How could I have ever said a charitable word about Alan Dershowitz? In penance, I urge you all to read Juan Cole’s dissection of Dershowitz’s grading of civilianity, or if you’d prefer something lighter, try Kung Fu Monkey’s demolition by amusing anecdote.
If anyone were in the mood to revisit my earlier post, you could easily undermine my appreciation of Dershowitz’s argument there by pointing out that it is Alan Dershowitz talking about morality, and I would have to sheepishly admit that he has no credibility on the matter.
Juan Cole is a man with no credibility whatever on the subject of Middle Eastern affairs. He is a notorious Israel basher, in the mode of Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, Stephen Walt, and John Mearsheimer. In the fantasy world populated by Cole, Buchanan, Novak, Walt, and Mersheimer, etc. the elimination of the State of Israel would solve all our problems with the rest of the world.
SLC, I think you’re on the wrong blog. You’d fit in much better in the comments section of Little Green Fottballs.
SLC, beat that strawman. beat it good.
I’m starting to lean toward a very radical viewpoint on this subject: The events in the middle east should viscerally demonsrate to every sane person there the insanity of religion. Everyone in the middle east who still claims a religion, be it Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is part and parcel of the problem there. The ONLY innocent, other than children, are those who simply want to live under a secular government.
Yeah, yeah. Bash away.
Are you new here, Russell? That isn’t radical at all in these here parts.
Is this the Alan Dershowitz who was arguing that torture might be legalized under certain circumstances? He seems to enjoy promoting the legality of killing and torturing people. He’s loopy.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/17/60minutes/main324751.shtml
Perhaps a little torturin’ could help him out. Then we can let him run north while we try to hit him with missiles. Fun and legal!
Stop reading Juan Cole. He’s very annoying. Reading some of the comments from your side, it’s as if this is the first time Israel has done this. Take the time to look up Israel’s past responses to their civilians getting blown up. I know you don’t like the word terrorism. Israel has always responded like this. It’s as if you could set a watch by it.
Suppose you have a situation where a Hezbollah fighter, his Katyusha rocket and launcher are housed with a family of Hezbollah sympathisers in a village in South Lebanon. The family are not coerced into doing this and, if needed, they would do whatever they could to hide this man and his equipment.
Now suppose the Israelis discover his location, bomb the house and kill everyone in it. Were they wrong to do so? Was that family “innocent” and “civilian” in the same sense that we assume those Canadians who were killed were?
Finally, if the Arab states and terrorist groups were to recognize the state of Israel and renounce the use of force to destroy it, is there any doubt that peace between Israelis and Arabs would follow?
On the other hand, if Israel were to disarm unilaterally is there any doubt that the Arab states would sweep her into the sea in short order? And I leave it to your imaginations to picture what the Arabs would do to any Israelis who fell into their hands.
Dershowitz is a lawyer. A damn good one according to his record…but that only means that he mostly gets his verdict whomever he represents. In this case, Israel.
Its not that he isn’t aquainted with principles of right and wrong. He understands them well enough to turn them inside out.
Lawyer: An occupation based on the absence of any absolutes and exercised by frequent demonstration that all truths and values are fungible and malleable.
You do recall this started with the capture of two isreali soldiers right?
A wee bit of an over reaction by Isreal. They didn’t expect Hezbollah to strike back with rockets. They’re both at fault.
A major peace summit is needed but Isreal isn’t helping. And neither are the neocons.
“Israel has always responded like this. It’s as if you could set a watch by it.” Israel has always responded like this whether or not civilians, i.e. Israeli, are involved.
Back in 1948 and the fifties, they systematically ethnically-cleansed hundreds of Palestinian villages. The Israelis had no qualms about attacking and killing women and children with no provocation.
Ariel Sharon was the leader of one of these groups, Unit 101. The object of this unit was terror, not preventing it but carrying it out. Now it is just convenient for the Israelis to use their civilians as a cover.
Desrshowitz doesn’t care to defend Palestinian or Lebanese victims, but others of you should look up the site called fromisraeltolebanon.
Depends on what Israel’s intentions were. This isn’t over reaction if Israel’s wants to hurt Hezballah capability to do it again.
H.Spedding: Now suppose the Israelis discover his location, bomb the house and kill everyone in it. Were they wrong to do so? Was that family “innocent” and “civilian” in the same sense that we assume those Canadians who were killed were?
Now suppose somebody who had nothing to do with any of this was walking by the house or delivering a newspaper or doing the gardening when the bomb hits.
Now suppose a close family member of the innocent person who was killed walking by or delivering a newspaper or doing the gardening decides revenge is in order and becomes a suicide bomber?
I don’t pretend to have an answer, but dropping bombs on people doesn’t solve anything and probably makes thing worse. Both sides are wrong.
In addition to his winks at torture for a “good cause”, Dershowitz supports the destruction of family homes of “known terrorists”. Very Biblical, this waging war on the entire family, and about as evil as one might expect of “Biblical values”.
And yes, with his total war mentality against all real or imagined “enemies of Israel”, I’m a tad surprised that PZ ever had anything good to say about him. I’m sure that he sounds like a civil libertarian on many American issues, but such “principles” disappear when arabs are being tortured or “collaterally damaged”. Well, no mind, so long as he is becoming known for what he is.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
Glen D
Back in 1948 and the fifties, they systematically ethnically-cleansed hundreds of Palestinian villages.
What are your sources for this?
“Depends on what Israel’s intentions were. This isn’t over reaction if Israel’s wants to hurt Hezballah capability to do it again.”
or if they just feel like killing hundreds of Lebanese . . .
If you note the kind of language the Israelis are using now, you’ll notice that they already seem to be backing away from the idea that they are actually going to really destroy Hezbollah. All the while occupying Southern Lebanon, the same action that led to the creation of Hezbollah 24 years ago.
or if they just feel like killing hundreds of Lebanese
You’re right. Israel just wants to kill Lebanese. It’s all so clear now.
Here’s a pair of quotes from Osama Bin Laden justifying attacking American civilians:
–“The Twin Towers were legitimate targets, they were supporting US economic power.”
–“The war is a responsibility shared between the people and the governments, the war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to its rulers and masters.”
I can’t see any difference between his view and Dershowitz’s.
Wasn’t there a time, long ago, before Dershowitz became the totally vile tool he is today? I have a vague and distant memory of him once as someone who was actually concerned with justice and the rule of law. Or maybe it was the ‘shrooms.
Billmon pours a hefty snifter of snark on Mr. D as well. Very, very worth the read.
http://billmon.org/archives/002558.html
I read Juan Cole’s piece. It’s terrible. I don’t have it in me pre-lunch to show why, but I hope it would be evident in reading it. This is the first I’ve read Cole, but it already bothers me that Cole has respect for his ability to handle ideas. Was this a misfire and Cole is usually more controlled?
If you want to recategorize Dershowitz as persona non grata, at least provide a link to what Dershowitz actually wrote, instead of Coles’s poor analysis.
What Dershowitz formalizes is what many think about war, terrorism, and crimes–that there are degrees of culpability, and complicity is one way to be culpable. Aiding and abetting is a crime in the U.S., and Dershowitz highlights the related case of aiding/abetting military or terrorist acts in which some civilians aquire a degree of culpability. He makes a point to say that there are cases where civilians have no degree of culpability.
Is this is itself objectionable?
But here’s where Dershowitz mis-applies it:
As Kung Fu Monkey points out, this is unrealistic. Those who choose to remain are in their homes and have a right to stay there–they do not become guilty in any degree just because they do not scatter at the beck and call of Israel. And it almost always entails a hardship to leave one’s home, even if one can do it. Dershowitz’s view here is similar to those who blamed the victims of Katrina for not evacuating on time, ignoring all the expected issues of human nature which must be considered if we are to have a compassionate and realistic view of human populations.
I am being pretty hard on Cole in the above, and I should eat lunch before I write such things. My apologies to Juan Cole. But I was bothered by what seemed like a missed opportunity to confront Dershowitz’s piece carefully, since the issue is important. Maybe I will understand more post-food and post-comments.
You don’t like Dershowitz’s morality?
That is highly amusing, as Dershowitz is arguing as an atheist.
Of course, on what grounds atheists criticize morality has always been a joke.
The fit survive, the weak perish.
All else is opinion.
The lynch mob is clearly gathering here, but you are all demonstrating knee-jerk reactions, rushing to the side of any argument that is, only superficially, sided with anti-war, anti-religion. Stop and really think, please.
Cole puts words in Dershowitz’ mouth. Dershowitz never categorized anyone as sub-human. The original quote regarding “animals” was (i) uttered by Gillerman, not Dershowitz, and (ii) clearly referring to the terrorists themselves, not the Lebanese who support them.
It is easy to mock, but anyone who really understands the Middle East conflict knows that Dershowitz is, unfortunately, on the mark. How do you universally declare children civilians when they are armed with grenades and pushed in front of tanks? How do you declare a school out of bounds when the Syrians intentionally locate them adjacent to military installations?
I am not saying that ALL the children killed in Lebanon were combatants. There are clearly civilian casualties of war, which is just about the most awful thing in the world. But why would this community of skeptics rush to judgment without acknowledging that Israel is engaged in a war FOR SURVIVAL with terrorists (and as an animal-lover I reserve harsher terms for the terorrists) who intentionally target civilians and swear to destroy the entire nation of Israel?
Look, I’m a skeptic and an atheist, too. Yes, I know, ENVIRONMENT=GOOD, BUSH=BAD, WAR=BAD, etc. But try not to be RELIGIOUS about it, okay?
Just to be clear, Dershowitz’s LA times essay is wrong more than it’s right, and wrong in important ways. Aside from my point above about the wrongness of assuming Lebanese citizens should relocate immediately or be considered complicit (to any degree), there are 2 more I can now see:
1) War has always been messy, with civilians involved in support of defense. It is not some new feature of a post 9/11 world. Pick a war from any time/place in history and this is easily demonstrable. Dershowitz seems to have imagined old wars as rule-based enterprises, “when uniformed armies fought other uniformed armies on battlefields far from civilian population centers.” It’s hard to imagine anyone having such a cartoonish account of real wars.
2) Dersh’s final suggestion that it would be informative if the media would somehow report to what degree the civilians who were killed were culpable is absurd. How would this be quantified? We’d need a “civilianity” equivalent of the Drake Equation, with most of the variables undefined, in order to get a “civilianity score”: how old was the civilian? Gender? Did they hide 2 rockets or 20? Etc. The media can barely report basic facts well, let alone track all this.
Thats beyond stupid and frankly shows your complete and total lack of knowledge on the subject.
As to the rest I find it sad that the world we live in has to even debate whether it’s children are civilians or combatants. It’s enough to make one cry.
Well, I also find it said that in Kansas…which is arguing about evolution…a child can be aborted the DAY BEFORE it is due to be born because it is, in effect, a sub human.
Go figure.
NatureSelectedMe,
Check out this article by Sandy Tolan, author of “The Lemon Tree”:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/07/11/gaza/index.html
Unfortunately, as General Sherman once remarked, war is hell and can’t be civilized. The world media, because of the development of precision munitions, has somehow come to the conclusion that wars can be fought in such a way that nobody gets hurt, except for a few bad guys on the other side. Unfortunately, when the bad guys hide among the civilian population, as the terrorist Hizbollah and Hamas do, civilian casulties are inevitable and unavoidable. Even the most accurate precision munition cannot distinguish between the bad guys and others in their vicinity. Anyone who thinks that the IDF is being too agressive should contemplate how many civilian casulties would ensue if low yield nuclear munitions were being used. Had the IDF been using such munitions, this war would have been over two days after it started.
It’s funny how the religious see themselves as moral by default.
Christiansen babbling much?
SLC is a freak.
2 abducted soldiers = use of “low yield nuclear weapons”
yeah that makes sense.
Re Steve_C.
Since Hizbollah and Hamas are firing missiles at random into civilian areas, I think that the use of low yield nuclear weapons would put a stop to these actions in short order and would preclude the necessity of carrying out bombing campaigns North of the Litani river in Beirut and Tyre. As for the previous suggestion that a peace conference is needed, I would remind Steve_C that several peace conferences were held, under US ospices, between Israel and the PA which led nowhere because of the Palestinian refusal to accept the State of Israel. This is not only my opinion, it has been testified to by Dennis Ross and former president Clinton, neither of whome has a reputaion of being anti-Palestinian. At the present time there is no point in holding negotiaions with the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hizbollah. One doesn’t negotiate with Hitler.
The Israeli Air Force was targeting Lebanese infrastructure as well as Hizbullah. The Beirut airport was ruined, bridges and highways were destroyed, marked ambulances were rocketed and much more. The apparent reason given was that in some way the Lebanese government and citizens were culpable for the presence and actions of Hizbullah, therefore they should be punished. This is in line with Israel’s collective punishment actions for years against Palestinians in Gaza. Israil apparently wants a failed state on their northern border instead of the booming economy that Lebanon was. Another possible goal of Israel is putting southern Lebanon under their control in order to tap the Litani river.
The causes of the conflict are somewhat murky – more so than the abduction of IDF soldiers. One line of thought was that Hizbollah was trying to get Israel’s attention away from their bombing and kidnapping in Gaza and seriously underestimated the IDF response. Or maybe they, in some dream of jihad, wanted things to be the way they are.
Another factor to consider is that the IDF patrol that was attacked was outside of the covering fire of established IDF positions and was an easy target for an opportunistic attack – the reason why the IDF suffered such a disproportionate loss of personnel to only one Hizbullah attacker. The other side of my conspiracy inclinations was that this was a set-up to provoke a Hizbullah attack in order to massively retaliate. I wouldn’t put it past either side.
There was a good N.Y. Times article today on retaliatory behavior by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. His conclusions:
Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.
None of this is to deny the roles that hatred, intolerance, avarice and deceit play in human conflict. It is simply to say that basic principles of human psychology are important ingredients in this miserable stew. Until we learn to stop trusting everything our brains tell us about others — and to start trusting others themselves — there will continue to be tears and recriminations in the wayback.
He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t
July 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/24/opinion/24gilbert.html?ex=1153886400&en=28cbeae781bd19fa&ei=5087
George wrote:
A very likely scenario, but suppose Israel does the decent thing and decides not to bomb because the risk of harm to innocent bystanders. That night, the Hezbollah guerilla sets up his launcher and fires a Katyusha into Israel which kills and injures a number of Israeli civilians. How is that a better outcome? The moral high ground is cold comfort if you are buried in it.
Dropping bombs on the wrong people is usually counter-productive, but dropping bombs on the right people can sometimes be very helpful.
In the Second World War, bombing the launch sites had some effect on the V1 and V2 bombardment of England but, in the end, it was troops on the ground overrunning the launch sites that finally put a stop to it. I suspect the same will be true in Lebanon.
As several (you can go and read this if you want – just research in the non-“mainstream” media) the immediate conflict did not begin with the capture of the soldiers, either. Read about the shelling of Palestinian beaches and that sort of stuff. Further, there is some (but less than conclusive) evidence to suggest that this outcome has been in the planning stages for a long time … draw your own conclusions. Finally, as for the initial ethnic cleansing and terrorism that helped found Israel, well, read the historical record. Its all there.
Steve_C said:
That’s this war’s Big Lie that’s haunting Israel right now.
To make things quite clear and truthful:
The abduction of the soldiers by Hizbullah would never have garnered such a reaction from Israel had we Israelis not been fired rockets at from areas we had fully evacuated. I am talking about the Kassam rockets fired at Sderot and Ashkelon from the Gaza strip.
When the two soldiers were abducted, the reaction was, “We’ve had just about ENOUGH!” That means, enough of being attacked from Jewish lands we had evacuated as a gesture of goodwill.
And anyone in our situation would have reacted the same, if not more severely. But the state of Israel is required to adhere to moral standards that no nation has ever been required to adhere to.
Boo hoo. You don’t get a free pass because you are a target.
Did Beirut fire the missles? Is this your version of shock and awe?
Yeah. Notice how well that worked for the U.S.
Try this moral standard. Don’t target civilians that had nothing to do with the attacks.
I think it’s bullshit that Army’s of nations are willing to let civilians die in order to preserve soldiers. How backwards is that?
Steve_C said:
Hizbullah fired the missiles. Hizbullah is in parts of Beirut. Those, and only those, are the parts we’ve targeted.
You speak of “moral standards”, but you seem oblivious to the fact that Hizbullah has none of those fancy things. They have no compunctions about hiding behind civilians. We Israelis are being as moral as we could possibly be in such a setting; the squeaky-clean morality you’re preaching would leave our north in total ruins.
Reading comprehension needed? Go back to what I said earlier:
For months before the Hizbullah abduction of soldiers, our civilians had been recieving rockets from areas we had evacuated for peace. In Sderot and Ashkelon (southern Israel), from Gaza. We’re tired of doing “land for nothing” deals with the enemy. We want the enemy to understand that such unprovoked aggression (attacks from areas that they had demanded and we evacuated, remember?) cannot be passed silently.
And your moral grandstanding wouldn’t have flown in WW2. Would have left the whole of southern Britain in ruin from the V1 and V2 rockets. You’re nothing but an armchair preacher, pontificating from the comfort of your as yet unattacked city (“as yet” because the Islamic enemy has designs on the whole non-Islamic world, not just on Israel).
You don’t get it. Send in the whole freaking Isreali army to get Hizbullah. Not jets.
Put some soldiers at risk. Wage some war if that’s your intention.
Send in tanks and 20,000 troops.
But I don’t think bombs are nearly as precise as you are pretending.
They didn’t seem to know they were hitting a UN outpost.
Nations send jets when they don’t want to risk soldiers.
I don’t care if you think Hizbullah have moral standards. It’s irrelevant.
You are a nation and by default should and ARE held to a higher standard.
But why expect Isreal to behave any differently then the U.S. government.
By the way I live in New York City.