Category Archives: Political Violence

No Limits No Soul

Extremism, Political Violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

A Statesperson, to warrant the title, must recognize, that even in war, there are limits and those limits must not be breached. In the heat of battle this is sometimes difficult. But whoever said the job of the Statesperson was easy? If it was easy we would have many statespersons.

According to John Rawls the American philosopher analyzing the decision the American president Truman made in Japan in World War II, this is what Truman said

 

“Truman once described the Japanese as beasts and to be treated as such; yet how foolish it sounds now to call the Germans or the Japanese barbarians and beasts! Of the Nazis and Tojo militarists, yes, but they are not the German and the Japanese people. Churchill later granted that he carried the bombing too far, led by passion and the intensity of the conflict. A duty of statesmanship is not to allow such feelings, natural and inevitable as they may be, to alter the course a democratic people should best follow in striving for peace. The statesman understands that relations with the present enemy have special importance: for as I have said, war must be openly and publicly conducted in ways that make a lasting and amicable peace possible with a defeated enemy, and prepares its people for how they may be expected to be treated. Their present fears of being subjected to acts of revenge and retaliation must be put to rest; present enemies must be seen as associates in a shared and just future peace “

These words are equally applicable to Netanyahu. The statesperson recognizes limits. Truman failed to do that. So has Netanyahu. I have not seem him recognize any limits. Hea will destroy Hama no matter what the costs.

Limits in war are more than just moral imperatives. As David French wrote to the Israeli’s in the New York Times, “Don’t lose your soul.”  No limits no soul.

 

Does the End Justify the Means?

Morality, Political Violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

John Rawls in his analysis of the bombing of Japanese cities by America at the end of the Second World War, turned to another important philosophical principle: the ends must justify the means and if they don’t the means must be discarded in favour of those that do. This was the argument made by another great philosopher this time from Canada and in fact from my university—Arthur Schafer. I hope to go into greater detail on this point in a future post on this issue but will just mention how Rawls deals with it. This is what he said:

 

“Finally, we note the place of practical means-end reasoning in judging the appropriateness of an action or policy for achieving the aim of war or for not causing more harm than good. This mode of thought—whether carried on by (classical) utilitarian reasoning, or by cost-benefit analysis, or by weighing national interests, or in other ways—must always be framed within and strictly limited by the preceding principles. The norms of the conduct of war set up certain lines that bound just action. War plans and strategies, and the conduct of battles, must lie within their limits (The only exception, I repeat, is in times of extreme crisis.”

 

In other words, war without genuine limits is never acceptable. Rawls, like Camus, and unlike Lindsey Graham and unlike Hamas, acknowledges there are limits to what one can do in a just war or it ceases to be just. Limits are not just important. Limits are essential to the just war. A war without limits, which so many wars in recent years have become, is not a just war.

Rawls insists that the defensive war must not cause more harm than good. In his view it really is that simple. He might be right.

I heard Antonio Guterres, U.N. Secretary-General interviewed by Fareed Zakaria and he pointed out that every year for 7 years he has published a report about children killed in wars. He has complained about countries like Syria, Russia, Israel and the Taliban in the past. None of them were happy with his reports. Until now he said, the most children that were ever killed by one country in such conflicts was 600 in a year. He also said that he did not rely on the numbers of deaths in Gaza presented by Hamas as they were not reliable, but he said,  “it is clear that the number of children killed in a few weeks in Gaza is in the thousands.”

Earlier he also said, Gaza had been turned into a graveyard for children.

Does the end justify that means? Thousands of children dead and of course, many more adult civilians, many of them women and old people?

I have a hard time seeing that as doing less harm than good.

 

Live the Peace you want

Democracy, Extremism, Political Violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

The American philosopher John Rawls in his article on the dropping of the Atomic bomb by the US on Japan, made another point: 

“A decent democratic society must respect the human rights of the members of the other side, both civilians and soldiers, for two reasons. One is because they simply have these rights by the law of peoples. The other reason is to teach enemy soldiers and civilians the content of those rights by the example of how they hold in their own case…. This means, as I understand it here, that they can never be attacked directly except in times of extreme crisis…”

 

This is an interesting idea. Rawls requires the democratic society to do more than go to battle against the aggressor. It must actually teach the non-democratic aggressor what it means to be a democracy. And it must teach by example; not words! The democracy does that, because when the war is over it wants to have one more democratic partner and one less enemy!

Rawls makes another very important argument, very closely aligned to the last one. This is what he said: “just peoples by their actions and proclamations are to foreshadow during war the kind of peace they aim for and the kind of relations they seek between nations”

I put it this way: Live the peace you want. Show the peace by your actions because, as we all know, actions speak louder than words.

 As Rawls says, just peoples know in their hearts, that  “present enemies must be seen as associates in a shared and just future peace.” Just leaders—statesmen as he calls them,  want to do more than avoiding losing the war. They also want to make sure they don’t lose the peace either!

Even in the midst of war, the democratic state must have its eye on the prize—i.e. the peace that is to follow. It wants to create a partner for the peace; not an enemy for eternity Again, I would submit that both Israel and Hamas are falling down here. Hamas is not democratic so this does not apply. Moreover, its actions have been so horrendous that it is very difficult to conceive of them as a future partner in anything. Israel though is not trying to create the just peace that can make a partner. Israel has voted for extremists at least since Ehud Barak ceased to be Prime Minister. He was followed by Ariel Sharon, and very briefly by Ehud Olmert, another extremist,  and then Benjamin Netanyahu a consistent extremist, and as a result turned from peace to war and in the process it ruined its soul! Israel turned itself into a monster. I know such a statement will hurt my Jewish friends, but I believe it is true. Israel has been provoked by extreme violence, but it has turned itself into Hamas light. I will have more to say on this in subsequent posts. Both sides are creating enemies for eternity. Both sides must deep six their extremist leaders who are leading them into the wilderness.

Hooray for Our Side

Extremism, Fear, Hate, Polarization, Political Violence, Politics & Religion, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

Stephen Stills wrote and sang  a wonderful song when he was with the band Buffalo Springfield. It is a classic embodying a lot of the good from the 1960s which I still think of as my time.  The song is very appropriate for the current times.  Here are the lyrics:

 

For What It’s Worth

There’s something happening here

But what it is ain’t exactly lear

There’s a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware

I think it’s time we stop

Children, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

 

There’s battle lines being drawn

Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong

Young people speaking’ their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind

 

It’s time we stop

Hey, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

 

What a field day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and carrying signs

Mostly saying, “hooray for our side”

 

It’s time we stop

Hey, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

 

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you’re always afraid

Step out of line, the men come and take you away

 

We better stop

Hey, what’s that sound?

Everybody look – what’s going down?

I think this song written in the 1960s sums up a lot of what’s happening in the Middle East now.

Religion has declined in much of the world. In fact, I would argue it has declined most strongly in those areas where it appears to be most vociferously present. My wife Christiane used to have a pin that said something like this “When religion turns to hate, it is no longer religion.” When religion declined it transformed into politics and became hate it turns into the most ugly form of politics imaginable.  A long way from the holy. When that happens the “other side” is transformed from the other side to the devil. This is what demonization does. By definition it dehumanizes the other.

Sometimes this is done by ignoring the other. For example, when Israel ignores Hamas or treats them with disdain as it has done for more than 15 years, it dehumanizes them. Hamas of course, treated Israel with vicious hate when it attacked them on October 7th of this year.   Dehumanization again.

The first step in the process of dehumanization, as happened in Rwanda in the 1990s is to call the other side non-humans. Like pests as happened there. It happened again in Israel when their defense Minister called Hamas “human animals.” That gives them the license to kill.

This is what leads to the conflagration in the Middle East. Now we all have to live with it.

The Blood-dimmed Tide

Extremism, Ireland, Political Violence, Politics & Religion, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

The problem in the Israeli/Hamas conflict that is not present in all conflicts, is that  where religious extremists are in positions of influence or power, is that matters are exponentially worse when both sides are led by religious zealots. Neither side wants to compromise with the devil. That is crucial to making the conflict there a wicked problem.

 

Fintan O’Toole in his article in the New York Review of Books, described the situation this way in his article:

 

“In the Book of Judges, where we find the Samson story, God has delivered the children of Israel into subjugation by their enemies as punishment because they “did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.” As it happens, Hamas’s forebearers, the Muslim Brotherhood, held the same belief. The Harvard scholar of the Middle East Sara Roy tells us that, after Israel’s victory in the war of 1967, “the Brethren in Gaza especially remained convinced that the loss of Palestine was God’s punishment for neglecting Islam.” It seems that God has a peculiar way of chastising his various chosen peoples in Israel and Palestine: by inflicting them on each other. With millenarian religious believers in power on both sides of the Gaza wall, it seems that this blood-dimmed vision is again being played out as reality.”

 

This reference to “blood dimmed vision” may be an allusion to the words of an Irish Poet, William Butler Yeats in his famous poem “The Second Coming.”

 No one understands the toxic blend of religious extremism and politics better than the Irish. Sadly, they have a wealth of experience that informs the opinions of people like Fintan O’Toole and William Butler Yeats and others.  Yeats put it this way in that poem which he wrote nearly almost exactly 100 years ago:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

That is precisely the point. When the religious zealots are left loose the innocents will indeed be drowned. Vision on both sides will be blinded by blood.

There was a powerful example of that today. Israel bombed a refugee camp—the largest in Gaza—when it was “aiming” at a place where a Hamas leader or two was believed to be. They missed. I don’t yet know how many civilians were killed.as a result. How many civilian deaths  would it take before such an attack would be a war crime?

 

Religious Extremism in Israel and Gaza

Extremism, Political Violence, Politics & Religion, violence, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

When religion morphs into politics, or politics into religion, there is likely nothing that produces uglier results. As, perhaps no one understands this better than the Irish.

Something that is too often ignored in the incendiary Middle East is the enormous and shattering effect of religious extremism. The problem is that both sides ignore it in their own tribe, while lambasting it in the other.

Fintan O’Toole, an Irishman writing regularly in the New York Review of Books, knows this better than most and he  asked a crucially important question: “What lessons do people actually learn from the cruelties they applaud and the ones they suffer in return?” We should remember the wise counsel in Matthew 7:3-5: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”  And no one ignores this advice more and also needs it more. than religious zealots.

O’Toole’s article centred around a story in what we call the Old Testament and others call the Hebrew Bible.  That article referred to what he called a

 “a Jewish legend” in which “the great warrior Samson ends up, as John Milton famously puts it, “eyeless in Gaza.” He is blinded by the Philistines and harnessed to a huge millstone, forced to drag himself around and around in circles, always moving but unable to go anywhere. Eventually, in the most spectacular of suicides, he gets his revenge by pulling down their temple on top of the Philistines, killing both them and himself. The story is apparently supposed to be heroic, but it feels more like a fable of vicious futility. Cruelty begets cruelty until there is nothing left but mutual destruction.”

 

The current horrid war between Israel and Hamas is exactly that—”a fable of  vicious futility.” The story is a cautionary tale to those of us who are too quick to say revenge is justified, or retaliation a duty. If we can understand that nothing is gained by a thirst for revenge perhaps we can learn a better way. Israelis were attacked by cruel and vicious butchers who targeted women, children and old people and Israel sought revenge. The Israeli’s say that unlike the Palestinians they do not target civilians or children or women or old people, but they know that by attacking the Palestinians in Gaza where 2 million people live in one of the most densely packed places in the world, they will hurt, injure and kill women, children, old people and innocent bystanders. That is unavoidable.

 Saying “we are not aiming to kill them” is not enough. Rather it shows that Israel really doesn’t care if civilians are hurt.  Some Israelis have said as much publicly. Such indifference to suffering can be summed up in the words of that great American philosopher Bob Dylan: “you don’t count the dead with God on your side.” In other words, it shows—clearly shows—that the problem with handing over war policy to religious zealots is that unnecessary harms will follow as certainly as night follows day.

Religious zealots are truly, inevitably, indifferent to the suffering of those in the “other” religious camp. That is because there is no reason for them to count the dead.

 Israel has democratically elected the religious extremists that now wield the vital votes Netanyahu needs to hold onto power in order to deflect attention from the corruption charges he is facing, or perhaps, better yet, the votes he needs to dissolve the charges against him. For the better part of 2 decades now Israel has reliably elected extremist political leaders knowing, but ignoring, the fact that this would certainly lead to a bonfire of violence. So the Israel population is deeply complicit.

The Palestinians on the other have had religious extremists baked into Hamas DNA right from the outset of that organization in 2006.  It has never been without controlling religious extremists. They elected the religious extremists more than a decade ago, and even though they have not had a second chance to vote them out in a democratic election, their acquiescence in the continued leadership of religious extremists makes them complicit as well.

Neither nation can claim innocence. The people on both sides have chosen extremism and the people are now paying a huge price for this mistake. Both sides should eject their extremists at the helm. There is no other way except mutual destruction.

 

No Comic Relief

Extremism, Fellow Feeing, Political Violence, The Commons, War Between Israel and Hamas

 

You know things are bad when we look to comedy writers for wisdom.  But that is what I want to do today. Recently, John Oliver began his television show by setting aside his regular introduction and speaking from the heart without making any jokes. That is not like him. So he did not offer any comic relief. In fact he didn’t really offer any relief at all, but he did offer some wisdom. More than many of our political leaders. So I want to turn this forum over to him. This is what he said soon after the horrific violence committed by Hamas in its attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023:

 

“I want to briefly talk to you about what has briefly been a horrible day. The immense suffering in Israel and Gaza has been sickening to watch and we are not going to be covering in the main body of our show for a couple of reasons.

 

First, it was horrific and I don’t really want to tell jokes about carnage and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear them. And second, we are taping this on Saturday afternoon and you’ll be hearing it on Sunday evening or on Monday through an illegal VPN. I do know who I’m talking to. Given how fast things are moving a lot could change between the time I’m saying this and the time you hear it. I do have a few broad thoughts that I still think will still apply. They have to do with sorrow, fear, and anger.

Sorrow is the first and most overwhelming feeling. The images we have seen this week and onwards have been totally heart-breaking. Thousands dead in Israel and now Gaza will be devastating not just to the people in the region but to diaspora communities across the world. Whatever thoughts you have about the history of this region or the current state of affairs, and I have shared mine in the past on this show, it should be impossible to see grieving families and not be moved. So there has been sorrow this week and lot of it. And also fear. Understandable fear of further attacks in Israel, and those taken hostage, and fear about what is to come in Gaza, as Israel’s leaders seem intent on embarking on a relentless bombing campaign, mass displacement, and a potential ground invasion.

I don’t know where things stand in Gaza right now, but all signs seem to be pointing towards a humanitarian catastrophe. Israeli official announced plans to cut off food, water, fuel and power. Hospitals are running low on generators. This has all the appearance of collective punishment which is a war crime.

I think many Israelis and Palestinians are feeling justifiable anger right now. Not just at Hamas whose utterly heinous terrorist acts set this weeks’ events in motion, but also the zealots and extremists across the board who consistently thwarted attempts at peace across the years. Israelis and Palestinians have been let down by their leadership time and time again and I don’t have a great deal of faith in the current leaders in charge to steer us toward peace. But I do still have some hope because the easiest thing to do in the world after a week like this is to engage in blood-thirsty rhetoric. And there has certainly been plenty of that from those in power, but I will say I have been struck by the ordinary citizens, both Israeli and Palestinian, who have called for restraint this week and not revenge.

 

Just listen to how Noy Katsman, whose brother Heim was murdered by Hamas last Saturday, ended this interview:

 

“I just wanted to say one more thing that is the most important thing for me and I think for my brother was that his death not be used to kill innocent people. I don’t want anything to happen to people in Gaza like happened to my brother. And I’m sure he wouldn’t want it either. So that is my call to my government—stop killing innocent people. That’s not the way to bring peace and security to people in Israel”

 

Right! People want and are entitled to peace. I’m not going to tell either side how to get it. Certainly not in this accent [English] which has done enough damage in that region to last a fucking lifetime. But just know that all the people who want to live in that region are going to keep living there. So peace is not optional and will require some tough decisions. I can’t say where a peace process ends but it just has to start with that kind of an ability to recognize our common humanity.”

 

 

 

Acquiescing to Extremists is not the Answer

Extremism, Political Violence, True Believer, War Between Israel and Hamas

A cousin of mine has responded to one of my recent posts by saying, rightly so, that “Hamas has now proven to be nothing more than a ruthless killer and terrorist organization.” I agree. But I wanted to reply on my blog since not all of my faithful readers go first to Facebook. That is why I wish more people replied on the blog site rather than Facebook, but each has a choice and I am happy when people respond.

As I told my cousin in my Facebook reply (with a few additional comments and corrections):

There is no doubt that people have the right to defend themselves from attacks. Governments must defend their people from such attacks. There is also no doubt that Israel was subjected to a vicious by a terrorist organization, namely Hamas. Nothing Israel has done justifies raping, murdering, and killing innocent women and children.  I do no support what Hamas has done.  I renounce it unequivocally. That does not mean that Israel has an unlimited right to retaliate.

As Nicholas Kristof said in the New York Times:

“Israel has suffered a horrifying terrorist attack and deserves the world’s sympathy and support, but it should not get a blank check to slaughter civilians or to deprive them of food, water and medicine.”

 

I just heard on the news recently that, according to Hamas, and so far uncontradicted by Israel, that more than 4,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by the Israeli siege and about half of these are children. Is that justified? Israel says unlike Hamas it does not deliberately attack children. But is Israel so reckless about whether or not civilians are killed that there is really no difference between that and deliberate targeting of civilians?

I also recognize that Israel is surrounded by murderous enemies. That makes a difference. How would we respond in the same situation? But Israel claims the higher moral ground. To justify that claim it must act accordingly. Using superior brutal military power to effect mass killings on Palestinians is not the way to do that. There is a better way.

I wish Israel had not turned its country over to its worst extreme elements when it elected Netanyahu and the religious extremists with whom he has aligned himself.

When two groups led by religious extremists do battle there is not much room to protect the innocents on either side.