tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7217199.post115284226111794487..comments2024-03-24T11:30:08.199-07:00Comments on Can you believe?: RepentanceJohan Maurerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13771067774042071617noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7217199.post-1152996184363933832006-07-15T13:43:00.000-07:002006-07-15T13:43:00.000-07:00PS: This isn't an exact parallel, but what if a co...PS: This isn't an exact parallel, but what if a corrupt unit of Mexico's police kidnapped a U.S. narcotics officer at the border? Stranger things have happened. The U.S. would not bomb Nogales or shoot up Mexican police stations.Johan Maurerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13771067774042071617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7217199.post-1152995446458847112006-07-15T13:30:00.000-07:002006-07-15T13:30:00.000-07:00Trying my best to set aside my pacifist biases for...Trying my best to set aside my pacifist biases for a moment: If I were a police or military leader and some of my people had been kidnapped and pulled across a border, I would pour resources into the search for intelligence, culprits, and every possible channel of collaboration with those on the other side of that border. I would not trash that other side's civilian infrastructure, kill innocent civilians, and impose what even the Israelis acknowledge is collective punishment. (I interpret Olmert's declaration that it will be painful for people in Gaza as collective punishment.)<BR/><BR/>I'm specifically talking about the Israeli government now. As always, there's a lively discussion in Israeli media, with some commentators within Israel making these same points about collective punishment, deaths of innocents, and collective punishment.<BR/><BR/>Just to consider Israel's ambivalent relationship with the Palestinian-governed territories: The Israeli government seems to work that ambivalence to its advantage constantly. Sometimes it treats those fragmented lands as a foreign government, demanding this or that policy change from that foreign government. At other times it operates as a rogue occupying power, collecting taxes, turning the water on and off, approving or denying the right to move about within the territories. In other instances, it's impossible to classify Israel's relationship with those territories; Israel makes the rules as it goes: with extrajudicial executions, the frequent destruction of private property without compensation, the unquestioned right to enter anyone's home at any time, the treatment of a whole ethnic group with radical prejudice. Israeli authorities demand more effective policing by Palestinian authorities, but kill police officers, crush their computers and equipment during raids, destroy their buildings, all the while imprisoning most of the Palestinian constituency in bantustans. And if anyone questions Israel about their heavy-handed treatment of Palestinians, the Israeli response is to point to the terrorism. Among relatively small groups of scholars, intellectuals, and journalists, the discussion does go further, to ask whether collective punishment and humiliation and terrorism are a vicious cycle, but on the larger world stage, nobody seems to demand that Israel account for its part in this cycle. Why are Israeli officials unwilling to use normal civilized policing methods to counter violent crime, instead choosing methods that, cumulatively, seem to signal a desire to eliminate Palestine? Hamas wants to eliminate Israel, apparently, but there's plenty of evidence that some sectors within Israel want to eliminate Palestine as an effective reality—and this is never dealt with publicly.<BR/><BR/>I see hypocrisy in Israel's approach to Lebanon as well. Israel points to Lebanon's enmeshment with Hezbollah as justifying Israel attacking the country, rather than just Hezbollah's own operations. However, Israeli intelligence knows full well how weak the Lebanese government is, and the demand to reign in Hezbollah is empty rhetoric. The secular side of me would understand securing the border and using police and intelligence methods to root out Hezbollah's capacity to raid Israel and launch missiles, but how does destroying Lebanon's economy, killing innocent civilians, and in general behaving like a total bully, secure the release of the kidnapped soldiers and increase Israel's security and moral health?<BR/><BR/>My questions are in part rhetorical, but what truly frustrates me is that Israel is not subjected by the world community to any process of accountability for its choices to kill and destroy. The essential question that Israel and its sponsors, principally the USA, should have to answer all boil down to, essentially, "Isn't there a better way to accomplish objectives that nobody would deny Israel has a right to accomplish?" The lack of a discussion at this level is what makes some of us wonder if another, uglier, agenda underlies this grisly quest for the elusive goal of national security--either a goal of elimination of Palestine, or, equally tragic, a loss of a national moral sensibility, a loss of biblical perspective, a misappropriation of Joshua and marginalization of Isaiah.Johan Maurerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13771067774042071617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7217199.post-1152914631994826162006-07-14T15:03:00.000-07:002006-07-14T15:03:00.000-07:00Johan -- I don't undrestand your bewilderment over...Johan -- I don't undrestand your bewilderment over Israel's response to Hezbollah's incursion, murder and kidnapping of Israeli citizens? I, too, pray that Israel will find the strength and courage to break the cycle. <BR/><BR/>But I don't find its response bewildering at all; it is what any sensible [secular] nation-state would do under similar circumstances, isn't it? <BR/><BR/>Or is the objection over the disproportionality of the response? Is Israel deliberately targeting innocents instead of the guilty? (I'd believe anything, but haven't heard any evidence of that.)<BR/><BR/> I just don't understand.Paul Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03483071863453025925noreply@blogger.com