It seems to me that most of the discussants here agree that all resistance is not the same and that targeting civilians, especially children and especially in non-combatant areas (schools and hospitals in Gaza, for instance, or schools and homes 10 miles outside Gaza)… and then the argument goes on to justify or quasi-justify this kind of mayhem on the part of the Palestinians because the Israelis are in general better at killing. Then they say… but of course it is wrong.

Where do we go from here? I’ve never characterized Palestinian action against, say, reservists at a bus stop as a violation of the Geneva conventions. But suicide-bombing a busload of poor folks and students (remember, those in higher authority don’t ride the bus!), or aiming rockets at non-combatant villages is a crime. I see no justification.

Israel’s oppressive actions against Palestinians is of course also a crime. I see no justification.

The argument among discussants is made that we have to concentrate on the Israelis and not demonstrate against Palestinian actions because the Israelis have the power, and that the “bigger crime” is in killing more people, and because they believe the Palestinian rewrite of history more than the Israeli rewrite of history. To do otherwise is a distraction.

But the Palestinian actions against civilians, especially children, gives the Israelis an excuse! (It is so much easier for the general public to grasp a suicide bombing event or a rocket attack than massively disproportionate use of force in heat of combat!) Why is this good for the Palestinians’ cause?

On statements about the majority of Israelis saying or believing this or that, any honest examination of polling within Israel itself, by Israeli and Palestinian pollsters (who, by the way, often cooperate on question-shaping and sample selection), strongly suggests this is simply not so. The exact interpretations are confusing, and no one knows what people “believe.” We can only know what people tell the pollsters, but there has almost always been (since the mid-seventies anyway) a strong Israeli majority favoring creation of a Palestinian state and against establishment of the settlements. The sticking points are on right of return and on dividing Jerusalem and frankly, these seem to be negotiable. (The sticking point used to be demilitarization of the West Bank… then Israel actually armed and trained Palestinian security forces.)

Likewise, there has almost always been a strong Palestinian majority recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

That’s the basis for peace and I think the time is particularly ripe for a “Gandhi solution.” Yet we have Sharon and Bibi coming to power with about a third of the seats in the Knesset, and Hamas winning a majority of the seats in the PA assembly with only 40% of the popular vote!

I’ve been trying to rally support for a demonstration in favor of the Goldstone report, but it comes at a bad time for me — I committed long ago to be in Houston and NYC next week, and in Norway the week after. I have to work. By the time I get back, around Oct 13, I think the moment will have passed. There are others trying to do the same thing.

The “justification” business is a slippery slope that does not work in the Palstinians’ favor. There is the least justification of all for firing rockets at schools in settlements well outside Gaza on land apportioned in 1948. That we don’t comkplain and demonstrate against it is wrong. Kids!

But the ICC, I am sure, would also — despite Israli blustering — also (as it should) judge Israeli to be tgargeting civilians, to be attacking when civilians are likely to be harmed, and on and on.

Eventually, I would hope that US officials that allowed the Israelis to use US technology in this way would also face judgment.

But if the Palestinians aim only to justify their actions, saying the targeting of kids is justified because far more Palestinians have suffered, the Israelis and the US are home free. This, in my opinion, is not a good idea.

As Eli Wessal said, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and soon everyone is blind and can’t eat.”

Today, the Yugoslav tribunal is a major force keeping calm in that region.

The Goldstone report stands today dead in the water. That’s a shame. I expect that it will be resuurected.

BTW it is amazing what records are available from WWII. The Germans kept amazing records!

Collective punishment is rationalized this way. And on the Palestinian side- since practically all Israeli’s serve or will serve and since they have voted this oppressive government in- they are thought to be legitimate targets.

International law holds everyone accountable, but we are looking at a situation where international law is being flouted.

[Shirin:] In general I do not think the failure of most Jews to fight back during the Holocaust makes them more virtuous than the Palestinians are as many Zionist apologists insist.

I don’t think that’s accurate. While the virtue and innocence of the Jewish victims is indeed extolled, I haven’t heard a bad word spoken either about those Jews who did fight back, not just those in the Warsaw Ghetto but also those in more organised partisan units (guerillas, or terrorists, as they’d be called in other places and times).
OTOH there’s insistence that “never again” will Jews be led like sheep to the slaughter, rejecting for themselves precisely the virtue they just praised their ancestors for. That’s simply done by narrowing one’s view to the false alternative “either them or us”, and opting for “evil but alive” instead of “good but dead”. Then this choice is sold, to themselves no less than to the outside world, as the “real” virtue, because, hey, everyone looks after their own tribe first, right?

There is no evidence that non-violence alone could lead to success in a liberation struggle to which there is determined opposition by those in power, particularly in the face of a fiercely determined, cruelly brutal power that is willing to to go to almost any level of savagery and deception to achieve its goals or maintain the status quo as is clearly the case with Israel.

Quite so. Albert Camus in his first Letter to a German Friend, July 1943:
“We have realised that, contrary to our held belief, the spirit is powerless against the sword, but that the spirit united with the sword will prevail every time over the sword drawn for its own sake.”

I think it is more interesting to note that the Bosnians never had a government policy to kill or cleanse Serbs, in a war in which they were badly mangled, but that was the fate of civilians in some Serb villages and neighborhoods. The lower-ranked Bosnians responsible (including a Bosnian general who is a “war hero”) are indeed being tried for war crimes.

Were some Zionists genocidal? You bet. Were some Arabs? You bet. The rants of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem back in the 1920s are instructive.

This is not unique to the Middle East. Just look at Fox News, which isn’t really “news.” Or much of MSNBC. In Colonial Boston, Sam Adams’s boys tarred and feathered opponents to the brewing Revolution. When a few kids throwing snowballs from out of an unruly crowd provoked return fire from young troops guarding the governor’s mansion, the five deaths became the “Boston Massacre,” memorialized by a Paul revere copper etching. But then Sam’s cousin John Adams defended the troops as acting in self-defense, and got them declared innocent by a colonial jury.

Back in the Middle East, polling done since the 1960s suggests that these were minorities on both sides. Even during the second intifada, 70% of Palestinians said they’d go for a “cold peace.” There’s been a consistent 60-70% of Israelis who would do the same, depending on what peace terms are suggested by the pollsters and depending on recent history of civilian Israeli deaths.

You raise a particularly important point about the first Intifada. Plenty of journalists IN THE REGION, certainly the majority, reported it fairly. The dominant theme of their reporting was that the intifada was a labor strike — and that it was working.

The international press, parachuting in on the scene, reported the episodic bombing violence. The Israeli government AT THE TIME barely had to do a thing (they certainly did try to shape the news, but they didn’t have to work very hard at it). As the period recedes into history, the government can simply lie about the period.

My greatest optimism about peace was of course when Rabin was on top… and then radicals killed him. I have not had reason be in Israel since, by the way, although I have traveled elsewhere in the region.

But look at Iran today. The government there is correctly fearful of a (in this case, Green) revolution, like in Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and so many other places. “Mainly peaceful” protest is hard to contain, and media are more informed, because of modern communications methods. Big demonstrations alone make news.

I still think that a well run and long-lasting general strike by Palestinians at any point from 1950 to 1967 would have done more to hurt the Israelis (and Jordanians) and force negotiations than any other action. The west, however, would have to have made it clear that it would ramp up shipments of food and other humanitarian aid to the strikers — as it did in Biafra at the end of the 60′s.

But that again is history — almost ancient history in Middle Eastern terms. Why do elements of the Palestinian cause ramp up violence when a moderate comes on the scene in Israel? They got Sharon elected (I can show you the tracking polls) and they got Bibi elected. Yeah, the moderates aren’t moderate enough, but they read the polls — 2 out of 3 Israelis want peace, 2 out of 3 Palestinians want peace. So why take the anti-Gandhi approach, even if you are not prepared to go Gandhi?

It delays getting people to the peace table.