The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself. Cohen WaPo 7/18

If Cohen believes this and urges restraint then any disproportionate war waged by Israel must be necessarily unjust if not unreasonable.

Daniel: You do realize, right, that to call anyone you disagree with an Israeli hater or a Jew killer has a way of diminishing the strength of your arguments.

First of all, it's "sequitur". If you're going to use big words, spell them properly.

Secondly, that the U.S. has similarly idiotic and immoral doctrines is no reason for Israel to adopt them.

Thirdly, I'm sure Colin Powell would vehemently deny that the "Powell doctrine" has anything to do with Bush's strategy (is there one?) in Iraq.

Fourthly, if you're going to argue that Israel can use force without restraint, then surely people dispossessed of their land by the creation of Israel are equally justified in employing violence. This sort of argument is morally obscene.

LOL

I don't know what to say except that is hysterical.

Gitlin's post is embarrassingly absurd. If it isn't about letting Jews die in order to meet his sense of moral decorum then what is its point?

I noticed that you decided to make a ridiculous attack on me rather that address my actual point. If Professor Gitlin thinks my point is so weakened let him answer the actual point.

I can see that the thought police works like this. No attack on Israel is unacceptable. No misstatement of defenses of Israel is beyond the pale. However, if you actually demand answer for such behavior people get all upset.

What is there to say but that your failure to face the truth of what I asked Professor Gitlin makes your personal attack on me amusing.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

>> Cohen: "Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself."

Man, do I hate this "Israelis are just doomed by fate" claptrap.

No Mr. Cohen, they're not doomed. If Israel showed common sense and moral courage, it could secure a lasting peace in the region. The very few who wish to push it into the sea could be reduced to the level of a "nuisance" (to quote Kerry) and the overwhelming majority of its neighbors could live side by side just fine (ever heard of Jordan and Egypt?) Palestinians are not fated by history to be Israel's perpetual enemies. Just give them a viable country -- not a prison camp.

But perpetual war is what the likes of Richard Cohen will get if they have their way.

I am really not sure I understand your first paragraph. I believe the Professor Gitlin and much of the far left hold Israel and the United States to a standard that they hold no one else and given the context especially Arabs. It is not about whose lives lost in war, I don't understand why Hezbollah apologists aren't outraged at the Lebanese lives they have put at risk, but what Israel is suppose to do in order to protect its citizens.

Given that the United States takes its wars to other people's countries dosn't the effect of the Powell doctrine in reality mean America is going to inflict enormous amounts of civilian casualties rather than risk extra U.S. ones? Is this not one of the complaints of U.S. actual targeting from the Gulf War to Iraq?

I know that Israel is stating over and over that they are doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties unlike Hezbollah. Michael Waltzer discusses this point in his "War Fair" essay in the NewRepublicOnline. Waltzer starts from the premise that the Palestinians and Hezbollah use human shields. "There is no neat solution to their(Israeli soldiers) dilemma. When Palestinian miltants launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are themselves responsible--and no one else is--for the civilain deaths cause by Isreali couterfire." Waltzer does say the Israelis have to make an extra effort to avoid hitting the civilian shields. That seems perfectly reasonable. I would like Professor Gitlin or anyone here make some effort at balance.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

We're asking the wrong question.

Israel is a sovereign state. Israel is free to make whatever decisions it chooses - wise, foolish, moral, immoral.

The right question is --- are the actions of the United States out of proportion?

Hezbollah did not attack us. More important, the people of Lebanon did not attack us.

What justifies our arming and rearming Israel? What justifies blocking a ceasefire, in fact, using our superpower to block the wishes of virtually every other nation on the planet? How does that keep Americans safer? Is New York safer today because no American should ever be able to ask about the Lebanese "Why do they hate us"? I don't feel safer. I feel ashamed of my country. I am particularly ashamed of the Democratic Party and it's craven use of this war to position itself in what it must assume is some cleverly hawkish frame.

Place the blame where it belongs - on the United States, on the Republican Party and on the Democratic Party.

Those with power have the responsibility to use it wisely. Ask any Sensei, who are arguably the most personnally powerful people you will have ever met, how they handle dangerous situations.

There is no way that this conflict will end through military force alone.

Let me try to make the first paragraph even more specific. Correct me if I misunderstand, but I have the impression you want Americans to be more concerned about Israeli deaths than any other country. Forget Gitlin and the far left. Do expect me, Howard C. Berkowitz, as an individual American non-Jew, to be more concerned about Israeli deaths than in Canada or Sierra Leone?

Again, please correct me if I am not understanding you, but my impression is that you believe in an Israeli exceptionalism in which all the world's citizens should guard Israel beyond all else.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

No not at all. As you know we have exchanged views on helping the people of Dafur.

I do believe that Professor Gitlin's post continues a post-modern tendency that asks Israelis to be at greater risk than anyone else. Cohen's column was addressing the issue of the goals involved in Israel's effort. This is not just about two soldiers but to protect the citizens of Israelf from Hezbollah missiles fired from Lebanon often among Lebanese civilians.

I think the concept of proportionality is missing but when it comes to Israelis protecting the lives of Israelis. No one seems to be all the concerned what Israel is actually facing.

I also think that there is an enormous amount of hypocrisy on the part of Americans. The American right, the Safires and Krautheimers attacked Barak for his efforts at peace from the safety of Washington. I think people here are equally glib with what they ask of Israelis.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

When I said "not at all" was an answer to your question. I think that all individuals deserve your concern. I did not emphasize it only because the thrust of Gitlin's post nor my reply was not on that point but on keeping Israelis safe.

I do think that Cohen's point, even if it does not apply to you personally does apply to Israel. There has been a l,000 year effort to exterminate Jews. Just a decade before my birth 6 million Jews were murdered as an effort to exterminate all Jews on earth. Millions more were tortured and displaced. This was not done just by Geman's but by the Spanish and the French in the West to the Nazi Arab allies in the East. After the war Jews in Eastern Europe were persecuted and the Jews of the Arab world were evicted from their homes. This tends to annoy non-Jews but I don't blame Israelis one bit being for not caring much about what the rest of the world will keep Israelis safe.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

I agree that Hizbollah's warmaking is also not just here. But just to be precise, I would say that where it probably most clearly fails from a jus in bello perspective is not that it's means are disproportionate to its ends, but that its means are indiscriminate. Firing rockets from a distance into cities does not show a great deal of care in discriminating combatants from non-combattats

Of course, one could raise all sorts of other jus ad bello questions about the legitimacy of its cause, its intentions and the whole question of "legitimate authority" when weak or failed states, and sub-national groups, are involved.

Correction: I see you commenting about Darfur citizens below, after I wrote this post. Just to be sure, then, you are OK with my treating Israel's safety equally with those of other countries to which I have no ties, no more and no less? It is also OK for me to care more about countries where I do have friends and family?


The comment below seemed to be directed at a question I wasn't asking.

This tends to annoy non-Jews but I don't blame Israelis one bit being for not caring much about what the rest of the world will keep Israelis safe.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I spent most of last week in a hospital bed worrying about whether or not I was going to lose my leg. Every TV but the one at my bed was blaring CNN with its repetitive reports about how Hezbollah was at fault and how Israel was forced into this action.

While I am a Christian, I attended daycare at the local Jewish Community Center decades ago. I know that's a long time ago but my formative years taught me to think of Israel as a wonderful place. I still approve of Israel but I disapprove of certain aggressive tactics.

That's already enough hemming and hawing to give everyone ammunition but I'm trying to make a fine point here. Israel and the United States are among a few countries that occupy a pedestal in my mind. When nations I look up to carry out policies that disturb me, it is doubly troubling.

Hopefully this turned out to be a false report but I remember learning that Israel warned the citizens of a town to evacuate and then bombed the evacuation convoy. I think I remember that Italian citizens were killed or wounded.

Daniel, I don't know how to feel. I believe that Israel is provoked on a regular basis. I studied the Holocaust and absorbed the Israeli national conscience where the highest duty is to keep it from happening again. I may not understand it because I haven't lived it but I try.

When the United States attacked Iraq on blatantly false pretenses, I felt a deep shame. I felt something similar when I heard about the convoy being hit and other innocent bystanders. When nations I don't care about do such things, I feel anger. Israel and the United States are supposed to be better somehow.

I am saddened because I believe the IDF went too far this time. I am numb to the fact that Hezbollah and others carry out so many deadly attacks. I am saddened because I cannot tell you what the IDF should have done differently. I can make educated guesses but I cannot place myself in their shoes. I am frustrated because we've reached a point where it only takes one person with a bomb strapped to their chest to prolong the tragedy that is Israel and the Palestinian Authority. I mourn the lost efforts of Rabin and Barak.

I mourn the fact that whatever defense Israel seems to attempt only worsens its security situation. There's far too much to mourn.

Hezbollah's actions are morally obscene.

The endless "he did it first" "No, he did it first" argument of apologists for Israeli terrorism and Arab terrorism is morally obscene.

"The Powell doctrine has been generally praised"

By whom? People who believe violence is an acceptable tool of foreign policy? Gangsters? I imagine the Nazis would approve of it. The logical conclusion of the Powell doctrine is the use nuclear weapons.

Again, it is moral obscenity. Nothing else.

I'd just like to point out that Cohen's essay, and many of the responses to it, seem to suffer from some serious confusion about the concept of "proportionality" as it is traditionally used in discussions of the justice of war.

Just war theory, for example, requires that one's end be legitimate, and that the means used be proportional to those ends. The state who engages in a war with a just cause and legitimate war aims is required by the theory to limit its violence to only that degree that is required in order to accomplish the end.

Just war theory does not require that the balance of destruction or death caused by one side be "in proportion" to the balance of destruction or death caused on the other side, which seems to be the absurd view Cohen is arguing against. Proportionality is not a matter of counting bodies and weighing rubble.

I should note that, in my opinion, traditional just war theory is a rather clumsy and antiquated tool for the evaluation of political violence in the modern age It contains a certain amount of wisdom, but also a lot of hoary anachronistic presuppositions about social and political conditions that no longer exist. It also relies on some crude, arrant moral nonsense like the "doctrine of double effect" which generates ridiculous conclusions in a variety of real and hypothetical circumstances. The only way to avoid those conclusions is to lard the original, blunt doctrine with so many amemdments that it becomes indistinguishable from consequentialism.

The most problematic part of traditional just war theory, to my mind, is the trouble it has with common sense distictions about degrees of necessity. A state may have all sorts of aims that are legitimate. But some of these aims are things that would just be nice to accomplish; others are absolutely vital interest. So more is needed thana proportionality between the means and a legitimate end. The greater the harm that is inflicted in achieving the end, the greater must be the importance of the end.

Traditional just war theory also has trouble dealing with the the probability of the pieces of practical reasoning that lead to the inferences from ends to means, especially in relation to alternatives. Suppose X is some vital interest, and suppose there is an argument that claims accomplishing Y will be conducive to accomplishing X. Does the inference from doing X to doing Y thereby justify one in inflicting some harm Z in order to accomplish Y? Surely it has something to do with how much damage is involved in Z, and also something to do with how certain the argument is from doing X to doing Y. Weak and speculative arguments from ends to means don't carry as much moral weight as tight and certain ones.

Now, if Cohen is really correct in his implicit assertion that Israel's failure to act in roughly the manner in which it is currently acting would be "suicidal", and that its actions are thus necessary to secure its survival, then so long as we assume Israel's attempt to secure its survival is a legitimate aim, it's means are proportional to its end. So rather than arguing "disproportionality is OK", he should be arguing "Israel's arguments are proportional to its legitimate military needs". I hate to lend assistance to Cohen like this, but I can't leave illogic alone.

A more interesting question, then, is whether Cohen is right about the military necessity of Israel's conduct. And I say no. Indeed, Israel historically makes extravagant claims about the various dire "existential" threats it faces - every week its some new existential threat - and the need to thoroughly pulverize its enemies, and its enemies cousins, and its enemies cousins' cousins, and its enemies, cousins' cousins' children who carry water for the enemies. It also periodically shows it believe in the need to scare the crap out of people who might later become its enemies by killing a whole bunch of them too.

Israel is also traditionally very fond of a crazy moral argument that goes something like this: if I have a legitimate aim in killing or apprehending some bad guy, and that bad guy does something that puts others in the way of the harm that falls from my attempts to kill or apprehend him, then since that bad guy is morally culpable for the harm that falls on the innocents, I am not morally culpable for that harm. Bad argument.

What is going on in Lebanon are more instances of two kinds of behavior that have been a pattern in Israeli history: collective punishment and estreme disregard for collateral damage to noncombattants. It's just getting a bit more attention now than it does when carried out against Palestinians. That's partly because Lebanon is more accessible to reporters; it's also partly because Lebanon has more friends in the US than do the Palestinians.

"ugly sentiments pregnant with antipathy toward the only democratic state in the Middle East."

And with these revealing words Richard Cohen becomes the latest Bush supporter to develop selective amnesia about Democracy Boy's little ongoing experiment in Iraq.

What does the fighting with Hezbollah have to do with the Palestinians?

You're kidding, right?