Jack Ross writes:
Here's the money quote from the New Republic/Dissent piece on Gaza by just-war theorist Michael Walzer:
The commentators and critics using [the word disproportionate] today, however, are not being
cautious at all; they are not making any kind of measured judgment, not
even a speculative kind. "Disproportionate" violence for them is simply
violence they don't like, or it is violence committed by people they
don't like.
The running joke in the foreign policy community about Walzer's "just war theory" is that he isn't interested in just wars but nice wars. A nice war is one that meets certain political/aesthetic criteria, in other words a war that the left can feel good about, irrespective of whether or not it is a just war. Walzer is brazenly calling the kettle black here, accusing the pro-Palestinian side of confusing justice with "niceness" on the issue of violence and proportionality. Of course, the nice/just dichotomy applies to Israel more then anything else.
'How many civilian deaths are "not disproportionate to" the value of defeating the Nazis? – Walzer
This is the money quote — Walzer has linked Hamas with Nazis. So obviously, anything goes against pure evil.
The analogy goes farther. Walzer poses the hypothetical question of bombing a Nazi munitions factory and killing some civilians as collateral damage. The reality was different. Thanks to Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, when the RAF ran out of military targets in Germany, they began firebombing cities such as Dresden for the sole purpose of terrorizing civilians.
This unacknowledged Allied war crime, repeated by the U.S. in Japan, rendered the WW II war crimes trials nothing but victors' justice. That conclusion is reinforced by the lack of war crimes trials today for Bush and Blair, who committed the 'supreme offense' of unprovoked aggression. Israel as a U.S. patron state receives vicarious protection under the U.S. umbrella of auto-impunity.
From Reuters –
LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. is seeking to hire a merchant ship to deliver hundreds of tonnes of arms to Israel from Greece later this month, tender documents seen by Reuters show. The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) said the ship was to carry 325 standard 20-foot containers of what is listed as "ammunition" on two separate journeys from the Greek port of Astakos to the Israeli port of Ashdod in mid-to-late January.
The tender for the vessel follows the hiring of a commercial ship to carry a much larger consignment of ordnance in December from the United States to Israel ahead of air strikes in the Gaza Strip. A German shipping firm which won that tender confirmed the order when contacted by Reuters but declined to comment further.
The ship hired by the MSC in December was for a much larger cargo of arms, tender documents showed. That stipulated a ship to be chartered for 42 days capable of carrying 989 standard 20-foot containers from Sunny Point, North Carolina to Ashdod.
The tender document said the vessel had to be capable of "carrying 5.8 million pounds (2.6 million kg) of net explosive weight", which specialist brokers said was a very large quantity. The ship was requested early last month to load on December 15.
In September, the U.S. Congress aproved the sale of 1,000 bunker-buster missiles to Israel. The GPS-guided GBU-39 is said to be one of the most accurate bombs in the world. The Jerusalem Post, citing defence officials, reported last week that a first shipment of the missiles had arrived in early December and they were used in pentetrating Hamas's underground rocket launcher sites.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L9736369.htm
————
Obviously, nobody in Congress has read Chalmers Johnson's 'Blowback.' Future acts of terror against U.S. interests, bought and paid for by Congress, as it provides the American bullets to kill Palestinian babies.
What Walzer starts here, he cannot finish, but the finishing is important, urgent even. Our initial responses in World War Two were within the realm of "just," but we soon overstepped those boundries in a dramatic fashion.
By attacking Germany, a country that had not invaded us nor sought war with us, we made a bad situation worse, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives (mostly Germans) and, it could be argued, the Holocaust. Our desire to see Germany defeated, driven by Jewish pressure in Washington, had the ironic result of destroying Jews in Europe.
This is the sort of lesson that neither Walzer nor Israel are likely to learn.
Walzer makes much more rational sense than Ross.
He's actually thought about this stuff.
"Nice wars". What a passive agressive snide comment.
"The tahdi’a [ceasefire] was violated by both Israel and various Palestinian organizations. While these infractions produced occasional fatalities — all 28 of them Palestinian — Israeli sources concur that Palestinian violations were few and less frequent as time went on. According to a December 2008 publication by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, for example, the number of Palestinian projectiles launched from Gaza into Israel decreased from 2,278 during the six months before the tahdi’a to 329 during it, with most of the latter being fired after hostilities resumed on November 4. A good proportion of the remainder, furthermore, were fired during the first 10 days of the truce while Hamas acted to establish control over organizations that did not countenance an agreement limited to the Gaza Strip or had other reasons for undermining the tahdi’a.
Thus, according to statistics disseminated by the Israeli consulate in New York, the sum total of Palestinian projectiles launched between July 1 and November 1, 2008 stood at 15 mortar shells and 11 rockets with no fatalities recorded. While by no means 100 percent secure, the southern Israeli town of Sderot was hardly living under a ceaseless rocket barrage.
Nevertheless, Israel and Egypt refused to lift the siege, spurning Hamas’ key demand and primary incentive to enter into the deal. Indeed, although the blockade was eased for many (but by no means all) basic goods, imports consistently fell below Palestinian requirements and exports remained non-existent. More to the point, according to the International Crisis Group, Israeli officials said that “they did not intend to open the crossings fully and anticipated this would be a serious bone of contention.”"
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero010709.html
Hats off to the great Jim Haygood, who continues to provide incisive and relevant commentary as witnessed in his level-headed comments to this post. Please note that Richard Witty, cognizant of the total lack of a substantial rational argument in this matter on the side of Zio-spinners, and waiting patiently for new instructions from Hasbara Central, finds in his arsenal only two usable tools: 1) a hissy fit and 2) name calling
PM
I'd call that "taking on" Michael Walzer in the same way a seventh grader takes on Shakespeare.
Paul,
Calling my comments "name-calling" or"hissy-fit" is a stretch.
The reality is the same as its been for a long time, and the solution similarly.
To the short-term questions of shelling and normalization of borders with Gaza.
1. PERMANENTLY, no shelling of civilians by Hamas and supporters
2. Normalization of borders
Its simple.
Long-term, the solution seems obvious to me as well:
1. 67 borders with day in court for all Palestinians with legal claims to land (and all Jews with legal claims to land in Palestine)
2. Perfection of individual settlers' title to land by compensation, and/or Palestinians that have settled on formerly Jewish owned land.
3. Funded option for settlers to return to Israel if they prefer.
4. Right of residence and citizenship in each state to those that swear to comparable allegiance oaths to the state that US naturalized citizens must.
Jim Haygood is a US national asset worth more than the whole nest
of banalities in the US congress and MSM.
Talk about no end-game.
Witty, what would be the criteria for stating, and for validating, a legal claim to land? Would Crazy Horse recognize them? Geronimo?
But for now let's wait quietly like synagogue-mice for a few weeks or months so that Israel can kill another 1,000 to 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza, right Richard?
PM
Obama recently squeaked out for public consumption essentially that once he gets into office he will deal more directly with the Pals & the humanitarian crisis. This was a bone thrown to his more radical followers on this issue–and a clear signal to Israel that it and BushCo can keep beating the s— out of the Pals until then. We're sending Israel more arms as I type. By deduction, the joint elite plan,
as shown to the world in the recent resolutions supporting Israel passed overwhelmingly by USA Congress, is the hope, and probability, give the Goliath v tiny David reality, as show by the
death ratio, that by the time Obama takes his seat HAMAS will bee in the mood to settle on Israel's terms. But I imagine Obama's
approach once in the orifice, and standing diplomatically atop the
giant heap of Pal bodies, will still have a problem with the tunnels, the blockade. He's not stupid enough to ignore for public
consumption the Gaza ghetto reality, so I imagine he will try to
split the baby by urging UN, NATO, or just American military police monitoring of
relatively open Gaza borders, coupled with more aid to Israel and even a little to Gaza. Methinks Israel will accept this if the monitors on the ground are only American GIs & a handful of
diplomats. That way Israel trades ever growing universal bad image for a lower
level of continued occupation.
"Israeli officials said that “they did not intend to open the crossings fully and anticipated this would be a serious bone of contention."
Why must we repeat ourselves here?
Exactly. They are counting on American goy rubber-stamping. As between the typical goy and the typical jew–nothing but Jimmie breakfast sausage & scrambled eggs.
'Walzer makes much more rational sense than Ross. He's actually thought about this stuff.'
Oh he's given it some thought alright. Might even have put in a few all-nighters on the No-Doze, but his thought is about obscuring the truth of the issue rather than illuminating it (no wonder you like him Richard)
His effort is that of a partisan, not an independent mind coming to a balanced conclusion. He is in his way essential to the brutal colonialism of Israel, providing a speciously respectable philosophical cover for mass murder of civilians. His weapon is his reputation as a thinker (inexplicable until you remember which side he's on – he owes his prominence to the same forces Tom Friedman or David Brooks do) and this weapon smooths the path or picks up the pieces for the guns and bombs of the IDF. Such apologist intellectuals stain the pages of every nation's history books.
Tha black academic robes don't show the blood like khaki does, but it's there all the same.