The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And so I can assure you that if -- I don't even care if I was a politician -- if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing. – Barack Obama
Let’s examine this statement - and the first sentence especially since it concentrates the premise upon which everything else follows.
Is it the first job of any nation state (and its political leaders) to protect its citizens?
On the surface, the statement seems uncontestable. Of course protecting one’s citizens is their first task.
But then, if this is a general principle, then it applies to any and all nation states. You cannot take a general principle and say that it only applies to one or some nation states and not others. As Glenn Greenwald points out today, Israel is responsible for “the ongoing four-decades brutal occupation [and] the recent, grotesquely inhumane blockade of Gaza.” So does not Hamas have the right to self-defense against Israel?
If you accept the premise - any nation state’s first job is to protect its citizens - then internecine and endless warfare can always be justified.
Moreover, as the back story to Israel’s attacks on Gaza, two things should be noted.
First, Israel’s real aim here, as analyzed by Ethan Broner in today’s New York Times (“With Strikes, Israel Reminds Foes It Has Teeth,”), is to redo with better results their failed 2006 attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s savage 2006 attacks that resulted in great loss of civilians’ lives ended up in a victory for Hezbollah, badly tarnishing Israel’s self-conscious image as invincible. Like the selective provocation that launched those 2006 attacks, Hamas’ rocket attacks are a pretext for Israel’s larger strategic goals to intimidate its adversaries and, according to a senior Israeli military official, to “shape a different and new security situation there.”
Second, Israel created the villains they are trying to destroy in the first place. Both Hezbollah and Hamas came into being because of Israel’s attempts to destroy and discredit the PLO.
Hezbollah arose out Yassir Arafat’s capitulation to Israel in 1982, leading directly to the Sabra Shatila massacre in which thousands of defenseless Palestinian women, children and men were slaughtered by Lebanese Phalangists, effectively escorted to the site by the Israeli Army under Ariel Sharon’s leadership (who was then Defense Minister). With Hezbollah came the dreaded suicide bombing tactic – the public raison d’etre for Israel’s ongoing war on Palestine and the rest of the Arab world - as a direct consequence of Israel’s infamy.
Hamas was encouraged and supported by Israel itself and Mossad in particular as an alternative to the PLO. As Israeli Prime minister Ehud Olmert said on February 12, 2007: "Netanyahu established Hamas, gave it life, freed Sheikh Yassin [Hamas founder] and gave him the opportunity to blossom."
Be careful what you wish for as you might get it, as they say.
You cannot destroy people’s resistance to oppression by stepping up your oppression of them. You only create more resistance, more anger and more frustration. That anger and frustration will find an outlet.
This is the problem with not only what Israel has been and is doing; it is also a problem with the premise upon which Obama sees the world. What he says above could very easily have come from Bush or Cheney’s lipless mouths.
These words are the underlying justification for the so-called war on terror.
The war on terror isn’t a war against terror. It’s a war of terror for empire and conquest, concealed under the guise of self-defense.
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What is happening to Gaza is an international crime.
I strongly agree with this statement. In light of that, I have a few questions:
1. Israel is one of many nations created after the Second World War. Which of these nations has been pressured by the world community to give back land to the people who lived there before?
2. Has any other nation been forced to give back territory won in a defensive war in exchange for anything other than total peace?
3. Hamas is a terrorist organization irrevocably committed to the destruction of Israel. It is similar to the IRA, the Red Brigades and Shining Path, among others. Is there any other nation that the world has pressured to deal with such terrorist groups in exchange for anything other than total peace?
4. The Jordanian government has killed many more Palestinians for reasons of state security than Israel has. Who has issued international condemnation of Jordan?
5. Many more people die each and every day in African countries than have died in the past 3 days in Gaza. Why is this less important than the deaths of Palestinians? Is it because they are black?
I hope that you can provide several examples of other countries that answer each of the 5 questions, since you appear to be suggesting that Israel do things that no other nation is required to do. As you say "if this is a general principle, then it applies to any and all nation states. You cannot take a general principle and say that it only applies to one or some nation states and not others."
You indicate that you think Israel is being singled out unfairly.
1. Israel is occupying lands that is not its to hold. That's why it's been told to give them back. By the way, the people being occupied didn't just live "there before." They lived there before and live there now. Since you want some examples of other nations, let's start with Iraq that invaded Kuwait (after being informed by the US ambassador to Kuwait that the US would not gainsay it), leading to Bush I starting the first Gulf War.
2. Why is every war that Israel wages a "defensive war?" You say that you accept the general principle of nations being able to defend themselves but you have missed the underlying point - that this slogan can be used by any and all parties and exceptionalism, which is what you are arguing for, can therefore enter by the backdoor.
3. "Hamas is a terrorist organization irrevocably committed to the destruction of Israel." Hamas, as I point out in my essay, was created by and encouraged by Israel. Hamas and Hezbollah are the result of the very same logic being employed, as we speak, by Israel in its attacks on Gaza. Terrorism, whether practiced by anti-state terrorists (such as Al-Qaeda) or by state terrorists (such as Israel or the US in its actions in Iraq or Afghanistan) is designed to force people to comply with the wishes of those employing terror. IT IS WRONG IN BOTH CASES. According to your logic, Amy, it would seem that terrorism wielded by Israel is OK, but not when used by others against Israel.
4. Jordan killing Palestinians is just as wrong as Israel doing it. Does the fact that Jordan arguably has gotten less condemnation for it mean that this somehow leaves Israel off the hook?
5. The fact that more Africans die everyday than are being killed in the Gaza by Israel's actions doesn't make what Israel's doing somehow more right. Injustice wherever it occurs must be condemned by people of conscience. Your logic means that it is somehow less egregious because there are fewer innocents being killed.
Yes, I do. That's why I asked for specific examples of other countries held to the same standard. As far as I can tell, you couldn't think of even a single one.
"Since you want some examples of other nations, let's start with Iraq that invaded Kuwait (after being informed by the US ambassador to Kuwait that the US would not gainsay it), leading to Bush I starting the first Gulf War."
That's not an answer to my question, since it is an example of a sovereign nation attacking another sovereign nation without provocation of any kind. It is not what I asked about, an example of a nations created after the Second World War pressured by the world community to give back land to the people who lived there before.
Instead of even one example, you merely offered excuses why Israel should be treated differently than all other nations, promptly violating the maxim that you stated:
"if this is a general principle, then it applies to any and all nation states. You cannot take a general principle and say that it only applies to one or some nation states and not others."
Amy - your comments and mine are going to go past each other since you apparently regard whatever Israel does as justified. I, on the other hand, do not premise my views on the defense of any specific state or states for that matter. If a state is carrying out atrocities, war crimes, or crimes against humanity, as Israel is now doing - and has been doing to the Palestinians - then I will condemn them for that. If another state or group is committing injustices or crimes, where ever that may be, including those committed by anti-state terrorists, then I have and do condemn that. Any person of conscience must do the same.
As Chris Hedge's points out in his newest essay "Party to Murder:"
"The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. A family that loses a child in an airstrike does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a 'martyr'?
"The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel."
The whole essay can be found at worldcantwait.net.
What Amy can not understand is that just because Israel was created by an unholy alliance of terrorists in the Irgun and Hagana with the structures of world imperialism (as embodied in the UN) following the victory of the USA in WWII does not make the theft of that land and the forced diaspora of the Palestinian people just.
In her pathetic attempt to justify murder, by Zionists using my tax funding, she points to other places in the world where genocide is taking place and blames the left for not confronting it.
But her admiration of first world standards is itself an aspect of the creation of the genocide that is currently taking place in areas like the Congo where battles over resources coveted by the first world has resulted in millions of deaths in the last ten years. But not a squeak from the millions in the first world who's hybrid Prius, cell phones and laptops are dependent on those resources.
Bottom line is the blood letting in Palestine just like the genocide in battles over resources will continue until capitalism is over thown in the first world and the authoritarian theocratic states are replaced with democratic workers republics throughout the near east. As long as the Israeli workers ally themselves with Zionism and imperialism they will not be able to forge the type of unity with Arab workers needed to build a just and peaceful world. A new leadership is needed that can challenge and replace the Zionists, the theocrats of Hamas and the corrupt leaders of the PLO by uniting Jewish and Arab workers against the capitalist class. The task is daunting but the only other alternative is endless war.
The American Jewish leadership has allied itself with imperialism and has condemned its settler class to the role of self righteous victim becoming the victimizer. The alienation of the Jewish people due to this role as the shock troops of imperialism in the middle east is more destructive to our people's soul than the generations of abuse that we have had to suffer as a people. When we justify murdering children we have indeed lost our soul.
"When we justify murdering children we have indeed lost our soul."
Couldn't put it better myself.