Speedkill

Since I’m such a slacker and haven’t posted at all this week, my fairly pedestrian thoughts on Norman Finkelstein’s lecture last night.

There were around 120 people in attendance, mostly students (obviously). Finkelstein spoke for about an hour and a half and then took questions for another forty five minutes. His talk was essentially a basic history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, nothing that I hadn’t heard before. It’s hard to do that in an hour and a half and Finkelstein spent most of his time talking about pre-1967 events. In what I’ve read of his work (a book and various interviews), he comes off as somewhat arrogant and combative. So it was surprising to me when he came off as pretty mild and conciliatory during his lecture. Aside from microphone trouble and some odd over-explanation (am I overestimating the student body when I say that he didn’t need to define caveat and quid pro quo?), he did quite well.

The question and answer period was pretty boring. He asked for “dissenters” to come up first, obviously used to people objecting strenuously to his statements. We only got one towards the end, though it was hard to tell if he was annoyed at what Finkelstein had said or was having trouble processing information that was so contrary to what he had heard before. His question led to the most interesting (to me) point of the night. He took issue with the practicality of refugees returning to Israel, the so-called “right of return” issue. Which is a genuine problem and Finkelstein’s response was that it’s unjust to refuse them such a right and that if Israel is going to do so, they need to make them an offer. An obvious position in retrospect, but it struck me because that’s an issue that I often dismiss out of hand because there’s simply no chance of Israel accepting a right of return.

So not the most interesting night, but a fairly unique one for this campus. He was brought here by a couple of students from Gaza, which should answer the question of why we would get someone like Finkelstein.

Andy McCarthy, over at the Corner:

One can always say a robust response to radical Islam’s atrocities helps Hamas, al Qaeda, etc., to recruit. But recruiting is aided at least as much by successful terrorist attacks to which the response is too meek. The people sitting on the fence — the ones who are sympathetic to jihadi aims but ambivalent about jihadi methods — are attracted most of all by the prospect of being with a winner. Sure, a robust response that communicates the resolve to keep fighting until the jihadists are crushed may bring in a lot of new recruits; but it also scares off a lot of prospective recruits while killing off the experienced ranks of a terrorist organization — making the organization, on the whole, a less dangerous killing machine. That’s why it remains the right thing to do.

Uh, no. If you’re weighing an incorrect political calculation against preserving your identity, the latter will win. The latter is how these strikes are viewed by Palestinians. I don’t understand why these people believe Israel can bomb the Palestinians into submission. I guess they feel they’re striking back against evil and feel the need to provide some sort of rational basis for it, but it’s not exactly convincing.

This post by Ezra Klein is about as good a statement about the Israel/Palestine issue and this current flare up as I’ve seen.

There’s a reason this conflict brings out so much vitriol on both sides. One side identifies with a legitimately threatened nation. The other side identifies with a legitimately oppressed people. It’s not really that neatly divided, but you almost always seen one of two response to flare ups:

• Palestinian terrorist group x is killing/attacking Israelis and they must respond with enough force to stop it
• Yes, Palestinian terrorist group x is killing/attacking Israelis, but the response is unjustly wreaking havoc on Palestinian society and making the problem worse.

There seems to be little variation from those two views. That’s not to criticize anyone, given that my last post fits into the second view. It’s hard to determine which view is actually “correct.” The history of this conflict is so tied up in arcane minutia of who did what first, who broke what agreement, was there a definite article in agreement x, etc. Most of it is arguable, even if I’ve made up my mind on a lot of it, and both sides have cause for moral indignation.

I don’t mean to equivocate. What Steve T terms “selective empathy” is a phenomenon that partisans on both sides suffer from, but it is more common on the Right. Regardless, we’re still talking past each other.

It comes down to this for me. Israel is attempting to control (or occupy) a region that is, ethnically and religiously, completely different. Suicide terrorism is the standard response to this situation and it works. Increasing control or increasing the harshness of the occupation does not make people give up. That’s not how human nature works. The fact remains that Palestinian terrorism is largely a response to Israel, which means Israel is holding the cards. They can’t end this by doubling down and Palestinians can’t simply roll over. We can talk about the moral abomination of suicide bombings all we want, but it doesn’t change the fundamental shape of the conflict.

Sure it will. If there were ever a time for this Internet tradition:

1. Bomb the fuck out of Gaza.
2. ???
3. Peace!

It seems pretty clear: Israel is bombing Gaza with no realistic chance of achieving any reasonable objective and is killing hundreds of Palestinians in the process. Yes, Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel. Eventually, isn’t one side going to figure out that this isn’t working? I suppose it’s naive of me to think so.

Mickey Mouse is a jihadist. Nothing is sacred.

(via Ezra Klein)

I haven’t said anything about this, so with a ceasefire looming, I thought I should.

Mike has an interesting post advocating the ouster of Olmert. In it, he cites an article in Ha’aretz:

There is no mistake Ehud Olmert did not make this past month. He went to war hastily, without properly gauging the outcome. He blindly followed the military without asking the necessary questions. He mistakenly gambled on air operations, was strangely late with the ground operation, and failed to implement the army’s original plan, much more daring and sophisticated than that which was implemented. And after arrogantly and hastily bursting into war, Olmert managed it hesitantly, unfocused and limp. He neglected the home front and abandoned the residents of the north. He also failed shamefully on the diplomatic front.

This sounds to me to be about right. Air operations like Israel launched in Lebanon are simply not going to do much to a group like Hezbollah, which has enough support from the population to hide among it quite easily. In doing so, Israel has wrecked southern Lebanon and caused the deaths of many innocent people (873 total Lebanese, I haven’t seen the figure for civilian casualties).

I don’t fault Israel for their actions in a broad sense. Degrading Hezbollah’s ability to fire rockets at northern Israel and retrieving their captured soldiers is a worthwhile goal, but how they’ve gone about it here is a travesty. Nearly a thousand deaths altogether, for what? A slightly degraded Hezbollah? I’m certainly no expert, but how exactly do you defeat a guerilla army from the air?

Hezbollah has become an interesting group. Without an occupation to provide the justification for suicide bombings, they’ve turned into a fairly advanced guerilla army. Guerilla armies are notoriously hard to defeat, but it can be done. In contrast, the other groups attacking Israel use suicide attacks as their primary weapon, which have a solid record of success. I don’t believe Israel can defeat those groups militarily, but they may be able to defeat Hezbollah in such a way. Robert Pape, whose Dying to Win is a fantastic book you should all read, disagrees. I think Pape neglects the fact that Hezbollah has moved beyond suicide bombing in the absence of an occupation, which is one of Pape’s preconditions for a suicide bombing campaign. The lesson we should draw from Pape’s work is that Israel should avoid occupying Lebanon again.

I don’t pretend to have a solution, but I can’t avoid the conclusion that this war was counterproductive and tragic. A ceasefire is the best option at the moment. And I have to agree with Mike, Olmert must go.

That’s my uninformed opinion, at least.

Matt Yglesias makes an excellent point against Dershowitz’s application of his “continuum.” Again, Dershowitz is right to note that there is some moral ambiguity in what are civilian deaths, but calling anyone who doesn’t leave an area which Israel wants to bomb complicit is absolutely wrong.

As Matt points out, Dershowitz’s claim essentially erases the distinction between civlians and combatants. If you don’t think Israel should be doing what it’s doing and don’t feel you should have to leave, you’ve become complicit. This makes Iraqi civilians complicit as well, which is absurd considering almost no one in that country supported Saddam.

This is the kind of thing Digby was getting at when he compared (via 4&20) Ward Churchill and Dershowitz (which I assume made some heads explode on the Right). However, I have to say that the comparison is somewhat strained. Dershowitz’s position has some logic to it. The people know what’s coming, they can leave (er, well, sort of), etc. Churchill is saying people going about their daily lives nowhere near any fighting are “guilty.” But in the end, they’re both trying to justify unjustifiable civilian deaths.

You can find pictures of Palestinian children doing worse things, but that doesn’t make these any less disturbing.

Dershowitz has an interesting op-ed in the LA Times today.

For the most part, Dershowitz is correct. He argues that who is and isn’t a civilian in a lot of conflicts is not that clear:

There is a vast difference — both moral and legal — between a 2-year-old who is killed by an enemy rocket and a 30-year-old civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets. Both are technically civilians, but the former is far more innocent than the latter. There is also a difference between a civilian who merely favors or even votes for a terrorist group and one who provides financial or other material support for terrorism.

Finally, there is a difference between civilians who are held hostage against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human shields, and civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm’s way in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire.

These differences and others are conflated within the increasingly meaningless word “civilian” — a word that carried great significance when uniformed armies fought other uniformed armies on battlefields far from civilian population centers. Today this same word equates the truly innocent with guilty accessories to terrorism.

It’s hard to disagree with that. However, Dershowitz goes off the rails later:

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims.

In a word: no. Being too scared or too hard headed to leave is not being complicit. It’s being human. More than just active supporters and people who are unable to leave stay behind.

I find Dershowitz to be mostly right on this issue, but he’s searching for something that isn’t there. He, like most partisans of either side, wants to see this confict without ambiguity. Israel has killed a lot of innocent people. Dershowitz will acknowledge this, but he still wants a way out of the recognition of the moral imperfection that comes with such an acknowledgement.

(via Political Animal)

So, yeah. Not good.

Time says they’re not going to focus on Israel at first:

Dealing with Israel—in either sense of that term—is not a priority for Hamas right now, nor will it be for some time to come. Instead, the radical Islamist group that won a landslide victory in Wednesday’s Palestinian Legislative Council election, taking 76 seats to the 43 of the ruling Fatah party in the 132-seat parliament, will focus on its stated priority of “cleaning the Palestinian house.” What this means, concretely, is ridding the Palestinian Authority of rampant corruption, and establishing law and order on the chaotic streets of the West Bank and Gaza. Ironically, that means that a Hamas government, despite its opposition to previous peace efforts by the U.S. and Israel, may nonetheless end up carrying out precisely the reforms in the PA long demanded by the the U.S. and Israel—ensuring accountability and transparency in government, and reining in the militias.

I don’t really see how this was going to be avoided in the long run. Fatah was pretty pathetic, though not as hostile to Israel as Hamas. Eventually they were going to have to go and Hamas was positioned to replace them. Given that Hamas is a terrorist group, what do we do? Marc Lynch says we can’t turn our backs now. Mike says we can’t negotiate with terrorists.

I don’t see how we can’t support democracy here. We’ll figure out soon enough if Hamas will take peace seriously in their new leadership position. As much as we dislike it, I don’t see how we can’t accept them for now. There’s no chance for peace without it.

UPDATE: This is about right:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — The Bush administration, reacting uneasily to Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian legislative elections, called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today to stay in office to steer a moderate course and warned Hamas that the West will not deal with it unless it disarms its militias, renounces terrorism and recognizes Israel.

But in a news conference, President Bush also struck a conciliatory note, saying that it was clear that Hamas’s performance was a triumph of democracy, among Palestinians in particular and Arabs in general, and a rebuke to “the old guard there.” It was striking that his tone was less one of confrontation than of inviting Hamas to change its ways while the world watches.