A friend writes: Isn't Yglesias supposedly one of bold new generation of young american jewish bloggers who speaks truth to power on Israel? This is pathetic:
doesn't know the extent of these things, but both of the people
speaking here are describing orders that were given to groups of
people, not just individual instances of bad conduct. Needless to say,
there are atrocities and war crimes
associated with every war, so there's no indication that this was any
worse than any other military's conduct. But by the same token, there
are atrocities and war crimes associated with every war. A lot of the
stateside supporters of this Israeli action seemed completely blind to
that reality, as they imagined the IDF
somehow stepping pristinely through the most densely populated place on
earth and perfectly plucking out Hamas villains rather than, say,
gunning down old ladies. That, however, is not the way of the world.
And the result is a military operation
that's responsible for orders of magnitude more civilians deaths than
were the rocket attacks it was supposedly going to put a stop to.
Weiss response: I agree with Yglesias that every war has atrocities. World War II: Charles Lindbergh condemned the atrocities done to the Japanese by pilots he flew with in New Guinea; they pushed them out of planes, and worse. And the Japanese did hateful massacres and waterboarding in New Guinea. Abu Ghraib never grabbed me, because it was inevitable. It's easy for us to armchair war atrocities, never having gotten in there. That's why I'm against these wars, because they brutalize people.
My tipster is po'd. He responds: "yglesias is throwing his hands up in the air and saying, ah well, war is hell. it's
just what war is. You reach the same conclusion. all he would have
had to do is read that NYT quote to understand that even by its own
standards, Israel's war conduct is dramatically worsening. it needs
to be held to account for that, not greeted w/a "war is hell" shrug."
OK, man, but I think this is why I'm just about a pacifist. The first atrocity was sieging, blockading Gaza. The murder of the old lady only followed from that. The Good War was filled with atrocities. You valorize Israel's own standards. I don't care about their standards, I think occupation is hell and war is hell and you should do all you can to avoid it. That said, I agree, Israel is on a specially-degraded path right now…
