Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXV: World War I

CNN reports:

TikTok this week removed an inflammatory anti-Israel video posted by celebrity beauty mogul and influencer Huda Kattan.

I've never been so happy to be unable to relate to any part of a sentence.

But what were the "anti-Israel" sentiments being expressed? 

Kattan, the founder and face of the billion-dollar brand Huda Beauty, shared a video to her more than 11 million followers on TikTok, accusing Israel of orchestrating World War I, World War II, the September 11 terrorist attacks and Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.

[....]

“All of the conspiracy theories coming out and a lot of evidence behind them — that Israel has been behind World War I, World War II, September 11, October 7 — they allowed all of this stuff to happen. Is this crazy?” Kattan said on camera in her since-removed TikTok post, which included other unfounded claims about Israel. “Like, I had a feeling — I was like, ‘Are they behind every world war?’ Yes.”

Alert readers might immediately notice that some of these events occurred before Israel was established. Perhaps the more forgiving among us might overlook that problem for World War II -- Israel was founded only three years after its end, and it was such a Jewy war after all.

But World War I? That's a new one on me. We didn't even have the Balfour Declaration at the start of World War I! Roping Israel into it is really an extra special stretch.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't flag the interesting language "allowed all of this stuff to happen." What I like about this is that it takes for granted that Israel and the Jews control the entirety of global affairs, and is only mad at their non-interventionist mindset. I suppose once you've decided that Jews are like all-powerful gods, theodicy becomes our problem too.

All this talk of global Jewish domination does remind me of a thought I once had, though. Among all the people who think the Jews run the world, there must be somebody who thinks we're doing an okay job of it, right? I'm just imagining some guy in a Peoria bar, overhearing grousing about the damn Jews who run our society, slamming his beer down and yelling "Hey! They're trying their best, okay? I'd like to see you juggle running the banks and the media and the universities and Hollywood and the United Nations!"

And honestly? That guy would be right. It's hard managing all of that at once, and nobody gives us an iota of credit for it.

The Shrapnel Marked "Occupant"

There's an old saying passed around by soldiers, that goes something like: "Don't worry about the bullet with your name on it. Worry about the piece of shrapnel marked 'occupant'."

The point of the story is to impress the fundamental impersonality of war. Who lives, who dies -- there's nothing special about it. The bullet or bomb or rocket doesn't care about you; the person firing it doesn't care about you either. In 99.9% of cases, it has nothing to do with you in any meaningful sense. We have for ourselves a thick understanding of our own choices and values and importance, but none of that really plays any role in who gets hurt. The bullet that comes for us almost certainly will not have our "name on it".

At one level, this outlook is a corrective to main character syndrome, where we all imagine ourselves to be very special indeed, and so the reasons good or bad things happen to us relate to our specialness and our special choices. The bullet is inscribed with my name because I made distinctive choices which made someone take notice of me and decide to specifically take me out. 

But at another level, this saying is also about undermining a sense of security based around our own ordinariness. In many respects, most of us I think don't imagine ourselves as "special". We don't stand out, we don't see ourselves as making some sort of radical or impactful choice that would cause someone else to go to the trouble of crafting a bullet specially for us. I'm just a regular guy, doing ordinary things. There's nothing special about me, so why would anyone bother to target me, of all the people in the world? And the answer is that maybe they wouldn't -- but the shrapnel marked "occupant" is distinguished precisely because it doesn't bother to target at all. Your mundanity will not save you.

I've been thinking about all of this in relation to my own coping mechanisms as I envision what the future might hold over the next four years. One mode of "reassurance" is to tell oneself that Trump and Trumpists aren't really going to go after me; they are targeting other, more distinctive communities (such an immigrants, or trans individuals). Of course, this cope might not even be right on its own terms (it's entirely plausible he will target, e.g., Jewish college professors). And to the extent it is right, even thinking this way wracks me with guilt -- "I feel better knowing it's others who will be hurt".

But there's a more fundamental problem at work here. Finding reassurance in terms of who is likely to be "targeted" tries to find security in normalcy and ordinariness. It's that notion of "I'm just a regular guy, I'm doing nothing special or out of the ordinary -- why would anyone bother to come after me?" And again, I think that self-conception is incredibly common. Some of you might have seen interviews with undocumented immigrants who claimed that, if they could vote, they would have backed Trump. This feels inconceivable -- how could they do that, when Trump says he wants to enforce their deportation en masse? The answer they give is basically: "he's not talking about me." Why would he be? I'm just trying to work hard and build a better life for my family. He must be talking about the criminals and the rapists and the predators. I'm just a normal guy, doing normal things. There's no reason why someone would go through so much trouble just to hurt me.

This in-depth story from a few months ago, about a trans girl in Florida who was on her middle school's volleyball team, hits a similar theme. The reassurance her mother tried to draw on was entirely centered around her daughter's ordinary mundaneness -- she's just a regular tween, going through normal adolescent experiences, who wants to play a sport. She's not even an especially good volleyball player! Who could be bothered to care about something so fundamentally normal?

Of course, it doesn't work. Her normalcy doesn't save her. Now certainly, in the Florida case one could say that this kid absolutely was personally targeted (the article suggests there were only two trans female athletes in the entire state at the time). The school board, the police, and so on -- they very much went after her when they found out she was trans and participating in public school athletics. But in a truer sense, I don't think it's accurate to say that what happened had anything to do with "her" at all. She is better described as the victim of the GOP's saturation bombing directed at the trans community, broadly; a campaign that self-consciously does not care about any of its victims as individuals. It's not about her. She's simply the occupant.

If one wants to catastrophize further, I sometimes think about what would happen if our newly-elected overlords got us into a global hot war (Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense is a Fox News personality who openly promoted the idea of a first strike attack on North Korea). It feels, and some sense is, cosmically unfair that such a war would effect me. What do I have to do with anything? I didn't vote for this! I think this whole thing is stupid! But what's true for soldiers is even more true for civilians caught in war zones -- we're all just regular people, and our regularity simply does not matter (this insight applies to other civilians who are actually, and not just hypothetically, stuck in actual war zones right now). If the rockets start raining down on Portland, it will do me no good to call out to them and say "I had nothing to do with us -- go over there!" They in no way will have my name on them, and they will  nonetheless be implacably indifferent to me.

Perhaps the moral of the story, then, is to not be afraid to stand up. Your normalcy, your ordinariness won't save you. Maybe it should, but it won't. It may or may not surprise you to know that this conclusion is very hard for me to grasp onto. I actually don't have any desire to stand out, I'm not looking to present a visage one cannot look away from. I'm fine doing "ordinary" politics and writing and participation, but I have no desire to be special beyond that. My fondest wish is that the world leave me alone and I leave it alone in turn.

But that probably isn't going to be an option. Someone like me may or may not be directly targeted for abuse and oppression -- as a Jew, as an academic, or as a Democrat. But targeted or no, there's always the chance that some shrapnel will find me as an "occupant". I don't think of myself as particularly special or distinct, I have no illusions that I represent some critical node in the Resistance to Trumpist oppression. I'm just a regular, normal guy. But normalcy will not keep me safe.

Israel's Forever War

As the war between Israel and Hamas grinds on in Gaza, we've seen various moments where both Israel and Hamas have been deemed the barrier to a ceasefire. At the moment, the pendulum appears to be swinging Israel's way, as reports grow from multiple parties accusing Israel -- and Netanyahu in particular -- of sabotaging peace talks.

Ultimately, Israel's problem is this: once the war ends, it's put up or shut up about the day after plan. And Bibi's conundrum is that he doesn't have a plan for the day after that would result in an equilibrium anyone either in Palestine or in the international community would accept, and he knows it. This is why we get bombastic but vague bleatings about "total victory". Even assuming, for sake of argument, that it would be possible to completely destroy Hamas -- what then? An independent Palestinian state? We know the answer for Bibi is no. Some sort of inferior dependency status? That's a non-starter. Occupation forever? That's just another way of saying the war continues.

But those are the choices, and ending the war means making a choice that Israel -- or at least, this government of Israel -- simply does not want to make.  Whenever one questions the possibility of destroying Hamas, one gets dismissive snorts about how we managed to destroy Nazism in Germany, and didn't stop until we achieved "total victory" there. But the end of World War II didn't coincide with ending Germany as a country -- it was always taken for granted that Germany would, within the confines of the new world order, remain a sovereign state (indeed, we dedicated unprecedented resources to rebuilding Germany post bellum in the form of the Marshall Plan -- a commitment that proponents of this analogy seem strangely uninterested in extending). If the Allies' approach towards the Axis powers was that they just never get to exercise sovereign powers again, but remain under perpetual occupation and subjugation ever-outward in time, that's not an end to the war at all -- that's maintaining the war indefinitely.

So long as the war continues, the legal, political, and diplomatic framework allows Israel considerably greater freedom of action vis-a-vis Palestine than would be available under any peacetime scenario. When you're at war, you can occupy, you can raid, you can detain, you can violate normal rules of sovereignty. That's what war is, and ending the war means either giving those opportunities up or explicitly endorsing the logic of conquest and/or apartheid. Remaining at war punts the decision down the road, remaining at war indefinitely punts the decision down the road indefinitely. This, I think, is a large part of what motivated the ICJ's decision regarding the unlawfulness of the occupation -- its conclusion being that the occupation had become a delaying mechanism, an attempt to retain the prerogatives of belligerency indefinitely. Bibi's interest in prolonging the war in Gaza now is a concentrated version of the choice Israel has made off-and-on since 1967: a forever war to avoid an undesirable peace.

This isn't to pretend that Palestinian factions have been eager partners for peace, stymied only by Israel's intransigence. But it is to say that Israel's interest in blocking Palestinian statehood is fundamentally incompatible with securing a lasting peace, because any durable peace cannot avoid the question of Palestinian independence. Bibi is probably more ideologically opposed to Palestinian statehood and equality than any modern Israel leader, so even if he didn't have a partisan interest in prolonging the war to delay his own electoral reckoning, it should not surprise anyone that his orientation towards the war in Gaza is to keep it going as long as possible. He simply cannot answer the questions posed by its end.

A "Permanent Ceasefire" is Called a Peace Treaty

Suppose one looks out at the devastation covering the Gaza Strip and thinks "we need an immediate ceasefire".

Nobody should ever fault that instinct. The immense human suffering being endured by Gaza's people should exert a moral pull on anyone who remotely cares about the human dignity of all persons. But, one might be asked, what about the hostages held by Hamas? Shouldn't they also be immediately released? Why should Hamas, in its capacity as the governing entity of the Gaza Strip, be the only beneficiary of a ceasefire that breaks a round of fighting they started?

You're not one of those ghouls who thinks the October 7 attack was justified. You absolutely think the hostages should be immediately released. It seems like a perfectly reasonable pairing: ceasefire in exchange for freeing the hostages.

Except ... you know that Hamas isn't going to release the hostages. And if "ceasefire" is linked to releasing the hostages, then there will be no ceasefire. In fact, Hamas just rejected a ceasefire proposal linked to it releasing 40 more hostages. So even if you think that Hamas is being unreasonable in rejecting this deal, the brute fact remains that tying the hostages to the ceasefire means that the ceasefire isn't going to happen. Which means it will be very tempting for those who think an immediate ceasefire  is the most essential thing to drop the demand; a drop which, in turn, makes it exceedingly unlikely that Israel will agree to a ceasefire.

Here we have the core paradox that afflicts the ceasefire talk: it takes two to ceasefire. Both parties have to agree. And both parties are going to have conditions. But, needless to say, in times of war the prerequisites each party will demand in order to accede to a ceasefire are rather far apart -- they're usually the precise thing being fought over. And that means both parties have veto points that can't be just wished out of existence.

At one level, it would be incredibly easy to get either party to agree to a ceasefire. If Hamas agreed to surrender outright, give up all its weaponry, submit to permanent Israeli dominion, and hand over its leadership for prosecution for the atrocities on October 7, Israel would no doubt end the fighting post haste. And if Israel agreed to dissolve itself as a sovereign entity, ship the "Zionist colonizers back where they came from", and submit to Hamas' suzerainty, I'm reasonably confident Hamas would happily agree to end hostilities.

But of course those conditions aren't going to be accepted. A ceasefire requires an actual deal to be struck, not the fantasized maximalism of one party or the other's most passionate zealots. 

There isn't such thing as a unilateral ceasefire. Check that -- there is, and it's where one party is allowed to strike the other and then cry "ceasefire" upon the ensuing retaliation. The Israeli narrative of what the pro-Palestinian community thinks should have happened vis-a-vis October 7 is (1) Hamas invades Israel, rapes, mutilates, and massacres a thousand people, and takes hundreds of hostages, and then (2) a "ceasefire" goes into effect the moment they leave, preventing Israel from striking back. That's not tenable. There's no such thing as a war where only one side is permitted to show up.

After all, perhaps the most fundamental question behind a ceasefire is "what happens if it is broken?" As Israel partisans like to remind people, there was a ceasefire on October 6, and it was rather suddenly and violently breached. What are the consequences of that action? There has to be something, otherwise "ceasefire" is a semantic nothing. Returning to a state of "ceasefire", where that means Hamas can just continue to launch renewed October 7-style attacks (as they have expressly promised to keep on doing) and Israel just has to accept it, is clearly a non-starter and makes a mockery of the term "ceasefire". But if we say "well, if the ceasefire is broken, then military hostilities can resume", then we're right back to where we are today -- with no ceasefire. We are living through right now "if the ceasefire is broken, then military hostilities can resume".

But suppose you can get around that -- somehow, you achieve some ironclad security guarantees that take military confrontation absolutely off the table. And having prospectively secured that, you say, the important thing now is to just separate the warring parties and have everyone go back to their corners. Israel stops attacking Gaza, Hamas returns Israeli hostages, and as far as possible we just rewind the clock back to October 6 (and just try to ignore all the pointless bloodshed and destruction that we're quite intentionally trying to make utterly meaningless).

Except ... October 6 wasn't exactly a satisfactory place to live. There was still an Israeli blockade on Gaza, still no real recognized Palestinian state, still no real Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state ... October 6 is not good! The Palestinian narrative of what the pro-Israel community thinks should have happened around October 6 is (1) Gaza is besieged forever, with no recognition of Palestinian independence and (2) there is no step two. If a "ceasefire" just freezes the October 6 status quo, that's hardly a good outcome either. The problem with October 6 is that it tends to lead into October 7.

So a durable ceasefire can't just rest upon the declaration "ceasefire!" We need a host of other features -- the aforementioned Israeli security guarantees, instantiation of Palestinian independence, an end to Israel's blockade of Gaza, acknowledgment and recognition of Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state, and ... oh look, you've just described the contours of a permanent peace treaty.

Which won't be negotiated overnight (for example, if you disagree with any part of the litany I gave in the last paragraph, that underscores the problem). And so if we think we need an immediate ceasefire, that's not going to work for you. Which brings us back to the initial problem. For which I don't have a solution. 

It is evident enough that only some form of negotiated solution will provide durable justice for Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas is not going to massacre its way to dismantling the Zionist regime; Israel is not going to bomb Gaza into passively accepting permanent subjugation. There's no way out but through a deal. Unfortunately, the obvious truth of that fact -- which seems like it should provide an impetus for an immediate ceasefire -- doesn't actually end up having much to do with it. We are not at the end; we remain, still, "somewhere in the horrifying middle".

Image from the music video for "Handlebars," by Flobots

Pot Committed

The Israel/Hamas war in Gaza has resumed. Hamas ended the pause with rocket fire into Israel slightly before the expiration of the ceasefire Friday morning (it also conducted a mass shooting in Jerusalem, though I suppose one could argue that was outside the "theater of operations" covered by the ceasefire).

There's no joy in seeing a period of relative calm -- hostages being returned to Israel, humanitarian aid reaching Gazans -- yield to the resumption of hostilities. But I'll admit I was cynical that this ceasefire would last. Indeed, despite the growing intense international pressure on Israel in particular to wrap up its military operation, I thought it was quite likely that they'd see through their campaign to the end (whatever "end" means in this context). A durable ceasefire, in the present moment, always felt out of reach.

Why? For starters, Israel has been quite public that the ceasefire was temporary and that it would resume operations at its conclusion. There was no hiding the ball on that. There's also the fact that most political observers think that Netanyahu is toast the second the war concludes, which obviously gives him a political incentive to drag the war out for as long as possible in the hopes that some deus ex machina will reverse his fortune. Of course, that's contingent on Bibi's willingness to put his own private political interests over the good of his country while indefinitely imperiling millions in the process. Which is to say, obviously Bibi will try to drag the war out for as long as possible.

But aside from all of that, I think the Israeli government may well think that this is their last, best chance to destroy Hamas. As I've written, I think even some relatively hard-bitten "pro-Israel" (and Israeli) observers were stunned at just how quickly the world's sympathy evaporated towards Israel in the aftermath of the October 7 attack (and these were people whom I suspect, if you talked to them on October 6, would have described themselves as hard to surprise on that front). Even though Hamas has promised it will try to conduct October 7-style attacks again and again in the future, it is unlikely that one of those future attacks would give Israel even the limited window for responsive actions it enjoyed this time around -- the turnabout will if anything occur even faster.

Given all that, Israel might calculate that it's now or never. It could conclude that it's already absorbed the brunt of international opprobrium overs its Gaza campaign -- things have already topped out; they won't get worse if the campaign drags on for another month or two (that's the problem with going to the "genocide" accusation too quickly -- you don't have anything to escalate to). The question of destroying Hamas, from Israel's vantage point, was always something like "is the benefit worth the cost in terms of the international reputational consequences that would inevitably flow from the campaign?" But for better or worse, now Israel's already eaten the costs. It's pot committed. So it might as well gain the benefit of destroying Hamas; take some sweet to go with the bitter. After all, it might argue, the only thing worse than wreaking all this devastation on Gaza in the course of destroying Hamas would be to wreak all this devastation on Gaza and not destroy Hamas.

That's the logic on the Israeli side. But it's worth noting (though far fewer do) that Hamas doesn't seem especially interested in an enduring ceasefire either. 

Again, we can start with their own revealed preferences: Hamas broke a ceasefire that existed on October 6, and it was the party that ended the ceasefire that was negotiated at the end of November. It is not acting like a party that feels significant pressure to wind down the conflict.

Beyond that, Hamas' entire mid-term strategy behind October 7, after all, was to bait Israel into an apocalyptic conflict whose inevitable destruction upon the Palestinian population would fixate the world's gaze -- and in that endeavor, October 7 can only be seen as a smashing success for Hamas. A durable ceasefire doesn't help that strategy, it thwarts it -- Hamas needs the scenes of death and devastation in Gaza to rivet international attention and keep the world's eyes on the Palestinian situation. Under normal circumstances, the countervailing pressure on Hamas would be a desire to limit Palestinian casualties, but it's beyond clear that Hamas simply does not care about Palestinian life. The dead are martyrs to the cause, and just as Israel has been clear about its intent to continue the fighting, so too has Hamas been clear about its willingness to sacrifice Palestine's civilian population to its military agenda. And once you take limiting Palestinian misery off the table, what exactly does Hamas gain from a ceasefire?

Moreover, any realistic proposal for getting a durable ceasefire will likely include terms that Hamas will have little interest in accepting. It's not going to return the male, military-age hostages without a lot more than Israel probably is willing to give (it got a 1:3 ratio this time around exchanging the elderly and toddlers for Palestinian security prisoners; it's obviously going to ask for more in the next round and it's equally obvious that Israel will want to give less). Disarmament (as several Arab nations have proposed)? Fat chance it agrees to that. And there's little chance Israel will make its own offerings that will sweeten the deal. I've said from the get-go that Israel cannot, under any circumstances, let "the moral of the story" for 10/7 be that massacring Israeli civilians is a winning Palestinian strategy, which means that Israel couldn't offer a "good deal" to Hamas even if it were hypothetically interested in doing so (which it won't be). Again, given the fact that Hamas doesn't seem especially motivated to pursue a durable ceasefire, these obstacles are likely fatal to the endeavor.

I give the above analysis without any normative endorsement of any party's behavior. There's no joy in a prediction of more weeks or months of violence and death. But I'm not optimistic. The structural dynamics here just aren't good.

Airstrikes While You Wait

On October 13, Israeli defense officials made the infamous announcement giving Gaza residents "24 hours" to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip in advance of an imminent ground invasion.

Three hundred thirty-six hours later, the ground invasion still hasn't materialized. The Israeli government appears internally divided about the feasibility of a ground invasion -- how it could be managed, whether it can practically achieve the objective of "destroying Hamas", how it interacts with the objective of freeing the hostages, is it possible to accomplish without unacceptable losses. And so, weeks after the invasion seemed to be imminent with the space of a day, we continue to wait on an uneasy precipice.

[T]he government called up around 360,000 reservists and deployed many of them at the border with Gaza. Senior officials soon spoke of removing Hamas from power in the enclave, raising expectations of an imminent ground operation there.

But nearly three weeks later, the Netanyahu government has yet to give the go-ahead, though the military says that it has made a few brief incursions over the border and that it will make still more in the days ahead.

The United States has urged Israel not to rush into a ground invasion, even as it pledges full support for its ally, but domestic considerations have also played a role in the delay. Beyond the hostages, there is concern about the toll of the operation and uncertainty about what exactly it might mean to destroy Hamas, a social movement as well as a military force that is deeply embedded in Gazan society.

When asked what the military objectives of the operation are, an Israeli military spokesman said the goal was to “dismantle Hamas.” How would the army know it had achieved that goal? “That’s a big question, and I don’t think I have the capability right now to answer that one,” the spokesman, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, said at news briefing a week after the attack.

At one level, this looks like yet another illustration of the Netanyahu government's broader pattern of dithering and incompetence that has characterized its response to this entire crisis. Yet while I bow to no one in viewing Netanyahu as an ineffectual and criminal buffoon, on this narrow point I won't fully agree: if one doesn't yet have a workable plan for how an invasion will destroy Hamas, it is better to hold off on the invasion than to do it just in order to do "something". The only thing worse than dithering about in uncertainty because you don't have a plan is doing a full-scale invasion of a neighboring territory because you don't have a plan, and given the choice between the two I'm glad the Israeli government has so far chosen the former route.

That being said, this puts the Israeli aerial strikes into Gaza in a different light. With the Israeli government locked in paralysis over how to resolve the current crisis, the airstrikes have all the appearance of a deadly holding pattern -- a "something" to do while the army waits for the politicians to figure out an actual plan. Taken that way, it's hard to justify the airstrikes -- and the massive devastation they've caused to Gaza's civilian population -- as justified. 

The airstrikes are cast as necessary to a campaign of "destroying Hamas", and maybe if they actually would accomplish that end they could be warranted. But in reality, when you drill down to it, there's virtually no evidence presented that the airstrikes are at all effective at securing that goal. The airstrikes are not "destroying Hamas". Rather, it seems like Israel doesn't yet have a plan for how to "destroy Hamas" and is lobbing missiles into Gaza while it tries to figure it out. The term "proportional" is often misused in international conflicts -- it's not a requirement that all military violence be meted out at a 1:1 ratio -- but here the actual legal meaning is illustrative: the question is whether the expected military benefit is proportionate to the anticipated civilian cost. There's been little evidence presented that these airstrikes actually have much in the way of expected military benefit vis-a-vis the objective of destroying Hamas, and so is hard to justify against the damage dealt to innocent civilians.

One name given to Netanyahu's overall failed strategy for relating to Palestinians was "managing the conflict". The term, like "mowing the lawn", was a self-conscious abdication of any effort to actually resolve the conflict; it accepted that the conflict would exist in perpetuity and tried to tamp down on the costs (to Israel) to acceptable levels. Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7 is a genuine crisis for Israel, but to a large extent the Netanyahu government's response can be characterized as "managing the crisis", because they have no idea how to resolve it. The goal of destroying Hamas is unquestionably just, but they can't figure out how to accomplish it. They can't give Hamas a win by just capitulating to its demands. They have a justifiably furious populace for whom they've got nothing to show, and an international community that's running out of patience. They're stuck. A "better" government than them would also probably be stuck, but this dilemma is certainly beyond the capacities of the pathetic rabble  of fascists and lickspittles that comprises Netanyahu's coalition. And so again, the airstrikes really seem more than anything like a stalling tactic. They are not a route out of the crisis, they do not even move Israel materially in the direction of emerging from the crisis. Rather, they are a relatively costless (for Israel; for Palestine the costs are devastating) measure it can dole out to do something while it gropes for an actual way out of the crisis that has eluded it thus far.

It is infuriating that the proximate villains of the atrocities on October 7 are largely inaccessible to be brought to justice. At some level, what we're seeing is an interplay between Israel's immense power (in the form of bombs and missiles and tanks) and terrible impotence (to have stopped the attacks in the first place, to bring justice to their actual perpetrators).

And yet: airstrikes on Gaza cannot be justified in perpetuity on the basis of "we can't figure out how to bring Hamas to justice, and we can't think of anything else to do." It is, I'll repeat, infuriating that we can't figure out a way compatible with basic human rights standards to make it so that Hamas pays its deserved price for the atrocities it committed on October 7. This is why I've been repeating ad nauseum that we need to devote a lot more of our creative energy to thinking about alternatives that can secure Israel's existential security interests in the wake of those attacks (including the interest in not sending the message that brutal massacres of civilians are the best way to secure boons for the Gaza population, which is why even from a left-humanist perspective "just give Gaza everything it wants" is horrifyingly less feasible now than it was on October 6). But it's also the case that the argument against a ceasefire, insofar as it takes the form "we can't cease our fire precisely because we haven't figured out yet how our continuing to fire will secure our valid security interests" simply does not work as an argument, and with each passing day it grows less and less persuasive.

To put it in stark terms: when do the airstrikes have to stop? When "Hamas is destroyed"? We've already said that the airstrikes don't seem like they'll do much to advance that agenda, so if that's the answer then it merges with "never". Just a perpetual bombing of Gaza until the "rubble bounces". But, as horrifying as October 7 was, it does not and cannot serve as a foundation for "Israel can bomb Gaza forever for no apparent significant military gain or purpose." The mismatch between the conceptual justification ("Hamas must be destroyed") and the actual practice (airstrikes which nobody seems to think will actually do much to destroy Hamas) means that the two categories will never actually merge, and that is a direction of perpetual, endless war.

I've spoken critically about the calls for a "ceasefire" which really aren't about a "ceasefire" at all, but boil down to the desire for "a flat rule that Israel is not permitted to pursue any of its security objectives via projection of military power". But the notion that, if Israel cannot figure how to actually pursue its valid security objectives via projection of military power it shouldn't be given license to simply exert military power indefinitely for its own sake, has a lot more purchase. The simple fact is that if Israel can show an actual plan for how a military operation -- whether we're talking airstrikes, a ground invasion, special forces raids, or something else -- actually will accomplish the end of "destroying Hamas", that's a conversation, and is not something that should be preemptively and categorically ruled impermissible. But right now, Israel doesn't seem to have any such plan, and the notion that it can indefinitely immiserate Palestinian civilians as a sort of holding pattern while it tries to figure one out is harder to stomach. 

Put differently: it is understandably infuriating to those who were directly and indirectly terrorized by Hamas' violence to witness Israel dithering about in uncertainty because it doesn't have a workable plan to resolve this crisis. But it's still better than Israel lofting bombs into Gaza indefinitely because it doesn't have a workable plan to resolve this crisis. If Israel can't determine how a military operation will actually translate into significantly advancing its legitimate security objectives, then it should cease fire unless and until it can figure it out.

In the Middle of It All

Shaul Magid has a very interesting, provocative, and thoughtful essay in Religion Dispatches about the current state of affairs in Israel and Palestine -- where it came from, and where it is going. Magid is an author for whom my general orientation is that I rarely agree with everything he says, but always find him worth reading, and so it is here. But one point in particular that he makes that very much resonates is that Hamas' attack on Israel "is not the beginning, nor the end, but as with most things, somewhere in the horrifying middle."

Nothing in geopolitics comes on a fresh slate, and there will always be history trailing behind us (and laid out in front of us). It is not justification or excuse to observe the obvious truth that Hamas' attack did not emerge ex nihilo. The same, of course, goes for the responses to that attack, which also cannot be viewed as wholly discrete, isolated events that can be analyzed and approved of/condemned atomistically. But one thought I keep returning to, as I read both justifications for Israel's campaign against Hamas and calls for that campaign to end in a ceasefire, is that a lot of people seem to think that we're not in the middle, that we could be on the verge of (if we make the right moves, anyway) the end. And in doing so, I think they're skipping past some essential but difficult question about what comes after whatever comes next.

Start with Israel's backers, for whom the call of the day is that things cannot proceed as they did before vis-a-vis Hamas in Gaza. I agree. As I said in my very first post on these atrocities, they were (among other things) a catastrophic failure of Israeli security policy; a complete discrediting of what came before. But before we go into what might change, we need to correctly identify what it is that was "before".

For most of the time following Israel's disengagement from Gaza and Hamas' ensuing takeover of the territory, Israel's policy has been one colloquially dubbed "mowing the lawn." In this metaphor, "the lawn" is Hamas' military capacity and willingness to inflict violence against Israelis across the border. When that capacity/willingness gets too dangerous (the grass grows too high), Israel launches an attack that depletes Hamas' stockpiles of men and munitions (the grass is cut), forcing Hamas to recuperate and recover. As time passes, Hamas inevitably replenishes its stockpiles of weaponry and its willingness to use them (the grass starts growing again), and the cycle repeats itself.

Notice that this policy is not one even aimed at securing a durable peace. It presupposes an ongoing and essentially endless cycle of violence; albeit one controlled at levels that are presumptively tolerable (for Israelis, anyway). That each Israeli attack inevitably will be followed by another one however many months or years later is not a failing of the strategy, it is the point of the strategy (just as it is not a "failure" when mowing the lawn that you'll have to do it again in a few months).

This was the strategy that failed and was decisively discredited on October 7. It is a failure both in its view that an endless cycle of low-grade violence could be kept at "tolerable" levels indefinitely, and in its broader apathy towards actually pursuing something that looks like a just and durable peace.

So now we move to today. The call to "destroy Hamas" is presented as a change from the prior policy of mowing the lawn; it's no longer about temporarily depleting Hamas' capacity to inflict violence, it is a decisive resolution -- the end of the story.

But how is it different, really, from "mowing the lawn"? To be clear, I shed no tears for Hamas' destruction; they're an evil terrorist organization who've inflicted untold misery on Israelis and Palestinians alike. But it's hard to imagine what "destroying Hamas" means in practice. If we're just talking about degrading the actual, social-political-military organization's specific ability to conduct operations, then maybe it's feasible -- but only because another organization will rise to take its place (and if "Hamas" is in 2024 replaced by "Babas" which does all of the same things, what has actually been accomplished?). If the goal is to permanently obliterate the ability of any actor, under any name, in the Gaza Strip to engage in insurgent violence against Israel, then it's not feasible at all -- surely, at this point, we've discredited the notion that Gaza can be bombed into permanent acquiescent quietude vis-a-vis Israel.

Put differently, a call to "destroy Hamas", without more, is just another iteration of mowing the lawn -- cutting the grass shorter, perhaps, but otherwise a repetition of the same failed strategy. It is not an end, it is a middle, and if left to its own devices it will continue the endless immiseration of the Palestinian people in service of eventually leading to another repetition of the terror we saw on October 7. So anyone calling to "destroy Hamas" has to have some plan for what to do afterwards. Those who say "destroy Hamas" and then stop there are committing the fallacy of assuming that "destroying Hamas" is the end of the problem in Israel and Gaza, and that's just obviously untrue.

So what is the "more" I propose? Simple: massive aid and reconstruction for Gaza. I spoke a few days ago of the grimmest silver lining of terrible war sometimes finally yielding a comprehensive peace, and if the terrible war is already upon us, we might as well try to leverage it to get the lasting peace.  Call it realistic, call it an ego-salve, but exploit the opportunity to say "now that Hamas has been destroyed, we can do ...." X, where X is good, humanitarian, reconstructive policies that break the pattern of entrapment and immiseration that has characterized the Gaza Strip for decades. 

There will be plenty of people who resist this; who say "how can you propose giving billions to Gaza after what happened on October 7?" Worse, Hamas -- being a terrorist organization -- isn't as prone to being "destroyed" in the way that, say, a corporation or even a state government could be. It'd likely be impossible to fully obliterate them; there will always be someone with a gun and a commitment to Hamas' ideology running around somewhere.

But my mind returns to the Marshall Plan after World War II, which surely was one of the greatest foreign policy decisions in modern history. No doubt, one could say, no country deserved less in the way of repair and support than Germany after World War II. Yet there's little doubt, comparing the outcome of post WWII to post WWI, that the choice to invest in reconstruction and repair paid off in incalculable dividends. The decision to focus less on retribution ala the Treaty of Versailles -- or, perhaps more accurately, to let "retribution" be in the military defeat and in the Nuremburg Tribunals, not in the post-war occupation of Germany (on the western side, at least) -- and more on creating future conditions of prosperity and fraternity seems, in context, almost impossibly humanistic, and yet it paid off beyond I imagine even the wildest hopes of its architects. If we can do it for Germany in 1946, we can do it for Gaza in 2023. Otherwise, we're just going to relive the same cycle again and again. 

So that has to be the deal: if you're going to destroy Hamas, then once you've declared "mission accomplished" there has to be a commitment to reconstruction. And moreover, one cannot use the impossibility of fully, completely, and in toto destroying Hamas as an excuse to never declare "mission accomplished". There's no universe in which a commitment to reconstruction doesn't take some leap of faith, but that has to be part of the deal.

That's the short-sightedness I see on the pro-Israel side of things. But there's actually something similar happening from those calling for a "ceasefire". Now, ceasefire can mean many things, and at its most literal it can mean nothing more than an intentionally temporary and short-term reprieve of hostilities to permit humanitarian aid to enter and medical and civilian evacuations to proceed without danger. It also can be temporary in the sense of a hope that the objectives which parties might rightfully be able to pursue in war could also be achieved via peaceful negotiation, so we should at least try the latter before (if talks fail) resorting to the former. 

But my sense is that most people calling for a "ceasefire" want something more durable than a few days where aid trucks can go in and out of the territories unmolested. Nor are they, in any realistic sense, hoping that with a few days of conversation Israel will be able to achieve its valid security objectives through a process of negotiation, while recognizing that a military option remains validly on the table. They think that any Israeli military response is inherently unjust and must be opposed, under any circumstances. "Ceasefire" is in some ways a misnomer; the actual demand is something closer to "the international community's position should be a flat rule that Israel is not permitted to pursue any of its security objectives via projection of military power".

A few days ago I wrote about why the call for a cease-fire seemed so futile. The basic thrust of my argument was that (a) Israel existentially cannot allow Hamas to view October 7 as a net victory, and (b) nobody has yet come up with a credible alternative beyond a bruising military response that would prevent Hamas from seeing October 7 as a net victory. An "everyone, go back to your corners" ceasefire would, at this point in time, still be seen by Hamas as it coming out ahead. Horribly, this sense would be amplified, not diminished, the more "ceasefire" is conjoined with new momentum for aid to the Gaza Strip or alleviations of the Israeli blockade -- it would suggest that brutally and shockingly massacring Israeli civilians is the most effective strategy at convincing the international community to come to Palestine's aid. And internalizing that lesson, as I said, really would be an existential threat to Israel -- it's something that the state absolutely cannot allow to happen.

But what I've come to realize over the past few days is that, just as many of Israel's supporters thinking "destroying Hamas" will be the end, rather than the middle, of the story; many of its detractors also think that we could be close to the end. Anyone who went to Hebrew School is familiar with an old saw, repeated ad nauseum in certain circles, that goes "If the Palestinians laid down their weapons there would be no more war; if the Israelis laid down their weapons there would be no more Israel." And it occurs to me that many of the pro-ceasefire commentators genuinely believe this, but in the reverse. They really believe, with absolute, 100% confidence, that if Israel just stands down and turns the other cheek, and presumably does various other pro-Palestine actions (which might include anything from "end the blockade of Gaza" to "permit a right of return for descendants of refugees"), this whole thing will be over. In a sense, Israel has no valid security interests going forward because it always, at any point it chooses, has the immediate and unconditional capacity to end the situation of security threat at its sole discretion.

From that vantage point, proponents of a ceasefire don't have to come up with an "alternative" to military action that will prevent Hamas from viewing October 7 as a net victory, because the whole thing will be moot. It wouldn't matter if Hamas "internalized the message" that brutally and shockingly massacring Israeli civilians is the most effective strategy at convincing the international community to come to Palestine's aid, because they'd have already achieved all that they wanted, and wouldn't have need to resort to that tactic again. We'd be at the end of the story, not the middle.

Framed that way, the logic -- indeed, the moral imperative -- of a ceasefire becomes undeniable. But it all depends on believing, with 100% certainty, that all Hamas wants is whatever boons and succor would result from a ceasefire and any ensuing alleviation of Gaza's humanitarian conditions. That seems unrealistic on two levels. First, of course, a ceasefire could not realistically provide conditions that represent a permanent and durable end to the conflict. But second, it is based off a dogmatic and unsustainable believe that all Hamas wants and all Hamas is fighting for is justice. It fails to take seriously the seemingly undeniable reality that Hamas actually, genuinely wants unjust things vis-a-vis Israeli Jews, and will be inclined to keep fighting in order to attain these unjust ends. It's not all they want, but it is the height of naivete to think that Hamas will be satisfied -- that the story would end -- if only Israel agreed to the demands of justice as conceptualized by western peace activists. And again, that belief is essential to the project, because if we're still in the "horrifying middle", then we do have to think about the risks and consequences of enabling Hamas to view October 7 as a winning strategy, and we do have to figure out what alternative to a military campaign could prevent that being the moral of the story.

That last part is an earnest plea. War is awful in general, and will be especially awful here to innocent Palestinian civilians who are functionally trapped in a zone of active hostilities. Moreover, as alluded to above I'm dubious this war, for all the death and destruction it will ladle onto an already overflowing pile of human misery, will even achieve the (not-so-)modest objective of permanently degrading the ability of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to inflict violence on Israeli civilians. Nobody should be excited for this, nobody should think this is a good thing.

What's needed now is an off-ramp, something that can plausibly induce Israel to not go down a seemingly inexorable path without it being seen as giving Hamas a win. How do we, to alter the sardonic advice given to the U.S. as it found itself stuck in Vietnam, convince Israel to declare victory and then stay home? Keep in mind that, with respect to everything I just said about the strategic necessity of shifting the moral of the story, none of it at all alters the initial set of observations that an Israeli ground campaign in Gaza would be disastrous for Israel, to say nothing of Palestinians. The whole problem is that this terrible option still seems to be "better" than all the alternatives, and if that is to change it will only be if an alternative that successfully convinces Israel that Hamas didn't win and won't perceive itself as having won.

If someone can propose a genuine off-ramp that can credibly avert this calamity, they deserve a Nobel Peace Prize and everyone's support. And I'll say I'm not opposed to a ceasefire that's meant to hold the peace while that solution is generated. But to come up with an alternative, it's necessary to recognize that we're in the middle of the story, not the end. As much as we might like to, we cannot skip to the conclusion.

Biden Visits Ukraine

President Joe Biden made a top-secret (but now public) visit to Ukraine in a show of solidarity as the country continues to face down Russia's war of aggression.

I don't have a lot to add to this except to say that as symbolic gestures go, this is quite the move. It obviously is reminiscent to trips Presidents Bush and Obama had made to Iraq and Afghanistan, but even more difficult to pull off given that Ukraine doesn't have American troops on the ground providing a security buffer.

As the GOP continues to play footsie with Putin's authoritarian thuggery, and the usual red-brown alliance pushes for Ukrainian capitulation and subjugation, this act of solidarity by the President is more than welcome.

If Russians Want Out, Let Them In

As the Russian government announced new military mobilization decrees to reverse their faltering Ukraine campaign, the world has witnessed a sharp spike in young Russian men attempting to flee the country and avoid a military call-up. This immediately poses the question: should other countries open their borders to Russians attempting to skirt military service?

One way this question is commonly debated is whether the Russians in question are morally culpable for their nation's actions in Ukraine. A common form of the argument goes something like "many of those trying now to flee Russia are hardly conscientious objectors or paragons of moral virtue. Most Russians support Putin and support the Ukraine war; they just are trying to save their own skin now that the war is going badly." While it might be one thing to give refugee status to those who've genuinely and consistently resisted Russia's war of aggression, it's another entirely to reach out and protect persons who actually support the war but simply don't like the idea of fighting in it.

One response to this argument is to observe that the people now being called up to fight are disproportionately being drawn from historically-oppressed ethnic minority groups in Russia's hinterlands -- an attempt, as one commentator grimly put it, for Russian nationalists to wage "two ethnic cleansings for the price of one."

But I'll go further: when it comes to Russians seeking to evade military mobilization, I'm less concerned about judging any individual's moral character than I am about thwarting and sabotaging the Russian war machine to the greatest degree possible. If the Russian military is feeling starved for manpower right now, I want to burn some of their grain silos to turn the screws even more. The fewer military-aged Russian men the Russian army has available to it to deploy to the front, the happier I am.

I certainly don't want to give sanctuary to out-and-out war criminals. But consider the marginal case -- the Russian man who had no problem with the Ukraine war right up until it became a live prospect that he'd have to fight in it. I wouldn't exactly nominate that man for a Nobel Peace Prize, and no doubt many would say that a trip to the front lines would be nothing more than just deserts. Perhaps they're right -- but I care significantly less about him getting that particular form of comeuppance than I do about Russian having one fewer soldier firing bullets at Ukrainian men, women, and children.

The easier it is for Russian men to choose not to fight in this war, the harder it will be for the Russian government to get them to fight in this war. And that's my lodestar for approaching this question. Every Russian who wants out of Russia right now is another dent in an already battered Russian war machine. So if they want out, I say let them in.

Why is Ukraine Different?

Why has the Russian invasion of Ukraine grabbed and held international attention? It is not, sad to say, the only example of armed conflict right now or in recent years. And Americans, in particular, are not known for being gripped by foreign affairs. So what makes Ukraine different from other conflicts? Here are a few (non-exclusive) potential explanations.

First, Ukraine is a European country being invaded by another (coded-as) European country. That, for better or for worse, makes a difference, though I don't have much more to add to it.

Second, it's a (relatively) evenly matched hot war conflict between two (relatively) modern and modernized military powers. Most of the major military confrontations involving modern militaries in recent years have been cases where one party is far more powerful in conventional terms than the other (e.g., either of the Gulf Wars). The traditional "war" part of the conflict was pretty much a walkover; any difficulties came later in reconstruction and/or insurgency. Here, neither side has the ability to decisively demolish the forces of the other in the short run even as we remain in a phase of traditional battlefield confrontation as opposed to guerilla resistance and insurgency/counterinsurgency.

Third, the war here involves a relatively stable, relatively liberal democracy on the defensive, being invaded in an existential threat to its existence. That is quite rare in my lifetime. Cases where, say, America has been attacked by illiberal forces tend to be sporadic and asymmetrical terrorist events; America certainly hasn't experienced nor has been at any substantial risk of an invasion in decades, or any other assault that poses a genuine existential risk of seeing the country dissolved. That's been true of most of our European allies as well; ditto countries like Japan or Australia. To see the liberal democratic camp on the defensive like that is, I think, quite shocking.

Other factors I might be missing?

What Does a Ukraine Peace Deal Look Like?

Russia's war against Ukraine has begun in full force. So far, the Ukrainian government and people have done a remarkable job in slowing Russian aggression. But Russia is much bigger than Ukraine, and every day this war goes on is another day of wholly unnecessary death and bloodshed.

There are reports that Ukraine has asked Israel to mediate peace talks with Russia (Israel being one of a very small number of countries that remains on at least halfway decent terms with both nations). Obviously, if Israel can do anything to bring this horrific war to end I hope it does so. We also, unfortunately, know that what with Israel being, you know, Israel, any hiccups in the negotiation process, or any sense that a resulting agreement is unfair or unjust (and someone will always find it unfair or unjust) will yield a quite ... predictable sort of discourse as a consequence.

Which leads me to ask: what, even roughly speaking, does a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine even look like?

This is an area I want to emphasize I am no expert in, and so I invite people who are experts to correct or supplement me. But here are some of the assumptions I'm working off of (which, again, I'm very open to correction).

1. First and foremost: this was a complete and unprovoked pure war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine. In a just world, they should get absolutely nothing -- not Donetsk, not Crimea, not Luhansk, nothing but a barrelful of summons to an international war crimes tribunal.  Any end to the conflict which appears to reward Russia for launching this invasion will be hideously unjust. Unfortunately, the ends of wars needn't be any more just than their beginnings.
2. While Ukraine has done an impressive job stymying Russia's advance so far, in terms of pure military material Russia retains a considerable advantage. It is highly unlikely that Ukraine can actually push Russia back on the battlefield or force Russia into a position where it has to "surrender", even though it can inflict heavy losses on Russian forces.
3. Ukraine is in a bit of a paradox: it obviously wants the war to end as soon as possible, but it's only chance to prevail is in slowing it down -- putting Russia in a morass, making the price unacceptable for the Russian people on the home front.
4. The war has not gone as quickly or as smoothly as Putin predicted, and that's a big problem for him. Europe is far more unified than he expected, his military is underperforming, and his normal allies are saying "nuh-uh, this is your mess". He needs something to come out of this that he can point to as a win, and undoing western sanctions that only came into play because of his own recklessness won't cut it. Launching an obviously optional war of aggression and limping back in pure defeat potentially puts his entire regime in jeopardy. In this context, it realistically puts Putin's head in jeopardy.

Basically, the core of the problem is that a viable deal almost certainly needs to give Putin something face-saving, but there's nothing obvious to give him that would not rightfully be a non-starter from the vantage of Ukraine and which wouldn't set a horrible precedent in terms of incentivizing offensive wars of aggression. Now to be clear: I, personally, have no interest in saving Putin's face or any other part of his body. He can swing for all I care. But while Ukraine can perhaps stop Russia from achieving total victory, it can't force Russia into a position of abject defeat, and so cannot compel a deal that -- however just -- Putin will never accept and can never accept without probably being ousted from power outright.

So that's my question: under these constraints, what does a peace deal look like? What proposal can be put together that maintains Ukraine's territorial integrity, deters Russia from undertaking similar actions in the future, but actually can get Russia's signature? If such a deal cannot be contemplated, it is hard to see how this war can be prevented from dragging on for the foreseeable future.

Russia Invades Ukraine

The war has begun. It is pure, unadulterated, irredentist imperialist aggression by a far-right authoritarian state against an American ally, and if there's the tiniest of silver linings it's that every serious commentator -- which includes people like Bernie Sanders but excludes people like Donald Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, and Tucker Carlson -- is unapologetic in recognizing it as such.

We can only hope that something convinces Russia to turn off this course of action with a minimum of bloodshed and human suffering. But acts require a united response from the liberal democracies of the world, and so far thankfully it looks like that's what we're seeing.

Who's Afraid of Valerie Plame's Antisemitism?

Two years ago, Valerie Plame -- previously best known as the CIA officer whose cover was blown by Bush administration officials in the run-up to the Iraq War -- got into a bit of trouble for sharing an article titled "America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars," published on the far-right White Supremacist website Unz Review.

Plame went through the usual cycle of "it's worth considering!" to "some of my best friends are Jewish!" to "I'm sorry -- but how could I have known an article titled 'America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars' might be antisemitic?" And then she disappeared again.

Now, she's reappeared, announcing a run for Congress in New Mexico's 3rd district. The New York Times did a 12-paragraph piece reporting on this reemergence -- and somehow "forgot" to mention the relatively recent antisemitism scandal she had been embroiled in.

As Yair Rosenberg points out, this is ridiculous and should be unacceptable. I'm actually more forgiving of the Times for not "contextualizing" Alice Walker's antisemitic book recommendation -- it was part of a series with a very particular structure that never included providing comment on the recommendations, so there the editors could plausibly say they were just following procedure. But this was a free-form story written on their own initiative -- it was entirely up to the writer and editors what information should be deemed important enough to include. That Plame's most recent emergence as a public figure came in the form of a high-profile antisemitism scandal should have garnered mention.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXXV: War!

There is a class in the political science department here at Berkeley, titled simply "War!" (the exclamation point is included). It explores the concept and practice of war from an international relations perspective -- does it follow political science "rules"? Can it be rational? Are there cultural, geopolitical, or demographic markers that make one more or less war-prone? Of course, it's taught by a Jew.

If that "of course" caused a cocked eyebrow just there, well, you aren't Valerie Plame, who ushered in the Jewish New Year by sharing an essay titled "America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars." Shana Tova indeed! It includes such lovely suggestions like demanding the media "label" Jews when they appear on television, "kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison." So that's nice. Missing is the apparently trivial fact that Jews are significantly less likely to support Middle Eastern wars than the American population writ large.

Plame has already completed the cycle that started with "yes, very provocative, but thoughtful," proceeded onward to "Just FYI, I am of Jewish decent [sic]", over to "put aside your biases and think clearly," and finally coming to rest on an apology.

Fun bonus fact: The site she shared from is the Unz Review, which was a key driver in directing antisemitic harassment at me personally following one of my Tablet articles (e.g., the infamous "are you this Jew?" email).

But one can't help but feel for Plame, who says she just "didn't do [her] homework" on the venue. I mean, who could have known that an article titled "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars" would be published on an antisemitic site?

Be AsInsured: Gaza 2014 was a "War"

Last year, I noted a lawsuit filed in California that sought to determine whether the events in Gaza in 2014 -- specifically, rocket fire into Israel -- were part of a "war" or "terrorism". The lawsuit wasn't filed by a human rights NGO, or survivors of the violence, but rather came about in the most mundane possible fashion: an insurance dispute, where a policy excluded coverage for damage due to war, but covered damage due to terrorism.

Anyway, the district court has issued a ruling, and determined that the events in question were indeed a "war". Thanks, insurance industry, for providing helpful clarity on this issue!

Are Hamas Rockets "War" or "Terrorism"? Thanks To Insurance, We May Find Out

A lawsuit just filed in California federal district court seeks to determine whether Hamas rocket fire in 2014 is an act of "war" or "terrorism".

Was the suit filed by human rights advocates? Survivors of the violence? Maybe an international NGO?

Nope. It was filed by the USA network against its insurance company. You see, USA was filming a series in Israel that was interrupted due to the rocket fire. It claimed coverage under its policy, which was denied as the policy excluded losses stemming from "war or warlike action". But it does not exclude losses incurred due to terrorism, and the network contends that is the proper descriptor of Hamas' activities.

I have no legal commentary to provide -- I'm just darkly amused that this very important issue (as a rhetorical matter, if nothing else) may well gain legal resolution due to an insurance claim.

If It's a War You Want....

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom provoked outrage in Israel when she alleged that the nation was engaging in "extrajudicial executions" when police forces killed terrorists engaged in stabbing attacks in civilian areas. Israel has responded by declaring that Wallstrom is no longer welcome in the country.

The bases for critiquing Wallstrom are legion, including the usual charges of hypocrisy (police officers in Europe -- including Sweden and France -- have killed armed assailants before, without any fretting by Wallstrom about the deaths constituting "executions"). Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman also observes that Wallstrom seems to badly misunderstand the relevant international law principles she purports to be defending. Most notably, Feldman observes that even if police use of lethal force in stopping an armed attacker presents an international law question in the first place (far from clear), the international law language she appeals to is that governing armed conflict, not criminal conduct. Questions of "proportionality" and "distinction" refer to the legality of military strikes which will result in civilian casualties in pursuit of a bona fide military objective. Civilian and military targets must be distinguished, and civilian casualties must be proportionate to the military objective pursued. These considerations are simply inapposite where the police are seeking to stop an identified criminal in a civilian context.

There's another point worth making here that Feldman does not raise. Obviously, some defenders of Palestinian attacks on Israel would argue that these are military, not criminal actions. It's possible that this is the view that Wallstrom is seeking to channel: the stabbing attacks conducted by Palestinians against Israelis are part of an ongoing military conflict between Israel and Palestine, and so therefore Israel's response should be thought of in terms of the laws of war.

Obviously, the goal of this framing is to elevate the stabbing attacks beyond that of unsavory criminality. The stabbers are not mere criminals, but soldiers, entitled to all the respect that position entails. Now there are all sorts of reasons why characterizing stabbing attacks as military operations is problematic, and another lengthy list of reasons why if they are "military" they're also war crimes. But putting that aside, Wallstrom and other advocates of "militarizing" Palestinian stabbing attacks overlook one essential characteristic of the laws of war relevant to this conversation:

Soldiers can be killed.

This is a bedrock feature of the law of armed conflict: it is obviously not illegal (in of itself) to kill a soldier on the battlefield. They can be killed immediately, without warning, and without opportunity to surrender. And one can kill as many soldiers as one wants. There is no "proportionality" requirement with respect to combatants. Nor is there a requirement that they be given judicial process. A combatant who does legitimately surrender is entitled to have that surrender accepted, and upon capture is entitled to various protections as a POW. But there is no obligation to try and take enemy soldiers alive. If they're there and they're active, they can be killed -- even if they aren't an immediate threat to kill someone.

In this way, one might say, it's sometimes better to be a criminal than a soldier. Criminals are entitled to judicial process; that's the process through which they are punished. Killing a criminal on the street is only justified if there is an objective, imminent threat to someone's safety (the officers or surrounding civilians). None of that is necessary to kill a soldier. This oddity exists because, odd as this might sound, killing a soldier is not taken to be punitive. We don't kill soldiers on the battlefield as punishment for them breaking a law (being a soldier does not, in itself, break a law). We kills soldiers on the battlefield because that's what war is. And so by the same token, a captured soldier cannot be punished simply by virtue of their status as a soldier. Detention in a POW camp is also non-punitive; it is lawful as a means of incapacitating an enemy force. To punish an enemy soldier -- e.g., to hang him -- you need to charge him with a crime (such as a war crime). But judicial process is not something that exists on the battlefield itself.

For my part, I think it is evident that the Palestinian knife attackers are not soldiers, but ordinary criminals. And so that does mean that they are subject to ordinary rules of policing, which means they cannot be killed unless they pose an imminent safety threat. But if their defenders want to cloak them in the garb of the soldier, they need to accept the consequences of the label. Soldiers can be killed in war. That's what war is. And if it's a war Palestine wants, Israel is not under any obligation to lose it.

You Shell Me and I Shell You Back

Turkey struck at Syrian targets today in retaliation for Syria shelling a Turkish border town. The Syrian attack killed five civilians.

Honestly, how could Syria have known Turkey would be so barbaric as to fire back at an entity engaging in cross-border shelling? Who do they think they are -- Israelis?

Turkey Ups the Ante Again

After expelling Israel's ambassador, now Turkey is apparently going to send naval escorts to ships trying to break the blockade of Gaza. This, of course, puts them on a military crash course with Israel.

Just so everyone is clear: as a matter of international law, one of the requirements for a blockade to be legal is that it has to be effective. That is to say, the blockade must actually work in stopping all or most shipping into the blockaded area. So, to the extent Israel wants to maintain its blockade, it has to stop all ships trying to breach it -- including those under Turkish military guard.

Meanwhile, Turkey also is promising to take the matter of Israel's blockade to the ICJ. If I were Turkey, and I was set on the course of escalation that they seem to be pursuing, this is exactly what I'd do too. Part of what makes the Palmer Report so notable is its rarity -- a relatively decisive victory for Israel in the international arena. It is a case of Turkey losing a bet where the odds were strongly in their favor. So if I'm them, why not return to the table? The ICJ has not been historically friendly territory for Israel (and in particular, like the UNHRC, it tends to play fast and loose with proportionality claims). If Turkey floods the zone with enough authoritative-sounding international legal opinions, the Palmer Report will become an anomaly and easily dismissed.

But of course, this sort of escalation is dangerous -- even Ban Ki-Moon can sense it. We're getting past the point where this is mere posturing. It is difficult to overstate just how wildly irresponsibly Turkey is behaving. You won't find a more fervent critic of the Israeli foreign ministry than I, but in this case they've made reasonable efforts at rapprochement that Turkey has rejected over and over again. The match is being held to the fuse, and Turkey seems bent on setting the whole region alight.

A War They Can Get Onboard With

Lauren Booth is a journalist for Iran's Press TV and a pro-Palestinian activist (in much the same way that the Kach Party consists of "pro-Israel activists"). She's mostly known for being the half-sister-in-law of Tony Blair. Like many folks of her particular political bent, she is affiliated with various putatively "anti-war" groups: Stop the War Coalition, Media Workers Against the War, etc..

But let it never be said she's not a pragmatist about it. For Lauren Booth appears to have found a war she can support: Urging Israel's Arab neighbors to attack it (again):

It is time, Brothers and Sisters, for Al Quds to be liberated. For Islam and people of the world who wish to pray there to the one God. And we say here today to you Israel, we see your crimes and we loathe your crimes. And to us your nation does not exist, because it is a criminal injustice against humanity. We want to see Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt go to the borders and stop this now. Liberate Al Quds! March to Al Quds!

If asking Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt to "march to [Jerusalem]" (Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem) isn't simply a pro-war rallying cry, I don't know what is. Other speakers clarified that, yes, they were talking about sending in the army:

You can’t take an army, which is a nation’s army, a terrorist nation’s army, and defeat it with sincere small fighters. It needs some of those states around to release their armies to burn that land and then that region will see peace like it had in the past. Because the only time that land has seen peace between Muslim, Christian and Jew living side by side was when sincere Islamic rulers ruled with justice.

The point is that the "anti-war" commitments of folks like Booth extend precisely as far as their realization that sometimes war has the salutary impact of killing Israeli Jews.