The Mess in Israel
Jan. 7th, 2009 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI have some thoughts about Gaza, and the mess going on there for the past several years. Lots of people are using words like terrorism to describe the rocket attacks on Israel. Many of the people who so characterise them also say Israel is justified in “disproportionate response; which is in contravention of the laws of war, common sense, human decency and the biblical principal of equal justice (eye for an eye, and all that).
What lost in all this is the merits of the situation. Israel has been blockading Gaza. Blockade is an act of war. That’s why the Cuban Missile Crisis was as serious as it was. It wasn’t that Cuba was being used as a staging ground for threats against the US, but that by blockading Cuba we were committing an act of “hot” war, and Cuba’s ally, the Soviet Union, could have used that as casus belli for a declaration of war against us.
Israel, herself, believes blockade is a cause for just war:
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Straits of Tiran on May 21st and 22nd to all shipping from and to Eilat; the area was open to Israeli ships under UN supervision since 1957, and Israel repeatedly stated that such a blockade will be considered as casus belli (justification for acts of war).
Israel included the right to make an actual attack on Egypt, in retaliation for the blockading of Eilat. In the early morning of June 5th 1967, the war broke out. Israel made a preemptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force.
Eilat isn’t all of Israel. There were open ports. The residents there could leave. they were free to travel outside of Israel. Egypt wasn’t blocking access to food, medicine, and freedom. Nonetheless Israel was of the opinion it was grounds for a Just War (the principle of jus ad bellum) it got international support for the war.
Which brings us to the present allegation of the rocket attacks being reason for the level of response Israel is making now. With jus ad bellum is twinned the idea of jus in bello, which is; to sum up, the idea of fair play.
Proportionality in war is part of the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Israel isn’t being proportional. I’ve hunkered down when people were lobbing things my way, trying to kill me, and the people I was with, it wasn’t like this:
A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists.
Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he'd carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."
Pilchick, and his compadres were on that hillside in Sderot on a sightseeing trip. They drove down from Jerusalem to watch the fireworks.
Why do they feel so comfortable heading down to treat it as a spectator event? Because in all of 2008, with hundred of rockets and mortars fired into Israel, a grand total of 81 people have been wounded, and 5 killed.
For the role of Irony in Everyday Life I particularly like this snippet: A cease fire was declared on 19 Jun. It was almost broken with a rocket attack on Israel, by an Israeli, who'd built a homade rocket with which he was trying to hit the Palestinian West Bank.
The first actual break occured on 24 June, when Isreal conducted an operation in Nablus.
On the 26th of June Hamas warned Israel that maintaining the blockade of the West Bank would cause a formal ending to the cease-fire.
All in all, Israel has been acting ham-handedly. They haven’t adhered to reasonable responses. They treat the Palestinians like red-headed stepchildren, and then wonder why the bad faith actions they take are greeted with something less than cheer and joy by those whom they are harming.
Are the Palestinians lily-white in this? No. But they are acting with far more restraint than the Israelis. The Palestinians have a case for their attacks. The Israelis don’t have justification for the level of response they’ve made.
Add the reports I saw on Monday, where Israel was spending it’s diplomatic efforts to keep any ceasefire from happening, so they could initiate the invasion they are undertaking now, and what reserves of trust and faith I have that the gov’t wants a peace, are getting harder to justify.
What lost in all this is the merits of the situation. Israel has been blockading Gaza. Blockade is an act of war. That’s why the Cuban Missile Crisis was as serious as it was. It wasn’t that Cuba was being used as a staging ground for threats against the US, but that by blockading Cuba we were committing an act of “hot” war, and Cuba’s ally, the Soviet Union, could have used that as casus belli for a declaration of war against us.
Israel, herself, believes blockade is a cause for just war:
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser blockaded the Straits of Tiran on May 21st and 22nd to all shipping from and to Eilat; the area was open to Israeli ships under UN supervision since 1957, and Israel repeatedly stated that such a blockade will be considered as casus belli (justification for acts of war).
Israel included the right to make an actual attack on Egypt, in retaliation for the blockading of Eilat. In the early morning of June 5th 1967, the war broke out. Israel made a preemptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force.
Eilat isn’t all of Israel. There were open ports. The residents there could leave. they were free to travel outside of Israel. Egypt wasn’t blocking access to food, medicine, and freedom. Nonetheless Israel was of the opinion it was grounds for a Just War (the principle of jus ad bellum) it got international support for the war.
Which brings us to the present allegation of the rocket attacks being reason for the level of response Israel is making now. With jus ad bellum is twinned the idea of jus in bello, which is; to sum up, the idea of fair play.
Proportionality in war is part of the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Israel isn’t being proportional. I’ve hunkered down when people were lobbing things my way, trying to kill me, and the people I was with, it wasn’t like this:
A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists.
Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he'd carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more."
Pilchick, and his compadres were on that hillside in Sderot on a sightseeing trip. They drove down from Jerusalem to watch the fireworks.
Why do they feel so comfortable heading down to treat it as a spectator event? Because in all of 2008, with hundred of rockets and mortars fired into Israel, a grand total of 81 people have been wounded, and 5 killed.
For the role of Irony in Everyday Life I particularly like this snippet: A cease fire was declared on 19 Jun. It was almost broken with a rocket attack on Israel, by an Israeli, who'd built a homade rocket with which he was trying to hit the Palestinian West Bank.
The first actual break occured on 24 June, when Isreal conducted an operation in Nablus.
On the 26th of June Hamas warned Israel that maintaining the blockade of the West Bank would cause a formal ending to the cease-fire.
All in all, Israel has been acting ham-handedly. They haven’t adhered to reasonable responses. They treat the Palestinians like red-headed stepchildren, and then wonder why the bad faith actions they take are greeted with something less than cheer and joy by those whom they are harming.
Are the Palestinians lily-white in this? No. But they are acting with far more restraint than the Israelis. The Palestinians have a case for their attacks. The Israelis don’t have justification for the level of response they’ve made.
Add the reports I saw on Monday, where Israel was spending it’s diplomatic efforts to keep any ceasefire from happening, so they could initiate the invasion they are undertaking now, and what reserves of trust and faith I have that the gov’t wants a peace, are getting harder to justify.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 06:09 am (UTC)58% Hamas to 33% Fatah
Their support may have been strongest in Gaza, but governments don't have to be the majority choice in the entire nation to be the parlimentary majority (though they do seem to have had significant support in the West Bank also).
And now we should argue over whether a President who attempts to lead a coup against the democratically elected legislature of his country is more legitimate than the members of that council? I believe the question I asked and its follow-up have been answered. Thank you for taking the time to satisfy my curiosity.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 12:43 pm (UTC)or perhaps the referent differs
and the one is limited to the two
and the other is the total vote...
there is no use to argue with you
or you with me, first because we are
strangers and if someone convinced someone
of something then what would come of that?
but secondly perhapsyou have decided what you think
and stopped at one level of the discussion
without hearing within yourself the answers
that would be made?
and so having it perhaps no uncertainty?
discussion without uncertainty even among
people who know each other really has no
possiblity...
but if you hear within yourself the answers
and the answers to the answers and on and on
then if we knew each other(and if the same were
true of me) we could talk and be friends...
but in any case then as things are
,as strangers,we dont
need each other to give answers.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-09 02:12 am (UTC)Yes, I've stopped the discussion at one level -- I have no great desire to debate whether the President (or Chairman, as Israel described the position when Arafat filled it) is a more legitimate representitive of the people than the elected legislature. I was curious as to why *you* considered Hamas not to be legitimate, and that would appear to be an opinion that isn't based on events or the party's electoral success.
Myself, I prefer to hear the answers of other people rather than those created for them within my own head -- at the very least it leaves open the posibility of being surprised. This is even truer when a person is a stranger to me. Talking with strangers is the only way to get to know a person, the only way to make acquaintances into friends (no really the non-verbal intimacy thing may seem like you're making friends but generally not so much) and it's the only way for groups of friends to maintain peaceful relationships with other groups (of friends). Silence tends to breed misunderstanding and mistrust. I cling to the belief that listening to other opinions, and talking to, or at, people is how people make peace, save marriages, and change the world -- even though murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide are more obviously effective. But I know many people don't share that philosophy, so I do try to avoid making too much of a nuscience of myself. Your willingness to answer a stranger has been appreciated.
city
Date: 2009-01-09 02:26 am (UTC)well as I said to our host I have
thought various things about this problem
over the years...it seems in some way
the problems of jerusalem are paradigmatic
of those of the world, just as its strange
odd angled streets and complex neighborhoods
make the small speace of the old city seem
like a microcosm of the world... and also
certain points in jerusalem seem to model
both city and world...
I do not mean to insist on some mystical
sense of jerusalem but just that being there
it is the sort of thing a person might feel
walking its streets.
well,he says brightening up,it is a rare
chance to use a jerusalem userpic!
+Seraphim