can we please just keep our facts straight?
Lorin:
In this instance, he is right. The retributive action taken by Israel was out of all proportion to the Hamas attacks, and hadn’t even a veiled intention of limiting casualties to civilians. 10 to 600 Charles.
It’s meaningless to criminalize Dr. Paul’s position when you haven’t dealt with the points I made in my earlier post. This one seems all about demonizing Dr. Paul, rather than rationally critiquing his position.
I might note, by way of “moral equivalence,” that you are as remiss as Dr. Paul in acknowledging the other side of the argument.
I, as a devout “Paulite,” hereby profess my sympathy with Israel in recognition of the injuries done to it by Palestinian terrorists. I completely understand their perspective, I believe, and think only that they are guilty of excessive violence in the pursuit of a just end.
I am at a loss to find you conceding that Israel is not always and completely right and justified in ANY action they take, because some militants have sworn their extermination.
You seem as much an apologist for Israel as Dr. Paul does for Palestinians.
Me:
First off, let me clarify one thing. “Atrocious massacre” was a phrase spoken by the PressTV interviewer, but attributed to Dr. Paul. The video itself does not show him actually saying those words. This is an important distinction for three reasons:
- He may not actually have said it, in which case his critics should not attribute the thought to him.
- If he did not say it, then he has an obligation (and may have done so) to refute it.
- Whether he said it or not, he was at the mercy of an interviewer sponsored by one of the actors in the drama—a fact which should have made him refuse the interview in the first place.
Second, Lorin, I want to make it very clear that, during the course of this thread, I am not going to be taken to related issues prematurely. What I mean by this is that my charge against Dr. Paul is that he is logically inconsistent in being a harsh critic of Israel (thus a de facto apologist for Hamas) while claiming his motivation is non-involvement. Nowhere in the video I linked to earlier does he discuss proportionality. I don’t agree with you on proportionality, but that isn’t the issue at hand. What is the issue is both Dr. Paul’s pejorative terms and his actual misstatements of fact. I believe his bias toward the facts is very clear in this video. Maybe the video is an aberration. But he gets cause and affect—aggressor and defender—reversed.
This point is illustrated even more clearly in another video shot on January 3:
Emphasis mine:
Today, Israel invaded Gaza.
They had been warning about this all along, everybody anticipated it, and it finally happened.
But to me, it’s a pretty sad day for the whole world, because it just means that whole idea of preemptive, preventative war was spreading.
Israel says they have to go in and prevent a problem that might come…
And you don’t have an issue with Dr. Paul’s blatant misrepresentation of facts?
From the New York Times, Dec. 24, 2008—Gaza Rocket Fire Intensifies:
JERUSALEM – Palestinian militants from Gaza increased the range and intensity of their rocket fire against Israel on Wednesday as the Israeli security cabinet considered options that included broader military action or efforts to renew a truce that recently expired.
One militant from Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza on Wednesday evening. The Israeli military said that it had attacked a squad that had earlier fired mortar shells at Israel.
More than 60 rockets and mortar shells were fired at southern Israel by the afternoon, the Israeli military said. The rockets slammed into the Israeli border town of Sderot, the yard of a house and a water park in the coastal city of Ashkelon and an Israeli factory at Nir Oz near the Gaza border, and they hit a house outside the Western Negev town of Netivot.
The strikes caused extensive damage and widespread panic among the residents but no serious injuries. Scores of adults and children were treated for shock, the emergency medical service said.
The security cabinet meeting lasted about five hours, but no details were made public regarding any decisions about Gaza. An official spokesman for the Israeli government, Mark Regev, suggested that a renewal of mutual calm was possible but that Israel’s patience was running out.
Israel “will answer quiet with quiet,” Mr. Regev said, “but will answer attacks with a response designed to protect our people.” Apparently preparing public opinion abroad for possible military retaliation, he said the sole responsibility for the deterioration in the south lay with Hamas.
Be honest here. Does this look like Israel is confronted with—how did he word this?—”a problem that might come”? Those were real Iranian rockets raining terror down on innocent Israelis. What exactly was Dr. Paul expecting Israel to do? Talk? As if that isn’t what they’ve been doing for several decades now—to no avail?
Here’s another New York Times story, this one from January 6—Israeli Shells Kill 40 at Gaza U.N. School:
GAZA – Israeli mortar shells killed as many as 40 Palestinians, among them women and children, outside a United Nations school in Gaza on Tuesday where they were taking refuge in the 11th day of the conflict. The Israeli military contended that Hamas fighters had fired mortars from the school compound, and United Nations officials called for an independent inquiry into the episode.The rising civilian death toll in crowded Gaza heightened international urgency to end the combat. American and European diplomats said it was highly likely that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel would travel to Egypt on Wednesday to discuss a cease-fire. Israel has said it will not end the operation until it has crushed Hamas’s ability to fire rockets into its civilian areas.
Meanwhile, Hamas continued to fire rockets, despite the large numbers of Israeli troops on the fourth day of the ground operation in Gaza. One rocket reached farther than ever into Israeli territory, only 20 miles from Tel Aviv, and wounded an infant.
With another day of gory news reports inflaming the Arab world, Israel contended that the deaths at the school, at the Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, demonstrated Hamas’s callousness toward the lives of Palestinian civilians.
The Israeli Defense Forces said that their troops had fired several mortar shells near the school in response to mortar fire from the school compound.
“They shot back to save their own lives,” said Ilan Tal, an Israeli military spokesman and a brigadier general in the reserves. Among the dead, the military said in a statement, were “Hamas terrorist operatives and a mortar battery cell.”
The military identified two Hamas operatives, Imad Abu Asker and Hassan Abu Asker, as having been killed.
A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack.
Ibrahim said he saw the militant after he answered calls for volunteers to pile sand around the camp “to help protect the resistance fighters.” Ibrahim went to pile sand near the school with his brother, Iyad, 20, who was then injured by the Israeli mortar fire.
United Nations officials were unable to immediately determine the accuracy of the Israeli military’s statements.
UPDATE:
Why the Israeli people have finally had enough:
So, it’s genocide now, is it? Or is it actually another holocaust, something which one typically restrained Palestinian analyst described as “worse than Hitler’s war against the Jews”?
Are we watching the ethnic cleansing of an entire people? Are we witnessing the deliberate eradication of a race?
Well, no actually, we’re not.
Yet the conventional dinner party wisdom which we’ve had to put up with in the media, both here in Ireland and generally across Britain, is that somehow Israel is the aggressor in the rapidly worsening situation in Gaza.
Footage of air strikes with the ensuing photogenic explosions and dramatic plumes of smoke, quickly followed by clips of collapsed buildings and enraged mourners, makes far better copy than actually looking at the reasons why Israel has done what it’s done.
Anyone who devotes only a cursory glance at the news, both print and television, would be forgiven for thinking that, out of spite, might and malice, Israel has decided to destroy the Palestinian people.
The problem with that conclusion — and it’s not something you’re going to learn from the BBC and most other outlets — is that, contrary to the currently popular belief, Israel is actually acting with a ridiculous degree of restraint.
Over the last couple of years, thousands of rockets have been landing on Israeli soil and, finally, they have had enough.
But behind that statistic there is a human dimension which tends to be rather ignored.
I know many people in the southern Israeli town of Sderot and what is remarkable about their stories is not the number or make of rockets which have fallen on them on a daily basis for years, but the psychological carnage this wreaked upon them.
One woman freely admitted to me that she hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in more than two years as she and her family now basically live in their bomb shelter and it’s hard to tell who she hates more — the Muslim terrorists of Hamas or the Israeli government which she thinks has abandoned them.
It’s a common feeling amongst residents of southern Israeli towns who have been the silent victims of a long campaign of violence, intimidation and murder carried out by Hamas. And now, finally, that the Israelis have said that enough is enough, they are somehow meant to be the aggressors?
There are people of good conscience on both sides of this argument, but one of the main problems in this debate lies in the cowardly tendency of the Western media to apply equivalence to both sides.
Thus, Hamas is seen to be as legitimate a government as the Israelis, and its rocket attacks across the border from Gaza are seen as being part of a yet another, intractable, interminable Middle Eastern dispute.
There’s just one problem with that approach — it’s completely wrong. . . .
At some point in time, the Palestinian people must be responsible for governing themselves, as well as whatever decisions that government makes. The fact that Hamas has fired over 7,000 rockets and mortars into Israel over the last 6-7 year makes me unsympathetic to whatever fate has to offer Gaza and the rest of Palestine. To use a simple analogy, if I’m a kid in a rock fight with another kid, I’m only going to take so many hits before I either give up or raise the stakes. Hamas brought a knife to a gun fight and gets what they deserve. If the Palestinian people don’t like the result then they should do something about it.
Paul
January 8, 2009 at 9:11 am
“What is the issue is both Dr. Paul’s pejorative terms and his actual misstatements of fact.”
- Which pejorative terms? As you notice, “massacre” was not his.
- Misstatements of fact: you mean his description of Israeli action as preemptive and preventative war.
This implies a too-simple chronological analysis of the situation. In one sense, this war has been going on since ‘48, so Dr. Paul is wrong on that account. In another, the actions of Hamas, suicide bombings and sporadic mortar fire, don’t constitute war waged by a distinct nation state, but the actions of an undisciplined and decentralized pseudo-state with no modern military to speak of. We can see the logical distinction between the two, can’t we? The U.S.’s bombings of Iraq or of Bosnia weren’t war, were they? At least, not in the same sense that the Iraq war is: a ground occupation of formerly sovereign territory. So, in the sense that Israel’s actions involve, not erratic and general terrorist actions, but the full-scale invasion and even bombardment of a separate entity, the one might be considered war and the other not. Similarly, though morally revolting, the attacks on 9/11 was not an act war by any nation state, say Saudi Arabia from which most of the hijackers hailed, or Afaghanistan, which was sympathetic. The response of the U.S., in invading Iraq and Afghanistan, however, was most definitively war in any sense of the word.
The underlying, and as as yet unanswered question is, what’s the distinction between war and terrorism? In the light of this, the questions you are delaying are not, in fact, “related issues,” being addressed “prematurely,” but the very considerations by which we must analyze the validity of these claims.
Moving on, then, from Dr. Paul’s presumed (im)moral qualities to the analysis of the situation his opinion about which has led you to assert, rather judgmentally, these moral inadequacies.
You say:
“What I mean by this is that my charge against Dr. Paul is that he is logically inconsistent in being a harsh critic of Israel (thus a de facto apologist for Hamas) while claiming his motivation is non-involvement.”
I am completely unable to discern precisely where you see his logical inconsistencies. Of course, this all ignores the fact that your thread wasn’t entitled “a very logically inconsistent man,” but “a very bad man.” If logical inconsistency makes one very bad, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.
First, let’s examine this part of your claim: that Dr. Paul is “a harsh critic of Israel (thus a de facto apologist for Hamas).”
Surely I needn’t point out that being a harsh critic of Israel means one is, de facto, and apologist for Hamas? I’m a pretty harsh critic of both, for instance, at different times (and USUALLY far more harshly critical of hamas). What you claim is like saying that, if A and B are fighting, and I criticize A harshly, I am de facto endorsing B. But this is not at all the case. Other options include:
- They’re both wrong, and one is addressing them seperately, or
- they’re both wrong, only A, in this specific episode is more so (as in A is stronger and doing real harm to B, who is RELATIVELY impotent).
- they’re both wrong, but there is a substantial degree of difference in the type (as opposed to degree) of their wrongs (as in, A is an adult, B a child).
- and no doubt other possible conclusions.
Your logic of identifying a criticism of Israel with an endorsement of or apology for Hamas fails utterly. To make another analogy, according to your assessment, those Americans who criticized the actions at Abu Graib, for instance, would be making a de facto apology for the enemy. Or again, that those who harshly criticize Bush are making a de facto apology for Obama. I am a harsh critic of Bush, but no less of Obama.
You see, one can proceed in the analysis of such events from one of two (or possibly more) perspectives:
1) Assessing the actions of those involved against an independent principle or set of principles.
2) Assessing the actions of those involved in a way analogous to a team sport, in which one chooses a side and rails against the other.
To take up a second logical inconsistency, as I see it, in your position, you claim that it is logically inconsistent for Dr. Paul to criticize Israel “while claiming his motivation is non-involvement.”
I’ve tried to deal with this distinction before, but will try here to do so more clearly.
Say I am eating dinner with my family at a restaurant. We all notice, next to us, a woman unduly upbraiding her child. What you are claiming here is like saying that personally condemning the woman’s actions is the same as, logically equivalent to advocating that you or even your entire family intervene.
We can condemn all sorts of people’s actions in conflicts all over the world, those of both sides at the same time, or of one side at a given time, without advocating that we, as a Nation, should intervene. We can criticize Russia for it’s invasion of Georgia without recommending intervention, indeed, while adhering strictly to a position of non-involvement (and it’s easy to see why EVERYONE in the U.S. political system did this: it would be bad for America). Or we can criticize homosexuality, for instance, without maintaining the state action is warranted to prevent it.
All he is saying is this: “In this instance, my personal belief is that Israel’s actions are out of proportion and thus morally wrong. Either way, however, as a nation, we should not involve ourselves. Indeed, our prior involvement, providing money to both sides, is certainly of dubious morality.”
Israel is not wrong in responding. No one has said that (which is why you can’t ignore the proportionality argument on which the criticism is based). Moreover, in any morally justified military action, it is likely that some innocents will be killed (3, for instance, by Hamas; 180, as a minimal estimation, by Israel). Why is one an anti-Israel agitator by finding fault with the enormously higher number of dead Palestinian civilians, even if Hamas “started it?”
I think it’s important to distinguish here the actions of Israel as a state from the moral culpability of Israeli citizens (as with the U.S. war in Iraq) and to distinguish the actions of Hamas militants (or other groups not constrained by them) from the moral culpability of all Palestinians. If the civilian citizens of each country are equally innocent, then the relative casualty numbers are morally unjustifiable.
Dr. Paul might be wrong about “which side started it.” In this instance, Hamas did fire rockets into Israel. Of course, this was, at least partially, a reaction to a prior, ongoing conflict (some 60 years, at least), in which Israel is not completely without fault. Do you think they’re completely without fault? This brings me to Dr. Paul’s words subsequent to those you posted: “The position that we should hold is that we should be on neither side. This is a conflict that has been going on for, not decades, but hundreds of years.”
Lorin
January 8, 2009 at 11:13 am
You say:
It depends on whether you think “concentration camp” in reference to Israel’s pre-invasion treatment of Gaza is a pejorative.
In answer to your rather complex argument/questioning regarding the difference between war and terrorism, I believe, historically, nations have viewed any violent provocations or attacks upon their people, territory or property to be an act of war (as also military mobilizations toward shared borders, especially if accompanied by threats). Terrorism is clearly an act of war, whether waged by a nation-state or a non-state actor (or a pretend-state, like Hamas-run Gaza). It makes no difference. And I do agree with the aspect of the Bush Doctrine dealing with nations which harbor terrorists who have attacked the U.S. If they don’t turn them over and if they don’t act to stop the acts of war based from within their territories (Taliban).
I like your illustration in the restaurant. If I may, I’d like to return to it later when I have more time.
Charles Flemming
January 8, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Well, if pejorative is exclusive of accuracy, then, no, it’s not pejorative, as it is at least explicitly accurate. While it may not live up to the connotation of concentration camps – the Nazi’s specifically – the situation there is one in which people are stateless and not free to move about. If it’s hyperbolic, it’s certainly not unwarranted, considering the general rightlessness of the Palestinians to protest the will of the Israeli state.
And if any violent provocations or attacks upon people, territory, or property are acts of war, then this war was begun in 1948 with the military conquest of Palestine. But might makes right anyway, so now it’s theirs…
Lorin
January 8, 2009 at 2:24 pm
“Pejorative” has nothing to do with accuracy. It merely means disparaging.
In the real world of war and diplomacy, there’s a kind of statute of limitations. It’s almost like stare decisis. The winner has won and the loser (or anybody else) only has a short window through which to reverse it. After that (however long that is), too bad. Generally speaking, the world works better when things are stable. That means borders can’t be changing every few years. People need to know what to expect. They need to move on and build their lives. Israel has been working like crazy to have a two-state solution. Hamas refuses to do anything but one-state, run by Hamas. Whatever you may feel about proportionality, Israel does have the right to defend its existence. Period. BTW, you have the 1948 events backwards. Israel was granted its land by the U.N. The war that resulted was brought on by its Arab neighbors, not by Israel. All the land occupied by Israel outside of its original U.N.-given territory was captured during defensive wars with its neighbors. You’d think they would have figured that out and left well enough alone.
From the Israel Wikipedia article:
Charles Flemming
January 9, 2009 at 8:40 am
While not having the time to respond in full, I find it crazy that you accept the legitimacy of the U.N. “giving” land to the Jews, a stateless ethnic group, which said land didn’t belong to the U.N. to give. If the U.N. were to “give” say, South Dakota to an Indian tribe, would you recognize the legitimacy? At least in that case, the majority of those Indians would have lived there before hand, which was not the case with the Jews in Israel. The notion that, because, in the vacuum of the British departure, no “modern” nation-state existed, the U.N. was legitimate in creating one is ridiculous. By what right? Indeed, the legitimacy Israel has to exist isn’t derived from some farcical “international body” saying so, but by virtue of having defeated the opposing forces. Their right to exist is based on their military might – they carved out a homeland – and the remnants of the defeated whose land the took are certainly not less legitimate in trying to do the same. It’s worth noting, the insanity of the Islamic/Hamas ideology aside, that Israel is not a modern, “secular” state in the sense that say, the U.S. or U.K. are, but has a large degree of theocratic elements in its constitution. To sell food you must it must be considered “kosher,” to be married legally you must both be Jewish, and so on.
Lorin
January 15, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I think we need to cut this up into its component parts.
Before we talk about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the U.N. in 1948 (one component), I have one question I think is key:
What was the U.N.’s purpose in allotting this territory to Israel?
In other words, what was their claimed rationale?
Charles Flemming
January 15, 2009 at 4:18 pm
And I know what pejorative means, but one can be both pejorative and accurate, was the intended point…
Lorin
January 15, 2009 at 4:18 pm
In this case, Congressman Paul’s statements were both pejorative and inaccurate.
Charles Flemming
January 15, 2009 at 6:54 pm
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