Jerome Slater writes of today's Times:
It's almost beginning to look like the Times has experienced an
ephiphany. Not only is there increasingly skeptical coverage from its
news reporters, including some who until now have been largely
uncritical of Israel, but look at today's amazing Op-Ed page: three columns that are highly critical of Israel, including one by Rashid Khalidi! In fact, the online edition has an additional column by Roger Cohen, who writes: "I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions…."
How
should we feel about these developments at the Times? Should we
rejoice that it's finally beginning to understand? Of course. Or
should we be angry that it's taken this long for it to acknowledge the
obvious and begin to undo the enormous damage that it has done until
now. That too.
In any case, the Times–and most US critical
commentary–is well short of attaining full enlightenment. Kristof and
even Cohen repeat the by-now standard mantra, the essence of which is
"Of course Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas
rockets, but not by these methods." No, the proportionality issue
aside, Israel has no such "right." An oppressor is not engaged in "self defense"
when it uses force in order to annihilate resistance to its repression,
and that holds true even if the form of resistance–attacks intended to
kill civilians–is itself morally wrong.
The implicit assumption
of the critics who focus only on the "proportionality" issue is that
Israel has no choice but to use some kind of (proportional) force to
end the Hamas attacks. But of course it has other choices–it can
withdraw from Palestinian land, end the occupation and repression of
the Palestinians,
and offer all the Palestinians–including Hamas–the international
consensus two-state solution. If Hamas continued attacking Israel even
after such a settlement, then–and only then–would it have a true
"right of self defense."
