(Some context: This is part of my revisited series, where I go back over stuff I have previously written, add to it, clarify it, and make changes in line with my changing views.
I don't know the bombing this relates, but one of the, to me, obvious questions you didn't ask is. . . . .
Would Hamas order the bombing strike if it was Israeli politicians visiting an Israeli refugee camp?
Clearly the answer is yes. And they would send in suicide bombers to help with the clean up.
I'm not sure how you could ever parse the right and wrong in this conflict, but I'm at a loss as to what peace might be like with Hamas still in power.
It goes without saying I have identical concerns regarding the viability with the Israeli hard right.
I don’t think this succeeds at sidestepping the question, or even at muddying the waters, if you think about it. The value of preventing Hamas from doing bombings is essentially built into the question already — that is, any question like “how many civilians would you be willing to kill in order to kill a Hamas fighter?” is already taking into account whatever subjective assessment you may have of the Hamas fighter’s potential contributions to future suffering. (And whatever subjective assessment you may have of the value of a Hamas fighter’s life as another human being.) To take that question and pile on “but what about how bad Hamas is?” is at best double-counting, but more often is used to either round up the estimate of how bad Hamas is to infinity, or create some kind of recursive compounding formula where the net value of (taking) a life becomes infinite.
That's not even a very good piece of propaganda sleight of hand.
One of the labels attached to the original piece was "something, something, free Palestine". If the philosophical argument had used an historical conflict, or even a fictional conflict between green and blue, then analysis of the argument without referencing propaganda may have been possible.
Presented as it is, with the tag line "something, something, free Palestine". The piece is obviously carrying an idealogical bias, and the bias chosen suggests the philosophical argument is just the trojan horse carrying the message.
As l1 points out in this thread, there are ethical concerns involved in letting this propaganda message spread unquestioned.
Pointing out how bad Hamas is, at every possible opportunity, is a perfectly justifiable ethical project in it's own right.
A parent of a child murdered at the music festival, can say anything they like about Hamas, in fact they are effectively morally obliged to say unpleasant things about Hamas, and it's supporters.
Accordingly, I can criticise the morality of the post. To let it go uncommented on, is to neglect my obligations.
Pointing out The Crimes of Hamas serves to neutralise the political bias of the philosophical conjecture as presented.
The philosophical argument, if representative of an objective truth, should be presented without the rhetoric. Rhetoric makes everything subjective.
Okay, so I’m not saying you can’t point out how bad Hamas is? I just mean that if you’re going to engage with the question “how many kids can you ethically kill in pursuit of killing a Hamas agent”, pointing out the moral value of a Hamas agent’s life is redundant. Your real answer is that you don’t like where this question leads, not that there’s a real “philosophical” problem with it or a missing data point that wasn’t accounted for.
You can’t remove this from the context of current events because “how many purple kids can you be morally justified in maiming/killing as opposed to blue kids” is incoherent, and once you add a single salient detail like “suppose the purple kids were poor and live in a colonized territory where the colonizing faction refuses to let any governing body except terrorist groups hold organizing power” the comparison becomes too transparent anyway.
This is such a strange question. Hamas does not have the capacity to bomb an Israeli refugee camp, because of the massive power balance between them. You are trying to effectively justify something that is actually happening with a hypothetical you know will never attempt. In effect this can be used to justify any war crimes done by a more powerful state
I realize you are not addressing me, as I don't support the killing of civilians by any government or entity--but at this point, it seems like who can be killed by Israel is more flexible The rhetoric is dividing up into 'supports everything done by Israel' and 'does not support everything done by Israel.' Palestinians are completely dehumanized but anyone who does not support Israel--they can be killed by Israel with impunity. Rachel Corrie was killed and some other Brits and Americans have been. The World Central Kitchen people were directly assassinated as have some others been.
--Jewish Israelis who oppose Israel's actions haven't been killed but of disinterest when it comes to protection, as we see with those kidnapped by Hamas. They aren't protected and nobody cares. Jewish people in the diaspora are probably not exempted. They are described as enemies and not really Jewish, according to some.
I’m sure such misidentification is impossible. Another interesting development is that Amnesty International has adjusted its position from “that’s probably genocide” to “that’s *definitely* genocide”
This is an entirely one-sided argument that misses the crux of the disagreement. Irrelevantly few people are arguing that Israel is blameless or morally perfect in this conflict. The question is which side is slightly less horrible, and many people (correctly, I think) believe it to be Israel, since they have slightly less religious fanaticism and are closer to being a modern liberal and democratic country. Israel may value Palastinian lives at near 0, but at least it's not negative. The same can't be said in reverse.
These are the wrong questions here. The question of which nation is better or worse only comes into consideration if one society or the other has to be destroyed. There is no serious reason to think that being forced to fight more in line with the laws of war would destroy Israel. The right questions are:
1. Who is doing the crimes.
2. Who do we have the most influence over.
3. How can we use that influence to prevent the crimes.
It depends on what you mean by "support Israel", but I think you're using it in a nonstandard way. I supported Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, and for exactly the reasons you give, I generally criticized the left more than the right while doing it; those are the people who are more likely to listen to me.
A substantial fraction of Western politicians demonstrably believe that any given Israeli politician is morally pure to the point of deserving complete immunity from the basic functions of international law.
> The question is which side is slightly less horrible
No, it isn't. That's certainly the question that supporters of Israel are determined to redirect the conversation to at all costs, but it's not the important one.
Because we're not choosing between them- we're assessing the moral character and defensibility of Israel's actions. Hamas being worse- if they even are- is only indirectly relevant.
I think it comes down to the fact that Palestinian civilians actually have some culpability. They tend to support Hamas, and October 7th for one. Now obviously Palestinian citizens have much less culpability than actual Hamas terrorists, but I think it's also fair to say they have more culpability than Israeli citizens. Therefore you can't equivocate Israeli and Palestinian citizens.
This is why Netanyahu is being charged with war crimes - he has grossly violated human rights. As a Jewish individual in America, I can not make sense of that man's EGO. How he has managed to hold onto power and yet run a dictatorship with no consequences I would like to know.
Let's answer the question: "If Hamas soldiers were imbedded with that number Israeli citizens, would Israel do the same thing?" The answer is no, but not for the reason you assume. If the Israeli citizens were free to move about, they would escape to allow their military acccess to Hamas. If they weren't free to move, the Israeli citizens in that case would be _hostages_, and would require much more convincing to be put in the path of oncoming Israeli fire. Given the chance, they would attempt to overpower Hamas first, rather than meekly submit to being slaughtered. That would reduce the Hamas supplies and mean that even their death would contribute to the cause.
Also, Hamas is counting on our sense of proportionality to allow them to literally get away with murder. They attacked and then hid in such a way as to force anyone coming after them to inflict civilian casualties in large numbers, hoping Israel would back off. This is part of the reason why the Israelis in that poll are not very caring about civilian casaulties: they see Hamas, who were democratically elected by Gaza, do not care if their civilians die, so why should Israel back down to a clearly craven tactic?
What a pyschotic argument. Your argument is that Israel should be allowed to kill as many civilians as possible, otherwise Hamas get away with murder. One wonders how Hamas "get away" with murder when they've lost much more members during this confrontation than any of the previous wars combined, but let's put that aside for a moment.
If Israel is to be allowed to kill civilians with impunity to avenge their honor, why did the same logic not apply to Hamas? In their worldview, Israeli civilians democratically elected governments that constantly seek to displace and murder them. Why should they care about those Israelis killed in the music festival? Perhaps they should accuse Israel of being so craven that they're putting their civil populace so close to military objectives.
Or alternatively, you can oppose all killings of civilians than trying to argue your way into justifying massacres.
One should also keep in mind that the "under democracies the people share the blame of their governments' actions and thus become legitimate war targets" is literally the same logic Osama Bin Laden used to justify 9/11. So nice for Israeli defenders to use the same logic as terrorists in their quest to supposedly destroy terrorism
The thing you have to consider is the future of this conflict. As long as we have capable enemies that aim to eradicate us, we have to get rid of them, their intentions or their capabilities. Moral dilemmas that slow this process are ultimately immoral because they extend the conflict, causing more bloodshed in days to come.
The question is how, and I won't pretend I have the answer. I do think that current actions bring us closer to that state, and my short-term recommendation to the Gazans is to completely surrender. That would be the quickest way to stop suffering.
“I’d suggest that a good test for proportionality is this: would you still be doing it if it were your own civilians?” That’s just not even close to the correct definition of proportionality. Practically no conflict ever would fit your definition. Would America have bombed German military factories in WWII had it been American civilians working in there? No. Does anyone think that means these strikes violated the test of proportionality? No, that’s just silly. In fact, the bombing of German military factories was a critical part of the war effort, and plausibly did more than anything else to bring about German’s defeat.
>If that camp had been filled with thousands of Israelis plus some Hamas targets, instead of Palestinians plus some Hamas targets, do you think Israel would have done this?
Isn't it a big talking point among the antizionists that the IDF is so bloodthirsty that it is shooting their own people all the time? If so, the answer to your question is clearly yes. Even if not, the answer to your question might still be yes, what with it being a Manichean total war and all.
More to the point: hypocrisy is just not a very productive charge in this litigation. We all know it's a tribal conflict; nice rules for my tribe and cruel rules for yours.
> If, however, I broke into my neighbor’s house and stole the medicine, saving my child but condemning their two children to die, this would rightly be seen as appalling.
I dunno that I'd see it as *appalling*. Tragic, yes. And as an outside observer I would consider it my duty to stop you. But I wouldn't actually judge you. I would weep and say, you must follow your values to the end; I must follow mine; curse the world, that we must be at odds, when our ideal worlds (all three children live) are identical.
Of course, this has limited bearing on the Israel-Palestine analogy because I find a parent's unconditional, infinitely-valued love for their child entirely more sympathetic than similarly-incommensurate love of one's nation or race.
As a follower of your blog I agree with many of your ideas, but my hometown being near Levant and having to immigrate to Western Europe for a couple of reasons one being the influx of refugees to my country becoming overwhelming, I'm on Israel's side in this conflict even if they're being brutal. I'm saying this as a person who, less than a decade ago, would join public protests in a kafiyah. My train of thought is more or less as follows:
1- Gazans in specific, and Arabs in general aren't really contributing anything to arts and sciences compared to their population and total wealth.
2- There are so many of them leaving their countries' for better prospects abroad, an overwhelming ratio of those being undocumented and illegal; this hurts both the resident people of the countries' they immigrate to; and the people of the countries' they immigrate to, who want to legally immigrate to a third country.
3- Both where they are, (Gaza, Syria, etc) and where they immigrate to (Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Europe) they breed too fast for a population which is under any kind of stress, making their numbers even more overwhelming.
4- Them being so populous and fast breeding, their value per capita seems even lower. I cry for the individual tragedy, but from a macro point of view, if somebody cries about the couple hundred of thousand Levantine Arabs that are killed in Gaza; Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, etc can give over ten times that. There are people by ship loads just straining the economy where they go to. A couple hundred thousand isn't enough to be noticed in the sea of immigrants around.
5- There are countries wealthier than the ones they immigrate to with the same language and similar culture (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, etc) that they might immigrate to; but even those don't want them so other countries like Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon are stuck with them. EU actively pays those countries to keep them so they don't go further into Europe. They are just unwanted excess millions of human beings. This is sad and unfortunate, but it's the truth.
6- In comparison, Jews from many countries and Israel itself dominate for example Nobel laureates per capita or any kind of metric one can come up with, with regards to contribution towards humanity. (Note: I'm not a Jew so this is not me seeing my own community in a better light)
7- The advent of technology caused cheap, easy-to-build rockets have more range than before. This means the current status of Israel, among a sea of enemy countries, is becoming untenable. Thus, they need to pacify areas close to their population centers.
8- The attack by Hamas against civilians was the last straw that broke the camel's back and now Israel is in the process of tidying up the area a bit. As a human, when I consider the per capita worth to humanity of an Israeli civilian versus a Gazan civilian; very unfortunately the ratio is very ugly. They'll have to do what they need to do and that is their duty towards humanity.
9- They should have first strictly cut off all communication to and from Gaza before their operation so there was less outrage in the world.
10- It's difficult for me to come up with a ratio, but all areas from which major Israeli population centers can be reached by cheap, easy to build rockets need to be one way or other pacified. Divide this to the population of Israel and you'll find a ratio.
11- This all has been really difficult for me to swallow and accept, and it took me over a decade to digest it, but this is where I arrived.
>Indeed if, somehow by some dark magic, every time a Palestinian civilian died an Israeli civilian died, do you think Israel would be conducting its bombing campaign like this?
No. They would immediately surrender, and the US would immediately surrender to the Axis in similar conditions.
I'm not a philosophy guy, bear or otherwise, but I feel like once you get up to the scale of nuclear weapons you're talking about a very different type of morality given the various externalities. I'd maybe be more comfortable speculating on the ethics if we were talking about conventional explosives.
I do agree with the special duties necessarily being positive though, at least from a philosophical stand point. So, looking to provide a counter to your example, let's say an attack occured in which America for some reason dropped a MOAB or a MOP on Canada, let's say it dropped it on Rogers Centre where the Blue Jays play, and they were at capacity which is about 40,000 people. Are you saying that the Canadian government would then be duty-bound to drop a similar sized bunker buster on Yankee Stadium if they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt it would prevent the American government from attacking again?
Now, since this a hypothetical, let's just imagine the Yankees were playing the Blue Jays in the World Series in both instances. Yankee Stadium has a capacity of about 47,000.
See, if we're just considering ethics, neither government would be morally justified in dropping a bomb in either situation. Things get different if we start considering things from an international relations standpoint, and I'd be happy to pontificate on those circumstances, but I don't think that's the argument Philosophy Bear was making. Maybe if we were in the comments section on Foreign Affairs Bear.
Not sure I agree with the statement that special duties have to be of a positive character. Consider an example where country Y nukes an American city, in the process killing 100,000 American citizens. Country Y promises not to engage in further attacks provided that the US pays a one time payment of say 500 billion dollars. The US leadership turns down this offer and instead elects to respond by nuking a proportional target in response, killing a comparable number of citizens of country Y. Let’s just grant here for the sake of the argument that we know for sure that this nuclear response would deter country Y from nuking the US again.
Would the United States do this if the population of the target city was filled with Americans? Obviously not. No sane American leader would kill 100,000 of their own citizens in that fashion to avoid such a payment. But should the US therefore avoid nuking the enemy city in response? It seems like the answer is no. If the US government has a special duty to its citizens, and truly believes in the deterrent power of its nuclear arsenal, then it seems like it has a moral obligation to use its nuclear weapons in order to prevent the further exploitation of its population.
It would seem morally wrong for the US not to intentionally kill foreign citizens if doing so was necessary to protect its own citizens and preserve their liberty (i.e. from nuclear blackmail). Indeed I find the very idea of paying money (of any amount frankly) to country Y grotesque and immoral. While doing nothing (neither paying nor responding in kind with a nuclear strike) would just invite further nuclear attacks. Not sure what your intuitions here are, but I certainly wouldn’t want a pacifist administration in power in a hypothetical situation like this.
I appreciate your reasonable counterargument, but I think the analogy is flawed, because the reason that we intuit America shouldn't accept the blackmail is largely because of the incentives it creates.
If we remove those incentives by stipulating that the payment ends the matter forever, and that it remains secret so that no one else is incentivised to try the same thing, it seems clear to me that America should simply make the payment- and, in fact, that there's no real moral difference between nuking the Y citizens and the Americans.
I agree that the primary motivation is about incentives, and that the moral calculus changes in the scenario you brought up, but I’m not sure that really defeats my point. The main argument I was advancing is that in the example where the perverse incentive structure is at play (my example), we don’t think it reasonable for the government to nuke its own citizens just because it would help eliminate perverse nuclear blackmail incentives.
For example, if a bunch of terrorists in Philadelphia hijacked the city, and nuked Washington DC, it wouldn’t be reasonable for the government to respond by nuking Philadelphia. But it seems reasonable (or at least more reasonable) for the government to nuke Islamabad in case some Pakistani separatists seized the city from the control of the country and nuked Washington DC (the crimson tide scenario).
This assumes that all other things are equal of course, and that the US government doesn’t encounter elevated risks from the Pakistani as opposed to the domestic scenario (e.g. there isn’t an increased chance of WW3 starting in the Pakistani versus the domestic scenario).
Now granted there might be instrumental reasons to think the government is more in the right to respond with a nuclear strike in the foreign as opposed to the domestic case. For example, we might think that the government would have an easier time retaking Philadelphia using conventional means, then it would have in taking over Islamabad. Or that it might have to engage in a program of nation building that would be harder to implement in Islamabad as opposed to Philadelphia.
I’m not sure how much of a difference maker this really is though, and even if it constitutes an important difference maker, I think these instrumental reasons are in fact important to consider when we assess whether the government has special obligations to its own citizens that entail adopting a negative attitude to foreign citizens! After all, it might be reasonable to think that the US government shouldn’t treat foreign citizens differently for intrinsic reasons, but should treat them differently for instrumental reasons.
Thanks to https://wonderandaporia.substack.com/p/states-dont-have-special-obligations for prompting me to pull this one out of storage
I don't know the bombing this relates, but one of the, to me, obvious questions you didn't ask is. . . . .
Would Hamas order the bombing strike if it was Israeli politicians visiting an Israeli refugee camp?
Clearly the answer is yes. And they would send in suicide bombers to help with the clean up.
I'm not sure how you could ever parse the right and wrong in this conflict, but I'm at a loss as to what peace might be like with Hamas still in power.
It goes without saying I have identical concerns regarding the viability with the Israeli hard right.
I don’t think this succeeds at sidestepping the question, or even at muddying the waters, if you think about it. The value of preventing Hamas from doing bombings is essentially built into the question already — that is, any question like “how many civilians would you be willing to kill in order to kill a Hamas fighter?” is already taking into account whatever subjective assessment you may have of the Hamas fighter’s potential contributions to future suffering. (And whatever subjective assessment you may have of the value of a Hamas fighter’s life as another human being.) To take that question and pile on “but what about how bad Hamas is?” is at best double-counting, but more often is used to either round up the estimate of how bad Hamas is to infinity, or create some kind of recursive compounding formula where the net value of (taking) a life becomes infinite.
That's not even a very good piece of propaganda sleight of hand.
One of the labels attached to the original piece was "something, something, free Palestine". If the philosophical argument had used an historical conflict, or even a fictional conflict between green and blue, then analysis of the argument without referencing propaganda may have been possible.
Presented as it is, with the tag line "something, something, free Palestine". The piece is obviously carrying an idealogical bias, and the bias chosen suggests the philosophical argument is just the trojan horse carrying the message.
As l1 points out in this thread, there are ethical concerns involved in letting this propaganda message spread unquestioned.
Pointing out how bad Hamas is, at every possible opportunity, is a perfectly justifiable ethical project in it's own right.
A parent of a child murdered at the music festival, can say anything they like about Hamas, in fact they are effectively morally obliged to say unpleasant things about Hamas, and it's supporters.
Accordingly, I can criticise the morality of the post. To let it go uncommented on, is to neglect my obligations.
Pointing out The Crimes of Hamas serves to neutralise the political bias of the philosophical conjecture as presented.
The philosophical argument, if representative of an objective truth, should be presented without the rhetoric. Rhetoric makes everything subjective.
Okay, so I’m not saying you can’t point out how bad Hamas is? I just mean that if you’re going to engage with the question “how many kids can you ethically kill in pursuit of killing a Hamas agent”, pointing out the moral value of a Hamas agent’s life is redundant. Your real answer is that you don’t like where this question leads, not that there’s a real “philosophical” problem with it or a missing data point that wasn’t accounted for.
Yes, that's right. I'm so glad you have read my original post on this thread, thank you.
You can’t remove this from the context of current events because “how many purple kids can you be morally justified in maiming/killing as opposed to blue kids” is incoherent, and once you add a single salient detail like “suppose the purple kids were poor and live in a colonized territory where the colonizing faction refuses to let any governing body except terrorist groups hold organizing power” the comparison becomes too transparent anyway.
This is such a strange question. Hamas does not have the capacity to bomb an Israeli refugee camp, because of the massive power balance between them. You are trying to effectively justify something that is actually happening with a hypothetical you know will never attempt. In effect this can be used to justify any war crimes done by a more powerful state
And would Hamas order the Israeli politicians to evacuate or provide warnings before they bombed the Israeli camp?
I realize you are not addressing me, as I don't support the killing of civilians by any government or entity--but at this point, it seems like who can be killed by Israel is more flexible The rhetoric is dividing up into 'supports everything done by Israel' and 'does not support everything done by Israel.' Palestinians are completely dehumanized but anyone who does not support Israel--they can be killed by Israel with impunity. Rachel Corrie was killed and some other Brits and Americans have been. The World Central Kitchen people were directly assassinated as have some others been.
--Jewish Israelis who oppose Israel's actions haven't been killed but of disinterest when it comes to protection, as we see with those kidnapped by Hamas. They aren't protected and nobody cares. Jewish people in the diaspora are probably not exempted. They are described as enemies and not really Jewish, according to some.
For starters, WCK deaths were definitely not assassinations and more likely a result of misidentification.
Not sure how the person pulling the trigger could have misidentified the WCK logo they directly hit with their drone
Let's discuss when you are sure about things. Interesting development:
https://www.reuters.com/world/world-central-kitchen-fires-dozens-workers-gaza-after-israel-accuses-them-2024-12-10/
I’m sure such misidentification is impossible. Another interesting development is that Amnesty International has adjusted its position from “that’s probably genocide” to “that’s *definitely* genocide”
you are sure, unsure, sure,.
Another interesting development:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/amnesty-israel-rejects-parent-groups-report-accusing-israel-of-genocide-in-gaza/
Oh, well, if Israel says Israel isn’t doing anything wrong, they must not be?
This is an entirely one-sided argument that misses the crux of the disagreement. Irrelevantly few people are arguing that Israel is blameless or morally perfect in this conflict. The question is which side is slightly less horrible, and many people (correctly, I think) believe it to be Israel, since they have slightly less religious fanaticism and are closer to being a modern liberal and democratic country. Israel may value Palastinian lives at near 0, but at least it's not negative. The same can't be said in reverse.
You endorsed this method of reasoning yourself just a few weeks ago: https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/lesser-evilism-is-not-endorsing-genocide
These are the wrong questions here. The question of which nation is better or worse only comes into consideration if one society or the other has to be destroyed. There is no serious reason to think that being forced to fight more in line with the laws of war would destroy Israel. The right questions are:
1. Who is doing the crimes.
2. Who do we have the most influence over.
3. How can we use that influence to prevent the crimes.
It depends on what you mean by "support Israel", but I think you're using it in a nonstandard way. I supported Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, and for exactly the reasons you give, I generally criticized the left more than the right while doing it; those are the people who are more likely to listen to me.
A substantial fraction of Western politicians demonstrably believe that any given Israeli politician is morally pure to the point of deserving complete immunity from the basic functions of international law.
> The question is which side is slightly less horrible
No, it isn't. That's certainly the question that supporters of Israel are determined to redirect the conversation to at all costs, but it's not the important one.
Because we're not choosing between them- we're assessing the moral character and defensibility of Israel's actions. Hamas being worse- if they even are- is only indirectly relevant.
I think it comes down to the fact that Palestinian civilians actually have some culpability. They tend to support Hamas, and October 7th for one. Now obviously Palestinian citizens have much less culpability than actual Hamas terrorists, but I think it's also fair to say they have more culpability than Israeli citizens. Therefore you can't equivocate Israeli and Palestinian citizens.
This is why Netanyahu is being charged with war crimes - he has grossly violated human rights. As a Jewish individual in America, I can not make sense of that man's EGO. How he has managed to hold onto power and yet run a dictatorship with no consequences I would like to know.
Let's answer the question: "If Hamas soldiers were imbedded with that number Israeli citizens, would Israel do the same thing?" The answer is no, but not for the reason you assume. If the Israeli citizens were free to move about, they would escape to allow their military acccess to Hamas. If they weren't free to move, the Israeli citizens in that case would be _hostages_, and would require much more convincing to be put in the path of oncoming Israeli fire. Given the chance, they would attempt to overpower Hamas first, rather than meekly submit to being slaughtered. That would reduce the Hamas supplies and mean that even their death would contribute to the cause.
Also, Hamas is counting on our sense of proportionality to allow them to literally get away with murder. They attacked and then hid in such a way as to force anyone coming after them to inflict civilian casualties in large numbers, hoping Israel would back off. This is part of the reason why the Israelis in that poll are not very caring about civilian casaulties: they see Hamas, who were democratically elected by Gaza, do not care if their civilians die, so why should Israel back down to a clearly craven tactic?
What a pyschotic argument. Your argument is that Israel should be allowed to kill as many civilians as possible, otherwise Hamas get away with murder. One wonders how Hamas "get away" with murder when they've lost much more members during this confrontation than any of the previous wars combined, but let's put that aside for a moment.
If Israel is to be allowed to kill civilians with impunity to avenge their honor, why did the same logic not apply to Hamas? In their worldview, Israeli civilians democratically elected governments that constantly seek to displace and murder them. Why should they care about those Israelis killed in the music festival? Perhaps they should accuse Israel of being so craven that they're putting their civil populace so close to military objectives.
Or alternatively, you can oppose all killings of civilians than trying to argue your way into justifying massacres.
One should also keep in mind that the "under democracies the people share the blame of their governments' actions and thus become legitimate war targets" is literally the same logic Osama Bin Laden used to justify 9/11. So nice for Israeli defenders to use the same logic as terrorists in their quest to supposedly destroy terrorism
Thank you for your civilized criticism.
The thing you have to consider is the future of this conflict. As long as we have capable enemies that aim to eradicate us, we have to get rid of them, their intentions or their capabilities. Moral dilemmas that slow this process are ultimately immoral because they extend the conflict, causing more bloodshed in days to come.
The question is how, and I won't pretend I have the answer. I do think that current actions bring us closer to that state, and my short-term recommendation to the Gazans is to completely surrender. That would be the quickest way to stop suffering.
“I’d suggest that a good test for proportionality is this: would you still be doing it if it were your own civilians?” That’s just not even close to the correct definition of proportionality. Practically no conflict ever would fit your definition. Would America have bombed German military factories in WWII had it been American civilians working in there? No. Does anyone think that means these strikes violated the test of proportionality? No, that’s just silly. In fact, the bombing of German military factories was a critical part of the war effort, and plausibly did more than anything else to bring about German’s defeat.
>If that camp had been filled with thousands of Israelis plus some Hamas targets, instead of Palestinians plus some Hamas targets, do you think Israel would have done this?
Isn't it a big talking point among the antizionists that the IDF is so bloodthirsty that it is shooting their own people all the time? If so, the answer to your question is clearly yes. Even if not, the answer to your question might still be yes, what with it being a Manichean total war and all.
More to the point: hypocrisy is just not a very productive charge in this litigation. We all know it's a tribal conflict; nice rules for my tribe and cruel rules for yours.
> If, however, I broke into my neighbor’s house and stole the medicine, saving my child but condemning their two children to die, this would rightly be seen as appalling.
I dunno that I'd see it as *appalling*. Tragic, yes. And as an outside observer I would consider it my duty to stop you. But I wouldn't actually judge you. I would weep and say, you must follow your values to the end; I must follow mine; curse the world, that we must be at odds, when our ideal worlds (all three children live) are identical.
Of course, this has limited bearing on the Israel-Palestine analogy because I find a parent's unconditional, infinitely-valued love for their child entirely more sympathetic than similarly-incommensurate love of one's nation or race.
As a follower of your blog I agree with many of your ideas, but my hometown being near Levant and having to immigrate to Western Europe for a couple of reasons one being the influx of refugees to my country becoming overwhelming, I'm on Israel's side in this conflict even if they're being brutal. I'm saying this as a person who, less than a decade ago, would join public protests in a kafiyah. My train of thought is more or less as follows:
1- Gazans in specific, and Arabs in general aren't really contributing anything to arts and sciences compared to their population and total wealth.
2- There are so many of them leaving their countries' for better prospects abroad, an overwhelming ratio of those being undocumented and illegal; this hurts both the resident people of the countries' they immigrate to; and the people of the countries' they immigrate to, who want to legally immigrate to a third country.
3- Both where they are, (Gaza, Syria, etc) and where they immigrate to (Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Europe) they breed too fast for a population which is under any kind of stress, making their numbers even more overwhelming.
4- Them being so populous and fast breeding, their value per capita seems even lower. I cry for the individual tragedy, but from a macro point of view, if somebody cries about the couple hundred of thousand Levantine Arabs that are killed in Gaza; Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, etc can give over ten times that. There are people by ship loads just straining the economy where they go to. A couple hundred thousand isn't enough to be noticed in the sea of immigrants around.
5- There are countries wealthier than the ones they immigrate to with the same language and similar culture (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, etc) that they might immigrate to; but even those don't want them so other countries like Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon are stuck with them. EU actively pays those countries to keep them so they don't go further into Europe. They are just unwanted excess millions of human beings. This is sad and unfortunate, but it's the truth.
6- In comparison, Jews from many countries and Israel itself dominate for example Nobel laureates per capita or any kind of metric one can come up with, with regards to contribution towards humanity. (Note: I'm not a Jew so this is not me seeing my own community in a better light)
7- The advent of technology caused cheap, easy-to-build rockets have more range than before. This means the current status of Israel, among a sea of enemy countries, is becoming untenable. Thus, they need to pacify areas close to their population centers.
8- The attack by Hamas against civilians was the last straw that broke the camel's back and now Israel is in the process of tidying up the area a bit. As a human, when I consider the per capita worth to humanity of an Israeli civilian versus a Gazan civilian; very unfortunately the ratio is very ugly. They'll have to do what they need to do and that is their duty towards humanity.
9- They should have first strictly cut off all communication to and from Gaza before their operation so there was less outrage in the world.
10- It's difficult for me to come up with a ratio, but all areas from which major Israeli population centers can be reached by cheap, easy to build rockets need to be one way or other pacified. Divide this to the population of Israel and you'll find a ratio.
11- This all has been really difficult for me to swallow and accept, and it took me over a decade to digest it, but this is where I arrived.
>Indeed if, somehow by some dark magic, every time a Palestinian civilian died an Israeli civilian died, do you think Israel would be conducting its bombing campaign like this?
No. They would immediately surrender, and the US would immediately surrender to the Axis in similar conditions.
I'm not a philosophy guy, bear or otherwise, but I feel like once you get up to the scale of nuclear weapons you're talking about a very different type of morality given the various externalities. I'd maybe be more comfortable speculating on the ethics if we were talking about conventional explosives.
I do agree with the special duties necessarily being positive though, at least from a philosophical stand point. So, looking to provide a counter to your example, let's say an attack occured in which America for some reason dropped a MOAB or a MOP on Canada, let's say it dropped it on Rogers Centre where the Blue Jays play, and they were at capacity which is about 40,000 people. Are you saying that the Canadian government would then be duty-bound to drop a similar sized bunker buster on Yankee Stadium if they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt it would prevent the American government from attacking again?
Now, since this a hypothetical, let's just imagine the Yankees were playing the Blue Jays in the World Series in both instances. Yankee Stadium has a capacity of about 47,000.
See, if we're just considering ethics, neither government would be morally justified in dropping a bomb in either situation. Things get different if we start considering things from an international relations standpoint, and I'd be happy to pontificate on those circumstances, but I don't think that's the argument Philosophy Bear was making. Maybe if we were in the comments section on Foreign Affairs Bear.
Oh, sorry, PB, this comment was supposed to be in response to the one made by Alex Popescu elsewhere in this section.
Not sure I agree with the statement that special duties have to be of a positive character. Consider an example where country Y nukes an American city, in the process killing 100,000 American citizens. Country Y promises not to engage in further attacks provided that the US pays a one time payment of say 500 billion dollars. The US leadership turns down this offer and instead elects to respond by nuking a proportional target in response, killing a comparable number of citizens of country Y. Let’s just grant here for the sake of the argument that we know for sure that this nuclear response would deter country Y from nuking the US again.
Would the United States do this if the population of the target city was filled with Americans? Obviously not. No sane American leader would kill 100,000 of their own citizens in that fashion to avoid such a payment. But should the US therefore avoid nuking the enemy city in response? It seems like the answer is no. If the US government has a special duty to its citizens, and truly believes in the deterrent power of its nuclear arsenal, then it seems like it has a moral obligation to use its nuclear weapons in order to prevent the further exploitation of its population.
It would seem morally wrong for the US not to intentionally kill foreign citizens if doing so was necessary to protect its own citizens and preserve their liberty (i.e. from nuclear blackmail). Indeed I find the very idea of paying money (of any amount frankly) to country Y grotesque and immoral. While doing nothing (neither paying nor responding in kind with a nuclear strike) would just invite further nuclear attacks. Not sure what your intuitions here are, but I certainly wouldn’t want a pacifist administration in power in a hypothetical situation like this.
I appreciate your reasonable counterargument, but I think the analogy is flawed, because the reason that we intuit America shouldn't accept the blackmail is largely because of the incentives it creates.
If we remove those incentives by stipulating that the payment ends the matter forever, and that it remains secret so that no one else is incentivised to try the same thing, it seems clear to me that America should simply make the payment- and, in fact, that there's no real moral difference between nuking the Y citizens and the Americans.
I agree that the primary motivation is about incentives, and that the moral calculus changes in the scenario you brought up, but I’m not sure that really defeats my point. The main argument I was advancing is that in the example where the perverse incentive structure is at play (my example), we don’t think it reasonable for the government to nuke its own citizens just because it would help eliminate perverse nuclear blackmail incentives.
For example, if a bunch of terrorists in Philadelphia hijacked the city, and nuked Washington DC, it wouldn’t be reasonable for the government to respond by nuking Philadelphia. But it seems reasonable (or at least more reasonable) for the government to nuke Islamabad in case some Pakistani separatists seized the city from the control of the country and nuked Washington DC (the crimson tide scenario).
This assumes that all other things are equal of course, and that the US government doesn’t encounter elevated risks from the Pakistani as opposed to the domestic scenario (e.g. there isn’t an increased chance of WW3 starting in the Pakistani versus the domestic scenario).
Now granted there might be instrumental reasons to think the government is more in the right to respond with a nuclear strike in the foreign as opposed to the domestic case. For example, we might think that the government would have an easier time retaking Philadelphia using conventional means, then it would have in taking over Islamabad. Or that it might have to engage in a program of nation building that would be harder to implement in Islamabad as opposed to Philadelphia.
I’m not sure how much of a difference maker this really is though, and even if it constitutes an important difference maker, I think these instrumental reasons are in fact important to consider when we assess whether the government has special obligations to its own citizens that entail adopting a negative attitude to foreign citizens! After all, it might be reasonable to think that the US government shouldn’t treat foreign citizens differently for intrinsic reasons, but should treat them differently for instrumental reasons.
Could you reply again to this comment just to give me an unread notification so I remember to come back to this?
I need to sleep but I don't see any option to mark a notification as unread.
Certainly!