By Pascal-Emanuel Gobry, FORBES
A great many of us pride ourselves on the subtlety of our minds, and on recognizing the complexities, both moral and practical, of the world, and this is a very good impulse.
But when this impulse is raised to the level of dogma, it risks obscuring more than it clarifies. There are some occasions–yes, few, but some–when the moral calculus is exceedingly simple.
I used to have a great personal interest in the policy detail of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I could lecture at length on the subtleties of Camp David, Taba, the Road Map; on the different kinds of settlements; on the security barrier, its precise shape and contours; on the various UN resolutions; on the history of Fatah and Hamas. By now, like Lord Palmerston and the Schleswig-Holstein Question, I have forgotten most of the details.
What I have not forgotten is the following: the State of Israel is a democracy with the rule of law and respect for human rights (yes, imperfect, unlike the United States and Europe, which, as we all know, are perfect); demonic hatred of Jews is a real and persistent fact of history and when left unchecked it always leads to atrocities; this demonic hatred is absolutely clearly distilled into the enemies of Israel; and most, most importantly this: if tomorrow Hamas, Hizbullah and other enemies of Israel dropped their weapons, peace would break out; if tomorrow Israel dropped its weapons, a genocide would break out.
There is, there can be, no moral equivalency. Sometimes there really are Good Guys and Bad Guys.
That the Palestinians are weak and poor while Israel is comparatively strong and rich changes nothing. That Israel is often unwise and, yes, occasionally criminal, changes nothing.
To take a purposefully provocative analogy: yes, during World War II, the Allies (even excepting the Soviet Union) committed war crimes. The strategic bombing of Germany and the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagazaki were war crimes. Elizabeth Anscombe was right to denounce Truman. It nonetheless remains true that if you lived through World War II and pretexted of Allied crimes to portray the sides as morally equivalent, or to refuse to take sides, you were guilty of moral cretinism and cowardice.
This is a conflict where there really are Good Guys and Bad Guys and to pretend otherwise is indefensible. The chief culprit of the plight of the Palestinians is not Israel but the terrorists and fanatics who use them as tools of their ravenous bloodlust.
Golda Meir was right then, and is right now. The conflict will end when the enemies of Israel start loving their children more than they hate Israel.
Yes, it really is that simple.
mar55 Said:
I have the same mother’s heart, it is terrible. But, then I remember the family history my cousin researched in Poland. There were small children in my Grandfather’s family who died terrible death and none came to save them.
@ mar55:
I have heard they have good technology and could pass information along but they have’t, probably because it might compromise their technology and they don’t want competitors.
@ yamit82:
yammit, what I meant was that if they can see the tunnels from space. would it be possible to destroy them from the air.
I remember when the Israeli Air Force destroyed with pinpoint accuracy all the Iraqi Air Force. That was before attacking Iraq and destroying their nuclear facilities.
@ mar55:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yquS2XDsfVY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Ph3bQyO80
@ bernard ross:
@ mar55:
Took this from a christian site so excuse NT references but it is essentially correct.
A Moral Problem—the slaughter of the Canaanites (Josh 6, 8, 10).
Israel was commanded by God to completely exterminate the Canaanite inhabitants of the land including men, women, and children. This has been called a primitive and barbaric act of murder perpetrated on innocent lives.
Several factors must be kept in mind in viewing this situation. (1) There is a difference between murder and justifiable killing. Murder involves intentional and malicious hatred which leads to life-taking. On the other hand, the Bible speaks of permissible life-taking in capital punishment (Gen. 9:), in self defense (Exod. 22:2), and in a justifiable war (Gen. 14). (2) The Canaanites were by no means innocent. They were a people cursed of God from their very beginning (Gen. 9:25). They were a vile people who practiced the basest forms of immorality. God described their sin vividly in these words, “I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Lev. 18:25). (3) Further, the innocent people of the land were not slaughtered. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah clearly demonstrates that God would save a whole city for ten righteous people (Gen. 18:22f.). In that incident, when God could not find ten righteous people, He took the four or five righteous ones out of the place so as not to destroy them with the wicked (Gen. 19:15). On another occasion God saved some thirty-two thousand people who were morally pure (Num. 31:35). Finally, the battle confronting Israel was not simply a religious war; it was a theocratic war. Israel was directly ruled by God and the extermination was God’s direct command (cf. Exod. 23:27-30; Deut. 7:3-6; Josh. 8:24-26). No other nation either before or after Israel has been a theocracy. Thus, those commands were unique. Israel as a theocracy was an instrument of judgment in the hands of God. (Norman L. Geisler, A Popular Survey of the Old Testament, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1977, pp. 99-100.)
mar55 Said:
they are CURRENT terrorists, their very existence poses an existential danger to Jewish children. They are programmed robots, no longer human.
yamit82 Said:
not only insane but indicative of the cowed Jew who accepts double standards.
yamit82 Said:
They had it right when they let the phalange into sabra and chatilla. They could have facilitated the set up of christian state in south lebanon which would have improved israels security. a state which would have allowed and invited the IDF to maintain bases.
bernard ross Said:
Golda Meir, fearful of the American reaction and procrastinating in the face of a Jewish holiday, did not preempt in 1973 when the Egyptian military buildup was unmistakable, though she could have deluded herself about its purpose. Compounding a grave error with a grave crime, Golda sent Jewish reservists to the slaughter, which resulted in 10,000 casualties—instead of employing nuclear weapons. Golda’s fear of world opinion greatly exceeded her concern with Jewish lives. That ugly character famously announced that she could forgive the Arabs for killing Jews, but not for making the Jews to kill Arabs. (What an inane statement) Likewise, her accomplice Moshe Dayan remarked during the early stages of the Yom Kippur war, “We’re witnessing the Third Temple’s destruction,” and reportedly was on the way to offer capitulation instead of nuking the Arabs.
The perversion gets worse. During the Lebanon war, the leftists demanded that Israel pull out, thus wasting over 600 Jewish lives lost to combat the terror on our northern border. The right-wing Likud demanded that the IDF stay put in Beirut, opening itself to still more casualties. No mainstream politician had the guts to do what has to be done to secure Norththern Israel: depopulate South Lebanon.
mar55 Said:
Glad to see you feel better.
The short answer is that while the IDF is technically competent they are not that competent. From experience I will state for the record that we have been lucky, covers a lot of our screw-ups. Almost all of Gaza in underground with interconnecting tunnels.
Best weapon is Napalm. The ones not incinerated will be scared above ground. To find them you first need to get into some and follow their paths but I wouldn’t want to fight in them.
@ yamit82:
@ bernard ross:
I always thought Children to be precious. Children are the future. I love children with their innocence and lack of self consciousness. Openness and unconditional love. I dread when I see children being killed.
One day I saw the video of the kids in Gaza being trained. One of them was a girl no more than four with a knife cutting a doll’s head. The indoctrination of children who are so vulnerable and impressionable at a very early age convinced me.
THESE CHILDREN ARE FUTURE TERRORISTS. They are been trained to kill my children and grandchildren. I changed my mind. If you are going to make war. Be sure to destroy the enemy completely and decisively. Finish the job.
On another thread. If from satellite pictures it is obvious the tunnels connecting Gaza to Egypt have not been destroyed. I’m sure the Israeli government must have the same information about the tunnels connecting Gaza into Israel. Why these tunnels have not been destroyed?
Does anyone have an answer?
Why would any Jew want to make peace with these people? I would prefer to see all of them dying, sick, in poverty, in ruins, in chaos…….
I keep dreaming of the day when a bunch of rioting stone throwers are mowed down by machine guns. That’s my vision for the enemy.
M Devolin Said:
Demonstrating once more the maxim that the best defense is a strong offense. Dirty tricks are another good tactic to use on the dishonest.
whatever they are called the war was shortened and our side lost less lives as a result. I have no shame in stating that I prefer millions of enemy lives to be lost rather than one of my children.
cute, but more indicative of jewish confusion than reality. Golda was wrong: the conflict will end when the enemies of Israel, and the Jews, are made to pay a price that renders them unable to continue their effort. Killing a lot of the enemy, destroying their habitats and making them suffer will aid in that goal.
Had Golda suffered less confusion she would have ordered a pre emptive strike on egypt in 73. When someone teaches his children to kill your children there should be no Jewish confusion. instead of engaging in peace talks those that libel Jews and teach their children to kill Jews should live in perpetual fear of the next attack. Why would anyone want to make peace with them as opposed to eradicating them? First, let them prove beyond a doubt that they do not want to kill me or my children. Talking and negotiating diffuses the energy that should be applied to their destruction: no Jew should be ashamed of killing those who want to kill their children.
Seeking peace with those clearly bent on your destruction is absurd and self destructive. it’s the wrong focus.
M Devolin Said:
To discredit what has been said about being right etc by other commenter. Being right don’t help much when you walk around with a sign on your ass that says kick me here.
Jew believes the law and it’s institutions will protect them.
They are wrong today as they have always been wrong. The best they can hope for is Institutional passivity and recently eve Institutions that should be their safe haven have been failing and Jews are left naked in the sun with a choice of fighting or losing. So far the wimps are losing and it could get a lot worse.
Previous generations of Jews learned how to fight and defend themselves until they became to rich to successful and forgot how to fight. They will pay for that failing.
“More troubling is that this statement reveals that the professors naively believed that pro-Palestinian activists can institute an ideological assault against Israel without anyone with opposing views answering back these slanders with counter-arguments and opposing views.”
But this is exactly what is happening: Jewish students cannot “oppose” these neo-Nazis on campus without exposing themselves to harassment, sometimes physical harassment. JDL Canada disrupted a BDS meeting at U of T a few days ago (I wasn’t there). Apparently these BDS robots were nonplussed by the presence of the JDL. Apparently the tactics used by the BDSers can be turned against them with great results. And just for the record, for anyone who has never faced off with these savages, they do a lot of shouting and camera work, but all in all, they’re a bunch of gutless wonders. I just read yesterday that a university in the states, I think, put one of these “for Palestine” groups on probation for causing disturbances on their campus.
How refreshing to finally see it in print!