One Man's Terrorist. . .
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Israel's assault on Hamas targets, along with "collateral damage" to the civilians around them, continues, with the New York Times reporting today that the death toll in the Gaza Strip is up over 350. Yesterday, a Bush administration spokesman put the burden of blame for the flared-up violence on Hamas. President-elect Obama made no new statements, but the NYT quoted him from the campaign season: "'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,' Mr. Obama said in July. 'And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.'"
True, true, and with two daughters of my own at home, I figure this is one rare time when Misters Bush, Obama and myself are all in whole-hearted agreement.
And now for the "but…"
Why is it, exactly, that the framing of the situation is as Obama presents it? Why doesn't Obama speak with an equivalent sympathy for the Palestinian perspective? It's really not that hard to do. It goes like this: "If somebody bulldozed the house where my two daughters sleep at night or dropped a bomb on the house, or fired a rocket into the house, or caged my daughters up in a one-million-person prison camp where food and electricity were sometimes denied, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing."
So I guess a philosophy of "whatever is in my power to do in the face of terrible danger, it's okay to do it" isn't really that great of a philosophy. It's awful when Palestinians fall for it and choose the "power" of rocket launches into Ashkelon or suicide bombings, and it's awful when Israelis fall for it and choose to drop bombs on apartment buildings, prevent women in labor or people having heart attacks from getting to hospitals, impose unemployment on hundreds of thousands of people, bulldoze people's homes, and empower reactionary and racist "settlers" to steal land and beat and shoot people.
If the U.S. is going to play a useful role in helping things to change, rather than continue the insane status quo that's been going on for more than 40 years, then our presidents, old and new, are going to have to open their eyes and recognize that Israel is not the sole aggrieved party and is in no position to claim superior moral right in the use of murderous violence to solve problems.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Good post, Jonathan.
December 31st, 2008 at 3:03 pm
This sums up the issue quite well. It takes two to tango. In this case the tango of death.
One way to move this dance in the direction of peace is with the under-promoted idea of the one-state solution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binational_solution).
Reducing the Jewish monopoly on power and providing equal protections under just laws in a multi-cultural state is the only way to provide Israelis with security and Palestinians with a constructive future.
December 31st, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I tend toward supporting a one-state solution myself, in part due to arguments that establishing a truly independent Palestine has become functionally impossible, but also am sympathetic to various reasons for preferring two states, not least being the strong preference on the part of the people involved. On a technical note, I think that Wikipedia article needs improvement on the basis of conflating "binational" with the single state. Within the circles of advocates for a single state, the idea of a specifically binational state refers to certain aspects of the (theoretical) constitution that are different from, say, those associated with the idea of a "single, secular, democratic state." The SSD state would be more like the USA–one person, one vote, all equal as individuals before the law. A binational state, as some use the term, would maintain legally protected nationalities (one "Jewish" and one "Palestinian") as communities with legal standing, alongside/above legal standing and rights for individuals. Kind of like having two official churches in the same state, or something. And so, of course, even within the community of supporters of a single-state solution, debate continues over the best form of that single state. See this for a bit on the difference and the history of the various ideas. Karmi notes that the binational state could be organized similar to the Swiss cantons: "This would give the Jews self-government in the localities in which they lived and the rest of the country would be split up into Christian and Muslim self-governing cantons."