Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck

Nick Kristof’s Moral Preening Over Gaza

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof seems like a good man, a decent human being. He reminds me of many of the dedicated liberals I went to law school and college with, always gathering signatures to ban the bomb, end a war, fight pollution, cure cancer, save whales, get universal employment…you know the list. These are the people who tear up when they hear “Imagine.” They were classic liberals before the ethics rot of progressivism, and that’s Kristof too.

Today he issued a characteristic Kristof primal scream about the carnage in Gaza, and if there was ever a “Think of the children!” lament, this is it.

It is the fourth such column by Kristof since the Hamas attack, having earlier submitted “I’m Crying for All the Victims That Are Going to Suffer”, “We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit“, “We Must Not Kill Gazan Children to Try to Protect Israel’s Children.” The beating and bleeding heart of “What Can We Possibly Say to the Children of Gaza?” or, in another format, We Can’t Justify This Much Suffering, is in these sentences…

Over the years, I’ve covered many bloody wars and written scathingly about how governments in Russia, Sudan and Syria recklessly bombed civilians. This time, it’s different… as a taxpayer, I’m helping to pay for the bombs.

Gaza is also different from Syria and Ukraine, of course, in that Israel did not start this war. Instead, Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas in a rampage of murder, torture and rape. Any government would have struck back, and Hamas maximized the suffering of civilians by using them as human shields.

Yet military response is not a binary choice; it exists on a continuum. Israel, traumatized by the attack it suffered, elected to retaliate with 2,000-pound bombs, destroy entire neighborhoods and allow only a trickle of aid into the territory, which is now teetering on the brink of famine. The upshot is that this does not feel like a war on Hamas but rather a war on Gazans.

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Should the World “Stand By”UNRWA? Of Course Not…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is losing support and funding for a very good reason. Israel’s intelligence alleges that at least six UNRWA employees infiltrated Israel on October 7, including two who may have helped kidnap Israeli civilians to be taken as hostage. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Britain’s TalkTV, “UNRWA is perforated with Hamas.”

Last week, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said 12 UNRWA employees were implicated in the Hamas attacks. Of those, “nine were immediately identified and terminated,” one is “confirmed dead,” and “the identity of the two others is being clarified.” In response at least 15 countries, including the United States, have announced a halt to payments to UNRWA, pending further investigations. Officials have expressed fears that UNRWA could run out of money, endangering its humanitarian efforts in Gaza.

Too bad. That consequence should have been considered before allowing terrorism supporting U.N. employees to work for the organization.

The New York Times published an opinion piece by the foreign minister of Norway, one of the nations holding fast to its funding commitments. Espen Barth Eide argues that “we should not collectively punish millions of people for the alleged deeds of a few.”

I may have to fashion that time-honored excuse into a rationalization for the list. We read and hear versions of that entreaty constantly: it is a call to avoid just consequences for unethically run, untrustworthy organizations, agencies, societies, cultures and businesses. The only rational response to that argument is “Sorry. The organization is at fault, not those who make a reasonable and rational decision in response to it.”

No one should give funds to any organization that has proved itself untrustworthy, and UNRWA has. Apologists for the agency keep talking about “alleged misconduct,” but the U.N. acted quickly in firing twelve of the accused Hamas agents in the organization, almost certainly because the allegations were true. UNRWA obviously didn’t properly oversee its activities or properly vet its employees. The agency has has the same leadership responsible for this inexcusable botch; there is no way at this point for nation donors to have confidence that their money won’t be re-channeled into fighting Israel or other illicit projects.

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The President’s Deceitful Executive Order

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

If I were maintaining a “lie database” on Joe Biden (like the Washington Post does, among others, on Donald Trump) this would go right on it. And yes, I have not read a single analysis on any source that explains the deceitful quality of the President’s latest executive order. Unlike several of the others, this one is constitutional. It is just completely misleading, and deliberately so.

Yesterday, Biden ordered financial and travel sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. That explanation at the top of the New York Times story cleared up initial confusion on my part. “Biden issues executive order targeting Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians” was the headline at Axios, and similar headlines abound. Huh? Does Biden think that he, like Leonardo DiCaprio, is King of the World? What power does the President of the United States have over citizens of foreign nations who aren’t in the United States? The answer, for those of you praying that J Biden and the Democrats can save democracy from the previous President who abuses presidential power, is none. None. The executive order is grandstanding of the most cynical sort. Biden literally could issue similar fanciful orders “sanctioning” Parisians who annoy visiting Americans by being rude to them with as much effect.

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UPenn’s Anti-Semitic Lecturer

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That cartoon above, showing apparent Zionists (as in “Jews”) sipping Gazan blood like wine, is probably the most outrageous of political cartoonist Dwayne Booth’s works…I don’t know, maybe this one is..

All a matter of taste, I guess. The ethics question is, now what, if anything?

Booth is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication having joined the school as an adjunct faculty member in 2015. Political cartooning is certainly a valid courss of study. He currently teaches two classes, but since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, his off-campus cartooning has become especially controversial.

Booth publishes political cartoons under the pen name “Mr. Fish.” One of his classes teaches students the political cartooning art by exploring “the purpose and significance of image-based communication as an unparalleled propagator of both noble and nefarious ideas,” according to Penn’s website. “Work presented will be chosen for its unique ability to demonstrate the inflammatory effect of weaponized visual jokes, uncensored commentary, and critical thinking on a society so often perplexed by artistic free expression and radicalized creative candor.”

You can see more of Booth’s anti-Israel cartoons here. As far as I can determine, there is not sufficient basis for disciplining him or ending his association with the school. Political cartooning, though I personally view it as a crude, over-rated and deceitful form of editorial, is by nature extreme in device and approach. Booth’s own political opinions and obvious anger at Israel that he expresses as “Mr. Fish” or on social media are not relevant to his value teaching the political cartooning craft, and would seem to be squarely within the margins of both academic freedom and the first Amendment, provided that his commentary in class and on campus are not directed at Jewish students.

However, if a school, like the University of Pennsylvania, decided that, at a time when there are unusual tensions around the Gaza-Israel conflict its lecturer should cool his public fervor or consider another teaching position elsewhere, that would be a fully ethically defensible position. He’s right at the line now.

He might even have crossed it.

Ethics Dunce (Still!): Harvard University

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

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It’s quite possible, I think, that Harvard’s ethics rot is so entrenched and endemic that it can never be fixed, even by Barack Obama.

Here’s the latest revolting development. Harvard’s Interim President Alan Garber announced in an email that Professor of Jewish History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Derek Penslar will co-chair its new anti-Semitism task force, established to deal with the concerns of students, faculty, donors, elected officials and the public at large over demonstrations on the Harvard campus calling for the elimination of Israel and the murder of Jews.

Penslar is, shall we say, not the ideal candidate to encourage trust in the task force’s dedication to its task. He signed a letter in August accusing Israel of running a “regime of apartheid,” stating in part, “Without equal rights for all, whether in one state, two states, or in some other political framework, there is always a danger of dictatorship. There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid, as Israeli legal experts have described it.” He has also said on more than pone occasion that the problem of anti-Semitism at Harvard is being exaggerated, while quickly pairing it with Islamophobia. “Yes, we have a problem with antisemitism at Harvard, just like we have a problem with Islamophobia and how students converse with each other,” Penslar said this month. “The problems are real. But outsiders took a very real problem and proceeded to exaggerate its scope.” Jewish Insider reported that Penslar told the Harvard Crimson in late December that the amount of media focus on anti-Semitism at Harvard has “obscured the vulnerability of pro-Palestinian students, who have faced harassment by actors outside of the University and verbal abuse on and near campus.”

Being “Pro-Palestinian” is the exact equivalent of advocating the killing of Jews, and will be until the official mission of Hamas and other Palestinian groups is altered to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

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Unethical Quotes of the Month: The University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is not an encouraging situation.

Last week, the University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council met to consider, among other matters, a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on school’s campus. An on-campus event in November included a speaker who said, referring to the barbaric terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, that “October 7 was for many of us from the region a beautiful day.” No one at the event did or said anything to reject that sentiment. The proposed resolution stated, “We strongly condemn the antisemitic statements made during a Unity roundtable event No Peace Without Justice held on November 28, 2023.”

That wouldn’t seem too difficult to agree with or too controversial, would it? Yet the resolution failed to pass. The Faculty Council voted 32-29, with six abstentions, to table the resolution for the foreseeable future. Here are some of the most striking comments made by those who objected to the resolution:

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State Sec. Blinken’s “Two State ‘Solution'” to the Israel-Palestinians Conflict Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

[I couldn’t decide between John and Sidney Wang…]

Advocating or worse, insisting upon impossible, impractical “ideal” solutions to ethics problems isn’t just foolish and useless, it is unethical. EA has discussed the phenomenon, which fits into the broad and nauseating category of the “‘Imagine’ Fallacy,” frequently here. Calls for racial “reparations,”to ban fossil fuels to end wars, hunger, racism and the need for police are all in there, making gullible people more stupid still, animating naively idealistic students, and causing trouble.

The most recent and significant outbreak was unveiled this week at the ‘We Are the Woke’—-the World Economic Forum—conference of socialists, world government fans and progressives in Davos last week. Biden Secretary of State Blinken embarrassed himself with his formula for Middle East peace: a Palestinian state. Blinken actually told the assembled that Israel could only attain “genuine security” if it the Palestinians to have a neighboring, self-governing state, because having Gaza next door has turned out so well for the Israelis. “To make this possible, Israel must be a partner to Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people in living side by side in peace with Israel and as neighbors. And Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians’ ability to govern themselves effectively,” Blinken said, repeating what he has blathered in Israel.

Never mind that doing this now, as a response to the war started by the Hamas terror attacks, would reward terrorism, ensuring even more of it. Never mind that the Palestinians have been refusing to compromise on any two statearrangement that includes an Israel since 1947. Never mind that Islam commands that the faithful must “drive out those who drove you out” (2:191) and holds that any land that has ever been ruled under Islam at any time belonged to the Muslims must never be ruled by anyone else.

Naturally, as any idiot could have predicted, Hamas instantly spit on Blinken’s proposal. Its representative said, implicitly thanking America’s campus anti-Semites,

“I believe that the dream and the hope for Palestine from the River to the Sea and from the north to the south has been renewed. This has also become a slogan chanted in the U.S. and in Western capital cities, by the American and Western public. Palestine is free from the River to the Sea–that’s the slogan of the American students and the [students] in European capital cities. The Palestinian consensus–or almost a consensus–is that we will not give up on our right to Palestinian in its entirety, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea and from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat or the Gulf of Aqaba.”

This is not a new or surprising position, not at all.

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Scary and Unethical Reactions to the Hamas-Israel War on the Left and Right.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I don’t want to end the year on a down note, I really don’t, but…

The ugly head of anti-Semitism or, giving some of the reaction a more charitable spin, the callousness and lack of sufficient concern for the fate of Israel has been a revelation for me. I’ve never understood anti-Semitism, and being forced to acknowledge that this contagion that once was at the heart of the evil plunging the world into a catastrophic conflict is still thriving came as a shock this year. Over at Simple Justice, liberal (but not progressive) criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield neatly assesses the significance of the anti-Jew and anti-Israel sentiments erupting on college campuses, in the black community, in the Democratic Party and other places where the woke run free. He writes in part (today),

“….the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th and its ensuing war in Gaza has bubbled up the fundamental differences between a liberal democratic nation and the swell of simplistic authoritarianism of the young.

Others in my position have adopted the woke view of the world, some because they needed the validation that comes from espousing the popular views of progressives, and others because they were never quite as serious as I thought. Or hoped. But how many more marches by  the young and unduly passionate who justify terrorism and suddenly find rape and murder acceptable when done by those their tribe tells them to favor?

Will 2024 be an inflection point, where people finally come to grips with the fact that they’ve become the enemy they righteously believed they were fighting? At first, it seems there might be an epiphany, a realization that dividing the world into the oppressed and oppressors was an infantile way to deal with the many problems facing society. But since then, it’s become apparent that the young and unduly passionate have fallen back into their tribal ways, enjoying the fresh air of sowing misery on blocked highways for an irrational and destructive cause.

I never would have believed in my old man head that we would be back to open Jew hatred again. Yet here we are, and tens of thousands of people who would claim the mantle of progress fully embrace the end of Jews. Never in its wildest dreams would Hamas have believed that raping and beheading Jews would turn them into progressive darlings, but here we are.

Will this cause young progressives to recognize the error of their ideology? Will they realize that their sudden existential concern for Palestinians when they cared nothing about them until it meant they could openly hate Jews, proves that they are just another flavor of haters, of authoritarians, of racists?”

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Res Ipsa Loquitur: Much Appreciation To Rep.Stefanik For Validating My Estrangement From Harvard

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

One comment only: It is astounding and damning that a woman with the erudition of Harvard’s president could do not better than repeatedly resorting to pre-memorized, non-responsive, probably lawyer-crafted boilerplate in response to Stefanik’s questions.

It immediately remind me of former slimeball Congressman Gary Condit (well, he’s still probably a slimeball) in the infamous 2001 ABC interview about intern Chandra Levy, then missing. Condit was romantically linked to his intern, and considered a suspect in what was eventually found to be Levy’s murder. Every time Connie Chung asked directly about their relationship, Condit repeated the mantra, “Well, once again, “I’ve been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life. But out of respect for my family, out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship.”

This, naturally, made him look guilty. As it turned out, he wasn’t.

But President Gay is guilty of hypocrisy and cowardice.

Ethics Quiz: The Star’s Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Last month, actress Susan Sarandon became a deserving casualty of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck after she spoke at at a pro-Palestinian rally and said that American Jews feeling threatened by the pro-Hamas protesters, demonstrators and rioters (like the Cornell students who had to hide in their dorms)were “getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.” This epically stupid comment got her dropped by United Talent Agency, whose management is Jewish. As I noted here, “the agency concluded, probably accurately, that Sarandon’s comments diminished her value to them, and perhaps having a pro-terrorism client might deter more rational artists from seeking their aid.”

Apparently Sarandon, who has progressed through her romantic lead stage into and out of her mother role stage and now is getting grandmother parts isn’t quite ready to hang up her acting spurs, and decided that she had made a potential career-ending mistake that needed fixing. So she has now issued this apology:

Your first Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of December is…

Is her apology sincere, trustworthy, and sufficient?

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