yeah, I don’t challenge people on their own website without a clear sense that they accept and maybe even welcome that.
You, James, for instance, are fine with it. But not everyone is. Now, I think you’re talking about Twitter/X, though, so it’s a tougher call. Xitter seems to embrace a “free-for-all” ethos, and always has. Everyone talks to everyone else. Still, some don’t want to be challenged – they just want to have their platform.
Given that the first comment on this is pro-genocide, I think it’s fair to say that actually engaging with people on Palestine and Israel is going to get tedious and people will put limits on it.
Also, if the only way for Israel to exist as a Jewish state is through genocide or apartheid of a third of the population, I am opposed to Israel as a Jewish state.
Get to a viable two state solution (hard because most of the Palestinians have been radicalized by poverty used as a weapon and bombs also used as a weapon, and Israeli Jews don’t want to give up the good land) or give the Palestinians full rights as Israeli citizens (also hard). And the US should be providing no aid while Israel isn’t pursuing one of those options.
Juice Media had thoughts on the issue. https://youtu.be/L0Zb9iUi0JM
I do find Israeli political discussions tiresome – it seems to bring out the worst in people. Arguments of state vs terrorist brutality, government vs citizen obligations, occupation vs occupier violence, historical vs present-day realities, old lines drawn in actual sand because of thousand-year-old traditions and deeply-held beliefs devolve into a morass of “you must hate Jews” or “you must hate Arabs”, mixed with “you’re a warmonger” or “you support colonialism” or “you support terrorists” or “you support genocide.”
Watching the discussions on OTB over the last few weeks, I’ve refused to wade in because of the way people get extremely heated when someone doesn’t agree that the most important framing is along a particular axis, and if your alignment on that axis isn’t identical to mine, you are a terrible human being.
The Middle East is so contentious because it is, perhaps, the area of the world and geopolitical discussion where Western elites are the most alienated from reality.
Israel is strong and the Palestinians are weak. And even if every criticism of Israel is accepted as 100% valid, it is still significantly better in just about every way than every other nation in the region. If the worst critic of Israel had to be reincarnated as a poor Arab, they’d choose to be reborn in Israel over any other Middle East country.
But instead of accepting these realities and trying to base policy and discourse upon them, we get nonsense like the “two state solution” which ignores them. I mean, when in all of human history has any group just been GIVEN their own country? Yet that’s supposed to be the basis for Middle East peace? It’s legitimately deranged.
@EddieInCA:
A couple of reasons:
“Wiping out Gaza and the the West Bank” would kill just under 5m people, leaving zero Palestinians alive. That’s rather different than killing 120,000 civilians out of an estimated (1945) 71m Japanese. Killing an entire population is, of course, the textbook definition of genocide.
Then there is the issue of proportionality, killing 120,000 Japanese in order to force the country to surrender (and thus saving hundreds of thousands of other lives) is much more reasonable than to just kill every man, woman, and child. In the case of Gaza, less excessive measures would definitely be possible.
Even so, the bombing of Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki (the latter city in particular) was almost certainly a war crime according to the accepted rules in 1945. It would definitely have been a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions of 1947 and the 1977 Additional Protocol I.
Finally, there is the point that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, which certainly wasn’t the case with Japan (which attacked the US and set out to conquer South East Asia because Western sanctions were about to hamstring its illegal conquest of China).
Every single settlement on the West Bank is a clear and indisputable violation of international law. And the best offer Israel ever made to the Palestinians would have forced the latter not only to accept most of the settlements, but also that the remaining territory would be divided into four non-contiguous areas.
During the negotiations of the 1990s and early 2000s, the Palestinians never demanded more (in fact, demanded substantially less) than they were legally entitled to. (Of course, they were in no position to demand more.)
Even so, Israel said no.
While the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ grievances doesn’t change the legal consideration of what constitutes genocide, it is telling that you appear to be OK with offering 5m people the choice between permanent (unlawful) oppression and genocide.
That doesn’t appear reasonable to me.
Also, while I agree that the slogan “From the river to the sea” implicitly calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, I find it hard to blame a bunch of college kids for using it when the “adults” have no interest whatsoever in making Israel adhere to international law (at best) or are calling for outright genocide (at worst).
Pot meets kettle…
What I find frustrating is the there are terms that are used interchangeably but they really are not. Example: Jewish state vs Zionist state. Currently Israel is a Jewish state. It has theological elements that are part of its basis. Similar (but not in degree) to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Non Jewish citizens of Israel don’t have the same rights as Jewish citizens. As a result many conversations go right past each other.
Many Palestinian groups have a Islamic basis but some do not. There are Palestinian Christians that object to an Islamic Palestine. I may be mistaken but there once was a large secular element to Palestinian national ambitions. But most conflicts in the ME seem to be describe as religious conflicts which have far more emotional content and therefore it is harder to have productive conversations.
@TheRyGuy: You know, I am in maybe 90 to 95 percent agreement with your thesis: Israel is better in every way. By my lights, and by yours.
AND, there is a principle that is in the way: The right of self-determination of peoples. Just because something is better in my view doesn’t mean someone else must do it my way. They can do it their way.
I see this as the rotten foundation stone of the whole Israel thing, starting in 1948. The Atlantic Charter and it’s assertion of the right of self-determination inspired many of the Western colonial powers to liberate their colonies. The colonization dynamic did not cease completely, but there was a big shift to self-rule.
Except in a few places, and one of them was Israel. Blood begets blood.
Do not take my remarks as support for Hamas, I don’t have any. I suspect Hamas’ motivation to be “We need to start a war quick or we might become irrelevant”.
@TheRyGuy:
*Cough* *Cough* Isreal’s creation in 1948 *Cough* *Cough*
Yes, Jewish folks were in the areas that became modern Israel from Mandatory/British Palestine, but this was clearly a case of a people being “given” a county by Western powers.
see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel#Mandatory_Palestine
Israel has dropped 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza. Hamas claims 6,700 civilian deaths. That’s a lot of deaths, but against 12,000 tons of explosives it’s proof that Israel is attempting to minimize civilian deaths. Israel is trying to be a good modern western nation and that’s been part of their problem. See, when we decided we wanted more land we didn’t try to avoid Indian deaths, we gifted them smallpox-infected blankets. Historically displacements were not as gentle as that practiced by Israel. Ask the people in the way of Mongol expansion . . . oh, wait, they didn’t survive long enough to complain about it.
It doesn’t matter how much Israel tries to minimize civilian deaths, they’ll be accused of genocide. That’s the anti-semite’s favorite attack line because it minimizes the Holocaust. The hysterical, one-sided and yes, anti-semitic ranting of Israel-bashers leaves me wondering why Israel should stay its hand at all. The old saying goes, ‘might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’
Palestine from the river to the sea? If that’s the game, if that’s what’s on-offer, then my counter is, Israel from the river to the sea. Let’s play that game and see who wins.
@Jay L Gischer:
When has any Arab country ever respected the principal of self-determination? For that you’d need to hear from the people, and that would require a free press and free and fair elections. Hamas doesn’t represent anyone but Hamas.
@EddieInCA: Taking cognizance of Dr. Joyner’s comment and citation of evidence, I would note that I think a significant difference is that the US ended up in charge of contextualizing the account of the events of 1945. Context matters. I will note in passing that to this day (to the best of my knowledge) the official position of the Japanese government is that the “comfort women” from Korea, among other conquered areas, were all a combination of women who were professionals in that trade already or had sought out the positions for the economic benefits the job provided.
Control context, control the story, control the audience response.
It got a bit heated in my family thread when I shared the hot take that I was, as a general rule, opposed to killing kids (disclaimer: I’m a teacher and a parent). Go figure.
@EddieInCA:
It totally was just like it was genocide when the Native Americans were killed and driven off their land. People like to not use the g-word because it makes them look like the monsters they are. Life and the choices we make mean you end up being the monster sometimes.
We absolutely did something horrible to the Japanese, regardless of what might have been necessary in a time of war. We were not heroes for it and if we were honest with ourselves, we’re not good people because we’re the only nation in the world who has deliberately nuked civilians.
I’m a proud American but I can admit my country has done some seriously atrocious things. The horrors of war may require you do things you will never be proud of but one should stand up and admit it like an adult. If you can do it, you can name it and own it.
@Michael Reynolds: You aren’t asking me out of curiosity, are you?
And no, the region doesn’t have a great track record as regards self-determination. For a while in my youth, Lebanon was doing pretty well, and then it all fell apart. Though I expect a political scientist (*cough*) could give us a much better evaluation as regards “Arab countries”. What about Pakistan? Or Indonesia? Just how democratic is Iran these days? I don’t have much of an evaluation.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, though. I think I’ve heard that somewhere. Blood begets blood. There’s a dynamic in play here that only ends when A) everyone on one side is dead or B) someone gets acted on, and doesn’t retaliate with more violence.
@KM: You know, my daughter took Japanese from a woman who was alive in Japan, as a small child, when the bombs were dropped. This woman said the US was completely right to drop the bombs, as they were preparing to put everyone, including the children into the defense of the homeland.
So, to her, dropping the bombs avoided a genocide.
I’ll start with the disclaimer: I don’t give a shit about this entire conflict. Both parties are simply awful, and if they are bound and determined to kill each other, as the past few hundred years would indicate, then who are we to get in the way?
That said: I fail to understand why it is doctrine that there exists a “Jewish state” in the first place. I understand that Jews were targeted by Nazis, and that was unconscionable and should never happen again. That is a completely separate issue from the idea that some religion gets to carve out their own state – and such a state is immutable and enjoys the full support and treasure of the United States government.
If these folks are hell-bent on eliminating each other from the face of the earth, the best approach is to get as many civilians out of the crossfire as we can, then let ’em have at it. But I sure as hell don’t want my name or country associated with bombs on either side of this conflict.
Maybe it’s better for me to take the Onion’s stance and be pro-Israel because that seems like the safer approach, but the alternating atrocities prevent me getting behind anybody here.
@Michael Reynolds:
Absolutely. With equal rights and citizenship for every person contained in the borders, regardless of their sky daddies or ethnic heritage.
I’m glad we solved this.
Also, Utah should not be a Mormon State. No one is advocating for that here, but same general principles.
@Tony W: I hesitate to attempt humor in this thread, but I’m more than half serious. Truman and the Brits wanted to give the Jews a state. Fine, but they gave them someone else’s state. They should have given them Mississippi. Better for the Jews, better for the Palestinians, better for the Mississippians.
@Gustopher:
Sure, let’s have yet another authoritarian state where women are treated as chattel and gays are executed. That is the progressive goal for the Middle East, right? Less voting, more oppression?
@drj:
Please. Explain it to me. Which less excessive measures be possible?
Please. Explain to me what would appear reasonable to you for an Israeli response to 10/7.
@Andy: The counterargument is that such a costly invasion was necessitated by the war aim of unconditional surrender, which many consider unreasonable. Ironically, even after the dropping of the atomic bombs, we agreed to a conditional surrender vis-a-vis the emperor.
@Tony W:
It’s important to remember that Jews were already in Israel, and had in fact legally bought up much of what became the State of Israel. They had as much right to be in Palestine as anyone. There was no Palestinian State, there never had been, it was part of various empires until after WW2 when Israel was created because Europeans just couldn’t stop murdering Jews. Now Arabs just can’t stop murdering Jews and, as usual, the world blames the Jews.
Israel was not the only state created by European diktat. Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon were all created the same way: Europeans drawing maps. The KSA also exists because the victors of the two world wars said so. And it, too, is a single-faith state. And yet we don’t seem to hear many calls for the dissolution of all those countries.
The only country in the ME where an Arab can really vote is Israel. The only place a gay person can live in the ME is Israel. The only place where women are equal in the ME is Israel. The Israeli minimum wage is ~1,500 USD a month – and protects Muslims as well as Jews. The only country in the ME that allows trade unions is Israel.
So it’s easy to see why so many progressives hate Israel. Totally not anti-semitism. Nope.
@gVOR10: “We,” mostly in the form of the Brits, gave the Israelis land mostly occupied by someone else. It was decidedly not someone else’s state. There was no such thing as a Palestinian people before the creation of Israel.
@Gustopher:
Which Arab countries have that currently?
@James Joyner:
Yes, there’s the rub. Was “unconditional surrender” reasonable or not? Opinions vary. Nations and political communities get to decide what their war aims are, including Hamas, and must live with the consequences.
@Matt Bernius:
I don’t think much is unique about Israel that can’t be found in many other places where the remnants of empire and colonization are still felt today. Jews lived in that area and – as a result of virulent anti-semitism, many wanted to immigrate there because everyone else hated Jews and wouldn’t allow them to immigrate. The British worked hard to stop immigration to the Mandate as the colonial administrator. Absent British control of the Mandate, Jews would very likely have migrated there in mass sooner and quicker, and the result still would have been a civil war, with the outcome either a Jewish state or another Pogrom.
I think it’s underrated just how much tension there is between two principles we in the West claim to hold – the inviolability of international borders and the right to self-determination. Those are very much in conflict in many parts of the world, and Western powers have not exactly been consistent in adjudicating things when those principles come into conflict.
The heady early days of the UN tried to make a compromise by dividing land into two states, not understanding how events would play out. What if they had not done that? I think hundreds of thousands of Jews would have continued to move there (because they had nowhere else to go), and there would have still been a civil war once the British ended control of the region.
You see basically the same situation and dynamic play out all across the ME, and we are still very much feeling the effects of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, WWI, WWII, and the decisions of people like Gertrude Bell and the UN who decided to draw lines on maps for reasons that seemed sound at the time but have proven to be problematic and ignorant of the peoples and geography of the region.
There are so many cases where borders were drawn that ended up – often intentionally – denying self-determination to some groups but not others, or creating divisions for geostrategic or colonial political reasons divorced from the reality on the ground. Those borders have largely endured despite not having much logic resulting in civil wars, and internal instability. Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, etc. And don’t forget Russia, where we see the last vestiges of the Russian empire collapsing. We recognize Ukraine (rightfully so IMO), even though it was never an independent nation until the early 1990’s. We don’t recognize Taiwan, despite the fact that it’s been independent since 1945. Because? Reasons….
The difference with Israel is that they won their war of independence, where most do not (see the Kurds and others), and then Israel won other wars from aggressors that sought to destroy them. The UN created one set of maps in 1948 and then another set in 1967 as reality on the ground changed. And those who complain that Israel was “created” in 1948 ought to at least recognize that “Palestine” is also a creation of the same kind of third-party map drawing. A lot of Palestinians reject that map – including Hamas – and are not interested in sharing.
And this map drawing continues today – South Sudan and Kosovo (to name the two most obvious examples) are countries created with the blessings of third parties that favored one ethnic group over others and are unlikely to endure without a benevolent patron. We went to war over Kosovo (and Bosnia-Herzegovina, still in a cold civil war). We brokered the separation of South Sudan into its own country, which then immediately went into a very bloody civil war. Meanwhile, in Croatia, the Serbian population declared independence, lost the civil war, and the Serbian population fled. We are told that isn’t ethnic cleansing because the Serbian people fled before the Croation army arrived. The “right of return” there, or elsewhere in the Balkans, is not much discussed.
Point being, all of this is very complicated, made moreso by our collective inability to reconcile the two principles discussed above, which are very often in conflict. Lots of groups deserve “homelands” and the right to self-determination, and we frequently tell them to fuck off because we consider national borders to be inviolable. Until we decide they aren’t.
Edited to add, I see Michael made many of the same points about map drawing.
@Michael Reynolds: “Sure, let’s have yet another authoritarian state where women are treated as chattel and gays are executed. That is the progressive goal for the Middle East, right? Less voting, more oppression?”
That’s pretty much what Bibi’s allies on the Israeli far right were trying to bring about in Israel.
@EddieInCA:
You have some fucking gall. Asking someone to justify why approximately 5m people (of which, conservatively, 4.5m+ had nothing at all to do with 10/7) should not be “wiped out.”
Right now, you sound like a monster. And if you mean what you are saying, you are one.
@Michael Reynolds:
Michael Benyair, former Attorney General of Israel:
Antisemitism is a serious thing. You are denuding that term of any meaning.
@drj:
You said, and I quote:
What’s the “less excessive measures” that would definitely be possible? Explain it to me. Change my mind.
What’s the alternative to fighting an enemy that want nothing – nothing – other than your complete and ultimate annihilation? What’s proportional in fighting such a foe?
@drj:
I don’t agree with Eddie’s position about wiping out Gaza, assuming that’s what he’s actually advocating, but his question is perfectly valid and one that is continuously dodged or ignored.
I have yet see anyone come up with an argument for how to defeat or retaliate against Hamas’ attack and incontrovertible war crimes (and continuing attacks) in a way that avoids all the things Israel’s critics complain about.
@Andy:
Just to be clear, I agree with you. And I think your points about South Sudan and other map redrawing are also a good example of this as well. Remember, I was responding to the assertation:
Perhaps I misunderstood the comment (that happens a lot). My point was simply that given the history of that land (not to mention the population breakdowns of that land at that time), this was a case of one ethnic group, out of two residing in the space place, being given their own country.
@EddieInCA:
The principle of proportionality in the Law of Armed Conflict departs from your opponent’s capacities, not your opponents ambitions.
Hamas does not have the capacity to annihilate Israel. It’s not even close.
Should we have nuked the entire Middle East because Al Qaeda wanted a Caliphate from Spain to Indonesia?
@Michael Reynolds:
I seriously don’t have an axe to grind here. I do think it’s worth pointing out that everything in these sentences could be easily reversed.
There were still Palestinians living in the lands that became Israel (original borders) at that time. Many more in sheer population percentages.
They had as much of a right to be in Palestine as anyone.
There was no Jewish State; there has never been at least in 2+ millennia*. They were a people living in diaspora as various Empires kept them on the move and occupied those lands.
And yes, Jews were killed in Europe (countless ones, in fact). And now Palestinians are killed and increasingly displaced by modern Jewish forces (in the same way Jews had been by previous generations–people learn the wrong lessons from collective and historic/intergenerational trauma). And, in both cases, collective guilt is typically used to justify said state-sanctioned violence.
This of course, gets to the real challenges of trying to find a resolution–especially when people say they are open-minded, but have more or less chosen a side to default to when things get serious. And that’s everyone’s prerogative–but also, lets admit that we’re just hurling insults across a fixed playing field.
* – BTW, if you are arguing for right of return, then Native Americans and First Nations people have a hell of a lot more recent claim to land.
@Andy:
Assuming you know how proportionality works, it is clear that significant civilian casualties among the Palestinians are unavoidable. Something that is made considerably worse by Hamas’ tactics.
The problem is not civilian casualties as such, but rather the collective punishments of Gazans and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.
UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani earlier today:
One would assume that a professional military would be able to stay within the bounds of the LOAC.
ETA: Or are you suggesting that the LOAC is not fit for purpose? That would be quite a claim.
@wr:
Yes, and for that we oppose Bibi et al.
@Matt Bernius:
It’s the Palestinians demanding that at the moment.
The flip side would be that I’d take the outrage at Israel’s appropriation of a sliver of the Levant much more seriously if Americans were interested in giving back the continent we appropriated. The entire surface of the Earth with the exception of Antarctica was stolen from X by Y.
@Andy:
I’ve been asking since this started what people think the solution should be and how they’d bring that about. No one has offered anything. As I’ve also been pointing out the assumption that there must be an answer if only ___ did ____ is is a very American naiveté.
@drj:
Oh, would one? How? How do you avoid all civilian casualties when terrorists use their own people as human shields?
Israel has dropped 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza and caused (Hamas numbers) 6700 civilian deaths. To you no doubt that screams, genocide! But I’d point out that 24,000,000 pounds of military grade explosives is enough to kill everyone in Gaza many times over. So quite obviously the Israelis are trying very hard to avoid civilian casualties. Are you ready to give them credit for that? Nah, because someone somehow somewhere is failing to give you the easy happy ending you demand.
I’m getting really tired of this kind of nonsense. Show your work. Or admit you haven’t got a clue.
@Michael Reynolds: Palestinian is the term we use for the people in the currently occupied areas. Many of whom were forcibly displaced from where their families had lived for centuries before the creation of Israel. There were no Israelis before the creation of Israel either, FWIW.
I believe most of the people in what is today the of course non-existent state of Palestine would accept something like Helot status if they could get fair treatment in the Israeli courts on issues like land and water rights. They have accepted much less for a long time now. Likudnik Israel is unwilling to grant them even that though.
@Michael Reynolds:
It usually helps if you actually read the comment you are responding to.
@James Joyner: I’m pretty sure the firebombing of Tokyo (+100,000 people killed and about a million injured) was just as much a “war crime”. The fire bombings in general were just as nasty as the atomic bombs…
@EddieInCA: 120,000 people didn’t instantly die to the atomic bombs. The vast majority of deaths were due to fire counting up to about 120,000-226,000 deaths combined for both bombs. Individually both atomic bombs killed fewer people than the fire bombing of Tokyo.
At the time the USA was looking at losing millions of people if they invaded Japan. The losses on Japan’s side would of been worse.
There are still 100,000 something purple hearts in stock from the anticipated invasion (something like 500k were made).
@Matt Bernius:
I have a bad habit of picking up on something and then monologuing about (what I believe to be) related issues. In hindsight I should have responded to TheRyGuy and not you.
Except that land wasn’t just given to one ethnic group. Rather, land was divided between two ethnic groups with each getting a portion. And this separation was only in the legal sense of whatever authority the UN had at the time (which wasn’t much). One ethnic group (the Arabs) rejected this proposal and went to war. Note that the UN, the US and the Brits did not go to war to compel the Arabs to accept the lines on the map the UN drew – Israel was left to defend itself and its legal right of existence. They happened to to win – had they lost, things would be much different.
@drj:
In what way is Israel not adhereing to that principle? Please be specific.
Well, considering I spent 23 years practicing LOAC, I think I know it pretty well. And yes, Hamas not only makes it worse by their tactics, they reject all the principles of LOAC both in the spirit and letter of the various laws and norms.
Which collective punishments exactly? Which indiscrimiate and disproportionate attacks exactly?
And even the UN spokesperson merely expresses concern that war crimes are being committed without any ability to identify any actual war crimes.
What are the bounds of LOAC? How, exactly, is Israel exceeding those bounds? Especially considering, as you’ve said, Hamas’s tactics do not conform to any norms and do not pretend to recognize LOAC?
@Michael Reynolds:
Indeed.
@Andy:
Lots of great points, I won’t have time to reply tonight, but I will.
@Michael Reynolds:
What can I say, nothing in your reply directly refutes my key points about how your initial response could have been applied to both sides, which gets to the final part of that post about fixed positions of most advocates on both sides.
To be clear I don’t have a better answer to this situation, which is why I have been trying not to comment on this.
@Andy:
Various UN experts and spokespersons have said that Israel is committing war crimes, including in the comment that you are responding to:
Collective punishment is, of course, a war crime.
Also:
Do you really think Israeli statements to the contrary are more reliable than various UN officials?
And I haven’t even mentioned Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B”Tselem, etc
Also, I don’t buy for a second that you somehow know better than these UN officials and other experts. There is a very strong consensus.
IIRC the first use of the Arabic equivalent to “from the river to the sea” was before the first recorded English usage. That was in the mid 1960’s, before Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank.
An analogous Arabic slogan was used, sometimes, from 1948 to 1967, at a time when the main Arab states supporting it were ambiguous about whether or not Palestinians were a distinct “nationality”.
The reason for which appears to be: whatever suited the policies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq at any particular moment., and consistency be damned.
Given that the Palestinian fedayeen, Fatah, PLO, PFLP etc were already attacking Israel before it had occupied the West Bank and Gaza, and while the Arab states were persecuting and expelling the Mizrahi Jews, it is hardly surprising that the Israelis tend to view assertion that “from the river to the sea” = “happy coexistence kumbaya” with a degree of scepticism.
This does not mean that the policies of Israel re. the West bank settlements etc were justifiable legally, ethically, or prudentially.
Or that the Arab Palestinian population were not subjected to a variety of historical injustices. Though it may be noted, they are hardly alone in that category.
Or that Likud in general, the kahanites in particular, and Netanyahu especially, are both short-sighted and amoral.
But the main point is: the Israelis as a whole are never going to readily make peace with those whose practical objective, even if rhetorically dodged or elided, is the elimination of Israel.
And vice versa.
@Gustopher:
Of course, the US could withdraw support for Israel.
But US domestic politics make this rather unlikely.
And there is always the question of what steps an isolated, nuclear armed, Israel might take to ensure it’s regional security position.
There are some questions that it’s unwise to ask.
Calling everyone who doesn’t give full-throated support to Israel an antisemite is completely counter-productive. Even if it were true (and I don’t think it is) it doesn’t accomplish anything except to piss them off and drive them further into the other camp. It’s like loudly calling all Republicans racists and authoritarians. A) They aren’t; B) the more you insult them the less likely they are to listen to you.
I also don’t get Michael Reynolds obsession with tons of bombs dropped compared to Gazan’s killed. Sure, obviously Israel isn’t being completely indiscriminate, but if we want to talk about proportionality then for the last several decades far more Palestinians have been killed by Israelis than vice versa. Even in the last few weeks. By any count since October 7th more than twice as many Gazan’s are dead as Israelis (probably more like 3 times as many and the disparity is growing), even with Israel trying to avoid civilian casualties. Thinking they have gone too far is a perfectly reasonable response without dismissing opponents as antisemites. Personally I think expecting Israel to not go this far (and further) badly misunderstands human nature. Look at the US reaction to the shock of 9/11. That doesn’t make the response morally or strategically RIGHT* (for us or the Israelis), but I see it as kind of inevitable.
As I’ve said elsewhere in these threads there are no good, just, or effective solutions to the situation today, and there won’t be until a whole lot of other regional and international actors change their cynical use of the conflict to score political points with their own people (and then giving time for the next generation to do better than we have). As long as groups keep empowering death cults like Hamas and Hezbollah that would be more than willing to commit genocide against the Jews there will not be peace. Israeli settlers and the far right responding in kind (they are well into the apartheid stage and downright enthusiastic about forced resettlement) are what has caused the majority of anti-Israeli sentiment in the West, not antisemitism, and those groups should be called out as well.
*What I mean here is that whether something is morally right or not will be left up to the winners to decide anyway. Strategically, I think Bin Laden wanted to suck the US into a insurgency, and I think Hamas wanted to provoke the Israelis into killing a whole lot of Palestinians while sabotaging the diplomatic initiatives trying to normalize relations between Israel and other countries in the region. Doing what your opponents want is a strategic mistake. But again, human nature makes such escalations and retaliations almost inevitable.
@Michael Reynolds: the grand Israel-Palestine will be majority Jewish, so I doubt women would be treated as chattel.
The queer folks… I hate to say it, but we are much fewer in numbers than the people being abused in Palestine right now. Fewer oxes gored.
“Aha, the people you don’t want genocided don’t like you” has never really felt like a compelling argument.
@JohnSF: I’m just saying, it’s at least as reasonable a position as the literal genocide some people favor, and possibly better than the open-air prison or reservation syatem that is the status quo.
There is no inherent right for a Jewish Israel that matters more than Palestinian lives.
@James Joyner:
If so, then much of the Allied bombing offensives during WW2 were also a war crime.
In this instance, the “scholarly community” are being rather purblind.
The intent was to destroy, or to demonstrate the capacity to destroy, the enemy capability to wage war, rather than to just kill en masse as an end in itself.
A similar end might have been achieved by blockade leading to mass starvation.
Which some “scholars” seem to regard as quite acceptable.
The essential difference in the means of induced state-collapse eludes me, I have to confess.
@Gustopher:
I certainly do not favour genocide of any variety.
And I rather doubt the IDF do either, given its impracticality.
There is no inherent right for a Jewish Israel that matters more than Palestinian lives.
True enough.
But there was no inherent or absolute moral right for German lives to matter less than British lives during WW2. For some peculiar reason, however, the Imperial General Staff tended to proceed on the basis of relative, rather than absolute, morality, and not give much of a stuff about German lives.
This seems to be a quite common thing in wars.
@Matt Bernius:
This is true.
It’s also entirely irrelevant.
The Palestinians (a who were rarely if ever categorised as such at the time) were done an injustice by the British decision to support a “Jewish National Home” in Palestine. An injustice that also enabled a large number to escape the impending Holocaust.
Such are the contingencies of history.
As was the decision of the Grand Mufti Mohammed Amin al-Husseini to ally himself with Nazi Germany and hope for the extermination of the Jews in Palestine.
Oops.
Or the determination of the Arab states in 1948 to reject the UN partition plan and to eradicate Israel.
Or the decision of the Arab states from 1948 to 1967 to continue the “struggle” by other means and build their forces for a renewal of the war.
Or the PLO being created while Gaza was controlled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan.
Or the mass expulsions of Mizrahi Jews from ME/NA countries after 1948.
It might also be noted that various other peoples have lost historical territories during the 20th Century.
Greeks, expelled from Ionia which had been part of a continual Greek heartland for more than two thousand years.
Germans, expelled from Prussia.
etc etc
The pretence that the Arabs/Muslims/Palestinians are particularly persecuted by “imperialism” is rather absurd.
(NB: this is not what I think you think, but it’s what a lot of the horseshoe thinks)
It’s understandable that Palestinians (or even Arabs more widely, perhaps) should think so.
Rather less that it should become a badge of “anti-colonial” righteousness to concur.
That the Likud/kahanite (etc) drive to “settle” the West Bank is obviously both immediately unjust, and seriously contrary to Israels objective interests, is another matter.
As is the hilarious stupidity of the Republican/evangelical/Likud alignment (which would be funny were it not so tragic, given the religious chasms between them).
@Tony W:
Why does any ethnic state exist?
This appears to be something some Americans have difficulty comprehending.
The US is, in some respects, a “propositional nation”. This is very unusual.
Arguably the only other such in all of human history is Republican France.
And for the Jews, as for some other groups, religion and ethnicity are almost a 1:1 mapping.
@Matt Bernius:
As do the Prussians. Or the Ionian Greeks,
Or the Sudeten Germans.
Or the Anglo-Irish.
Or the Transylvanian Magyars.
Or the Karelian Finns.
Or etc etc etc
The point being the Palestinians are asserting they have a “right of return” but also that the Jews do not.
It’s rather irrelevant; what is relevant is do those parties want to make peace on the basis of current reality?
That is, are the Palestinians prepared to give up “from the river to sea” on the basis that the Israeli’s similarly give up “from the river to the sea”?
The problem is, Hamas have shown scant inclination ever to accept such terms.
And it’s ironic that now the very people (I don’t mean you, FTAOD), who were till recently demanding Israel negotiate with Hamas as “the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people”, are now saying “Hamas, nothing to do with the people of Gaza, collective responsibility is a war crime!”
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza today. As has been the pattern for decades, Israel and America voted against the majority, joined by the usual tiny Pacific Island states and (unusually) a couple of European countries.
I can see no end to the Israel/Palestine conflict while ever the United States persists in its dogmatic insistence that it will have Israel’s back no matter what the rest of the world thinks about the merits of the situation.
@JohnSF:
These are hardly separate matters. These issues are inextricably tied.
@DK:
Fair point, they are connected; badly worded by me.
I was focusing on why the Israelis react badly to “form the river to the sea” as a slogan, due to history since 1948.
Thus, why the Palestinians would be well advised to stop using it.
My “another matter entirely” was meant to indicate that, whatever the Israeli sensitivities due to the Arab attitudes to the legitimacy of Israel, ongoing settlement expropriations and provocations in the West bank are unjustifiable, as is the Likud policy of cynically avoiding any negotiation whatsoever.
@drj:
Well, you’ve motte and bailey’d into the appeal to authority fallacy, thereby avoiding having to any of the relevant questions.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
That’s been Michael’s thing for a long time.
Also, proportionality has nothing to do a comparing the ledger of killed on one side vs. another. Proportionality in war means that a military should use a proportional amount of force needed to meet a specific military objective. For example, if you want to destroy an enemy ammo depot, you don’t drop a megaton nuke on it, you drop a few bombs or whatever is the minimum application of force required, that you posses, that will achieve the military objective. Proportionality is supposed to be a guard against indiscriminate attacks, which would cause the unnecessary loss of innocent lives and collateral damage. And that proportionality principle comes into play for individual attacks and operations. The conduct of war itself is inherent not about proportionality. The goal in war is to inflict disproportionate casualties on an enemy, not to trade evenly.
@JohnSF:
And many of the allied bombings were intentionally indiscriminate and meant to target civilian areas. Which, ironically, is exactly what Hamas is doing by firing thousands of rockets at civilian areas. The only reason there aren’t thousands more Israeli dead is because Israel made the investment in bomb shelters and Iron Dome. Hamas made no investments in protecting civilians for reasons we both understand.
Of course – as I’m sure you also probably know – technology in WW2 meant that a lot of allied air and other attacks were unintentionally indiscriminate. Many attacks that were intended to hit military targets missed completely and blew up something else, including a lot of civilians. Thousands of French civilians along the Normady coast died during the predatory strikes before the landings and the combat afterward to break out.
Coming back to Israel, there are a lot of things they could be striking that they aren’t – things the allies would certainly have struck in WW2. And that’s because Hamas hides behind civilians, which is only an effective tactic because Israel generally wants to avoid killing civilians. IOW, if Israel really didn’t care about civilians in Gaza, then that tactic would not work. That Hamas’ tactic does work is pretty strong evidence that Israel is not engaged in “genocide” or intentional attacks against civilians.
Yes, many Americans do not seem to understand that the vast majority of countries in the world are ethnic nation-states, and why that is an important differentiating characteristic from the US.
@Andy:
Indeed.
It was also understood at the time that a lot of the bombing campaign necessarily entailed massive civilian casualties.
The justification being that the civilian casualties were not the objective of the operations.
It was a bit of a casuistical dance: that the bombings inevitably produced mass casualties, but that the deaths were not the goal, but a side-effect of the project of disrupting war production by destroying the urban bases of such, and “dehousing” the workforce.
Actually, killing the workforce.
A lot of shiftiness and blame dodging and ex-post facto exculpation got involved later on.
Which led to the shameful denial of a campaign medal to the veterans of Bomber Command, Air Marshal Harris being blamed for what were actually IGS/Cabinet decisions, etc.
It could have been even worse.
It’s not as well known as it might be that Churchill in 1944 pushed quite hard for large scale poison gas use against German cities, in response to the V-1 attacks on London.
Around 70,000 IIRC.