Israel Long War Update
It is escalating quickly.
Having spent much of the last hour scanning several major English language sources (NYT, WaPo, WSJ, NPR, Reuters, and Economist most notably), I’m surprised at the scattershot nature of the reporting on what’s happened in the conflict over the last 24 hours. Almost all of the US sources are doing live blogging rather than writing real articles.
Here’s what’s clear:
- There are serious recriminations to be had over Israeli security and intelligence. How such a massive attack took them by surprise is still unclear. (No, this isn’t comparable to the 9/11 attacks. It required a massive movement of forces, not a handful of dudes with box cutters.)
- The Israeli death count is rising, with some having the figure over 1000. It’s mostly noncombatants.
- The conflict has already widened beyond the Israel-Gaza borders. Israel has struck targets in Lebanon and an Egyptian policeman has murdered Israeli tourists. Countries around the world are enhancing security at Jewish temples and other places where Jews might be targeted.
- Israel is, as was almost a given, committing significant war crimes in response. Almost by definition, most targets in the Gaza strip are non-military and even hitting legitimate targets by air will kill a disproportionate number of non-combatants. Because they consider Hamas a terrorist group rather than a legitimate military force, they have long had a policy that the laws of armed conflict don’t apply. While that’s not have international humanitarian law works, the impulse is understandable.
- This is not to say that Hamas, Hezbollah, and related groups aren’t terrorists. They very much are and these attacks on Israeli civilians and the associated kidnappings are a new low.
- The Biden administration’s attempts to broker a wider Middle East peace deal, like almost all such efforts over the last half-century, have been dashed by bad actors
- President Biden is naturally coming under attack from would-be Republican replacements. That’s politics. It’s also absurd.
What’s decidedly not clear:
- I have no idea what the end state is at this point but fear it’s going to be savage. At the very least, I’d take the under on the odds of Gaza being a separate territory when this is over. For now, I see it less likely that Israel takes back the West Bank but that rather depends on what else happens.
Israel will trash Gaza, but I can’t see them wanting to own it, ever.
My general attitude is, a pox on all their houses, as there is sufficient blame to go around on all sides of the dispute.
This is an editorial choice for reporting on breaking news events and they save the comprehensive stories for the daily summary that becomes part of the print edition, when there is one. In truth, it isn’t very satisfying if you are trying to get a handle on the event and can be rife with error.
I’ve always felt Palestine deserved to be treated better in all this.
But Hamas f’ed them with this tragic blunder.
Israel is going to, rightfully, destroy Palestine.
This is not going to be pretty.
I imagine that this will also stop the US outreach to Iran and attempts to restart some sort of nuclear deal. And I wonder if Iran sees this as (partial) revenge for the killing of Suleimani?
This whole thing reminds me of the class I took on the history of the Troubles in Ireland. (although much, much more complicated and worse.) It was year after year of missed opportunities and bad, but understandable, decisions.
And I keep reading people saying that this is entirely the Palestinian’s fault, that they should be resisting Hamas, and that if their leaders would just stop fighting, they’d have a country of their own by now. I’m not sure if that’s even true, but so far, we’ve had three leaders like that that I can think of offhand: MLK Jr, Gandhi and Mandela. If your requirement for peace is that your enemy produce the nearest thing most people can think of to a saint (though they all had their flaws), you’re asking for too much.
https://twitter.com/DNCWarRoom/status/1710757011812458808
Iran meddling seeking more influence and power is a big part of this.
More Republican hot take:
https://twitter.com/GovChristie/status/1710676678798663700
This is BS BTW, standard GOP manure:
The career functionaries were too busy plotting against their own government and stopped looking outward. We can hope in their desperate need to protect their careers they step up, but that means they’ll step hard on Gaza.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F73zePTb0AARIMF?format=png&name=small
It has been the extremist Israel position for years to take over all of Judea and Samaria and evict those who live there. This disaster will be used as another step towards that goal.
@JKB: That the intelligence apparatus was distracted seems to be the consensus view. But distracted in support of Netanyahu, or in opposition to him seems to be a big dividing line.
You are suggesting its in opposition to Netanyahu, am I correct? That’s how I’m reading you, but it’s a bit ambiguous.
I offer no opinion, as I have no information on this. It would be no more than a guess that confirms my priors.
Biden will have to go to the House of Representatives to get any additional funding for Israel. Pity we don’t have a House of Representatives.
I would not want to see Ukrainian arms shipments shorted to help this asshole Netanyahu and his gang of extremists and racists dig their way out of this mess. We should focus on using (firm) diplomacy to keep Hezbollah and Iran from getting any more involved, and aside from that Bibi and his fascistic pals can go fuck themselves.
This would have been a potentially smart move by Hamas had they not acted like animals. (Or Russians.) But any sympathy they expected to garner was gone when they started kidnapping old people and killing children. Now it’s bilateral pox time.
Sometime in the mid late ’80s on a weekend afternoon I saw a television program that Linda Ellerbee hosted. She presented teenagers from the Middle East. There were two groups of 3 or 4. Maybe 14 to 17 years old. One group was Israeli. The other group was Palestinian.
I don’t remember who started but it began like this.
A boy child from one group said: “It is written in our Holy Book that God gave us this land many years ago and we have the right to fight to defend it.”
Then a girl child from the other group said: “Our Holy Book says that God gave us this land thousands of years ago. We must fight to defend and keep it.”
This was 35 or so years ago. Those teenagers are well into middle age by now.
When ever the Holy Wars in the Middle East erupt I wonder where those kids are.
And I still think that we should burn all the Holy Books.
I’m sorry to see that most of my first impressions yesterday were correct.
A few more thoughts:
– This is like 9/11 in that it is an intelligence/security failure, although the circumstances are somewhat different. But more importantly, it’s like 9/11 in terms of impact, a system shock on Israel society. It’s also similar in that it deliberately targeted civilians. And the body count is almost 1/3 of the number killed on 9/11 in a country with ~3% of the US population.
This is a problem of urban warfare against an opponent that deliberately utilizes civilian infrastructure. I’m actually surprised that Israel is still doing what it’s done previously – “roof knocks” on buildings giving warnings before they are struck, and texting Palestinians giving warning of where Israeli operations will take place.
But even with those measures, fighting in a dense urban city always comes with significant casualties among the civilian population. But it’s not clear what alternative you would suggest?
And if you want to get legal about it, civilian infrastructure used for military purposes is legal to attack. And Hamas just uses civilian infrastructure extensively – in previous conflicts, they’ve hidden command centers in the basements of hospitals, for example. Legally, that removes the protected status, allowing it to be attacked. And doing that – using protected areas for military purposes, is definitionally a war crime – as is using hostages as human shields, as it deliberately killing civilians which, at this point, was one of the primary goals of Hamas’ attack.
I know this will piss people off here, but I reject the “both sides” arguments being made. The way Hamas and Isreal conduct military operations is not remotely comparable regarding LOAC or morals.
We had this same problem for many years in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the fact that fighters and enemy leadership deliberately use what is normally protected infrastructure is somewhat understandable from a tactical point of view, but it only works because the US and, admittedly to a lesser extent, Israel actually do take measures to avoid striking purely civilian infrastructure – unlike Hamas. If Israel really didn’t care, then these tactics of using human shields would not work.
Secondly, I agree that Hamas isn’t a terrorist group even though it uses the tactics and has the goals of a terrorist group. Hamas, remember, won elections in 2006 and then quickly went about rounding up and killing all their political opponents, mainly Fatah.
Since then, it’s been the de facto government of Gaza, even though most countries don’t recognize them. But as a matter of basic facts, they are the Gaza government. And, IMO, it should be considered the government of Gaza and treated accordingly. And that means a lot of things, including not making excuses for their war crimes.
It also means, IMO, that the problems of Gaza rest primarily on their shoulders. In the last couple of days, I’ve read a lot takes about how this attack is justified because of the Israeli blockade. Well, Israel blockades Gaza because of Hamas. Because it’s clear what Hamas’ goal is, it’s written in their charter – their struggle is against “the Jews” and the goal is the destruction of the Israeli state and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the region. Hamas’ priority isn’t good governance. Much of the misery in Gaza is because Hamas would rather import rockets, weapons, and war material to do this kind of “attack” to further its goals rather than provide for the people it is supposed to represent.
In a lot of ways, Israel’s blockade is a very similar situation to similar actions taken against other authoritarian and murderous regimes. We had massive sanctions and an effective blockade on Iraq during most of the 1990’s which did weaken the regime but had a terrible effect on the people of Iraq. And part of that was deliberate on Saddam’s part – the goals was to ensure people suffered as a method to buttress regime legitimacy by blaming the misery on the actions of the West. And Russia is doing the same playbook. Their propaganda is that all hardships in Russia are caused by the West and its desire (so they say) to see Russia destroyed.
The problem is that it’s not very clear what the alternative is. The Israeli public would never tolerate doing nothing and allowing Hamas to just import whatever it wants. The justification for that view is very plain at this point.
And so I think Israel has concluded that the efforts to block off Hamas from sources of weapons and weaken it have failed. And now they are not doing the more limited “anti-terrorism” operations of the past. They are treating Hamas like an enemy state are mobilizing for war in a way they haven’t done for generations. There are already reports that Israel is mobilizing practically all of their reservists, which is a significant percentage of the population.
Personally, I think the majority of the blame for what comes next falls on Hamas because their “attack” was primarily about murdering civilians and taking hostages. I think the world – and me – would have a lot more sympathy if they conducted a military operation against military targets and not a deliberate slaughter of hundreds of innocent people.
One more thing about this. It’s come out that all the regular forces had been pulled out of the Gaza area to support actions in the West Bank. This makes sense since nothing stopped Hamas, and it took hours for Israeli forces to respond.
It is clear, but Israel and its allies don’t want to point it out:
Elite Israeli reserve fighter pilots and intelligence officers boycott training to protest against Netanyahu’s right-wing government
This attack was a direct result of Netanyahu’s authoritarianism
Random thoughts sitting in the ER with my SIL…
Somehow this is all vaguely reminiscent of the Book of Judges, isn’t it?
@Andy:
A big chunk of Bibi’s support is the religious nuts so Bibi panders to them. Religious holy day Simchat Torah with ceremonies going on at West Bank holy sites, so IDF there to protect against Palestinian interference. The entire IDF was in the West Bank so Israel itself undefended. This will blow back on Bibi a lot.
@Jay L Gischer: it is worth noting that this intelligence failure will cause Israeli to act in exactly the way Netanyahu has always desired.
@Andy:
I don’t have one. While I have a long-held disdain for Netanyahu, I can’t imagine the Israeli leader who wouldn’t, to quote Marcellus Wallace, “go medieval on their ass” under the circumstances. It’s going to be brutal, horrific, and criminal. But the laws of armed conflict were written in response to state-on-state war and this is a hybrid of warfare against state-like actor (the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority) and related terrorist groups.
@Michael Reynolds:
I have seen a reddit of the corpse of a 30 Y.O. German tourist woman being abused. They have an odd notion of public relations.
@Mister Bluster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pKMV6e5kEo
https://blog.ninapaley.com/2012/10/01/this-land-is-mine/
@James Joyner:
There is very likely to be a unity government in Israel soon and Netanyahu is already in talks with the opposition.
As noted, Hamas is a de facto government. That they engage in hybrid warfare and use the tactics terrorists use doesn’t change that. It’s like the Taliban – just because we think they are a terrorist group doesn’t mean they are not the government of Afghanistan. They should be treated like a government, which means this is a war and not anti-terrorism.
@charontwo:
Yes, she was one of what’s looking like a couple of hundred or more young people killed at a music festival near the border.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I hope she’s OK.
@Andy: So, a tiny little resistance movement that desires to drive out the occupiers should engage with a vastly superior military only on equal terms?
I’m not justifying Hamas. But I certainly don’t see the Israelis as innocent in all this. It is a repressive apartheid state, in fact it’s an end stage apartheid state where it seeks to drive the “inferiors” completely from the land it occupies.
We should wash our hands of the whole mess. There is nothing we can do.
Will Cain posted on X
I wonder if that is why the Biden admin rushed to delete their quick call for Israel to not respond to the attack.
Hamas may have really screwed up going after the rave. Seems they’ve brought in a lot of countries citizens into the fray.
Hamas is awful but they offer the young men of the area what they want, revenge. Unemployment in Gaza is either the highest in the world or among the highest for many years, largely due to the blockade, running in the 45%-50% range. Among the young its even higher, about 60% with some sources claiming 70%. For us that’s some abstract number but for the young man in Gaza that means every day is spent in hopeless humiliation. We got deaths of despair in th eUS in areas with 10%-15% UE, imagine what it feels like there. For comparison UE is about 13% in the West Bank.
So Israel has imposed world class awful conditions upon Gaza, largely due to Hamas, but Hamas offers a chance at revenge to the angry young men for whom things seem hopeless. I also think it likely Israel has a fairly unrestricted response and kills many, many thousands in the efforts to kill Hamas members.
What will they get out of that? It gets revenge and some israelis feel better. Who can blame them? On the other side? It breeds the next group of angry young men who want revenge. If Israel is able to eliminate Hamas, which I doubt given this intelligence failure, another group will spring up offering them revenge. I think they are stuck in a loop with both sides acting upon incentives that kind of make sense for them but end up being destructive and maintaining the status quo. You can argue that one side started it or that one side may be worse but it’s an asymmetric conflict and that’s how things work. To top it off you have the religious leaders egging this on. I dont see a good way out.
Steve
Not helpful for Sen. Tuberville to be blocking military promotions right now.
Not helpful for Republican senators to blocking diplomatic confirmations, including that of Biden’s Israeli ambassador.
Not helpful for rightwing extremists in Congress to be blocking Ukraine aid right now — helping an Iranian ally and signaling to bad actors that the West will not help allies.
Not helpful for Trump to have revealed Israel defense secrets to Putin, an ally of Iran and Hamas.
@steve:
It also distracts from the failed, racist ideology of Lilud a d its partner — and from Netanyahu’s failed leadership.
@MarkedMan: Agreed.
And it’s amusing to see those who bothsides everything in American politics — including Russia’s genocidal warmongering — suddenly get cold feet when such thinking is warranted re: Israel and Palestine.
https://www.bicom.org.uk/
IDF news
@Kevin:
Forgive the pedantry: MLK did not call for people to stop fighting; he called for “militant nonviolence,” following Ghandi.
The “militant” qualifier has been erased, in MLK’s postmortem whitewashing that seeks to reduce him to one out-of-context quote.
@charontwo: Correct, their withdrawal was not some gesture to the Palestinians, it was getting rid of an unwanted toothache. Contra West Bank.
Reoccupying densely built and urbanised Gaza is a nightmare, and one that has only gotten worse since the pullout.
Unless the Israelis decide to engage in a genocidal ethnic cleansing….
@steve: the recent – past several years degradatin of conditions in West Bank as the settler – annexationist factions have gotten free(r) reign make West Bank a close follower, including the despair aspect as explusion and annexation looms. My Christian Palestinian friends resident there – noting the Christian aspect – have grown darker and more sympathetic to the nihilistic factions. Netanyahu’s game has sown dark seeds.
Can anyone remind me how it was that the Irish drove the occupiers out of their county after centuries of brutal repression, genocide and ethnic cleansing. In my recollection that wasn’t non-violence…
@Andy: There is a thing called asymmetrical warfare which I suspect you’ve heard of.
Not arguing that Hamas is anything less than vile, but it seems a little disingenuous to demand that the occupied fight with the same methods and resources as the occupier. It’s basically the same argument that rich, well-armed powers have made for centuries — that rebels don’t fight with the same decorum as their betters.
Seem to recall this was an argument the British made against the rebels way back when.
@gVOR10:
Sorry, I wasn’t clear… Son in law. Sorta (they’ve been engaged for 10+ years, and are currently living in our spare (?) bedroom.
This is not what SWMBO had on my honey-do list for Sunday.
@MarkedMan: Based on the little I know, I believe Irish republicans had a coherent political and military strategy involving British military targets and including civil disobedience.
Off the top of my head, I don’t think a Hamas-like indiscriminate targeting of civilians, and even of foreign tourists, was part of the official playbook.
There are many Israelis — Jews, Arabs, and others — hostile to Netanyahu’s rule and to Likud’s apartheid-style ideology, and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
Is it helpful to Palestinians for Hamas to alienate and even kill these people, rather than rally them to civil disobedience (or even to destruction of goverment property)? Would the members of Parliament sympathetic to Irish republicanism have been able rally the votes for Irish independence if the Irish had been targeting British civilians, not vice versa?
These situations all have their own contours and are not analagous. But despite the evil and brutal repression, disenfranchisement, poverty, theft, and violent KKK terror they faced in the Carolinas and Georgia post-slavery, I just don’t think it would have helped my grandparents and their grandparents and great-grandparents to have been rampaging through the South killing white people. No matter what Kanye says.
Reparation would be nice, though.
@charontwo: Gov./Prez candidate Christie bloviates:
My question: Is candidate Christie willing to give some concrete suggestions as to how he would have stopped either “war” from starting? Or is this simply another of the GQPs “secret plans” that they can’t reveal because then, their political enemies will do the same thing before they can?
@MarkedMan: While the ahistorical terminology re English rule, perhaps rather more accurately Protestant English rule of Ireland is a bit tedious, yes, the Irish did not achieve home rule by playing by European state-army rules. They did usually have the good PR sense however to avoid targetting pure civilians (as like say children), where the Hamas militias have not shown such good sense their own videos seem to suggest.
Given the disingenousness of the Netanyahu governments (in the plural) negotiations approach, however, where West Bank side government has only to show expanded annexation and indeed late colonial style pseudo-government for its efforts, it is not hard to understand the why of the attraction of Hamas style reaction given the farce of pseudo-negotiation.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah, that Christie claim is pretty absurd. It took a long time to create the preconditions for this, and was mostly the work product of Netanyahu and his supporters.
But yeah, people like Christie and Ronna McDaniel excel at staying classy.
Adam Silverman over at BJ is a pretty good reference on this.
https://balloon-juice.com/2023/10/08/the-israel-hamas-war-of-october-2023-update/
@charontwo:
It’s clear HAMAs designated a few people to film it and release it to the public. Clearly a feature, not a bug. This is intended to generate maximum outrage against them.
They have given up hope. The settlements in the West Bank continue and have increased. Jerusalem is lost. Gaza, the world’s largest prison, was doomed to eternal abject poverty and the Arabs who once supported Palestine are kissing up to Israel. They seek now to go down in a blaze of what they imagine to be glory, not to “win”.
@Flat Earth Luddite: All things considered, the honey-do list might have been better.
@DK: FWIW, the Irish Republican Movement did sometimes involve targeting civilians. For one set of examples see the Fenian Dynamiters. But in the main, you are right, although the Palestinians have a much more hopeless situation. The Israelis aren’t simply occupiers in Israeli, it is the entirety of their country. The Palestinians refusal to accept reality and work to achieve the best possible outcome for their people, and instead fuel eternal hatred and undying commitment to driving the Israelis into the sea has removed all hope. The Israelis for their part continue to implement apartheid and ethnic cleansing through land and property confiscation.
When the Irish were finally victorious they did not take revenge against the British loyalists and did not confiscate and redistribute their property and that is a large reason that Ireland is peacefully and well integrated into the world community today. I can’t imagine a victorious Palestinian people would follow the same route. Instead the brutality and savagery would make them pariahs.
Bottom line, there are no good guys here and there are no longer any significant Israeli contingent who wants to find as good a solution as possible. That’s why we should wash our hands of the lot of them.
@MarkedMan:
Well, I think there are several problems with what you’re suggesting.
The first is the implication that we should give weaker combatants a pass in war and allow them to engage in war crimes because they are the weaker party. Suffice it to say that I do not agree with that.
You say you are not justifying Hamas, but it’s really difficult to interpret the implication of your question as anything other than suggesting Hamas’ war crimes are less serious because they are militarily weaker.
And that seems especially problematic considering the intentionality with which Hamas targeted and killed civilians in this incursion. This isn’t a case where Hamas is attacking military forces and not exercising due diligence in protecting civilians – this is a case where civilians were the primary target. Of the roughly thousand people killed that we know of so far, less than 50 were Israeli military. Less than 40 were other Israeli security like police. Many, we are now finding out, were foreign nationals.
I do not think that is a principled view. Either one believes that combatants in a war have a duty to protect the civilians and noncombatants, or one doesn’t believe that. And if one doesn’t believe that, then one can’t legitimately claim to care about civilian harm based on principle.
As I previously noted, from a purely practical perspective I can understand the reason for using tactics like hiding in civilian areas and using civilians as human shields for force protection. But understanding the reasons that some combatants do that should not be an excuse and it is not a moral justification. Expediency is rarely – if ever – a valid moral justification.
And I’ve seen that happen firsthand. And sometimes it can’t be helped – fighters may run into a building to seek protection during combat with non-combatants in that building. The fighting continues, and those noncombatants can die. That is not a war crime, that is part and parcel of the horror that is war.
Hamas, however, does this deliberately. Not only hiding behind civilians, hostages and POW’s, but carrying out operations with the specific intent to kill civilians. Those are all serious war crimes. When Hamas hides weapons and fighters in a Mosque, that is a war crime – and that action makes attacking that Mosque legal. And this is where the problem holding Hamas to a lesser standard than the US or Israel becomes really problematic because when we or Israel strike that Mosque, it’s called a war crime with zero mention of the war crime that allowed that attack to be legal. The fact that so many elide that reality, especially those who bleat “both sides” constantly, is troubling.
And speaking of effectiveness, let’s take a counterfactual – say Israel hid its forces behind Israeli civilians such that in attacking Israeli forces, Hamas would end up killing civilians. If Israel did that, it would be a war crime. Isreal doesn’t do that because it values the lives of its citizens and also because it would not be an effective tactic. Why? Because Hamas is perfectly happy to kill civilians, so it would not be a deterrent. It’s only a deterrent to military forces that want to avoid killing civilians.
Secondly, Hamas isn’t trying to “drive out the occupiers” unless one shares Hamas’ goal of killing/driving out Jews from the region completely.
The border between Gaza and Israel is the internationally recognized border that was part of the 1967 armistice. Israel unilaterally withdrew its settlements from Gaza in 2005 to that established border. Hamas didn’t kill “settlers” or “occupiers” unless one agrees with Hamas that all Jews are occupiers who should be cleansed and that the 1967 borders mean nothing.
And speaking of the whole “bothsides” comments from certain quarters, I have a general comment on the weird way domestic politics and ideology drive some of the partisan and ideological narratives.
On the one hand, Hamas murders and kidnaps hundreds of civilians. The US right-wing goes all-in on “blood and thunder” with little concern about the effects on Palestinian civilians under Hamas’ rule. Meanwhile, the left-wing talks primarily about how bad Israel and Netanyahu and Republicans are, how the whole problem is really their fault, and anyway, there are no good guys here, and we should just do nothing, by which they mean we shouldn’t do anything to help Israel.
On the other hand, Russia murders and kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian civilians, and the US right and left are completely the opposite. The left-wing is blood and thunder with little concern for impacts on Russian civilians who really should overthrow Putin if they knew what was good for them. And the us right wing talks primarily about how bad Ukraine and Democrats are, how the whole war is really their fault, and anyway, there are no good guys here so we should just do nothing, by which they mean we should do nothing to help Ukraine.
Well, count me guilty of being a “bothsides” person in that I think Hamas’ attack and the Russian invasion are both indefensible, and the right thing to do is to support Ukraine and Israel against these attacks. I feel perfectly comfortable taking that moral stance while acknowledging the complex and divisive history that underlies these two conflicts. I think anyone who claims that one is black and white and the other is not is ignorant and fooling themselves. I think the notion that there is some moral parity between Israel and Hamas or between Ukraine and Russia is laughable.
Also, amidst this is the weird status of Iran in domestic US politics. So you have right-wingers hating Iran – as they always do – but underplaying Iranian support for Russia and hyping Iranian support for Hamas and terrorism generally, including promoting the idea that Iran is pulling all the strings with Hamas.
It’s the Democratic side that gets a bit weird. A number of Democrats still seem wedded to the idea of a rapprochement begun under Obama despite the current reality on the ground of Iran materially helping both Russia and Hamas in committing their atrocities. Although I supported Obama’s effort in this and opposed Trump’s unilateral gutting of the JPCOA, today Iran is a bad actor by arming Russia and Hamas and not caring one iota about the plight of Palestinians or Ukrainians.
@Andy:
Is there a case where this type of broad sanctions have worked? I genuinely don’t know what a successful sanctions regime is supposed to look like, and how long it is supposed to be in place to change the behavior of the sanctioned government.
The borders are porous, and things are getting through anyway. That is also very plain at this point. And, it’s creating a level of suffering that radicalizes the next generation.
Treating Gaza like a giant, open-air internment camp is only a viable long term solution if you are willing to accept a whole lot of suffering in Gaza and sporadic outbursts outside of Gaza as normal.
And “mowing the lawn” only works until the angry, radicalized Palestinians figure out how to operate under than normal.
@steve:
I’m wondering whether a massive WPA style program would have any actual effect. Or would it just mark anyone involved as a collaborator and make them a target?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Unfortunately people don’t vote on the basis of well thought out chains of causation. They vote on how they feel. If they feel bad they vote against the incumbent. FOX/GOP will go to a lot of effort to make people feel bad about this.
@Gustopher:
I’m firmly on team “sanctions don’t work.”
In Iraq, they did weaken the regime somewhat, but at a high cost, and those were in force for a decade. They are not working against Russia. They haven’t worked for decades with North Korea. They, quite obviously from recent events, haven’t worked to prevent Iran from getting weapons to Hamas.
But the problem is there aren’t any good alternatives. What should Israel do instead – nothing? Stop trying to prevent the flow of weapons to an adversary bent on genocide? Who here wants to stop sanctions against Russia because they don’t work, are unlikely to work, and are likely to strengthen the regime? Should we end sanctions on North Korea and allow them to rearm?
I don’t think there are any easy answers here.
Hamas controls Gaza and has for almost two decades. What makes anyone think they would run a WPA program or, especially, allow a third party to run one, much less Israel? Hamas is in control, and they decide what happens with any aid sent there. They’ve had ample opportunity to improve the lives of Gaza residents, yet they spend most of their money and effort on getting arms and building military infrastructure for the next fight with Israel.
So, I think it’s important to understand that Hamas’ goals, which should be crystal clear after the last couple of days, are not primarily about improving the material conditions of Gaza residents – quite the opposite.
@Andy:
I think MarkedMan is making the argument that the definition of war crimes is written to justify and excuse the civilian deaths caused by the stronger power, while demonizing the deaths caused by the weaker power. Similar to how we would criminalize crack far more severely than powder cocaine, because rich people use the powder.
I don’t want to speak for MarkedMan, but I’ll flat out state that.
The attacks from Hamas are killing fewer civilians than the effects of the blockade on Gaza (look at infant mortality, shorted lifespans, etc) and the various rounds of “mowing the lawn”. And likely less than the civilian deaths from Israel’s response.
Or one can take a utilitarian view, and just count the bodies.
War goes hand-in-hand with war crimes. Always has.
@Andy:
I support Ukraine because it was blameless. But even more because supporting Ukraine bleeds one of our two potential major power opponents, degrades their economy and trashes their martial reputation.
Israel does not have the moral high ground Ukraine occupies, and supporting Israel has no serious effect on our strategic foes, Russia and China. IOW, there is profit for us in Ukraine, and nothing but risk and exposure in Israel.
Ukraine has treated the US with respect; Israel has decided to join partisan battles inside the US on the side of Republicans and has treated American presidents with contempt. Zelensky is a hero. Bibi is a fascist asshole.
So, I don’t see the Democratic hypocrisy or confusion here. The case for supporting Ukraine is clear and compelling. Other than well-deserved disgust at these Hamas animals, what is the US interest here? That’s the case I’d like to see someone make.
@Andy: You are putting words in my mouth. I don’t consider the atrocities committed by Hamas to be justified. Hamas is led by the extremists and fanatics that have taken over the Palestinian cause via violence including assassination against their own, ensuring that there can never be peace. Just as the extremist and fanatics have taken over the Israeli cause, and used violence and assassination against their own annd against the moderate Palestinians to ensure their dominance. The fanatics on both sides agree on one thing, those who would compromise deserve to die.
Where I do think you are being naive is this idea that a guerrilla campaign against a vastly superior force can set up military encampments and fight from there. And there is also the question of “civilians” in this case. If an army comes in and takes my home and installs a family there, is that family truly “civilian”?
There is no hope for justice in the area. Colonial powers took the land from the people the people who lived there and created Israel. (Yes, I know it was more complicated than that, but that’s the core.) But we are three generations in and the Israelis who live there now have as much right to that land as anyone. There is no “fair” left to be had. The best solution would be to carve out two countries and find coexistence, but that is no longer on the table. We have nothing to contribute at this point and should pull all support from both sides.
@Andy:
One other point. Ukraine does not have an equivalent to the settler faction, the ultra-orthodox in particular who back the most racist factions and actively engage in DIY ethnic cleansing, and then take a religious exemption so that the war they start ends up being fought by secular Jews the ultras treat with almost as much contempt as they do Palestinians. The Israeli men and woman dying right now in fire fights with Hamas are exploited and oppressed by religious nuts. And it’s our job to save them?
@MarkedMan:
Your own link says the official targets of these bombings were military, goverment, and police infrastructure.
Of course civilians always end up dying, which is tragic, indefensible, and evil (see the Oklahoma City Bombing). So it’s arguably six in one hand, a half dozen in the other. Still, specifically targeting everyday civilians for killings is uglier. And terrible PR, if you want to rally support.
@Gustopher:
This is where it’s useful to have one standard for behavior. That is what the laws of armed conflict are supposed to be about.
Civilian deaths are inevitable in war but the goal of the laws of armed conflict is to prevent them from being deliberately targeted. It does not mean that any killing of a civilian is a war crime.
That is why bombing a building with enemy fighters and civilians in it, thereby killing both, is not considered a war crime, but gunning down civilians at bus stops and outdoor concerts is.
But there is also a difference of scale and intent. In any war, any side of a conflict will commit war crimes. That includes Israel and the US. But Israel and the US don’t intentionally kill civilians as goal in and of itself. This is exactly what Hamas does. The idea that Hamas should be given a pass for this is bizarre, amoral and also violates both the letter and intent of LOAC. Which seems to be where you are:
Hamas controls Gaza. Hamas spends its time and funds buying arms to deliberately kill Israelis instead of helping improve infant mortality and other things you mention. The fact that you lay no blame for the conditions in Gaza at the feet of Hamas, especially when they’ve shown their colors in the last two days, speaks volumes.
Next, you are going to tell me that the US is responsible for the frequent famines in North Korea, and therefore the North Korean government is entirely justified in landing military forces in downtown Seattle and murdering civilians.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think that’s at least a coherent realpolitik argument. But I think you discount the effects if the US were to abandon Israel. It’s not like the region has countries with a moral high ground that we can ally with, to say nothing of actual democracies.
According to SECSTATE Blinkin, those “Hamas animals” apparently have apparently killed some not-yet-known number of Americans, and taken others hostage.
Edited to add: I’d just note that the comparison is about domestic political narratives. I’m not interested in a line-by-line adjudication of the very real and material differences between these two conflicts. But the way these narratives paper those over to put the thumb on the scale for who each side thinks is good and bad is, IMO, very real and instructive.
The level of atrocity by Hamas is such the they have to be condemned. I doubt we really need to support Israel but we can offer. However, this is nonsense unless you have some numbers.
“Hamas controls Gaza. Hamas spends its time and funds buying arms to deliberately kill Israelis instead of helping improve infant mortality and other things you mention.”
Katyusha rockets cost about $300. if they launched 5000 then they spent $1.5 million. The population of Gaza is 2 million. Giving everyone an extra 75 cents isn’t going to change the economics. As I noted before UE in the West Bank is 13%, 45% in Gaza. Small arms just don’t cost that much.
It’s a given, I think, that Israel goes in and kills a lot of people. The question is what comes after. As long as 60% of the young men in Gaza can’t find work due to the blockade this will happen again.
Steve
@MarkedMan:
You say I’m putting words in your mouth, but here you are bothsidesing Hamas and Israel by saying the latter “just as” extreme as the former.
Dude, I am well aware. Been there, done that, and seen it firsthand. As I previously said, I can understand why groups do this, but that doesn’t make it right or justified. But more importantly, it doesn’t make it a war crime to attack the enemy when it does that.
And, importantly, using civilians to shield your forces from attack is not a “get out of jail free” card that prevents the enemy from attacking you. When combatants hide behind civilians in a war, and those civilians die, the moral and legal responsibility for their deaths rests with the combatants who hid behind the civilians.
And Hamas is not a guerrilla group – they are the de facto government of Gaza and have been for almost two decades! The notion that the only option they have is to gun down civilians is ludicrous.
On that we agree.
So what do you think would happen if the US sat by and did nothing?
@DK:
True, although civilians were also killed. But I have a memory (from history, I’m not that old!) that there was a bombing of a hotel too, but in couldn’t find it. Too many hits from The Troubles.
@Michael Reynolds:
Iran? Significant player.
American hostages? Europeans.
There may be some American credibility and American face involved here, which some seem to think is of some value.
@Michael Reynolds:
You’re right, there isn’t much, except for those wedded to intellectually lazy narratives, predicated on misrepresenting Democratic/leftwing positions. For example, it’s just uneducated to imply the right is more concerned about Russian civilians than the left.
Those who cannot see that the very cut-and-dried case for supporting Ukraine lacks the grey areas associated with the Israel-Palestine conflict are either dull-witted or deceitful. Possibly both. Ukraine was pre-emptively invaded by an imperialist, expansionist power that’s been trying to swallow its neighbors for 500 years. Ukraine isn’t building settlements in Russia. Ukraine hasn’t created a humanitarian crisis by blockading any part of Russia. Neither is the Ukrainian government targeting or terrorizing Russian civilians, opposing US policy, or catering to religious extremists who hate Russia.
On the contrary, NATO forced Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons to Russia for security guarantees that Russia is now flagrantly violating. So much for NATO being a threat to Russia, ignoring Russia’s integrate, and Ukraine making a deal with Russia.
On both sides of the Israel and Palestine conflict, there’s neo-fascist religious extremists in power. On both sides, people calling for total eradication of the other. On both sides, powers acting againsy preferred policy of the United States. On both sides, wars crimes — and yes bulldozing and displacing Palestinians with settlements illegal under international law is a war crime.
So of course bothsidesism is warranted as we press for peace between Israel and Palestine, even as we oppose Hamas terrorism. This is not the case with Ukraine, where peace = Russia going home and leaving its neighbors alone.
It will be good if more Americans get to the point of unequivocal Ukraine support, rather than suggesting we disarm or defund them, forcing Ukraine to give up 20% or more of its territory because “Blame NATO.”
@MarkedMan:
Off the top of my head, a hotel was bombed targeting Margaret Thatcher, who survived. Other British officials were killed. Is this the incident you’re remembering?
@DK: I didn’t follow the Irish settlement, so if you or JohnSF or someone wants to correct me, I’ll defer. But it seemed to me the key to the Irish settlement was the stronger side, Britain, deciding they were more interested in resolving the issue than in “winning”, and therefore willing to make concessions. Israel is the stronger side and I’ve seen little indication they’d be willing to be gracious.
@DK: I should clarify that I think the Irish handled this about as well as anyone in 1917. And I’m not disinterested- my father was born in County Clare in ‘23 and my mother in Wexford in ‘28. My life would be very different if it wasn’t for the intelligence and control of people like Michael Collins.
But The Troubles in post WWII Northern Ireland were very different and the IRA uselence against civilians frequently. But in the end, the moderates prevailed and were able to reach a negotiated settlement.
@Andy:
Are you just ignoring the reality that Russia is having a hard time manufacturing or buying components for modern weapon systems? They have a handful of T14 because sanctions are keeping them from buying the components they need. Sure Russia was able to buy a bunch of stuff from France prior to the war but that’s all cut off now thanks to newer sanctions. The Ukraine War sanctions are without a doubt having an effect on Russia’s ability to engage in the war. On the financial side sanctions have been squeezing Putin’s ability to pay for the war. I consider knee capping Russia’s ability to replace war losses and to finance campaigns to be a major win.
Now the sanctions prior to the war were anywhere from toothless to annoying for Russia.
@Andy:
Holy shit what a simpleton view of the situation. You know there’s a blockade instituted by Israel right? Kind of hard to rebuild hospitals when you cannot get any construction materials outside of the rubble left behind by Israel’s latest “lawn mowing”. After being choked for 18 years there’s basically no industry and little in the way of work. As stated prior unemployment is at catastrophic levels and with fewer building standing each year the cost of living climbs. Even if Hamas wanted to there’s nothing they can do to improve the lives of people living in Gaza at this point. Not that Hamas is blameless lord know they are full of pieces of shit too. So at this point they are stuck in a cycle of death as they circle down the drain. It’s almost like Hamas is trying to commit suicide and they want to drag as many innocents along with them as they can.
Seriously though there’s no hope for a bright future when basically everyone is unemployed and full of “free time” to think of how much they hate whoever for their problems.
@Michael Reynolds:
Ukraine’s leaders think Russia has a right to exist.
Russia’s current leaders do not think Ukraine has a right to exist.
Palestine’s current leaders do not think Israel has a right to exist.
Israel’s current leaders do not think Palestine has the right to exist.
That’s the difference, simplified. Of course our support for Ukraine should be unequivocal, our dealings with the others conditional.
That said, abandoning Israel is out of the question and will not happen. It is in US interests to press for a democratic Israel and a two-state solution, for all sorts of hard power and soft power reasons.
For one thing, our (shaky) international credibility requires both opposing terrorism and standing by allies. We have to do a two-step here. We cannot be seen to abandon allies, even as we acknowledge their misbehavior. And our own.
@Andy: You continue to put words in my mouth. And you continue to be incredibly naive about the strong being able to dictate the rules of engagement to the weak. By your definition anytime a strong military engages with a weak one they should just concede because they are obligated to protect enemy civilians. That is the view of the strong. It is most certainly not the view of the weak.
Andy, you seem to want to say Israel is, for the most part, justified in all their actions and deserves our support because Hamas is acting stupidly and barbarically. Israel is not. They do not.
@Andy:
Israel has treated Gaza like a massive open-air internment camp, crippling the economy. The rise of a brutal, violent regime in those conditions is an easily foreseeable consequence.
I don’t hold Hamas or the Palestinians in Gaza blameless. I just lay a whole lot of blame at the feet of the Israelis (both the government, and the people who keep voting for the hard right governments that support these policies).
Blame is not a finite resource, and it is not all or nothing.
You say that Hamas controls Gaza, but Israel also controls Gaza. They control the vast majority of what goes in and out, and thus a lot of the conditions there. Like blame, control is not all or nothing.
The Israelis decided that their security could be maintained by keeping the people in the occupied territories contained and weak. That’s a choice they made.
Was it their least worst option? I don’t think so. It was, however, the easiest option at each step of the way, kicking the can down the road.
It’s obvious that this choice requires constant vigilance to keep violence against Israelis (violence against Palestinians is apparently not part of the equation) to an acceptable level, and that Israel dropped the ball. I don’t know if this will play out with Netanyahu managing to bolster his support by getting everyone to rally around the military, or whether he will be ousted for failing to keep Israelis safe (9/11 analogies fail because 9/11 had been beyond the imagination of most Americans, but this is exactly what Israelis have been imagining)
Israel has a whole bunch of radicalized, violent people contained within its borders. Their policies over the past 20+ years have ensured that this problem would not de-escalate. I’m not going to be shocked or horrified when containment fails or leaks.
Your North Korea hypothetical is unlikely. I would not be surprised if one of the recipients of our drone war* in the Middle East blew some shit up here, and it wouldn’t be entirely unjustified.
*: the drone war may well be our least worst option. It has probably prevented an attack or two that would have led to a major war and killing a lot more people. It’s a less lethal option. But, it has all the dangers of giving police tasers — it’s easy and gets overused.
@MarkedMan:
Hmmm. Therefore, can a case be made that Irish independence was successful partly because of its focus on military and government targets, and on civil disobedience — while the Irish reunification cause was fatally injured by terrorism targeting civilians?
I haven’t read nearly enough about 20th century Irish history, outside of major events.
@DK:
I think if it becomes a question of Israel’s existence we will and should step in. Yes, in the end, we’re with Israel. But I don’t mind at all letting them feel nervous. If Israelis want American support they need to change the way they vote. Bibi Netanyahu needs to bend the knee and remember who saves whose ass when shit gets real. Better yet Bibi could fuck off and let someone who’s not a corrupt POS be PM.
I ran out of edit time and I need to clarify this. What I meant for this sentence was that there’s nothing Hamas could do within the constraints of the situation to improve infant mortality. Certainly there’s fantastical options out there but that doesn’t address the decades of very angry unemployed people in Gaza. If Hamas leadership quit on mass they’d be replaced by some other group promising puppies and dead enemies. Because that doesn’t fix the underlying issues of a lot of people in prime age walking around with nothing but rage and religion in their head.
@DK: You may be right. Despite my recollection, I continue to be unable to find it.
But my googling did remind me of the King David hotel bombing, in which the Jewish underground bombed a hotel full of civilians. And there is of course, The USS Liberty in which the Israeli Navy sank a US ship and Maxine gunned the survivors in order to cover up treaty violations. These things arguably worked. When Israel was the underdog they employed terroism. Now that they are the big guys they want to pint terroism as unacceptable. Andy’s need to divide everything into good guys and bad guysjust doesn’t reflect reality.
@Matt: I would claim that sanctions are a tool of war — one employed by the powerful against the weak, with a disproportionate impact upon the civilian population.
Another example of war crimes being defined to reinforce the stronger powers.
As Woody sez: Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
As a tool of war, they absolutely have their uses — and the current sanctions against Russia are appropriate and effective at limiting their ability to rearm.
But I don’t think that broad sanctions should ever be seen as anything other than a tool of war.
@DK:
Perhaps. But the Sinn Fein strategy of keeping the IRA active but at arm’s length. eventually led to home rule, which is probably the best outcome the Catholics could have hoped for.
Reunification was never on the table then is only slightly on the table now because of Brexit
I think a lot of my placing blame on Israel comes from my belief that sanctions are a weapon of war. And the blockade, whatever its intentions, effectively becomes a sanctions regime.
Further, Israel has a duty of care for all the people in its borders — including the Palestinians. “Mowing the lawn” is a complete failure in that duty of care.
Haaretz: Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Israel-Gaza War
Israel’s newspaper of record isn’t concerned with manufactured unity and won’t be letting Netanyahu’s monstrous leadership off the hook.
Good.
Video is going to start showing up of the massacre at the music festival. Then Hamas will set to murdering hostages on video. God forbid an American hostage. And all our discussion will be for naught, it will just be bloody violence time and no one is going to feel much pity for the people of Gaza. Hamas has given the Israelis and the world license to ignore their suffering.
IIRC the Gerald Ford is in the Med, sent there to overawe the Serbs and Bosnians. I assume it’s steaming toward Lebanon.
@Michael Reynolds: In terms of world opinion this is a repeat of the Olympics massacre
@Matt:
And even if they weren’t replaced by someone worse, the blockade and degradation would continue. If Hamas leadership quit and walked directly and peacefully to Israeli execution squads, the blockade and degradation would not end. If every single person in Gaza voted to disarm and never harm anyone ever again, the blockade and degradation would continue.
There is nothing the Palestinians can do that the Israeli’s would accept as peace short of every one of them dying.
Assumed facts not in evidence.
I worry that Hezbollah won’t be able to resist getting into this. They’ll look like pussies while Hamas struts. I wonder how far Iran wants to push things.
So the beheading videos are starting to come out. Hamas is basically ISIS now.
@Matt:
Sure, sanctions can have effects, but the effects are relatively minor. Russia has ways to get around most of them. And please note what I’m saying – I’m not necessarily against sanctions, but they “don’t work” in terms of the effects their proponents proclaim.
Yeah I do. And despite the blockade, Hamas still got a lot of weapons – what was that you were just saying about sanctions being effective?
And the blockade is in place to try to prevent Hamas from arming and doing what they just did. And they failed.
And it’s hard to rebuild hospitals when your authoritarian government (Hamas) doesn’t care about rebuilding hospitals and instead wants Isreal to blow them for propaganda effect. Maybe if Hamas spent more time and money building hospitals instead of building bunkers underneath them, the medical care in Gaza would be better. Generally, it’s hard to provide social services, jobs, etc., when your government only really cares about murdering a bunch of civilians because they are Jewish.
@Gustopher:
I can’t dispute the notion that sanctions are a weapon. But it’s not clear to me what Israel should have done instead, considering what Hamas is and what its goals are, which can no longer be denied. And does that mean you oppose all sanctions?
@DK:
I agree with that. It’s also important to have the US there to try to restrain Israel if necessary.
@MarkedMan:
Ok, what’s your view then? Because in your responses so far, what I see is a lot of equivalence. You seem unable to say anything bad about what Hamas has done and is doing without a lot of throat-clearing about how Israel is also bad. If I’m not reading that right, then I’m happy to be corrected.
Well, unfortunately for your point, that is how international law works. It doesn’t provide a lesser standard for “weak” combatants – which is entirely subjective. Weak how? By what standard? Where does one draw the line between weak and strong?
Furthermore, I think the idea that “the weak” should be afforded more leniency to kill civilians or put them at deliberate risk of being killed as a way to even the odds against a stronger opponent is a morally bankrupt framework.
I’m objecting to what I see as attempts to paint a moral “bothsides” equivalence between Hamas and Israel. I am not saying that Israel is justified in all its actions past, present, or future, but I do think it deserves support – moral support if nothing else – for what’s happened over the last two days.
@Andy:
“ I’m not justifying Hamas”
“ I can’t imagine a victorious Palestinian people would follow the same route. Instead the brutality and savagery would make them pariahs.”
“ I don’t consider the atrocities committed by Hamas to be justified. Hamas is led by the extremists and fanatics that have taken over the Palestinian cause via violence including assassination against their own, ensuring that there can never be peace”
But go ahead, argue with what I am saying in your head and not with what I am actually saying.
@MarkedMan:
Fair enough. My apologies then.
@Andy:
Sure, and international courts have condemned Israeli’s treatment of the Palestinians for decades and that has achieved exactly nothing. What has been the repercussions for Israel violating international law? Tut tutting from their allies? Did international condemnation raise the dead after Israel surrounded Sabra and Shahil and sent in the butchers to slaughter hundreds, thousands? In the real world international law means nothing unless both parties abide by it. Israel ignores it, but you seem to wave that away.
Look, I get that for whatever reason you need to paint this as good guys against bad guys. But as I’ve said over and over I see it as bad guys against bad guys. There is no “right” side and we should walk away.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yet another GOP comment for which the only appropriate response is a belly-laugh.
@Andy:
No. I also don’t oppose all wars.
Made peace decades ago, before Hamas was in charge? Not doused gasoline on all prospects of a two state solution?
I’m not going to solve Mideast peace in a blog comment. Let alone go back in time and solve it.
I am however willing to say that Israel has create a status quo where a lot of Palestinians are suffering, and where violence will spill over into the Jewish areas on a regular basis, even when the status quo is functioning. It’s also unstable and will break in a massive eruption of violence sooner or later (this is not that).
What they have been doing is not going to work, unless they think this is working. And even then… it’s just a matter of time before it stops.
Israel has a population of about 9M people that they claim as their own, plus about 4.5M Palestinians in the occupied territories.
They’re going to have to go into the awkward space known as nation building, which never works as well as anyone would like.
Or cut them free and build up their borders and take the hits until they can get a lasting peace. (Probably need a generation)
Or just continue to oppress a third of their population and hope something magically changes for the better. Sometimes that happens.
But, ultimately, Israel is responsible for conditions in the occupied territories, the same way we are responsible for prison conditions, or the state of Mississippi or the rest of poor rural America.
I recommend a massive investment program, both in the occupied territories and rural America. Prosperity leads to fat lazy people who have something to lose.
It will be hard. It will often fail, or succeed less than hoped for. Maybe even backfire. Might require forcibly removing leadership that is an obstacle. But that has to be the direction if Israel is ever going to be safe.
Hell, maybe they can make “separate but equal” work. The one nice thing about starting near the bottom is there are a lot of less worse directions.
It’s not going to be “over” in the lifetimes of anyone reading this blog. It took the Irish Catholics 400 years more or less to kick the Protestant Brits out. The Moros have been fighting for autonomy from rule by Manila almost since Magellan made landfall in Cebu. And then there are those annoying Ukrainians who refuse to admit they really are Russians …
@MarkedMan:
I’m not painting Israel as the good guys. I’m merely asserting – with pretty strong evidence – that they are less bad guys than groups like Hamas. And they are probably the least bad actors in the region. That you want to pick through the historical record in search of the equivalence you desperately seek to yell bothsides and walk away ignores, in my view, facts and certain truths.
I’m no friend of Israel, but when it comes to a war between Israel and Hamas, I’m on Israel’s side. You act like they are the same and therefore, we should treat them equally and do nothing. That’s not only immoral, it’s stupid.
America has many allies and governments of strategic interest today and throughout history that are far more imperfect than Israel, and we would assist them if they were attacked because it’s in America’s interest to do so. It’s like saying we should stand by and do nothing about ISIS because the countries ISIS is attacking are dictatorships with bad human rights records.
@Andy: Well, if you are debating how much we should assist Israel because of their strategic value to us, that’s a completely different question. On moral grounds though? Why should we weigh which regime is more barbaric and choose one to support? Sure, Hamas is more openly repulsive than Israel. I’ll give you that. So?