Yecchh.
If I were still teaching legal ethics at American’s law school, I would resign in protest over this.
“Remember Pearl Harbor and the members of the Japanese and German communities that suffered tragic losses in the weeks that followed that tragic day.”
“Remember 9/11, and the many who died that day, including the brave terrorists who sacrificed their lives for what they believed, and those American soldiers, Iraqi combatants and brave Taliban warriors who died in the months and years that followed.”
What needs to be remembered is that on October 7, not for the first time, Palestinian terrorists murdered innocent Jewish civilians in Israel as part of the long-standing mission of wiping that nation from the map. We need to remember the victims, the perpetrators of this crime against humanity, the motives behind this horrific act, and the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic forces in the U.S. and abroad that are enabling the terrorists by condemning and attempting to block Israel’s necessary military response.
Often in life, one has to pick a side in a conflict after careful consideration of the issues and values involved. If you don’t have the courage and integrity to do that and accept the consequences of your choice, then shut up and stay on the sidelines with the other weenies.
American University is teaching its students exactly the wrong ethical lesson.
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Added: And here is the fatuous, intellectually bankrupt “Imagine”-level twaddle from Barack Obama, insulting the intelligence of everyone who reads it:
“One year ago, Hamas launched a horrific attack against Israel, killing over 1,400 Israeli citizens – including defenseless women, children, and the elderly – and kidnapping hundreds more. Today, the prospects of peace seem more distant than ever. But we continue to hope for a return of all the hostages, an end to the violence, a rejection of hate, and a future in which both Israelis and Palestinians can enjoy the security and stability that most of them yearn for.”
Ethics Alarms 
I expect drivel from Obama, but I didn’t see anything particularly wrong with his statement. Was it the implication that most Palestinians yearn for stability and security? Am I missing some implied meaning in his remarks? It seemed moderately pro-Israel to me, or at least not anti-Israel.
My point is that it’s drivel, and a refusal to acknowledge reality, which is that the Palestinians don’t want “peace,” and don’t want Israel to be “secure”—and pretending that “hate” is going to be eliminated between two people who have hated each other for 80 years is insulting. Obama knows better. It’s just Hallmark card garbage. Leaders who make statements they know are nonsense are not trustworthy leaders. Deal with facts.
Regarding your take on Obama’s remarks: In 1945 it was a fact that the United States was at war with Germany and Japan. In 1960, it was a fact that no human had been to the moon. In 1980, it was a fact that the Berlin Wall existed. “Facts” can change with time, if we seriously consider the possibilities. Possibilities are just as much a part of reality as facts are.
You’re asking people to share your beliefs about what’s possible and what’s not, for the purposes of deciding what effort is worth making, and it’s not very persuasive. You’re telling people “Don’t Imagine,” which is just as wrong in its own way as “Imagine.” We need both imagination and critical thinking. You need to start learning how to say, “yes, if…” instead of just, “no, that’s impossible.”
Furthermore, when you say “the Palestinians” as if they all believe the same things or have the same power to stop Hamas, you reveal a flawed perspective on the situation inside people’s heads. I think this is an underlying blind spot. You’ve got a strong, clear grasp of ethical boundaries from your upbringing, but you haven’t taken the time to really appreciate what it would be like for a person who grew up in an environment of hostility and confusion, whose ethical boundaries developed weaker and fuzzier.
If you want people to take you seriously, you have to take them seriously. You have to temporarily suspend not just your intellectual understanding of what’s right and wrong, but your feelings about it as well, and see things from a destructive point of view. It takes practice and it’s often disconcerting, but I’ve found it an invaluable skill. If you want to teach a destructive person ethics, you have to rederive ethics starting from their perspective–their motivations and assumptions about the world. The same goes for epistemology, or anything else you want to teach them. (To be sure, the process usually involves deconstructing any mistaken assumptions that can’t be worked around, but you can’t just dismiss them as wrong.)
Maybe you should take a break from assuming what other people are thinking and practice looking for the ways in which the things they say could make some amount of sense, if only to them. For someone like you who’s accomplished so much apparently without that skill, it’ll make you unstoppable.
Both the Japanese and Germans became our allies after we ground them into the dirt in ways that would today be considered war crimes.
I imagine Israel may eventually be forced to do the same thing to achieve peace, and know for certain this is not the position Obama advocates.
I agree that it is ineffective and intellectually dishonest to advocate for peace without acknowledging the necessary existence of a best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), in the form of the proverbial big stick. Conversely, I assert that to effectively leverage the big stick, having some idea of what peace could look like is necessary. Otherwise the situation deteriorates into people hitting each other with increasingly large sticks.
Trying to be more reasonable than your cousin Cthulhu? Optimism and empathy only get you so far. When someone’s being destructive, the first priority isn’t to teach them ethics, but to stop the destruction. After the threat is neutralized, THEN you can work on reform. When Jesus encountered the sellers and money-changers at the temple, He didn’t lecture them about reverence and honesty, He drove them out with a whip.
It reminds me of when I’d get bullied as a kid, and the adults would have some sob story about the bullies’ home life. While on some level I could feel empathy for them, as far as the bullying act was concerned, their motivation was utterly irrelevant towards whether it was right or wrong or what to do about it The first priority is Israel’s safety. If they can defeat their enemies and leave some innocents alive who can be their friends, great. But no-one should put empathy above survival.
That all sounds reasonable to me. I’d like people to talk about the situation as you are doing, acknowledging both the short-term approach of bombardment and the long-term goal of some kind of peace. People need to be thinking about how to connect the two, not just defending or condemning the short-term approach.
Arguing about short-term approaches is a common trap I see human populations falling into. The short-term approach has drawbacks, but not doing it also has drawbacks. We can lower the stakes by figuring out how to set up a situation where we don’t have to choose any of those drawbacks. If nobody thinks about the long-term, they are stuck in a situation where it is guaranteed that someone will lose badly. Instead of building better options, everyone is spending all their effort trying to make sure they aren’t the loser.
The long-term goal isn’t going to happen on its own. It’s only when we have a plan for what peace looks like and how to make it happen that we have an exit strategy for the short-term approach. When Hamas no longer exists, Palestinians stop getting attacked and Israelis no longer have a reason to attack. Then we can move on to addressing less deadly conflicts.
Do recall that last year’s terror attack by Hamas broke an existing cease fire agreement. When do you think the “fool me once…” principle kicks in in international relations?
(I should also note that it takes more than grinding people into the dirt to make lasting peace. What happened with Germany after the Treaty of Versailles was very different with what happened with Germany and Japan after WWII.)
This is easily rebutted by the old line “You can’t get there from here.” If you can describe any possible way two cultures that have distrusted themselves for almost a century and an entire people without a single generation alive can suddenly sing Kumbaya and “Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah!” (Pop quiz: reference?), please do it. Japan and Germany became US allies after they rejected their leadership that had brought them to ruin. That’s one way these things change—someone wins. Obama isn’t talking about Palestinians coming around after being crushed. That’s why his message is worthless and insincere.
It is a straw man to resort to “not every Palestinian”—the vast, vast VAST majority of them do. Polls in Gaza show 75% support for Hamas. Your idealistic argument reminds me of the Berrigan brother who said that passive resistance might have stopped Hitler. Impossible solutions are not ethical. They are deceptive, and waste time…and hope.
“Let’s get together“
The original “Parent Trap”.
We have a winner!
And of all people who should be estopped from making such a cynical statement, it’s Obama. Against the vehement objection of Israel, he released billions to Iran as a sop to his party’s Muslim wing to promise (as if Iran can be trusted to keep deals worth “The Great Satan” not to nuke Israel until Obama was safely retired and cashed in. Iran used that money, as everyone predicted, to sponsor terrorism, including, in all likelihood, Oct. 7.
That’s a fair point.
That sounds reasonable to me. I don’t think I was clear on what I was criticizing. I’m not asserting that there must necessarily be a solution that doesn’t involve violence. I’m asserting that we need to make sure we’re thinking about how to eventually end the violence. All paths might lead through violence, but we have to have a destination in mind where people are living in peace. Otherwise, as per the insightful words of Yogi Berra, if we don’t know where we’re going, we might not get there.
Alright, I’ll concede that point. I’m still biased towards constructive psychological warfare myself, but sometimes that doesn’t prevent as much death as artillery does.
Palestinians have the power to push back on Hamas. They choose not to. Staying in buildings after repeated warnings to get away from the area is a tell. Allowing Hamas to put weapons and munitions in civilian areas suggests the majority are behind the effort to exterminate or subjugate all Jews in the region. Palestinian parents are not pushing back on the anti Israel narrative.
I am actually tired of the rhetoric that absolves the Palestinian people of any responsibility for the perpetual state of hostility toward the state of Israel by Hamas, Hebollah and the mullahs from Iran.
I believe that your recommendations to Jack regarding assumptions and what they are thinking are aimed at the wrong person. It always seems that only one side is responsible for listening and modifying what they must do. When I see you are also directing your ideas toward those who do not want to make any concessions then I might take your recommendations more seriously.
So that you make no assumptions about what I am thinking I will be blunt. I believe you enjoy establishing yourself as one who is an intellectual superior who works above the fray and who believes it is the responsibility of the stronger party to adjust their behaviors to accommodate a weaker but instigating belligerent.
Thank you for that information. I concede that point. I didn’t realize that the Palestinian general public had that level of complicity in Hamas’s continued operation.
Someone (maybe you) raised that same point that I wasn’t tackling the situation from the other side. It’s a good point. I started doing that with Thor until Jack banned him.
I was originally focusing on the regulars here to help people recognize and avoid driving away reasonably intelligent moderate progressives, because people here were complaining about there not being any among the commentariat. I figured it would be more efficient to work with the regulars to establish some reasonable standards of respect than it would be to help each newcomer acclimate to being snidely contradicted with a justification of “you should know this already.” (I have extensive experience in conveying “you should know this already” while explaining basic concepts without explicitly insulting someone’s intelligence. The trick is to ask the right questions. If they have decent answers, so much the better.)
I can understand why you’d think that. When one deals with idiocy on a daily basis, as I do, intellectual superiority is one of few sources of solace. However, it’s a dangerous thing to lean into lest I become unable to let go and allow it to start warping my perspective and decisions. I can’t allow myself to become defined by working above the fray, even though it’s the position that I keep finding myself occupying as I seek the most effective ways to end said fray one way or another.
I do support the philosophy of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” While I believe people rely too much on pain to teach other people lessons that could actually be taught more effectively without it, sometimes the lesson that people need to learn is itself the nature of pain, and how those who seek to inflict it on others should expect retaliation that escalates until they stop, and that this is not arbitrary, but a rational principle. If a measure is necessary and sufficient for a person to learn basic ethical behavior (and doesn’t harm innocents), I will likely support it even if it could be considered cruel and unusual. That said, wherever possible, I do still prefer that people survive to actually learn the lessons, even if maybe they would prefer otherwise.
Your response is well received. I too would like to see constructive dialogue between players. But when one side is committed to violence then violence is the only way to respond.
Based on your initial responses to some parts of my comment in which you say you were unaware of Palestinian civilians staying in buildings after numerous warnings to move out or allowing weapons to be stored on the premises of hospitals and schools I have to conclude you have been limited in your understanding of the tactics used by the Palestinians to win the propaganda war.
I do appreciate your insightful commentary but in this case your comment to Jack (who can obviously take care of himself) was one that seemed directed at anyone who did not share your belief that we should imagine a peace between the Palestinians and Israel through dialogue was intellectually stunted. Palestinian society is infected with culture that neither the Egyptians nor the Jordanians want in their countries. The area known as Palestine was once part of those two nations and they don’t want it back. Palestinian society is infected with a cancer that can only be eradicated through processes that totally cleanse the society of the mutant ideology.
I have no problem with the idea that we can “imagine if” but the if’s have to be achievable. When the “if” has been shown not achievable through dialogue because to get to a point of agreement one side must end its existence, no amount of additional dialogue will allow the “if” to be realized nor will reach the desired point of peace between the two because one side no longer exists.
They would have been better not to tweet anything.
Another “very fine people” moment, I guess.