Thank you for such a balanced and thoughtful assessment of this sticky quagmire of blurred lines between valid criticism of Israel and antisemitism. When feelings are raw it is all too easy for me to fall down the rabbit hole of shooting from the hip but your insightful words help promote cautious reflection first. I appreciate this is an attitude much easier to cultivate from the relative peace here than on the ground of a war front.
The Zara protests have gone global. USA, Turkey, Chile, Leicester... and Zara have apologised. For an add campaign started in September, conceived in July & looking like someone dropped a bag of cement on a building site. Their decision of course, but apologising for offending someone because the offended party has got it wrong? For something you didn't actually do, & couldn't have withouta time machine?
I'm still waiting to hear a response from policing authorities and other officials here in Toronto, where the mob that descended upon the Zara outlet in the Eaton Centre, a major tourist attraction, was so belligerent that some of them uttered insults and even death threats at the Toronto police officers on the scene and the police said nothing, and no charges were laid.
“the best way to pursue a military campaign against a terrorist group embedded within a hostile civilian population”
That is a misidentification of the objective.
Since the population is “hostile” (I assume you didn’t mean that its hostility was directed against the “terrorist group”), the enemy is the population.
Conflict is often focussed upon the armed forces (which is what your “terrorist group” actually is, here), partly because the threat is largely concentrated in them, and partly because killing civilians usually does not play well, either at home or to the watching world. (See, by contrast, the Dresden bombings.) However, the objective is to bring the enemy polity to heel; to make the opposing side accept your will.
(Had you not said “hostile population”, we might be looking at a different problem, one in which the Gazan people lack democratic control over the “terrorist group”, which, accordingly, will act in pursuance of its own interests – these being, substantially, one might think, to avoid being brought to justice. In such a case, pummelling the people is totally inappropriate and likely counterproductive.)
Thus, according to your assessment of the stance of the Gazan people, with which I concur, the Israeli regime is in conflict / at war with the Gazan population (if not Palestinians in general).
Whereas the brutality of the Israelis’ conduct of the conflict horrifies us, there simply is not a nice way to make war upon a people. We can form subjective opinions about unnecessary brutality, but kvetching about battle technique is mostly partisan posturing. The overriding concern is for the “right” side to be victorious, and we should probably excuse its prioritisation of its own in the minimisation of the human cost of the conflict. The rub, of course, is that our recognition of displays of inhumanity may influence our determination of which is the “right” side.
“Israel to achieve its legitimate aims of rescuing the hostages and achieving long-term security on its southern border”
This is where you display your allegiance.
My moral compass is orientated in almost the opposite direction.
I do not accept that an occupied people can live in dignity nor believe that the dispossessed may quickly abandon pursuit of restitution*. Accordingly, there is not, in my view, any enduringly peaceful settlement, that would permit the Zionists to maintain control of the part of Palestine they seized, that we might censure the Gazans for eschewing. The fight against the indigenous people of Palestine is an existential necessity for the “State of Israel”, but the lives and human rights of the Palestinian people outweigh the survival of the Zionist project in Palestine.
You are wrong. Calling for a ceasefire is inherently antisemitic when
1) it doesn't include linking that ceasefire to the release of all hostages, the surrender of Hamas leaders, and the laying down of arms
and/or
2) it aims to deny Israel's rights of self-defense against an enemy that has self-declared genocidal aims, and that has perpetrated a genocidal attack,
3) it is based on accepting terrorist data - but not Israeli data - as correct.
Israel's rights to self-defense are - the same as every other country - inherent natural law.
Self-defense is the absolute bedrock of law, upon which rest the two fundamental principles of international law: sovereign equality and reciprocity. Whatever is necessary for a country to defend itself - its sovereign territory and its citizens - is above the law. Law only steps in to regulate what goes beyond necessity.
These facts are indisputable:
1) Hamas has genocidal aims against Israel, and against Jews in general. (See their Charter, both the original and revised versions.)
2) Oct 7 was a conglomeration of major war-crimes: civilian-targeting, torture, massacre, mutilation, rape and kidnap. Some scholars have called it a "genocide event", but such determinations are not formalised without a great deal of investigation into both action and intent.
3) Hamas has declared its intention of carrying out Oct 7 attacks again and again and again until Israel is destroyed.
4) For Israel to continue to exist, Hamas must be destroyed.
5) Hamas intentionally maximises Palestinian civilian casualties by Blurring the Distinctions between civilian and combatant - also a major war-crime. That makes them responsible for any collateral damage arising from an opponent's inability to tell who's who.
(International law requires the opponent to take all reasonable care and to put forth every effort to distinguish. What it does not require is that the opponent hold its fire against military targets with a civilian presence. Collateral damage must be measured against the importance of the military target, and kept within those bounds.)
I was interrupted and had to stop there but I had lots more to say. Upon reflection, however, I've decided to forego explaining more of the details about what makes calling for ceasefire inherently antisemitic and go straight to the central point, which many pundits get wrong.
Antisemitism is a very specific type of racism, but it falls under the same general rubric. Racism is not only about intent. It's about procedure and application.
The primary measure of whether something constitutes racism is not the presence of malice (though, of course, that is often present) but the treatment of the targeted minority. If the target group is treated with discrimination, double standards and/or delegitimisation (or in a more advanced case, dehumanisation or demonisation) - whether this is the cause or the effect of the thought/speech/act - that is racist.
Whenever there is discrimination, double-standards or delegitimisation of Jews or Israel, that is racist/antisemitic.
So the operative condition that determines whether or not calling for a ceasefire is racist is whether that accords Israel equal treatment with other nations. I think it's pretty clear that it does not.
Set aside the fact that the calls for ceasefire are almost all directed solely at Israel and not Hamas (which is still firing rockets into Israel, by the way); set aside the fact that the accusation of "disproportionate force ... too many civilians" was (as usual) based on biased and inaccurate data that statisticians have been debunking for months and that has now (finally) been acknowledged by OCHA and the UN to be false; set aside the way calls for ceasefire have quickly devolved in many cases into demonising and attacking Jews and Jewish edifices.
We don't *need* that evidence to determine that the ceasefire calls are antisemitic. Just the fact that protestors are calling Israel to stop a Just War when they do not make the same calls, let alone with the same force, to other nations at war (Just or Unjust) is all the proof we need.
Sudan, Chad, Myanmar, Yemen, the list of current ongoing wars goes on and on, and many of them are larger, longer and with more fatalities. (Could the "ceasefire" protestors even name any other wars except Russia vs Ukraine? Their ignorance is no excuse: in this information age we live in there is no excuse for not knowing.) But I'll restrict my examples to Israel and immediate neighbours.
Do protestors for the displaced Palestinian civilians protest for the quarter-million displaced Israelis? Do protestors for Palestinians killed by Israel protest for the thousands of Palestinians and half a million Syrians killed by Syria? Do protestors who accuse Israel of apartheid protest or accuse Syria and Lebanon of apartheid, for enshrining in law restrictions against Palestinian ownership, inheritance and employment?
Put any other country in Israel's place, and what would the protestors do? We don't have to imagine it. We can see the answer is that they'd go about their lives, uninterested and uncaring.
Thank you for such a balanced and thoughtful assessment of this sticky quagmire of blurred lines between valid criticism of Israel and antisemitism. When feelings are raw it is all too easy for me to fall down the rabbit hole of shooting from the hip but your insightful words help promote cautious reflection first. I appreciate this is an attitude much easier to cultivate from the relative peace here than on the ground of a war front.
The Zara protests have gone global. USA, Turkey, Chile, Leicester... and Zara have apologised. For an add campaign started in September, conceived in July & looking like someone dropped a bag of cement on a building site. Their decision of course, but apologising for offending someone because the offended party has got it wrong? For something you didn't actually do, & couldn't have withouta time machine?
I'm still waiting to hear a response from policing authorities and other officials here in Toronto, where the mob that descended upon the Zara outlet in the Eaton Centre, a major tourist attraction, was so belligerent that some of them uttered insults and even death threats at the Toronto police officers on the scene and the police said nothing, and no charges were laid.
Just watched footage of the Eaton Centre protest. Shows a man clearly making an audible death threat. Should've been arrested and charged.
“the best way to pursue a military campaign against a terrorist group embedded within a hostile civilian population”
That is a misidentification of the objective.
Since the population is “hostile” (I assume you didn’t mean that its hostility was directed against the “terrorist group”), the enemy is the population.
Conflict is often focussed upon the armed forces (which is what your “terrorist group” actually is, here), partly because the threat is largely concentrated in them, and partly because killing civilians usually does not play well, either at home or to the watching world. (See, by contrast, the Dresden bombings.) However, the objective is to bring the enemy polity to heel; to make the opposing side accept your will.
(Had you not said “hostile population”, we might be looking at a different problem, one in which the Gazan people lack democratic control over the “terrorist group”, which, accordingly, will act in pursuance of its own interests – these being, substantially, one might think, to avoid being brought to justice. In such a case, pummelling the people is totally inappropriate and likely counterproductive.)
Thus, according to your assessment of the stance of the Gazan people, with which I concur, the Israeli regime is in conflict / at war with the Gazan population (if not Palestinians in general).
Whereas the brutality of the Israelis’ conduct of the conflict horrifies us, there simply is not a nice way to make war upon a people. We can form subjective opinions about unnecessary brutality, but kvetching about battle technique is mostly partisan posturing. The overriding concern is for the “right” side to be victorious, and we should probably excuse its prioritisation of its own in the minimisation of the human cost of the conflict. The rub, of course, is that our recognition of displays of inhumanity may influence our determination of which is the “right” side.
“Israel to achieve its legitimate aims of rescuing the hostages and achieving long-term security on its southern border”
This is where you display your allegiance.
My moral compass is orientated in almost the opposite direction.
I do not accept that an occupied people can live in dignity nor believe that the dispossessed may quickly abandon pursuit of restitution*. Accordingly, there is not, in my view, any enduringly peaceful settlement, that would permit the Zionists to maintain control of the part of Palestine they seized, that we might censure the Gazans for eschewing. The fight against the indigenous people of Palestine is an existential necessity for the “State of Israel”, but the lives and human rights of the Palestinian people outweigh the survival of the Zionist project in Palestine.
* See, e.g. the Washington Principles.
You are wrong. Calling for a ceasefire is inherently antisemitic when
1) it doesn't include linking that ceasefire to the release of all hostages, the surrender of Hamas leaders, and the laying down of arms
and/or
2) it aims to deny Israel's rights of self-defense against an enemy that has self-declared genocidal aims, and that has perpetrated a genocidal attack,
3) it is based on accepting terrorist data - but not Israeli data - as correct.
Israel's rights to self-defense are - the same as every other country - inherent natural law.
Self-defense is the absolute bedrock of law, upon which rest the two fundamental principles of international law: sovereign equality and reciprocity. Whatever is necessary for a country to defend itself - its sovereign territory and its citizens - is above the law. Law only steps in to regulate what goes beyond necessity.
These facts are indisputable:
1) Hamas has genocidal aims against Israel, and against Jews in general. (See their Charter, both the original and revised versions.)
2) Oct 7 was a conglomeration of major war-crimes: civilian-targeting, torture, massacre, mutilation, rape and kidnap. Some scholars have called it a "genocide event", but such determinations are not formalised without a great deal of investigation into both action and intent.
3) Hamas has declared its intention of carrying out Oct 7 attacks again and again and again until Israel is destroyed.
4) For Israel to continue to exist, Hamas must be destroyed.
5) Hamas intentionally maximises Palestinian civilian casualties by Blurring the Distinctions between civilian and combatant - also a major war-crime. That makes them responsible for any collateral damage arising from an opponent's inability to tell who's who.
(International law requires the opponent to take all reasonable care and to put forth every effort to distinguish. What it does not require is that the opponent hold its fire against military targets with a civilian presence. Collateral damage must be measured against the importance of the military target, and kept within those bounds.)
I was interrupted and had to stop there but I had lots more to say. Upon reflection, however, I've decided to forego explaining more of the details about what makes calling for ceasefire inherently antisemitic and go straight to the central point, which many pundits get wrong.
Antisemitism is a very specific type of racism, but it falls under the same general rubric. Racism is not only about intent. It's about procedure and application.
The primary measure of whether something constitutes racism is not the presence of malice (though, of course, that is often present) but the treatment of the targeted minority. If the target group is treated with discrimination, double standards and/or delegitimisation (or in a more advanced case, dehumanisation or demonisation) - whether this is the cause or the effect of the thought/speech/act - that is racist.
Whenever there is discrimination, double-standards or delegitimisation of Jews or Israel, that is racist/antisemitic.
So the operative condition that determines whether or not calling for a ceasefire is racist is whether that accords Israel equal treatment with other nations. I think it's pretty clear that it does not.
Set aside the fact that the calls for ceasefire are almost all directed solely at Israel and not Hamas (which is still firing rockets into Israel, by the way); set aside the fact that the accusation of "disproportionate force ... too many civilians" was (as usual) based on biased and inaccurate data that statisticians have been debunking for months and that has now (finally) been acknowledged by OCHA and the UN to be false; set aside the way calls for ceasefire have quickly devolved in many cases into demonising and attacking Jews and Jewish edifices.
We don't *need* that evidence to determine that the ceasefire calls are antisemitic. Just the fact that protestors are calling Israel to stop a Just War when they do not make the same calls, let alone with the same force, to other nations at war (Just or Unjust) is all the proof we need.
Sudan, Chad, Myanmar, Yemen, the list of current ongoing wars goes on and on, and many of them are larger, longer and with more fatalities. (Could the "ceasefire" protestors even name any other wars except Russia vs Ukraine? Their ignorance is no excuse: in this information age we live in there is no excuse for not knowing.) But I'll restrict my examples to Israel and immediate neighbours.
Do protestors for the displaced Palestinian civilians protest for the quarter-million displaced Israelis? Do protestors for Palestinians killed by Israel protest for the thousands of Palestinians and half a million Syrians killed by Syria? Do protestors who accuse Israel of apartheid protest or accuse Syria and Lebanon of apartheid, for enshrining in law restrictions against Palestinian ownership, inheritance and employment?
Put any other country in Israel's place, and what would the protestors do? We don't have to imagine it. We can see the answer is that they'd go about their lives, uninterested and uncaring.