Why using the now-fashionable but still inaccurate term to describe Israel's actions in Gaza betrays a hidden agenda, and also how we can't take seriously the GOP's rush to protect Jewish students.
Thank you Micah for your thoughtful coverage. I too believe that the left is failing to see the situation with all of its historical complexities. I’m no fan of reducing history to slogans. But I also think that most people won’t take the time to read complex analysis. So the balance is between highlighting complexity while discussing the realities in a way that larger numbers of people can digest. That’s not an easy thing to do. I’m not sure I have any answers. All I know is that I’m horrified by the human suffering on both sides of the border and I think the only way the conversation moves forward is for both sides to acknowledge the suffering of the other side. Thank you for taking the time to do the reading that most of us don’t have the time to do.
Thank you for your articulate discussion on this issue! It seems like our policy discussions have devolved to name-calling worthy of a 10-year old.
The October 6th terror attack against Israel was horrific, but not genocide. Israel turning Gaza into a rubble strewn graveyard is horrific, but not genocide. Believing that Palestinians are worthy of a state of their own does not make someone a Nazi, nor does believing in a homeland for Jews.
A former military officer was interviewed on Bloomberg surveillance who commented that Hamas is a cancer and must be surgically eliminated. He apparently missed column by an Israeli columnist who observed during a previous bombing of Gaza that it is not possible to eliminate Hamas - they are part of the fabric of Gazan society and can only be eliminated by killing all of the Gazans (I guess in today's world, I need to point out that the columnist thought that would be horrific and inconceivable.)
I recall a class in military history in college in the early 70's where someone commented that the war in Viet Nam was genocidal. Our professor, a solid leftist with contacts with various communist terror organizations, put the class in its place - the war was horrific, but not genocidal. If the US were exterminating all Vietnamese (genocide), they would bomb the damns and flood the entire north. I still remember that lesson.
Tnx Micah for being such a thoughtful and rational analyst of this catastrophe. One need not even get to the abuse of the term genocide. Ha’aretz among other outlets report that most of those chanting From the River to the Sea dont even know the names of either one. I despised Kissinger but I think Gandin’s sweeping statement crosses the line into hyperbole and gross simplification and as much a knee jerk lefty posture as are the current accusations of genocide. Much tnx also for the statement by those sane lefty Brits.
"In fetishising Israel/Palestine, and romanticising and idealising Palestinian struggle, leftists mirror the mainstream’s dehumanisation of Palestinians. The effect of this leftist fetishisation of Israel/Palestine is to render both Palestinians and Israeli Jews transcendent avatars for political narratives, rather than flesh-and-blood humans, capable of a range of responses to their conditions and experience."
This reminds me of Jung: "Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories help very little in this respect. For the more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts. Any theory based on experience is necessarily "statistical"; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, even though it need not necessarily occur in reality."
Would you live with what Israel is doing being characterized as setting the conditions for ethnic cleansing?
Thank you Micah for your thoughtful coverage. I too believe that the left is failing to see the situation with all of its historical complexities. I’m no fan of reducing history to slogans. But I also think that most people won’t take the time to read complex analysis. So the balance is between highlighting complexity while discussing the realities in a way that larger numbers of people can digest. That’s not an easy thing to do. I’m not sure I have any answers. All I know is that I’m horrified by the human suffering on both sides of the border and I think the only way the conversation moves forward is for both sides to acknowledge the suffering of the other side. Thank you for taking the time to do the reading that most of us don’t have the time to do.
Thank you for your articulate discussion on this issue! It seems like our policy discussions have devolved to name-calling worthy of a 10-year old.
The October 6th terror attack against Israel was horrific, but not genocide. Israel turning Gaza into a rubble strewn graveyard is horrific, but not genocide. Believing that Palestinians are worthy of a state of their own does not make someone a Nazi, nor does believing in a homeland for Jews.
A former military officer was interviewed on Bloomberg surveillance who commented that Hamas is a cancer and must be surgically eliminated. He apparently missed column by an Israeli columnist who observed during a previous bombing of Gaza that it is not possible to eliminate Hamas - they are part of the fabric of Gazan society and can only be eliminated by killing all of the Gazans (I guess in today's world, I need to point out that the columnist thought that would be horrific and inconceivable.)
I recall a class in military history in college in the early 70's where someone commented that the war in Viet Nam was genocidal. Our professor, a solid leftist with contacts with various communist terror organizations, put the class in its place - the war was horrific, but not genocidal. If the US were exterminating all Vietnamese (genocide), they would bomb the damns and flood the entire north. I still remember that lesson.
Thanks again.
Tnx Micah for being such a thoughtful and rational analyst of this catastrophe. One need not even get to the abuse of the term genocide. Ha’aretz among other outlets report that most of those chanting From the River to the Sea dont even know the names of either one. I despised Kissinger but I think Gandin’s sweeping statement crosses the line into hyperbole and gross simplification and as much a knee jerk lefty posture as are the current accusations of genocide. Much tnx also for the statement by those sane lefty Brits.
re just vernin
"In fetishising Israel/Palestine, and romanticising and idealising Palestinian struggle, leftists mirror the mainstream’s dehumanisation of Palestinians. The effect of this leftist fetishisation of Israel/Palestine is to render both Palestinians and Israeli Jews transcendent avatars for political narratives, rather than flesh-and-blood humans, capable of a range of responses to their conditions and experience."
This reminds me of Jung: "Since self-knowledge is a matter of getting to know the individual facts, theories help very little in this respect. For the more a theory lays claim to universal validity, the less capable it is of doing justice to the individual facts. Any theory based on experience is necessarily "statistical"; that is to say, it formulates an ideal average which abolishes all exceptions at either end of the scale and replaces them by an abstract mean. This mean is quite valid, even though it need not necessarily occur in reality."