Tag: Gaza

Can We Agree on a Few Basics?

W.J. Astore

Sides in War Are Not “Teams”

1. Killing civilians and especially children is wrong.

2. Cutting off water, food, electricity, and fuel to millions of vulnerable people is wrong.

3. Forced mass evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people in preparation for a destructive invasion is wrong.

4. Dropping thousands of bombs and killing thousands of innocents is wrong. So is launching hundreds of unguided rockets and killing scores of innocents. 

5. Holding hostages and threatening to slay them is wrong.

Whether Hamas or Israel are doing these things, they are wrong.  Putting an end to such wrongs through a ceasefire is right.  Certainly, it’s less wrong.

In going to Israel and embracing Netanyahu, President Biden is obviously choosing one side, that of Israel, and empowering it to do whatever it wants in Gaza. Interestingly, Biden claimed that yesterday’s destruction of a hospital in Gaza was done in his words by the “other team,” meaning Hamas.

The terminology here is striking. Israel and Hamas are not sports “teams” in which we choose to root for one side against the other. Israelis and Palestinians are people equally deserving of human dignity and human rights.

I’ve written about the invasion (so to speak) of war terms into sports and vice-versa. Biden’s dismissal of Hamas as the “other team” that’s allegedly responsible for the hospital’s destruction and the deaths of hundreds of innocents trivializes a deep human tragedy.

Are we ever going to move beyond this “team” mentality where we root for the total victory of one “team” over another?

What, Exactly, Is “Repugnant” About Efforts to Stop Mass Killing?

W.J. Astore

The Biden Administration Embraces War and Israel

Remarkably, the press secretary of the Biden administration stated that calls for deescalation of conflict in Gaza, calls for restraint, calls for a ceasefire, are “disgraceful” and “repugnant.” There are not two sides to the conflict, the press secretary said. There’s only the Israeli side of righteousness. And Israel must be given a blank check, as well as plenty of U.S. weaponry, to strike back. And so Israel has, dropping 6000 bombs in six days. Obviously, Israel had a prepared list of targets; you don’t drop one thousand bombs a day on Gaza in “precision” strikes without being long prepared to do so.

Sure looks “precise” to me. Jabalia, Gaza Strip, 10/11/23 (Hatem Moussa/AP) 

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden said he had seen photos of Hamas attackers beheading Israeli babies. No such photos exist. Indeed, the initial claim of Hamas beheading babies was false, a frontline rumor that was debunked by the reporter who put it out there.

By recklessly repeating an unsubstantiated battlefield rumor of heinous atrocities and inventing “photos” to support it, President Biden demonstrated his complete lack of fitness to serve as president.

Think about it. In what world is it acceptable for America’s president to claim he’d seen actual photos of beheadings of babies when no such photos exist? How could the president be so recklessly confused, assuming it was simply confusion?

As far as I know, the only candidate for the presidency in 2024 who’s acquitted himself with dignity is Cornel West. West actually accepts that Palestinian babies and children are just as precious and worthy of life as their Israeli counterparts. Every other “name” candidate, e.g. Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well as all the Republicans, are at pains to support Israel without reservation or qualification.

Indeed, far more debate is allowed in Israel about the actions of the government there than is allowed in the U.S. mainstream media and in Congress. Congress is far more obedient to Netanyahu than the Knesset. Perhaps he should be nominated as the new House Speaker? He’d win in a landslide.

Of course, I deplore the Hamas attacks and the deaths of innocent Israelis, just as I deplore the deaths of innocent Palestinians caught in the reprisal bombings. It’s horrible when innocent people die. Isn’t this how any normal and sane human being would feel? Shouldn’t we all unite in calling for a ceasefire, an end to the killing, and some kind of way forward that doesn’t end in mass death and the total destruction of Gaza?

What is so “repugnant” about that?

Dissent and Democracies

us constitution
W.J. Astore

Dissent is fundamental to democracy.  Or so we claim.  Until such dissent makes us angry or uncomfortable.  Then we yell at the dissenter to shut up; better yet, we denounce him or her as a traitor to … well, whatever fits.

But responsible criticism of the actions of one’s government is not disloyalty; rather, it’s often a form of higher loyalty, a loyalty to the ideal of freedom of speech as well as the ideal of organized political action.  The alternative is “My government, right or wrong.”  And who wants that, except for government leaders and their lackeys?

The USA and Israel claim to be democracies.  Yet in difficult times, dissent is often suppressed, and dissenters painted as disloyal.  Recall the aftermath of 9/11 in the USA, when those who questioned the rush to war against Iraq were painted as naive peaceniks (at best) or as dupes of Saddam Hussein or even (at worst) as supporters of Al Qaeda.  That was the mentality of Bush and Company, a Manichean “you’re either for us or against us.”  And look where that got us.

Sorry, I’m not “for” a government and its leaders.  I’m “for” the US Constitution and our essential rights and liberties, including the right to dissent from my government when I believe it is wrong.

Today, the debate on Israel and Gaza is similarly heated.  Those who risk expressing sympathy for the Palestinians often get painted as supporters of Hamas and terrorism.  Jon Stewart showcased this mentality on The Daily Show here.  Similarly, David Harris-Gershon wrote a telling article with the meaningful title, “Empathizing with Gaza does NOT make me anti-Semitic, nor pro-Hamas or anti-Israel.  It makes me human.”

It almost goes without saying that Stewart and Harris-Gershon are Jewish. Indeed, Harris-Gershon’s wife was seriously injured by a terrorist bomb in Israel, an ordeal he wrote about in his book, “What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?  A Memoir of Jerusalem.”  That they have to fight against the charge of being “self-hating Jews” or enemy sympathizers says much about the suppression of dissent by authoritarian elements in Israel as well as the USA.

Look: The situation in Gaza is highly inflammatory.  As an organization, Hamas is quite obviously dedicated to launching rockets against innocents and building tunnels to launch terrorist attacks.  Few people can blame Israel for wanting to stop the rocket attacks and destroy the tunnels.  But honest people in good faith can definitely disagree with how the Israeli government is going about it.

Let me close with a comment from a Jewish friend.  He wrote to me with grave concern about Israel’s actions in Gaza.  What he said resonated with me.  He said that the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza were betraying a fundamental core value of Jewish identity.

That value?  Compassion.

You may agree or disagree with him.  But is it too much to ask that we take his concern seriously, without denouncing him as naive or misguided or calling him a self-hating Jew or even a traitor?

Update (8/4/14): Call it “dissent” or call it “gumption” (the word Andrew Bacevich uses below): We need it when the experts are marching in lockstep in the pursuit of bad policies, as they did with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in August 1964 that enabled the disastrous escalation of the Vietnam War.  But let Bacevich tell it:

“It takes gumption to question truths that everyone “knows” to be true. In the summer of 1964, gumption was in short supply. As a direct consequence, 58,000 Americans died, along with a vastly larger number of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians.

“After 9/11, similar mistakes — deference to the official line and to the conventional wisdom (“terrorism” standing in for communism) — recurred, this time with even less justification. The misbegotten Iraq war was one result. Yet even today, events in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere elicit an urge to ‘do something,’ accompanied by the conviction that unless troops are moving or bombs dropping the United States is somehow evading its assigned responsibilities. The question must be asked: Are Americans incapable of learning?”

We’re especially incapable of learning when those few who dare to question the wrongheaded policies of our government are painted as malcontents or traitors.

Check out Bacevich’s article here.

David versus Goliath in the Middle East

david and goliath_aaron wolpert

W.J. Astore

When I was a kid, I was a big admirer of Israel.  I saw Israel as being surrounded by implacable enemies bent on its destruction.  Israel was the plucky underdog, David against Goliath, with Goliath being Arab countries like Egypt and Syria, having militaries trained and equipped by the Soviet Union, sworn enemy of the U.S. during the Cold War (or so my ten-year-old mind saw it).  I recall keeping a scrapbook of articles on the Yom Kippur War of 1973.  I cheered the Israeli “blitzkrieg” (What an odd term for a daring Jewish armored attack!) that crossed the Suez Canal and isolated the Egyptian Third Army, as well as the Israeli riposte on the Golan Heights against Syria.

That was 1973.  Forty-one years later, Israel is engaged in yet another assault on Gaza and the Palestinians.  Compared to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the Palestinian militants are undergunned and hopelessly outclassed.  Organizations like Hamas rely on the traditional tactics of terrorists (or freedom-fighters, choose your loaded word): hit-and-run raids, random attacks (unguided rockets), war in the shadows (or in the tunnels).  Who is David and who is Goliath now?

What hasn’t changed, of course, is the mainstream media in the U.S., which cheers the Israelis while condemning Hamas and any other Palestinians who choose resistance instead of compliance.  Watching a snippet of CNN, I witnessed Wolf Blitzer, who poses as a disinterested journalist, demanding from his Palestinian interviewee an immediate stoppage in rocket attacks.  Blitzer had nothing critical to say of Israeli air raids or the disproportionate casualties suffered by the Palestinians in this latest skirmish in a very long war.

What can be done?  As one of my historian friends put it, the Middle East has “a massive legacy of entropy.”  All I know is that more bloodshed, and more innocents killed, like those four young boys playing soccer on the beach, only adds to that entropy — and the legacy of hatred.

Perhaps one thing I’ve learned in four decades is that negotiations in good faith can’t occur when either side sees itself as a heroic David fighting against a glowering Goliath.  Until Israelis and Palestinians see each other as fellow human beings, as equals rather than as monsters, wars will continue, innocents will suffer, and hopes will be left in the dust, slayed like so many Goliaths by self-anointed Davids.