Clearly Israel’s behaviour is evil and counterproductive, but nevertheless, this whataboutery is sickening.

Israel’s attacks do not stop those of Hamas, and the converse is even more true: Hamas attacks do not stop those of Israel, they provoke more.

Israel’s attacks have little defensive effect (in terms of reducing the enemy’s military capacity) they will kill few soldiers and destroy few weapons. Hamas attacks have no defensive effect whatever.

Israel values Israeli blood higher, and so does Hamas – it is happy to use rockets that miss, that fall short and kill Palestinians, and to provoke reprisals.

What is Hamas fighting for? Will you get a military victory with rockets that cannot hit a strategic target? No. All you get is reprisals and good PR. Blood is cheap and PR is valuable.

Condemn Israel for its actions, condemn it for “enabling” this delinquency, but Hamas are the greater villains. Don’t oppose evil by siding with greater evil.

Personally, I’d prefer it if the people spouting obfuscatory guff about this subject just stuck to shouting The bombing must continue/stop because the side I support are the Goodies, and them other ones are the baddies.

It’d be every bit as insulting to the intelligence, but it has the advantage of a) brevity and b) not directly calling anyone who disagrees a genocidal nazi.

Don’t oppose evil by siding with greater evil.

Where do you see him do that?

Nice to see Guido is then offering financial support for one group of killers:

http://www.order-order.com/2009/01/on-brink-of-ground-war-on-hamas.html

Sunny, fair cop. Our brains are all wired, tribally, to see selective condemnation as selective support for the other lot. This is half the reason that it is usually impossible to debate this subject.

Having said that James does engage in apologetics for Hamas, mostly around the point where he says he won’t. Eg:

“What I am interested in is how a civilian based battle force could do anything but surround themselves with other civilians.”

Er, they could stop being a “battle force” altogether, which is already a twisted euphemism. They have no military objectives, they fight and kill for show.

It is fairly blatant that the IDF, which is causing the overwhelming majority of suffering and death (300+ to 1 says it all, really)

A point I make here.

An interesting variant on this argument is the traditional “They started it” argument. Hamas breached the ceasefire, therefore Hamas had it coming. Unfortunately the blockade began on November 4th, with the Israelis thus ending the ceasefire prematurely.

Indeed Israel had been killing Palestinians and stealing their land for decades before Hamas was founded.

@1: Condemn Israel for its actions, condemn it for “enabling” this delinquency, but Hamas are the greater villains. Don’t oppose evil by siding with greater evil.

Indeed so. Having said that, neither side comes out of this decades-old struggle with much moral credit.

@4: Nice to see Guido is then offering financial support for one group of killers

Has Guido ever written anything worth reading in his entire life? (I ask because I don’t read his blog)

[troll]
International Jewish finance runs the USA and the weston powers Jews I beleive our taught an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth so are less than human in my view with that attitude.

Is it true Israili soldiers turned their guns on israili youth for protesting against their bombing of Gaza?

Christians are the foot soldiers for their masters in Israil England was never under threat from weapons of mass distruction it was a war to protect Israil I am ashamed to be English

I certainly think that Israel cause is not helped by some of its more vocal supporters. Their absolute moral certainty in the righteousness of their cause and of Israel’s actions coupled with their absolute refusal to concede that the Palestinians have even the slightest of grievances is pretty unpleasant.

That doesn’t mean that all of their arguments are neccessarily wrong though. For example much is made of the ineffectiveness of the rockets fired by Hamas but that doesn’t mean that it is not extremely frightening for those on the receiving end day in day out. Nor should the intent behind the rocket attacks be ignored – what would hapen if Hamas got its hands on more powerful and accurate missiles? Therefore I can’t see how Israel doesn’t have the right to try to retaliate against such attacks, even we might argue about what constitutes a proportionate response.

Margaret – your charm and erudition is indeed a wonder to behold.

Having said that James does engage in apologetics for Hamas, mostly around the point where he says he won’t.

I don’t see why condemning the Gaza attacks automatically puts you in the ‘supporting anti-semitic terrorists’ camp. It’s a big leap of faith isn’t it… unless you have an ulterior motive to smear anyone who criticises even in the least.

Why, for example, don’t people such as Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes who blindly support Israel have to justify whether they support the mass-murder of random innocent civilians?

Is it a coincidence that every conflict where people on the right are happy justifying ‘collateral damage’ just happens to be when Muslims are involved? When that collateral damage involves whites, then suddenly they find their moral outrage.

Er, they could stop being a “battle force” altogether, which is already a twisted euphemism. They have no military objectives, they fight and kill for show.

Well I was not correct when I called Hamas a “battle force”, no. I was referring to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Very sloppy of me, my error, sorry about that.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7808825.stm

“The UN has warned that Palestinians in Gaza are facing a serious health and food crisis, as Israeli air strikes continued for a seventh day.”

How does this constitute a military action against Hamas? Unless of course you think Israel has a right to kill as many Palestinians as it can until Hamas decides it’s enough and stops the rockets?

The rockets haven’t stopped. Why won’t you learn?

[troll]
Cablamat – The Israelis bought the land usually from absentee Landlords to whom it was given under the Ottoman Empire. There were 700,000 people in the region at the time of the first world war and Palestine as Western style nationality yet to be conceived .

Its odd I have found myself becoming pro Israel having previously been indifferent simply from the type of people that hate them. The problem with this Jew-o-phobic article is that it forgets we are precisely where Hamas want us to be , not where Israel would choose. The section that tries to deal with this problem is incomprehensible sophistry
Ever since Hamas siezed control it and its Tehran masters have encouraged activists to lob bombs at Jewish children. They did start it which is not a childish point when otherwise we would have nothing to talk about . It has done its best to undermine Mahmoud abbas because it wants causalities . It locates its military hardware hidden in population centres precisely so as to offer its win up as a sacrifice for greedy consumption by the bleeding hearts and left wing opportunists ( whose only real interest is Anti America ). Of course there are options what are you talking about ?Put it somewhere else …
The IRA , also much loved by the left , were a vile organisation but they would not have offered their own up as bloody propaganda . Furthermore Hamas does not want any sort of plausible settlement it is an obstacle diplomatically and Barrack Obamah will be hoping it gets squashed to give him any chance of success in settling the region. Hamas are interested in conflict for wider reasons .
It is pointless to count up numbers. These causalities are actually quite small. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have killed 189 people in four days of raids on villages in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo last week,- .- Cholera caused by nutty black Marxism claimed another 1400 in Zimbabwe . Where is the outrage ? On the same blank sheet of paper where outrage at the Muslim genocide in the Lebanon was not written a skirmish that got through a Lebanon every ten days.
So why is it the left are so uniquely concerned about Israel`s defence , a country which given its situation is heroically civilised . By the count up method the Allies were the moral inferiors of the Nazis a soldier the moral inferior of a murderer . A little bit of friendly action was not an option , a few clipped ears , not on the table ?

There has been article after article on this site attacking the Jews no pretence of balance and it is utter childishness to pretend this is not support for aggressive Islam and Tehran financed terrorists . I am at a loss as to where this loathing for the Jews comes from. Apart from a few extremist Hamas sympathisers I am yet to meet anyone who has much condemnation for Israel.

I agree with those saying Israel’s actions are grossly disproportionate but I’m buggered if I know what a ‘proportionate’ response is. It’s a crime to bomb civilians but it’s a crime to fire from a civilian area. What’s Grayling have to say on the matter?

‘I don’t see why condemning the Gaza attacks automatically puts you in the ’supporting anti-semitic terrorists’ camp’

No, even ignoring those who just hate Jews, there are two distinct groups in the UK who would condemn such attacks:

1. those who hate war, and want there to be peace between Israel and its neighbours.

2. those who hate injustice, and want a military defeat for Israel to precede any such peace. This group can be further split into those who want a major, minor or total defeat: there is a lot of scope for debate as to who is in exactly which faction.

The issue is that the first group can do nothing that would promote their cause: about the most the UK could do is offer a country house in which the two sides could meet, and that’s hardly something Brown would have to be pressured into making available.

The second have a perfectly plausible plan of action:

1. remove UK diplomatic support for the world embargo on arms to Gaza
2. initiate a boycott of UK and EU supplies to the Israeli military and economy
3. remove UK military support for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, in the hope the successor regimes join an anti-Israeli alliance

Most of the activists and organisers will be working to this agenda. You can see this in how their propaganda constantly stresses the ineffectiveness of Hamas weaponry, and how things would be much fairer if they had proper cluster bombs: hardly a line you would expect a typical anti-war group to take.

But it is always a mistake to think that just because someone is involved in an organisation that has an agenda of promoting military conflict, they are aware of that organisation’s agenda, let alone share it.

“Th srls bght th lnd slly frm bsnt Lndlrds t whm t ws gvn ndr th ttmn mpr. ”

Before NM’s transmission was scrambled (a policy I strongly disagree with) it outlined the reason I imagine the Guido Fawkes Right is in Israel’s camp: because the left aren’t and, above all, they really hate the left.

Soru: Stop smearing, start arguing.

I didn’t see a single piece of “propaganda constantly stresses the ineffectiveness of Hamas weaponry” at the protest I went to. I didn’t see a single shred. You can read my write-up here:

http://www.scriboergosum.org.uk/revamp/2041

Were there lunatics? Of course. Jews are the favourite target of conspiracy theorists. It was fairly obvious there would be there some and yes, there were some. A total of four unhinged nut-jobs I encountered. Out of hundreds. Possibly over a thousand, I showed up late.

And none of them even really talked about Hamas.

I did not see a single bemoaning the inefficiency of cluster bombs. That is a pretty severe claim which all of your own conspiracy theorising depends upon.

And as for the nonsensical suggestion that there is nothing which can be achieved by war-haters: international pressure. America produced and paid for the bombs being dropped. Israel could exist without their funding, but operations of the nature they are currently embarking on would be effectively impossible.

The hardest type of soft power is cash.

And as for your bizarre little fictional list 1) and 2) have been attempted but I have no clue what you are talking about when you mention 3). Troops out of Iraq? Obviously that’s a long standing aim. But Saudi Arabia? That’s not even on the radar.

I really don’t really know where you got that from…

‘And none of them even really talked about Hamas.’

Isn’t that kind of my point? How can you have a genuine anti-war demo without even mentioning one of the two sides in the war? Especially the one many third-party observers judge to have kicked off it’s latest phase?

‘I did not see a single bemoaning the inefficiency of cluster bombs’

I count 3 on this thread alone, including the original blog post. It is never ‘too many people are dying’, always ‘the wrong people are dying’. When people repeat these talking points about ’300 and 1′, they may not realise the implication; that doesn’t mean it is not there.

The world arms embargo on Gaza is a pretty rare and fragile thing. There are not many regimes noone will, or can, sell arms to – the Taliban, Saddam, Suharto, Pol Pot, apartheid SA, Mugabe all had or have a queue of suppliers. It is such an obvious low-hanging fruit, how could there not be a political movement organised to disrupt it?

‘America produced and paid for the bombs being dropped. Israel could exist without their funding, but operations of the nature they are currently embarking on would be effectively impossible.’

Many would say it is unwise for Israel to conduct such operations, but wisdom can’t be induced. Incapacity, as is my entire point, plausibly could be.

The consequences of disabling one side in a balance of power in that way is something that, I suppose, may be obvious to only some people only in hindsight.

But even if you were persuaded it was a good idea, what on Earth would make you think that it is an easier political task to organise to somehow persuade america to disarm Israel than it would be to influence Hamas to commit to a goal of a just peace?

This is the silence that speaks volumes. Pointless moral condemnation is irrelevant – where is the plan, where is the course of action, that would attempt to influence Hamas to change it’s strategy by one iota?

It is such an obvious low-hanging fruit, how could there not be a political movement organised to disrupt it?

Ermm.. yeah, we’re all secretly in the pay of Hamas, with the aim of disrupting that arms embargo so Hamas could bomb Israel. Because, going by our editorials, that’s something we really really want to see.

Soru, I think you should send in these ideas to Standpoint magazine. They’d love this conspiracy rubbish.

Isn’t that kind of my point? How can you have a genuine anti-war demo without even mentioning one of the two sides in the war? Especially the one many third-party observers judge to have kicked off it’s latest phase?

If there was a Palestinian state perhaps there’d be a Palestinian embassy to protest.

I count 3 on this thread alone, including the original blog post. It is never ‘too many people are dying’, always ‘the wrong people are dying’. When people repeat these talking points about ‘300 and 1?, they may not realise the implication; that doesn’t mean it is not there.

What the fuck are you talking about? The implication is that one military force is clearly causing a lot more damage than the other. Due to the superior force which the IDF can marshal it can cause a huge amount of death that Hamas’ military wing quite simply is not capable of.

And that isn’t just a responsibility issue, it isn’t something abstract or purely worth considering upon the hypothetical level. People are dying. That is something happening, an event occurring.

The only way to make the set of deaths inflicted by one institution over another institution is by arguing via deontology, something I identify explicitly and attack in my post. How exactly is it possible to stage a utilitarian case for 300 deaths being of less importance than less than ten, Soru?

Now I had no idea I would have to spell out something quite this rudimentary, but it seems that I over-estimated you: if the one military establishment are killing far, far more innocents than another military establishment then we should emphasise opposition accordingly. The people causing the most damage need to be stopped most.

Now if you can get from there to “Oh no, jews aren’t dying!!” then please do it visibly, because I’d find it pretty impressive to watch.

The world arms embargo on Gaza is a pretty rare and fragile thing. There are not many regimes noone will, or can, sell arms to – the Taliban, Saddam, Suharto, Pol Pot, apartheid SA, Mugabe all had or have a queue of suppliers. It is such an obvious low-hanging fruit, how could there not be a political movement organised to disrupt it?

All of those groups are notoriously susceptible to public protest and “world community” opprobrium. Mugabe in particular.

The consequences of disabling one side in a balance of power in that way is something that, I suppose, may be obvious to only some people only in hindsight.

At the moment one side is disabled. I don’t find that a pity, in fact to me the outcome seems pretty admirable. Empirical evidence suggests that this is a major success which might merit expansion.

But even if you were persuaded it was a good idea, what on Earth would make you think that it is an easier political task to organise to somehow persuade america to disarm Israel than it would be to influence Hamas to commit to a goal of a just peace?

It’s already looking something of an odd man out, isn’t it?

This is the silence that speaks volumes. Pointless moral condemnation is irrelevant – where is the plan, where is the course of action, that would attempt to influence Hamas to change it’s strategy by one iota?

Pull out of the West Bank? End the blockade which breached the ceasefire? Accept the decade long truce offered by retreating to the 1967 borders?

Hamas has offered ten years of peace. Israel simply needs to rout some settlers, return them to Israel proper & leave enough land to allow the Palestinians to develop a state and we might see progress. Does that put the onus on them? Well yes, but they are the one with all the money, the devastating military, the technology and, in short, the power.

We all know what comes with power, don’t we?

‘BErmm.. yeah, we’re all secretly in the pay of Hamas,.’

It’s not like most of the people organising these events are in any meaningful sense Hamas supporters: many despise them as religious nutters. They just hold the agenda I outlined above:

1. justice for Palestinians requires military defeat for Israel
2. a combination of religious militia, ballistic rockets and sanctions can deliver that.
3. demos and mobilisation can deliver the sanctions part of that war plan

Would you claim no-one in the world believes that, would support it? Especially if they can persuade themselves, as James appears to do above, that with everything in place the results of the war would be so self-evident it wouldn’t actually need to take place.

No need to delve into conspiracies, just read the slogans, leaflets and speeches, ask what other slogans, leaflets and speeches could have been used instead.

Which aspects of genuine Palestinian suffering rarely get mentioned? Which aspects are clearly stretching a point by some kind of selective reading of international law?

Will you not find the the former tend to be irrelevant to that agenda, and the latter central to it?

Soru – I have no idea what you are even talking about. The same is clearly true of you with me, if you think that: “that with everything in place the results of the war would be so self-evident it wouldn’t actually need to take place.” I’m not really a Hegelian, I don’t just see a mass of conflicts and deem that reality. I don’t believe that only military combat can see justice brought to Palestine (although it is true that withdrawal from the West Bank or further, far greater, application of force are the only two courses which can save Israel).

I would request that you start engaging with the arguments which I actually make instead of some fantastical super-structure which you imagine into existence beneath.

You haven’t provided a single verifiable instance of a piece of anti-massacre material which seems irked at how poorly Hamas are doing at killing Jews, despite my request and the immense importance which these (as far as I can tell entirely fabricated) documents hold within your argument. It seems like you can be relied upon for the consistent and inexplicable misunderstanding of people’s positions and the imagination of more interesting one’s for them.

Try again.

1. justice for Palestinians requires military defeat for Israel

No it doesn’t. In fact, that you’re making this assumption to start with says to me you think this is a zero-sum game that must go on until someone gets wiped out…. Israel or all Arabs. You might as well be part of the War of Civilisations crowd, instead of boring us with these tedious assumptions. Like I said – Standpoint.

No, even ignoring those who just hate Jews, there are two distinct groups in the UK who would condemn such attacks:

Allow me to intercede, here… I suspect you might better understand teh left in one of these two groups…

1. those who live a whimsical existence of magical joy in the land of fairy ponies, where imaginary and terribly brave fighter pilots wreak a multicoloured havoc of prettiness with shimmering bombs of golden niceness, resulting in rainbow showers of peace and amity, and

2. Those who are vaguely familiar with the concept of reality.

The bombing won’t work – that’s it. It’s a pointless and murderous exercise – I can’t put it any more simply than this.

I’ve talked so many pro-war left twats through the history of guerrilla war, only to be repeatedly ignored and insulted* – well,it makes me sick to my gut. We’ve been through Vietnam, Soviet-era Afghanistan, Chechnya, the ’82 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the ’06 Lebanon clusterfuck and a certain Gaza occupation, just to choose a few examples, and there’s only one lesson – dedicated insurgents won’t be beaten by air power

I’ll take that back if Hamas capitulate, and gladly – I’m just not waiting for it. So far as I can see, this is a pointless round of arbitrary violence committed with political intentiosn, and I suspect that anyone who stakes their reputation on Israeli rectitude is going to regret it in five years time.

*As is their right, of course. They’re just horribly wrong, and usually** wankers into the bargain.

**Scatch that – I meant “almost always”,

I count 3 on this thread alone, including the original blog post. It is never ‘too many people are dying’, always ‘the wrong people are dying’. When people repeat these talking points about ‘300 and 1?, they may not realise the implication; that doesn’t mean it is not there.

What utter bollocks. What you mean is that you want everyone with whom you disagree to have sinister motives, because it makes putting your own case that much easier.

PS – Newmania are you feeling ok?

This quote from Alexei Sayle seems to typify the attempt by pro-Israeli commenters to justify what Israel is doing right now:

“I think that Israel has an idea of itself as being noble. Israeli people have an idea of themselves as being noble. When you attack somebody but you have this idea of yourself that you’re the good guy and you think that well, how can this be? I’m the good guy and I’m killing these people, and what you do is you blame the people that you killed and you hear all the time from Israeli spokespeople that they are angry with the people they have murdered for making them murder them.”

quote from here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7808005.stm

@sunny:
’1. justice for Palestinians requires military defeat for Israel’

‘No it doesn’t. .’

Did you miss the bit where I said ‘They just hold the agenda I outlined above’?

I agree it doesn’t, you agree it doesn’t, many others would too. But if you try to pretend that_everyone_ agrees with you and me, then you are not acting in the world as it is, but as you would like it to be.

Surely you would agree that the worst thing for any peace activist would be for them to find out that, in the end, their actions had prolonged, deepened and embitterred a war? Given moral sustenance and hope of eventual victory to one side that would have otherwise negotiated an end to the war much sooner?

Isn’t it worth spending a few minutes thinking about how to avoid ending up that way?

‘The bombing won’t work – that’s it. It’s a pointless and murderous exercise – I can’t put it any more simply than this. ‘

Of course it won’t, and of course it is. Wrong question. The real issue is:

1. what else could Israel do instead?
2. what could a political campaign in the UK achieve in terms of persuading, influencing or forcing it to take that other course of action?

Lets stop treating the strengthen Hamas/weaken Israel strategy as if it was the only alternative to despair and apathy, the only demo in town, How about some positive proposals, a plan of action for a peace movement that has the potential to credibly _reduce_ the total number killed and dying? Maybe be radical, hope for years to go by in which _noone_ in the region dies over land and water?

Or is the UK comdemned to the role of simply being the host for the hamas equivalent of the IRA widows and orphans fund in 1970s Chicago?

When you look back at that thread I see Sunny has put down a brutally disproportionate censorship of any pro Israeli comment . What else could they do is the only point and if Israel protyects its own first and foremost , who can blame them ?

Newmania,
if you’d care to make your comment in a lucid and non-inflammatory way then it will stand.

Where you are incapable of behaving constructively you know the consequences, so you can have only yourself to blame.

Why, that’s kind of like the impasse which we’re trying to discuss!

“what else could Israel do instead?”

Adopt a strategy that has a hope of winning.

Here is a prediction: Israel will continue to bomb for a few more weeks, possibly months, killing a large number of civillians in the process. Then one of the new Obama administration figures will visit the region and obtain a temporary ceasefire on both sides, with the usual platitudes about a new peace process being on offer.

Like before, hamas will use the ceasefire to regroup, promote its younger and more inexperienced members into positions of authority whilst its recruitment of fighters/potential suicide bombers will have increased from the ranks of pissed off youths who’ve known nothing but life in a giant prison. The attacks will then resume, possibly with Hamas having better weapons, and provoke Israel into another retaliation therefore starting the cycle again, with even greater loss of life.

In the meantime Israel will have expanded settlements on the West Bank, and Fatah will have lost even more support amongst Palestinians because of its inability to stop settlement expansion and its support for Israel over this matter.

Stop playing the poor ickle victim, Newmania.

You’re a boring reactionary wind-up merchant who amuses himself by playing a little “let’s see what I can say to annoy the lefties ho ho ho I’m hilarious” game on this site, rather like an unpaid Argos version of Jeremy Clarkson – so to puff yourself up as some sort of “anti-censorship” crusader just makes you look even more pathetic and ridiculous than you already are.

Which is very pathetic and ridiculous indeed.

Thanks for the post, i knew i was not alone detecting the crap pro-israeli comments below articles and blogposts all over the world. Sorry psychopaths, this will not fly.
There seems to be some sort of weird contingent of concerned cybercitizens from “all over the world” (and you are antisemite if you think they sit in a mossad bunker).
Open up any article on dailymail.co.uk about the war, and seemingly every comment says israel has a duty to defent itself. Those lone voices telling about apartheid and organised murder are voted down with the red arrow.

Go see this from last night:
At least 14 children killed in Gaza terror as Israel defies demands for a ceasefire
http://tinyurl.com/9l23xd

Or this from a few days ago:
Demonstrators hurl shoes at Downing Street in day of global protest against Israeli attacks
http://tinyurl.com/9sprwn

And decide yourself, when you read entries like these:
Would these people accept it if Belgium was firing rockets into the South of England?
- Will, Caracas, 3/1/2009 20:22

Let’s just get one thing straight, Hamas is NOT fighting on in the name of God.
- Phil, Cheshire UK, 05/1/2009 14:28

Well done the soldiers of the brave IDF, I say! Hamas and the Palestinian terrorists need to be taught a harsh lesson!
- bob roberts, worcester, uk, 4/1/2009 20:12

And Hamas needs a real and serious lesson – Shimon Perez.
Hamas need their heads examined! How could they possibly think that Israel was going to just sit there and let them fire rockets at their people? It is so simple, and I keep saying this, don’t fire rockets at people who have bigger and more powerful rockets than you (amongst other artiellery) and are more than happy to use them! Don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out – pun not intended.
- Stewart, Toronto, Canada, 4/1/2009 21:24

Anybody would think that Isreal was not being bombed.. Maybe if Hamas would stop bombing Isreal then they wouldnt have the need to retaliate..
- Jacqui Weems, Southampton, 03/1/2009 20:38