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Sorry about my choice of rhetoric. I’ll try to improve. I want to note that Israel does indeed have special obligation coferred by statehood. Formally those ar

Sorry about my choice of rhetoric. I’ll try to improve. I want to note that Israel does indeed have special obligation coferred by statehood. Formally those are all the international agreements it has signed and promised to uphold. Relevant here are, among others, the Geneva convention, the Genocide convention, Convention on the Rights of the Child, etc. I’ll give special mention to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which Israel hasn’t signed, thus making it scary as North Korea. When a state signs these obligations but then fails to follow them, they have in fact failed humanity on a moral level. When these failures result in countless deaths and horrors, they are especially bad. To me this is what makes Israel worse then Hamas. You don’t have to agree with me, but I hope you understand where I’m coming from.

tptacek 3y ago
Thank you for the edit! I appreciate it. I think Israel's actions in Gaza have been hard to defend (their motivation: less so) so none of what I'm saying is an apology for Israel. But the idea that they're even morally comparable to Hamas is an extraordinary claim. Many (most?) normal reasonable people will read it and scratch their heads. Every country fails humanity at a moral level in a great variety of ways. Israelis sometimes feel --- with some justification --- that they're held to a standard that does't apply to other western countries, let alone countries in their own region, where the deliberate, planned murder of civilians has occurred within just the past decade or so at scales that dwarf what's happened in Gaza.
- runarberg 3y ago
  I think the root of our disagreement is in Israel’s motivation. We will see when the ICJ rules whether Israel’s intention is merely counter terrorism or—as it is accused of—to destroy Palestinians in whole or in part. In the latter case (which is what I believe) the motivation is indeed hard to defend.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    When you think about this, remember that there are 2.2MM Palestinians in the Gaza Strip alone, and almost 5MM total. 24,000 is a terrible toll, and I think much of it is reckless and probably criminal, but it isn't a dent in the Palestinian population. There's no way to write that without sounding soulless, as if people were scoring tokens on some sort of strategy game we're all playing. But it's deeply relevant to the formal notion of a "genocide", which is what we're talking about when we talk about the ICJ. Yemen and Syria are instructive comparisons here, and I'll note that while everyone was pretty grossed out at Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen (which had more to do with how we felt about Saudi Arabia than a genuine concern for Yemenis, who, like Palestinians, are for the most part victimized by the combatants on "their side), you didn't see much talk about Yemeni genocide. Further arguing against a finding of genocidal intent on Israel's part is the provocation they responded to, which, again, is among the worst in modern history: a truly, deliberately vile attack done at breathtaking scale.
    - runarberg 3y ago
      Like I said, we will see when the ICJ rules on the matter, which probably won’t be for another decade. However if the court rules in favor of provisional measures (which will probably be in the coming weeks) you must at least see how I’m justified in believing the genocidal intent. And even if it isn’t, the very fact that these serious charges are being pressed, means that many legal experts think there is a probably cause for concern. The other points raised here are irrelevant. I’ve said before in this thread—and other threads—that there is no justification to genocide. So however heinously Israel was provoked, the genocidal conduct afterwards speaks for it self. This was explicitly stated in the oral arguments by South Africa. As for the numbers, that also is irrelevant to the question of genocide. The convention states “in whole or in part”. South Africa argued that Palestinians of Gaza constitutes a group, and that Israels conduct in Gaza violates annex (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; of Article II of the Genocide Convention. In comparison the Army of Republika Srpska was convicted of Genocide for killing 8,372 victims out of a population of 1.2 million living in territories controlled by the perpetrators. The total number didn’t matter, what mattered was the intent to destroy Muslim Bosniaks living in Srpska as a group.
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  I agree with all of you that we should not tally crimes, that one crime doesn't justify another. But if I had to rank anyone morally, I'd say the same deed becomes morally worse the better off a person/group/nation is. We can trivially observe this in daily life, too. A rich person stealing 1€ from a beggar would be considered kind of monster, even though it might not even matter that much to the beggar. A beggar stealing 1€ from a rich person dropped wouldn't be a hero, but wouldn't raise any eyebrows either. And the difference Gaza which has been cut off from the internet for 4 days in a row now, and a government that buys Google ads to smear the ICJ genocide charges as being politically motivated support of Hamas, is rather stark. The US senate just voted with a 75% majority to not even record Israeli war crimes. Are they affording that to other countries in the region, too? > let alone countries in their own region That's such an odd defense we never hear anywhere else, but constantly in contest of Israel. Why would the physical region matter? Those other countries aren't taking part in the Eurovision song contest, for example. They're not claiming to be a democracy respecting humanitarian values. Israel was founded by educated Europeans in no small part, not people from the region. If someone brags so much, including having "the most moral army in the world", while that army is doing what it is doing now, it might have something to do with them (too), not (only) the people who don't buy it having double standards. We expect no better of other countries who currently aren't developed and weren't ever, we're barely even on speaking terms with them, when it comes to having a place at our table in polite company. I bet they also brag about being the best and having the best army, but we don't even hear about it and don't care. If one of them got accused of genocide via a formal trial, most media outlets would have covered and translated the first hearing, where the accusations where laid out -- instead of totally ignoring that and then reporting on Israel's so-called defense the next day. We certainly don't have a fleet of journalists embedded in the armies of other countries in the region posting feel good stories, while the other half is writing up other random personal interest stories to make people feel good about the part of the picture they're not being shown at all. Or politicians just leaping to their defense before the ink on the accusation is even dry: https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2024/01/germany-rushes-to-declare-intention-to-intervene-in-the-genocide-case-brought-by-south-africa-against-israel-before-the-international-court-of-justice/ https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2024/01/germany-rushes-to-decl...
  - 3y ago

tptacek 3y ago

Thank you for the edit! I appreciate it. I think Israel's actions in Gaza have been hard to defend (their motivation: less so) so none of what I'm saying is an apology for Israel. But the idea that they're even morally comparable to Hamas is an extraordinary claim. Many (most?) normal reasonable people will read it and scratch their heads. Every country fails humanity at a moral level in a great variety of ways. Israelis sometimes feel --- with some justification --- that they're held to a standard that does't apply to other western countries, let alone countries in their own region, where the deliberate, planned murder of civilians has occurred within just the past decade or so at scales that dwarf what's happened in Gaza.

runarberg 3y ago
I think the root of our disagreement is in Israel’s motivation. We will see when the ICJ rules whether Israel’s intention is merely counter terrorism or—as it is accused of—to destroy Palestinians in whole or in part. In the latter case (which is what I believe) the motivation is indeed hard to defend.
- tptacek 3y ago
  When you think about this, remember that there are 2.2MM Palestinians in the Gaza Strip alone, and almost 5MM total. 24,000 is a terrible toll, and I think much of it is reckless and probably criminal, but it isn't a dent in the Palestinian population. There's no way to write that without sounding soulless, as if people were scoring tokens on some sort of strategy game we're all playing. But it's deeply relevant to the formal notion of a "genocide", which is what we're talking about when we talk about the ICJ. Yemen and Syria are instructive comparisons here, and I'll note that while everyone was pretty grossed out at Saudi Arabia bombing Yemen (which had more to do with how we felt about Saudi Arabia than a genuine concern for Yemenis, who, like Palestinians, are for the most part victimized by the combatants on "their side), you didn't see much talk about Yemeni genocide. Further arguing against a finding of genocidal intent on Israel's part is the provocation they responded to, which, again, is among the worst in modern history: a truly, deliberately vile attack done at breathtaking scale.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    Like I said, we will see when the ICJ rules on the matter, which probably won’t be for another decade. However if the court rules in favor of provisional measures (which will probably be in the coming weeks) you must at least see how I’m justified in believing the genocidal intent. And even if it isn’t, the very fact that these serious charges are being pressed, means that many legal experts think there is a probably cause for concern. The other points raised here are irrelevant. I’ve said before in this thread—and other threads—that there is no justification to genocide. So however heinously Israel was provoked, the genocidal conduct afterwards speaks for it self. This was explicitly stated in the oral arguments by South Africa. As for the numbers, that also is irrelevant to the question of genocide. The convention states “in whole or in part”. South Africa argued that Palestinians of Gaza constitutes a group, and that Israels conduct in Gaza violates annex (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; of Article II of the Genocide Convention. In comparison the Army of Republika Srpska was convicted of Genocide for killing 8,372 victims out of a population of 1.2 million living in territories controlled by the perpetrators. The total number didn’t matter, what mattered was the intent to destroy Muslim Bosniaks living in Srpska as a group.
johnnyworker 3y ago
I agree with all of you that we should not tally crimes, that one crime doesn't justify another. But if I had to rank anyone morally, I'd say the same deed becomes morally worse the better off a person/group/nation is. We can trivially observe this in daily life, too. A rich person stealing 1€ from a beggar would be considered kind of monster, even though it might not even matter that much to the beggar. A beggar stealing 1€ from a rich person dropped wouldn't be a hero, but wouldn't raise any eyebrows either. And the difference Gaza which has been cut off from the internet for 4 days in a row now, and a government that buys Google ads to smear the ICJ genocide charges as being politically motivated support of Hamas, is rather stark. The US senate just voted with a 75% majority to not even record Israeli war crimes. Are they affording that to other countries in the region, too? > let alone countries in their own region That's such an odd defense we never hear anywhere else, but constantly in contest of Israel. Why would the physical region matter? Those other countries aren't taking part in the Eurovision song contest, for example. They're not claiming to be a democracy respecting humanitarian values. Israel was founded by educated Europeans in no small part, not people from the region. If someone brags so much, including having "the most moral army in the world", while that army is doing what it is doing now, it might have something to do with them (too), not (only) the people who don't buy it having double standards. We expect no better of other countries who currently aren't developed and weren't ever, we're barely even on speaking terms with them, when it comes to having a place at our table in polite company. I bet they also brag about being the best and having the best army, but we don't even hear about it and don't care. If one of them got accused of genocide via a formal trial, most media outlets would have covered and translated the first hearing, where the accusations where laid out -- instead of totally ignoring that and then reporting on Israel's so-called defense the next day. We certainly don't have a fleet of journalists embedded in the armies of other countries in the region posting feel good stories, while the other half is writing up other random personal interest stories to make people feel good about the part of the picture they're not being shown at all. Or politicians just leaping to their defense before the ink on the accusation is even dry: https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2024/01/germany-rushes-to-declare-intention-to-intervene-in-the-genocide-case-brought-by-south-africa-against-israel-before-the-international-court-of-justice/ https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2024/01/germany-rushes-to-decl...
- 3y ago