Getting our heads round Hamas
Imagine if a political organisation took antisemitic conspiracy theories to heart to such a degree that they began to act upon them as if they were fact.
One of the more foul lies about the Holocaust is that it was a joint venture between Zionist Jews and the Nazis. The aim of the Holocaust, some on the extreme Right and Left argue, was to generate so much sympathy for the Jews that the world would support Zionism.
Now imagine that a political movement believed this “truth” so earnestly, and deemed their own political and religious ambitions to be so important, that they decided to emulate the tactic that they supposed their enemies had themselves employed.
Outside of a Bond villain, could a country’s leadership dream up such a mind-bogglingly evil scheme. Could many citizens of a country fall in behind it? It’s hard to imagine. But if wicked plots never happened, it would be hard to believe the crimes of the Third Reich in Germany, of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, of the genocidaires of Rwanda. But nonetheless, horrors did take place in these three countries.
We struggle to believe that humans are capable of extreme wickedness. Indeed, we reject so vehemently the idea that a political movement could be so committed to wanton destruction, that even when the suicide bombers in London explained in detail, and with reference to scripture, the theological basis for the massacre that they executed, commentators rushed to superimpose their own, more rational reasons for the actions of the terrorists.
In the same way, we seemingly ignore the video confessions of Hamas’s tactics: because our western liberal democratic brain can’t assimilate the information.
Can you imagine political leaders, and a religious culture, so sick and twisted that parents groom their children to be suicide bombers? Where cartoon characters on kindergarten TV set an example to those children by becoming martyrs? We see the evidence: but how many of us believe it?
By now, many civilians have died in Gaza. That is horrific. Who can fail to be moved by images of death, injury and grief. It is heartbreaking and stomach churning. But while much of the international media seems keen to imply that these civilians have been deliberately targeted by Israel, there seems to a be great reluctance to consider the manner in which they have been made targets, intentionally, by Hamas.
The evidence for this is incontrovertible.
Of course, you could be forgiven for thinking this is as far-fetched as the spurious Zionism = Nazi comparison. But it isn’t. Hamas are not shy about admitting that this is their strategy. Here we have a senior Hamas MP talking quite openly about their methods.
And here we have another Hamas figure explaining how, when he got a phone call from the Israeli military warning him to get out of his house, he instead moved his family onto the roof, and invited his friends and neighbours to bring their wives and children into the house as human shields.
Both acts are extraordinary. It is extraordinary to phone your enemy and warn them to clear civilians from a target. And it is extraordinary not only to ignore the warning but to do the reverse and crowd the area with women and children.
Similarly, Hamas know the huge emotional impact when people see the targeting of schools and mosques. They know the average television news viewer in western liberal democracies will instinctively block out any suggestion that these are used for military purposes. But once again, here is the video evidence that Hamas use mosques as armouries and booby-trap schools.
Is Hamas so sold on the effectiveness of the Gaza = Holocaust propaganda - and the belief that the state of Israel was established as a result of a Zionist-authored Holocaust - that they have actively been trying to engineer the mass slaughter of their own civilian population? Do they believe that this is how they will win?
We have to begin accepting that when they say “as you love life, we love death”, they really, really, mean it.
Comments
| 14 January 2009, 1:53 pm |
Well said Brett. You hit the nail on the head at the end. They really do mean it. I think that their apologists etc in the West don’t get that.
| 14 January 2009, 1:54 pm |
This is absolutely vile. Excellent clips.
I’ve been threiping on about this for years, that the central problem is theology, or rather a very skewed interpretation of it.
I know HP readers don’t believe this, but the secular establishment in this country is partly to blame because their materialist secular outlook so automatically rubbishes and discounts religion that it simply cannot comprehend that most of the world is religious.
It is European exceptionalism that has to be accounted for. WE are not the norm.
Regardles of whether you are religious or not, you have to pay some attention to Islamic theology to understand what is really going on in the Middle East.
Jeremy Bowen?
I know it goes against the grain, but Hamas can only be countered by a liberal intellectual onslaught against the complete falsity of its theological views. Ie, you have to engage them theologically, and if this involves challenging the Quran, (the source of Muslim anti-semitism) then so be it.
The wonder is that ‘moderate’ Muslims would appear not to be moved negatively by what the Quran says about Jews.
| 14 January 2009, 1:57 pm |
Jeffrey Goldberg has an excellent Op Ed today, which jibes with this post.
| 14 January 2009, 1:59 pm |
you love life, we love death
Is true for many Palestinians in general. Remember the celebratory street parties on Sept 11.
| 14 January 2009, 2:03 pm |
“It is extraordinary to phone your enemy and warn them to clear civilians from a target.”
Yes, truly extraordinary. It’s heartening to see that the IDF have reached the high moral standards of the IRA.
| 14 January 2009, 2:06 pm |
The IRA called Downing St before launching a missile at the Prime Minister? Not that I recall.
| 14 January 2009, 2:07 pm |
A large part of this ignorance regarding Hamas ( among other islamist organisation) is that The West has no academics or no institutes of mid-east/Islamic studies worthy of the name.
All we have are a series of apologists who disseminate deceit and illusions about Islam and the Mid-East, and who do so largely because they on the payroll of various Gulf States.
In fact, these ‘academics’ have arranged things in such a way that expresing any accurate truths about islam is now considered a form of bigotry.
I sometimes think that with regards to Hamas, and in particular their mental state, the solution to Gaza’s problemes are be found in the realm of the medicinal, and not the military.
They need to be locked-up in padded rooms, given massive injections of intra-muscular valium and then, when calmed down, slowly deprogrammed by skilled psychiatrists.
| 14 January 2009, 2:10 pm |
“The IRA called Downing St before launching a missile at the Prime Minister? Not that I recall.”
Neither did they give a warning before the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings. And their ‘warning’ before the Birmingham pub bombings was a vague and unhelpful affair.
| 14 January 2009, 2:14 pm |
There was nothing like this in the IRA Charter - Hamas Charter Article 7:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharqad tree would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).
| 14 January 2009, 2:14 pm |
Nice friends respect and the SWP have. Maybe little mikey rosen can write them a poem
| 14 January 2009, 2:15 pm |
The IRA called Downing St before launching a missile at the Prime Minister? Not that I recall.
I believe that was a mortar? Perhaps your remarkable powers of recollection have also failed you in regards to the fact that the IRA regularly phoned warnings in advance of their attacks?
Not that this in any way justified their acts of terror of course.
| 14 January 2009, 2:17 pm |
Did they call a warning in to No 10 before the mortar attack, then?
| 14 January 2009, 2:20 pm |
That is an excellent article by Jeffrey Goldberg as well.
Loathe as I am to invite the possibility of inviting the likes of TheIdiot onto a thread like this, but I want to hear other people’s answers to the following question:
why do folks like TheIdiot continually act as if Hamas were merely social democrats with a few minor policy quibbles with Israel over the subject of tarrifs on bananas? Why, when confronted with genocidal nutters of the same league as the Khimer Rouge and the Nazi Party do the likes of TheIdiot continually fawn over them and stand up for them?
| 14 January 2009, 2:20 pm |
The fact that they did not always give warnings is beside the point. As I’m sure you are aware the IDF have also launched thousands of attacks without warning.
Are you denying that the IRA often gave warnings in advance of their attacks?
| 14 January 2009, 2:22 pm |
I’m also curious as to how the IDF expect Gazans to respond to said warnings?
Seek shelter in a UN refuge perhaps?
| 14 January 2009, 2:30 pm |
No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to play silly buggers.
Israel ought to be targeting the leaders of a terrorist organisation that pursues a strategy of murdering Israeli civilians.
Unlike 10 Downing Street, Hamas leaders embed themselves - and their weaponry - in civilian areas.
Israel has an obligation to try to minimise civilian casualties; which it discharged in this case by issuing a warning to civilians.
As a response, Hamas filled the area with civilians, so that Israel had a choice: kill those civilians, or allow the Hamas leaders to get away, so that they could launch further strikes against Israeli civilians.
This bears no resemblence in any way to any actions by the IRA, at any point of its career. In particular, the IRA did not warn civilians at the Grand Hotel or No 10 that a bomb targeted at politicians was about to be exploded.
But thank you for your point.
| 14 January 2009, 2:30 pm |
I’m also curious as to how the IDF expect Gazans to respond to said warnings?
Seek shelter in a UN refuge perhaps?
It would be good if the sought refuge and THEN Hamas didn’t start firing mortars and rockets from the vicinity (note: i did not say from inside school but there were many witnesses who said Hamas were firing from the area near the school).
| 14 January 2009, 2:30 pm |
‘why do folks like TheIdiot continually act as if Hamas were merely social democrats with a few minor policy quibbles with Israel over the subject of tarrifs on bananas?’
Because being secularists, they are theologically illiterate. They need to start taking theology seriously. You don’t have to believe it, you just have to take it on.
We need a Voltaire to stand up against Islamism and the false pretensions in Islam.
| 14 January 2009, 2:34 pm |
Well said Brett. You hit the nail on the head at the end. They really do mean it. I think that their apologists etc in the West don’t get that.
We all know they are scary. You can say, if you are that way inclined,
that they are evil. We can get morally righteous; we are of course morally right, although our governments kill people too - more people, oftentimes, but in better ways, and for better reasons.
Yes, we can accept all that. However, if we do, we can still bring Hamas in.
Ephraim Halevy, former head of Hamas, knows Hamas inside out. He advocates full negotiations with Hamas. Not because they are nice, but because they are horrible. Nor is that appeasement. It is realism, and its sign of Israel’s strength, not weakness.
What say you?
| 14 January 2009, 2:37 pm |
What is there too negotiate about, if Hamas’ position on Jews, being theologically-derived, is non-negotiable, just as the whole of the Quran is non-negotiable?
| 14 January 2009, 2:37 pm |
Because being secularists, they are theologically illiterate. They need to start taking theology seriously. You don’t have to believe it, you just have to take it on.
Dude, I’m a secularist. In fact, I’m much more of a secularist than the likes of TheIdiot.
We need a Voltaire to stand up against Islamism and the false pretensions in Islam.
We had a modern day Voltaire already (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and liberals and leftists sneered at her, shouted her down and pretty much drove her out of the country for daring to challenge their cosy alliance with the likes of Hamas.
| 14 January 2009, 2:37 pm |
“Seek shelter in a UN refuge perhaps?”
Not when Mad Gilbert is there
| 14 January 2009, 2:44 pm |
As further evidence that Israel’s intentions are not to kill civilians, here they have to keep going above and beyond their international obligations in order to circumvent Hamas callous deployment of its civilians: read the whole piece for more.
“A new Israeli weapon, meanwhile, is tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb. The Israelis are countering with a missile designed, paradoxically, not to explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called “a knock on the roof.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/middleeast/11hamas.html?scp=13&sq=gaza&st=cse
| 14 January 2009, 2:46 pm |
‘Not when Mad Gilbert is there’
Relax, he’s left now. Replaced by another team.
| 14 January 2009, 2:48 pm |
devorgilla
14 January 2009, 2:46 pm
“Relax, he’s left now. Replaced by another team.”
is that true?
mattG
| 14 January 2009, 2:49 pm |
Israel has an obligation to try to minimise civilian casualties; which it discharged in this case by issuing a warning to civilians.
I don’t believe this is the case:
Human Rights Watch:
International humanitarian law requires, so long as circumstances permit, that warring parties give “effective advance warning” of attacks that may affect the civilian population. What constitutes an “effective” warning will depend on the circumstances. Such an assessment would take into account the timing of the warning and the ability of the civilians to leave the area. The Israeli warnings to date appear to be too general - providing no specific information on time or place — to be considered “effective.”
Civilians who do not evacuate following warnings are still fully protected by international law. Otherwise, warring parties could use warnings to cause forced displacement, threatening civilians with deliberate harm if they did not heed them. So, even after warnings have been given, attacking forces must still take all feasible precautions to avoid loss of civilian life and property. This includes canceling an attack when it becomes apparent that the target is civilian or that the civilian loss would be disproportionate to the expected military gain.
International humanitarian law also prohibits “acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.” Statements calling for the evacuation of areas that are not genuine warnings, but are primarily intended to cause panic among residents or compel them to leave their homes for reasons other than their safety, would fall under this prohibition. This prohibition does not attempt to address the effects of lawful attacks, which ordinarily cause fear, but rather those threats or attacks on civilians that have this specific purpose.
Unless of course you believe that International humanitarian law shouldn’t be allowed to get in the way of Israel achieving it’s political and military objectives?
| 14 January 2009, 2:51 pm |
You cannot kill Hamas.
Or, to put it more accurately, if you do, another will spring ups inevitably.
Hamas is the product of three things:
Occupation
Perception that Fatah are ’sellouts’
An Islamic credo
The second two cannot be dealt with immediately.
However the first factor impacts the other two heavily. So progress has to be made on that first, and Hamas hold the key to that (to 67 borders).
Now, as we know, the danger still exists that Hamas continue chucking rockets over, to bolster themselves, if nothing else.
However, they are significantly weakened because the occupation is over, and that is the main bugbear of the West, and indeed many Palestinians, who are not all hardcore antisemites by a long chalk.
A full resolution also plays to the moderates and changes the dymanic in Palestine - something again that Hamas will have to deal with. Other issues, that have to be dealt with by an independent state, such as economic growth, governance, the environment etc, are put into sharp focus - with no safety net.
Moreover, hardened, final borders, and a fully independent Palestine, simplifies things for Israel. Any further rocket attacks are simply dealt with as a simple and direct attack on Israel’s sovereignty, rather than complicated by other issues.
| 14 January 2009, 2:52 pm |
The Israeli warnings to date appear to be too general - providing no specific information on time or place — to be considered “effective.”
That’s utter bunkum. How much more specific than “We’re going to bomb your building” do you want?
carefulnow is clearly arguing that the IDF be held to standards way beyond those of any other professional army on the planet.
| 14 January 2009, 2:54 pm |
We need a Voltaire to stand up against Islamism and the false pretensions in Islam
Some Fench Muslims are seeking to have his work ( very unflattering) on Mohammed banned from public libraries.
| 14 January 2009, 2:54 pm |
TBH when people start to talk about the IRA with regard to Israel/Palestine I switch off.
same applies when they copy and paste long paragraphs from somewhere else.
Can we add that to the new list of ‘Donts’
MattG
| 14 January 2009, 2:58 pm |
We can debate international law until the cows come home, but without a final settlement, Israel will simply carry out more operations like this. The ‘drip drip’ effect of human rights reports, allegations (or even judgments) that they have broken international law can be damaging longer term, whatever one thinks of the UN.
| 14 January 2009, 2:59 pm |
carefulnow is clearly arguing that the IDF be held to standards way beyond those of any other professional army on the planet.
Except of course I’m not making that argument. HRW are - on the basis of international law.
same applies when they copy and paste long paragraphs from somewhere else.
I agree. reading 200 words in one post must be quite taxing. Maybe you should go and have a lie down and rest your addled brain.
| 14 January 2009, 3:05 pm |
It is most unfortunate the UN Human Rights have immunity and are free to spread canards.
Jan 13, 2009 21:54 | Updated Jan 14, 2009 12:15
‘IDF white phosphorus use not illegal’
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
GENEVA
The International Red Cross said Tuesday that Israel has fired white phosphorus shells in its offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has no evidence to suggest it is being used improperly or illegally.
The comments came after a human rights organization accused the Jewish state of using the incendiary agent,…
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231866575577&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Navi Pillay has less gray matter than an emaciated cow on the streets of New Delhi. That goes for the whole UN.
| 14 January 2009, 3:12 pm |
I have watched the videos that Brett posted..
They are extremely depressing. These are the methods of a guerrilla army with bells on. However, this is expected. How can this situation be resolved, at least temporarily?
Reoccupation by Israel?
Insertion of the PA?
Both seem short term solutions.
| 14 January 2009, 3:16 pm |
‘ “Relax, he’s left now. Replaced by another team.”
is that true?
mattG’
According to Aftenposten, the current Norwegian doctors are Muhammed Abu Arab (???) and someone called Brattebo. They reported over the weekend that Fosse and Mads Gilbert had left Shifa on Saturday. The report says that Abu Arab is sending regular reports to Aftenposten via text messaging. Presumably pictures are being sent that way too.
Norway currently has a far left Labour government which has already met with Hamas leaders in 2007. Norway was the first European state to recognise Hamas, and possibly the only one so far (unless I’m mistaken).
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/midtosten/article2866073.ece
| 14 January 2009, 3:19 pm |
Great post Brett. Hamas are not exactly the first bunch of totally convinced murdering lunatics that the world has had to deal with in the last 100 years.
But the liberal fallacy (as described by Paul Berman, for example) means that we find it very hard to explain other people acting in accordance with beliefs that are fantastical and irrational.
This is shown also in histories of the Nazis. Contemporary comment and even the early histories rationalised the Nazis at every step. Very few even considered that Hitler actually meant what he said, and acted in accordance with his beliefs.
Even Raul Hilberg talked about German civil servants having to overcome their moral scruples in order to administrate the Shoah. It was not really until Daniel Goldhagen’s book that people started to consider that Hitler and most Germans of that time acted as they did because they really believed their anti-semitic fantasies and that elimination of the Jews was the only “rational” response to the problem.
The majority of Hilberg’s civil servants had no moral scruples to overcome in relation to Nazi actions towards the Jews. Their morality, if we can call it that, was simply to do their jobs well for the fatherland.
Exactly the same is true of Hamas. And the beliefs that Hamas represent have their origin in Husseini and Al Banna’s tutelage by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.
Based on the evidence, the truth seems to be that there is no proposition which is so stupid and so irrational and so evil that human beings will not believe it and act on it. Human beings are not fundamentally rational.
But we wish that they were.
| 14 January 2009, 3:24 pm |
‘Exactly the same is true of Hamas. And the beliefs that Hamas represent have their origin in Husseini and Al Banna’s tutelage by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.’
Agree 100%. Not many people grasp the power of ideologies to subvert reason.
Isn’t this what HP is all about? Questioning why the far left have become so thoroughly irrational?
| 14 January 2009, 3:26 pm |
Jen Bradford (nice blog, Jen) posted a link to an article by Jeffrey Goldberg. He came up with this solution:
The only small chance for peace today is the same chance that existed before the Gaza invasion: The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan.
Well, its one possible solution, although highly problematic since it treats Gaza as a separate entity, and assumes a Palestinian split. It does not deal with Hamas directly and assumes they simply won’t scupper any peace deal.
Palestinians need to unite, and Hamas needs to be dealt with directly. You have to being them in.
| 14 January 2009, 3:27 pm |
Great post Brett!
I have nothing more to say. And that’s saying something.
| 14 January 2009, 3:30 pm |
” Hamas needs to be dealt with directly”
Isn’t that precisely what is happening at the moment?
| 14 January 2009, 3:34 pm |
The IDF really should train up more specialist snipers - like the Royal Marines; our British Commandos run a rather hectic 12 week sniper course at the Commando Training Centre in Devon which incidentally also trains all 22 SAS snipers. For some reason the IDF not really big into this, I think they should be.
| 14 January 2009, 3:34 pm |
Navi Pillay has less gray matter: Well, when I was acquainted with her, her legal work consisted as I recall of third party motor insurance claims. I didn’t notice where she fitted in her human rights work between then and when she arrived at the Hague as a judge, but maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
| 14 January 2009, 3:35 pm |
carefulnow
“I agree. reading 200 words in one post must be quite taxing. Maybe you should go and have a lie down and rest your addled brain.”
Its rather more that I come to the comments thread to see some original thought, opinion and argument. Fortunately, since the new ‘pruning’ policy, these things have returned to this blog.
Ive been coming here for quite some time and find those that copy and paste long paragraphs from elsewhere generally have little of interest to say themsleves.
Im afraid that you do seem to fall into that bracket.
Sorry (Christ, in the new spirit of this blog I even feel the need to apologise to people)
MattG
| 14 January 2009, 3:36 pm |
Norway currently has a far left Labour government which has already met with Hamas leaders in 2007. Norway was the first European state to recognise Hamas, and possibly the only one so far (unless I’m mistaken).
I think they then backed off:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/890400.html
That was about recognition of the Hamas-Fatah unity government I think. Still, I am not sure what non-recognition and attempted isolation of Hamas has achieved.
| 14 January 2009, 3:38 pm |
Isn’t that precisely what is happening at the moment?
I mean not by military action.
| 14 January 2009, 3:41 pm |
Sorry, but I completely disagree with one of Brett’s thesis, namely, that a Western democratic public is unable to understand that barbarians act as such, that human beings can be absolutely cruel and sadistic out of their own volition. Actually, most of those who are unwilling to take the Hamasniks at their word or to take their genocidal intentions seriously do believe, on the other hand, that the Jews are evil, cruel perpetrators of a new Holocaust. Most of those who are ready to take the side of Palestinian grievances wouldn’t concede that the Israelis may have grievances of their own. Thus, yes, most people believe in evil, they just atribute it to the other side. Maybe a very small minority of hyper-intellectualized fools believes that everyone is good and that whoever does something wrong did it either because of grievances or because of circunstances stonger than him/herself. But they are exactly that, a insignificant minority. How many of those who deny the murderous, genocidal intentions and wishes of Islamists suicide bombers would grant Bush, Cheney or Ariel Sharon the benefit of doubt? How many among those who deny Hamas’ evil intentions would say the same about Israel, the USA, the British Empire and so on? I’d say the majority of democratic westerners do admit people can be consciously evil, they just blame those they a priori dislike.
| 14 January 2009, 3:42 pm |
Nick (ex South Africa) RE: 14 January 2009, 3:34 pm
Review -
The Robert Land Academy is located in the Niagara Peninsula south of Toronto. The headmaster of the school was an officer in the Royal Canadian Army, Colonel Scott Bowman. “He was a Canadian intelligence officer who had done a yearlong stint in Israel, working with an international peacekeeping delegation around the time of the Yom Kippur War in the 1970’s. During classes Colonel Bowman would talk about the Israeli Military. He told us that the Israelis were-bar-none-the most elite, cutting-edge military in the world.”
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0061236152/littlegreenfo-20
They keep improving:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/middleeast/11hamas.html?_r=1&scp=13&sq=gaza&st=cse
| 14 January 2009, 3:46 pm |
“I mean not by military action.”
But it would be rude not to reply to Hamas in the language in which they’ve chosen to speak.
| 14 January 2009, 3:46 pm |
Morgoth at 2.52pm wrote:- “carefulnow is clearly arguing that the IDF be held to standards way beyond those of any other professional army on the planet.”
And I would add, is arguing that Hamas is being held to no standards whatsoever, moral or otherwise.
| 14 January 2009, 3:54 pm |
It’s just socially forbidden (or worse, in bad taste) nowadays to believe Muslims can be wicked while, at the same time, it is forbidden to think that Bush, Cheney, the Jews, the Zionists are not or cannot be wicked.
Go ahead, just try to say at any dinner in London that, well, we also have to understand the grievances that made the American conservatives or Israel move against Iraq or Gaza. I imagine you’ll hear everyone agreeing and telling you: yes, of course, we have to address the root causes of these grievances as well.
In short: there’s no such thing as relativism. Those who claim to be or are accused of being relativistic are also taking sides, sides about they’re not relativistic at all.
| 14 January 2009, 3:55 pm |
Excellent article.
It might be prudent to wait until the dust has cleared a bit (i.e. after the op.) before reaching decisions regarding international law etc. One wouldn’t want to be like the Red Cross and have to retract ridiculous statements later on.
The IDF is working with experts on international law before deciding on every strike and if the lawyers say that the target is unacceptable, it doesn’t go ahead, no matter how much the army wants it to.
Taking into account the fact that many (if not most) of the UNWRA and Red Cross staff in Gaza are drawn from the local population, it is quite obvious that some of the reports and accounts coming out are going to be a little fanciful. I suggest we all remember the reports of the 5,000 dead in that famous non-event “The Jenin Massacre” in 2002 and reserve judgement until the facts are clear.
I’m still waiting, by the way, to hear an apology from any of the British newspapers which ran the Jenin story with such gusto…. and the depleted uranium story of 2006…… and …..and…..
I think there might be a pattern here!
| 14 January 2009, 4:02 pm |
And I would add, is arguing that Hamas is being held to no standards whatsoever, moral or otherwise.
I don’t see anyone here arguing in defense of Hamas’ right to bomb civilians, ‘warnings’ or no.
Are you saying that Israel has the right to ignore international humanitarian law?
| 14 January 2009, 4:09 pm |
7 minutes difference
| 14 January 2009, 4:27 pm |
Hamas is perfectly entitled to conduct a war against the Israeli military.
Not that they’ve really tried to do so.
| 14 January 2009, 4:44 pm |
NO doubt among many, I have just had an email from Jewdas admitting to the hoax cancellation email and giving a lengthy very lofty, justification.
They deride the Sunday rally: A rally that puts all the blame on one side (and arguably on the weaker one at that) and fails to call for a ceasefire, can hardly be described as being for peace.
Then follows their own declaration, this time in their own name:
“We call for an immediate ceasefire, immediate negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and for lifting the economic blockade of Gaza, in order to allow the Gazan and Israeli people to live together in peace. There is no military solution, only a political one.”
I would add that, a declaration that puts all the onus on one side, and utterly fails to call on Hamas to stop the rockets can hardly be a call for peace.
| 14 January 2009, 4:51 pm |
But it would be rude not to reply to Hamas in the language in which they’ve chosen to speak.
You are a man of impeccable manners!
| 14 January 2009, 5:11 pm |
Jeffrey Goldberg (of the Atlantic) has an excellent op-ed piece in The NY Times on dealing with Hamas. His view is quite pessimistic concerning the merits of accommodation, to which I concur.
As with the Nazis (who will eternally be the lode star of political discussion), the only way to deal with them is to destroy them, regardless of the cost. While I believe currently Israel is pursuing the correct strategy in Gaza, I have my doubts it will be effectively ultimately as they are probably not committed to eradicating Hamas. They seem to believe that they can inflict sufficient punishment to eliminate the problem, at least for a number of years to come. That may be true. The overblown statements of dead terrorists might be just so much bravado, but the history of Hamas doesn’t suggest that. The difficulty of dealing with murderous fascists is that, again, like the Nazis, they are willing to sacrifice their own people for their own ends. I don’t believe Hamas would have any problem seeing all of Gaza turned into rubble, yet that is probably what is necessary, to some extent.
The Israelis really don’t have the stomach for this; and, taking a cue from their reluctance to go the distance, the world community will use their doubts as a wedge, to create a ceasefire which will only push the issue into late 2009 or early 2010.
| 14 January 2009, 5:30 pm |
TofE, I think you’re right.
But re “As with the Nazis (who will eternally be the lode star of political discussion), the only way to deal with them is to destroy them, regardless of the cost. ” as you say, Israel will not have the stomach to do this.
And nor should it.
The aim of the current conflict is to reverse the Hamas coup, and to force Hamas to rejoin a Palestinian National Unity government. According to the diplomatic noises from Cairo, this objective is very close to being achieved.
Also, it looks as if there is now a split in the Hamas leadership between the Gazans and Damascus/Teheran, with the Gazans wanting to say yes and Damascus / Teheran threatening to withdraw funding if they do so.
| 14 January 2009, 5:33 pm |
As with the Nazis (who will eternally be the lode star of political discussion), the only way to deal with them is to destroy them, regardless of the cost.
Odd. There are some important differences - differences indeed that are important in deciding how to deal with Hamas.
Here are some:
The Nazis were not stateless, Hamas are (Gaza not a state).
Hamas fighting for Palestinian state, on to which they attach their ideology. Hence Israeli occupation is an important factor.
Hamas is not a conventional army, as were the Nazis.
The Nazis were not eradicated, or “destroyed”; they were defeated in conventional warfare. However, the Nazis were not fought primarily because they had a genocidal ideology; they were fought because they invaded Europe.
While I believe currently Israel is pursuing the correct strategy in Gaza, I have my doubts it will be effectively ultimately
Israel is “pursuing the correct policy”, but you think it will fail. Hence killing hundreds of Palestinians civilians is okay, even if it fails. Odd.
The difficulty of dealing with murderous fascists is that, again, like the Nazis, they are willing to sacrifice their own people for their own ends.
More comparisons with the Nazis; yes, Hamas are not nice, but see above for the clear important differences.
I am afraid coming out with the Nazi comparison does not make the realities any easier.
| 14 January 2009, 5:35 pm |
The aim of the current conflict is to reverse the Hamas coup, and to force Hamas to rejoin a Palestinian National Unity government.
Will Israel deal with that unity government if Hamas are part of it? Because they didn’t last time.
| 14 January 2009, 5:39 pm |
The problem is that the IDF and police special forces, along with the elite brigades, take all the available snipery snipers and their sniping capacity. The *designated marksman* program was designed to provide the average infantry platoon with a higher-trained infantryman with an up-scoped long-barreled M-16, but the introduction of the Tavor assault rifle–which supposedly has superior accuracy thanks to its awesome scope–may have changed that dynamic a bit.
The IDF has been transitioning to a “every rifleman a marksman” paradigm, but is nowhere near the US Marines’ “every marine a rifleman” approach.
| 14 January 2009, 5:55 pm |
Milliband - the moron who said, apparently in all seriousness, “Israel is a democratic state and as such should be held to a higher standard than the terrorist organisation Hamas” (to paraphrase), a few days ago in the Commons. Typical fatuous Labour politician nonsense. So terrorist organisations are supposed to get a free pass to be bestial at the expense of fellow democratic states? Jumped up little freak…
| 14 January 2009, 5:58 pm |
Teaching the IDF code of conduct
By Amos Guiora
November 30, 2003
The IDF School of Military Law was established seven years ago by then-Chief of Staff Ehud Barak and the former judge advocate-generals. It was based on the American model of the U.S. Army School of Military Law located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Over the past year and a half, the school has changed its emphasis in order to teach commanders about military law, criminal law, and international law, using innovative computer software to teach thousands of IDF commanders and soldiers out in the field.
http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Views^l105&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Views&
| 14 January 2009, 6:08 pm |
“Milliband - the moron who said, apparently in all seriousness, “Israel is a democratic state and as such should be held to a higher standard than the terrorist organisation Hamas” “
Milliband is quite correct.
Of course, there are complications because Hamas is more than a terrorist oganisation, it is the (democratically) elected leadership in Gaza, has control of civil society and has militarised the whole society towards a singular aim - destroying Israel.
| 14 January 2009, 6:14 pm |
Even Raul Hilberg talked about German civil servants having to overcome their moral scruples in order to administrate the Shoah. It was not really until Daniel Goldhagen’s book that people started to consider that Hitler and most Germans of that time acted as they did because they really believed their anti-semitic fantasies and that elimination of the Jews was the only “rational” response to the problem.
There’s a devastating riposte to Goldhagen’s book by Clive James, in his serious, European man of letters mode and deep liberal conscience mode, not in his leering down the blouses of young actresses on TV mode. It was originally published in edited form in The New Yorker, and is collected in several of his collections in its original form. My copy is at home, but as a subscriber to the New Yorker I can get at their digital archive and the section I was looking for is in the edited form.
At one point he points out that part of the problem was that although the nazis said what they planned to do, a lot of people just didn’t believe them. They thought all the anti-Semitism was just electoral fluff, which wasn’t going to actually happen:
Hannah Arendt was not wrong when she said about Nazi Germany in its early stages that only a madman could guess what would happen next. In 1936, Heinrich Mann (Thomas’s older brother) published an essay predicting the whole thing, simply on the basis of the Nuremberg laws and what hd already happened in the first concentration camps. But his was a very rare case, perhaps only made possible by artistic insight. It needed sympathy with the Devil to take the Nazis at their word; good people rarely know that much about evil. But well in advance of the Holocaust’s official starting date there were plenty of bad people who didn’t need to be told about mass extermination before they got the picture.
Later, James asks why if Germans were uniquely eliminationist, why was the holocaust kept from them, while it wasn’t in other countries?
In the election of 1930, which won the Nazis their entree into the political system, the Jewish issue was downplayed. And later, when the Third Reich began its expansion into other countries, in all too many cases a significant part of the local population could be relied on to do the very thing that Goldhagenm accuses the Germans of — to start translating their anti-Semitism into a roundup the moment the whistle blew. In the Baltic countries [...] the results were horrendous from the outset. A more civilized-sounding but even more sinister case was France, where the Vichy regime exceeded the SS’s requirements for lists of Jewish men, and handed over lists of women and children as well — the preliminary to the mass deportations from Drancy, which proceeded with no opposition to speak of. Why weren’t the Germans themselves seen by the Nazis as being thoroughly biddable from the start?
Goldhagen leaves the question untouched because he has no answer. He is so certain of the entire German population’s active collaboration — or, at the very least, its approving compliance — in the Holocaust that he underplays the Nazi state’s powers of coercion through violence, something that no previous authority on the subject has managed to do.
If you have access, http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1996-04-22#folio=044 is well worth the read.
| 14 January 2009, 6:19 pm |
Carefulnow @4.02pm. What I am saying is that I hear no one questioning Hamas’ standards of warfare in general, in the wider world.
Was not referring to anyone on this thread.
What is international humanitarian law? Does it have a section that deals with rockets lobbed into peoples’ homes? Does it have a section that deals with a declared wish to have those peoples and those homes “wiped from the earth/out of existence”?
| 14 January 2009, 6:24 pm |
The Nazis were not stateless, Hamas are (Gaza not a state).
The nazis felt Germany was under a cabalistic Jewish ‘occupation’, and that its media and key industries were controlled by Jews.
Hamas is not a conventional army, as were the Nazis.
The fact Hamas has neither the intellectual or financial wherewithall to organise a standing army changes nothing.
The Nazis were not eradicated, or “destroyed”; they were defeated in conventional warfare.
The Nazis were eradicated, but NOT Germany itself, just as Hamas should be eradicated but not the Palestinians themselves.
However, the Nazis were not fought primarily because they had a genocidal ideology; they were fought because they invaded Europe.
Hamas rockets are as much an invasion of Israel as those Nazi V2 models lobbed at the UK.
I am afraid that coming out with the Nazi comparison DOES make the reality clearer.
| 14 January 2009, 6:30 pm |
Brett: In the same way, we seemingly ignore the video confessions of Hamas’s tactics: because our western liberal democratic brain can’t assimilate the information.
I’ve never had any trouble understanding them. But that’s because I’m not a coward who wants my opinions to be socially acceptable like you Brits. I reason forward from evidence not backward from “what will people think of me” Understanding Hamas is simple, just imagine what it would be like to absorb their religious, mystical, racist beliefs. Imagine you’re 10 and being groomed by a member of Hamas.
devorgilla: Because being secularists, they are theologically illiterate. They need to start taking theology seriously. You don’t have to believe it, you just have to take it on.
We need a Voltaire to stand up against Islamism and the false pretensions in Islam.
Exactly
As for Benji, I’ve never seen someone as completely confident and righteous of his foolish assumptions and program. I’ve given my views on the subject before and not gotten an answer from him so I won’t waste my time arguing now though.
| 14 January 2009, 6:36 pm |
Eurosabra The Royal Marines are upping their marksmanship too in similar ways with various initiatives; it was candidly, simply terrible, as per all hm forces except the SBS/SAS, who have always taken shooting skills rather more seriously. But the Commando snipers have already been rather good, with the Marine CTCRM sniper course at Lympstone possibly being the most thorough military sniper course anywhere.
Incidentally. The L96 in 7.62×51 has recently been replaced in the Commandos by the similar looking L115 A1 in the rather hectically intense 8.6×70 (.338 Lapua), I suspect the Israelis could probably do with a few of these to ‘reach out’ and help dominate ground in Gaza.
| 14 January 2009, 6:50 pm |
Now this Tavor is one of the best 5.56mm assault rifle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N7X0pvhQ4w
| 14 January 2009, 6:54 pm |
Hamas is not a conventional army, as were the Nazis.
The Wermacht was not nazi in the sense that you did not need to be a member of the party to serve in the army. As Hitler and other leading nazis distrusted the generals It seems that Himmler felt that the SS would eventually replace the wermacht as the nazi army and the SS of course was full of religious-style blood and soil mystics rather as Hamas appears to be full of lunatic fundamentalists.
| 14 January 2009, 6:54 pm |
Benjamin: John P addressed well many of your points. I have some additions, but one point in general: Like many analogies, it only goes so far.
The point of using the Nazis is that they are the ne plus ultra regarding evil, at least in our collective memories (but some would add Communists, certainly in terms of sheer numbers). So, the point of anaolgizing Hamas to the Nazis is simply to show (as many do willy nilly) that Hamas is capable of similar evil. I think it is capable of that.
The main point of the Nazis for me is that for them, ideology trumps everything. For Nazism (or rather, for Hitler) they gladly sacrified the German nation, explictly so at the end of the war, since the German people had failed them, by losing to the Russians. Similarly, it seems to me, that Hamas would gladly see Gaza in complete ruins if they thought (and I believe they would so think) that it served their purposes. For them, the eradiation of Jews and Israel is more important than the lives of Palestinians.
I don’t know how much your average Palestinian buys into that. I imagine some do and some don’t. Certainly, during a war period, people get worked up and often ally themselves against (what seems to us) their own interests. I’m sure a goodly number of Gazans support Hamas’s firing missiles into Israel, even if they do little damage, have little chance of doing damage and if they only serve to justify continued Israeli attacks on Gaza. From just about any normal strategic viewpoint this support is wrong, but not from an ideological point of view. I think this point is what most people, diplomats, etc., are going to run into. Many Gazans will not support their own self-interest (as we define it). It is not a matter for many of them of sharing values, raising families, getting education, living in peace, etc. Not all Gazans, of course, but many.
One point about the Nazis: They were fought because they attacked Poland (a treaty signatory with England and France), thereby bringing England into defense of Poland and because they attacked the Soviet Union, with whom they had previously enjoyed rather cordial (if deceptive on both sides) relations, including a treaty. We fought them because after Pearl Harbor they declared war on the U.S.
| 14 January 2009, 7:04 pm |
xyzzy: Has Goldhagen ever responded to James’s critique?
| 14 January 2009, 8:00 pm |
Sorry, but I don’t buy this. Jewish values don’t require that we go to the lengths to which the IDF goes to protect civilians in Gaza. Protecting IDF soldiers - our children, grandchildren, siblings and (in the women’s case) husbands - ought to come ahead of protecting people who might otherwise be innocent but who put themselves in harm’s way. I’m not arguing that we should target civilians - that would be wrong. I’m not even arguing that we should bomb Shifa Hospital, although the thought has crossed my mind. But the Geneva Convention is quite clear that terrorists cannot gain immunity by hiding behind civilian populations. Judaism doesn’t require us to give them immunity either. And I question whether an IDF General - or several IDF Generals - who may or may not be Torah scholars, ought to be deciding what Judaism requires.
And the world still regards us as child killers anyway, so we’re not gaining anything by sending young men like Aharon Karov into booby-trapped houses anyway.
http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2009/01/gazas-true-disproportion.html
| 14 January 2009, 8:39 pm |
What is international humanitarian law? Does it have a section that deals with rockets lobbed into peoples’ homes? Does it have a section that deals with a declared wish to have those peoples and those homes “wiped from the earth/out of existence”?
Yes. It calls it terrorism and it is illegal under international law. But as I said, no one is defending the actions of Hamas’ - we all know that they are fanatics. The question is why Israel, as a supposedly liberal, democratic, first world nation is engaging in terror and the wholesale slaughter of civilians in response.
Speaking of ‘wiping them out’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FABqq_jjRRo
| 14 January 2009, 9:00 pm |
Now this Tavor is one of the best 5.56mm assault rifle.
Agreed, and I’m just really busting to have a go.
The Tavor TAR21 is clearly bettter than the other main current bullpups ….including the Austrian Steyr AUG, the especially shiiite British SA80, and French FAMAS and it can be configured for us left handed shooters, unlike the fucking irritating SA80. But it’s still not fully ambidextrous, and personally I think a basic assault rifle should be. Allegedly it’s workings are based on the AR18.
All that said, It’s impressive how quickly the Zionist entity got the thing designed pressed it into service.
| 14 January 2009, 9:05 pm |
“The question is why Israel, ……….”
To fulfill the prophecy:
After the completion of Fajr Salaat (congregational dawn prayers), Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) will open the door behind him where Dajjal accompanied by 70,000 Yahudis (Jews) will be. He will indicate with his hand to move away between him (Hadhrat Isa (A.S.)) and Dajjal. Dajjal will then see Hadhrat Isa (A.S.). At that time every Kafir on whom the breath of Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) will reach, will die. His breath will reach up to the distance of his eyesight. The Muslims will then come down from the mountains and break loose on the army of Dajjal. There will be war, Dajjal will retreat, and Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) will pursue Dajjal. Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) will have two flexible swords and one shield with him and with these he will kill Dajjal at the Gate of Hudd. He willl show the Muslims the blood of Dajjal which will get on his shield. Eventually the Yahudis will be selected and killed. The swine will be killed and the cross broken. People will revert to Islam. Wars will end, and people will return to their respective countries. One Jamaat (group) of Muslims will remain in his service and companionship.
http://www.islam.tc/prophecies/jesus.html
| 14 January 2009, 9:24 pm |
Goldhagen doesn’t take aimed criticism well. Chris Browning’s very mild but damning comments on HWE, having used much of the same sources, in the postscript of later editions of ‘Ordinary Men’ resulted in my publicists ire but few answers.
Goldhagen, remarkably as a Political scientist, ignores comparative techniques when they are one of primary heuristic tactics of his discipline. Kwiet puts some good points online about here.
| 14 January 2009, 9:27 pm |
Just in on Ynetnews : a mortar fired from the northern gaza strip landed unexploded in the Eshkol regional council. The mortar has been found to contain…..white phosphorous - the same substance that the Red Cross were accusing Israel of using until they retracted their accusations yesterday. Could it be that the suspicious burns allegedly seen in Gaza’s hospitals were the result of ” work accidents”?
Also - Israeli civilians have been receiving text messages saying “Come on into Gaza. Lots of surprises waiting for your sons, the least of which is death” -in english. The texts came from a British number xx447624803777.
And - what does anyone know about a story that the Lib Dems tried to get the Israeli ambassador expelled this week and another that the speaker or chief whip of the labour party (not clear from the report in Hebrew) only allowed attackers of Israel to speak in a debate on the subject of operation Cast Lead this week?
Thought I’d been following the news but must have missed quite a lot!!
| 14 January 2009, 9:35 pm |
We have to begin accepting that when they say “as you love life, we love death”, they really, really, mean it.
Callousness, cold callousness and indifference on all sides. That will be the hallmark of this conflict.
Hamas/and its Western supporters far exceed every other party in this conflict in both callousness and indifference but that doesnt mean that one can not increasingly apportion a measure of both these attitudes to the actions of Israel and its supporters including many commenting here.
Brett is correct. Hamas is not like other political parties. Its leadership and followers are purely ideologically motivated and are not open to compromise. Hamas is their religion.
This is a fact that Hamas’ neo-Stalinist supporters, the Jeremy Greenstocks, and most secular Palestinians have not grasped. In the case of the Leftists that support Hamas it is this aspect that has the greatest psychological appeal to them. Hamas and Islamism are the cloesest approximation to the “pure” reactionary ideology that they hanker for.
Hamas should be taken at its word and there is a perfectly valid comparison between Hamas and Nazi ideology.
The fact that Hamas hasnt carried out the ethnic cleansing of all Jews is only a consequence of circumstance. The conditions are not optimal simply because Hamas dosnt have the opportunity to carry out such a programme. If it did it would.
That is the chief lesson of the unfolding of the Holocaust. Goldenhagen is wrong - the Holocaust wasnt pre-planned for the outset. The extermination of Jews was carried out opportunistically in line with Hitler’s long stated beliefs and ambition. Perhaps the most authoritative work on this subject is Origins of the Final Solution by Christopher Browning.
What Israel and its supporters have to be careful about is not plumbing to the depths of Hamas’ amorality.
No people have a God given right to anything. Not every action is justifiable. Unfortunately many in Israel and many of her supporters have forgotten this.
The Jewish state if it is to mean anything must be cogniscant that it is imperilled not by Hamas but by the rise within its own ranks of callousness and indifference.
| 14 January 2009, 9:39 pm |
Interesting. Here’s news of the comprehensive military defeat of a terrorist organisation known for employing suicide bombing, without political initiatives, negotiations, UN resolutions, genocidal tactics or anything else really. Proves that it can be done with sufficient will, I think?
| 14 January 2009, 9:44 pm |
The Jewish state if it is to mean anything must be cogniscant that it is imperilled not by Hamas but by the rise within its own ranks of callousness and indifference.
Rostam, you mean the Palestinians are imperiled by the rise of callousness and indifference on the Israeli side. If the Israelis ever get as callous as Britain was in WWII they’ll be slaughtered en-mass.
Not sure how you figure that imperils the Israelis though.
| 14 January 2009, 9:53 pm |
no one is defending the actions of Hamas
?
| 14 January 2009, 10:07 pm |
Not sure how you figure that imperils the Israelis though.
Depends on what your understanding of what Israel is. I see Israel to be - not a racial state as its enemies would like the world to believe but one based on Jewish law, morality, and ethics as set out in the Torah and as developed by a millenia of rabbinical and secular Jewish thought and teaching.
If Israel loses its unique understanding of morality and ethics in the fight against Hamas then ultimately what is the difference between the two?
Very little other than the fact that the color of the flag of one is white and blue and the other white and green.
To be clear I am not saying that Israel has no right to defend itself. It does, and it should. I have no truck with appeasers of Hamas - Jews or gentile.
Hamas for a host of reasons must be contronted and defeated. But the manner in which Hamas is confronted and defeated is as important to Israel and its allies as victory over Hamas.
| 14 January 2009, 11:03 pm |
xyzzy - James’ reference to the French at Drancy says much about the French of that time; it says nothing about the Germans, nor Goldhagen’s analysis.
It is not really a devastating critique, and the book is worth reading. Explaining the perpetrators’ actions is difficult, and requires that many of the kind, fuzzy assumptions that we like to make have to be discarded.
And maybe this was too difficult for Clive James.
| 14 January 2009, 11:17 pm |
Goldhagen’s article on political Islam is here by the way:
http://www.goldhagen.com/Pages/articles/TheNewRepublic_TheNewThreat03022006.pdf
It includes a quote from a Khaled Marshal sermon, broadcast from a Damascus mosque on Al Jazeera:
After his audience was moved by his speech to interrupt him with the chant, “Death to Israel. Death to Israel. Death to America,” Mashal lapsed into a blood-curdling reverie: “Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day…. Allah willing, we will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains.”
In the book which James attacks, Goldhagen identifies the Nazis’ needless cruelty, on an individual level, as being one of the key elements and hallmarks of their eliminationist anti-semitism.
What’s especially bizarre in Marshal’s quote is the common cause with the Nazis which he expresses in wishing Jews to suffer humiliation and degradation before they die. And remember also the reports of torture from Mumbai by the Indian doctors who had examined the bodies of the Jewish couple murdered in Chabad house.
But like Clive James, I can’t really allow myself to believe that “they really, really mean it”.
But I think this tells us something very horrible about what Hamas thinks.
| 15 January 2009, 1:40 am |
Rostam perhaps you want to make a more careful moral argument that isn’t a fallacy.
I don’t support Israel as a “Jewish State” any more than I support support Iran as a Islamic state. I support Israel because it has a legitimate liberal democracy that represents the will of its people as best as possible.
For this reason, the decisions it takes have legitimacy, and if it decides to destroy it’s enemies, that’s a sign that those enemies chose to threaten that public past its tolerance - and that’s easy to avoid, and so inherently their own damn fault.
The Allies in WWII won the war through a policy of war crimes - the RAF fire bombed Dresden, the USAAF firebombed Japanese cities. Despite that, no one in their right mind would say this means that there were no moral differences between Britain and the Nazis. The difference is in the outcome depending on who won. Imagine what Britain would have been like if the Nazis won. Imagine what Germany would be like.
Well now imagine what the it would like if the Islamists win some more war… hint look to what Iran is like.
| 15 January 2009, 1:47 am |
I’m not defending that outcome, I’m just pointing out that your argument was fallacious.
| 15 January 2009, 1:49 am |
Despite that, no one in their right mind would say this means that there were no moral differences between Britain and the Nazis.
Read what I wrote carefully. I didnt say that there was no moral difference between Israel and Hamas. I said there is a moral difference that Israel must guard.
Dropping of nuclear weapons an Dresden no matter how justified were not the Allies finest hour even if they werent technically war crimes.
Well now imagine what the it would like if the Islamists win some more war… hint look to what Iran is like.
I know what the Islamic Republic made of Iran which is why I opposed Islamism from the outset in 1979.
| 15 January 2009, 2:01 am |
By the way I said THEY WERE war crimes.
In the end we do what it takes to win, and then our liberals write apologetic books a few decades later. Thats how it always works. Don’t expect us to act civilized in a pinch. Ever.
| 15 January 2009, 3:23 am |
Hamas didn’t breach the ceasefire, Hamas didn’t breach the ceasefire, Hamas didn’t breach the ceasefire.
Repeat until you get that into your skulls, please. Even the Israeli government released a press pack admitting as much, your denial is becoming downright pathetic now.
| 15 January 2009, 5:39 am |
James, being a very small country, Israel prefers to avoiding losing men even though that means forgoing obvious causa belli.
| 15 January 2009, 6:45 am |
“The IRA called Downing St before launching a missile at the Prime Minister? Not that I recall.”
DavidT. What an awful comment to make.
So the IRA terrorist are preffered to Hamas?
| 15 January 2009, 7:27 am |
xyzzy - James’ reference to the French at Drancy says much about the French of that time; it says nothing about the Germans, nor Goldhagen’s analysis.
The article is rather longer than my quote. His essential point about Drancy was that the holocaust was kept muted in Germany, but sung from the rooftops in France and other occupied territories. Now why would that be? One conclusion would be, of course, that eliminationist anti-semitism was no more common, and perhaps less common, in Germany than in those occupied territories. Why, for example, build the extermination camps in Poland, and erect a complex web of euphemism to conceal their purpose? Why not just build them in central Berlin and invite the press to see how efficient you are at killing the untermensch? After all, if the whole population supports you, won’t this be morale boosting?
He also points out that, after the Stauffenberg plot, several of the conspirators listed the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany as amongst their reasons for plotted to kill Hitler. That can’t have helped their position, much. Whyever would they have said that, unless it was true?
White Rose, too, of course.
Goldhagen’s claim is that killing Jews was a universally popular policy in Germany, and uniquely in Germany. He’s wrong on both fronts: it was kept muted within Germany, and other European countries went to the Holocaust with a will when offered the chance. It’s not that all Germans wanted to kill Jews. It’s that a substantial number of Europeans wanted to kill Jews. Hitler provided the opportunity, but enough people were keen for him not to have to force anyone.
| 15 January 2009, 10:29 am |
“Whyever would they have said that, unless it was true?”
Because they knew it was wrong, because they knew Germany was losing the war, and because they knew that war crimes trials were coming.
Despite Hollywood’s airbrushing of Stauffenberg, the German anti-Nazi record during is a long way from what it might have been. Virtually all the conspirators had supported Hitler until the collapse in Stalingrad at the end of 1942, and changed sides because they were losing.
I don’t really think that Goldhagen is making that claim by the way. It’s a straw-man.
I see his thesis as being that ordinary people did terrible things because they actually believed in what they were doing. And that so many people in Germany actually held these beliefs that they were willing to be executioners.
As the record of collaboration around Europe shows, these beliefs were not exclusively German.
Re your comment regarding a complex web of euphemism to conceal the purpose of the death camps, have you seen the interview of the Poles outside Oswiechim (sp?) cathedral in Lanzman’s film? People knew.
| 15 January 2009, 11:29 am |
Carefulnow @ 14th January You say that you are not defending the terror brought by Hamas on Israeli’s and it’s own people; good. Because judging by the numbers of people outside the Israeli Embassy, who are rioting in support of Hamas, it looks as though many people are, and they are not putting Hamas’ actions under any moral scrutiny, and certainly not the same scrutiny under which Israel is at the moment.
That Israel is a first world theory, is much like saying, the parent is giving absolutely no example to the child. Interesting. So Hamas are just a bunch of rowdy and murderous Middle Eastern Hooray Henrys, eh? At least we agree on that.
| 15 January 2009, 11:39 am |
Re your comment regarding a complex web of euphemism to conceal the purpose of the death camps, have you seen the interview of the Poles outside Oswiechim (sp?) cathedral in Lanzman’s film? People knew.
No matter how much Hitler wanted it to be otherwise, Poles aren’t German. `Shoah’ demonstrates (and has be criticised, but I’m not competent to judge) that outside Germany, there was both wide knowledge and wide support for the holocaust. That scene (I have a copy of a transcript of the film at home, but not here in the office) doesn’t say much about the knowledge that Germans had, but does say something about Poles.
But let’s grant one side of Goldhagen’s thesis and assume that the same was true in Germany: that the holocaust was widely known about and widely supported. Then the interviews with Poles, saying that they knew what was happening in the camps and didn’t have much of a problem with it, rather demolish the other side, that there was something uniquely German about eliminationist anti-semitism.
There’s four basis positions one can argue in this.
1. Germans were largely willing and knowing participants in the holocaust, while people in occupied countries largely weren’t, thus Germany is uniquely eliminationist.
2. Germans were largely etc, as were people in some occupied countries, thus Germany is eliminationist but so are a lot of other people.
3. Germans were largely not etc, but people in some occupied countries were. Thus the holocaust is a product of Nazism and anti-semitism throughout Europe, and the Nazis were playing a tune heard more clearly in various other countries.
4. Germans were largely not etc, nor were people in occupied countries, and thus the holocaust was a product of Nazism and similar anti-semitic factions in other countries acting in secrecy.
4 is unsupportable. 1 is Goldhagen’s position. 3 would be supportable. So would 2, and is probably more accurate.
Of course Germans knew about what was happening. Of course quite a lot of them were in favour. But the same was true in Holland and France and Belgium and Poland and Austria and Russia and Hungary and elsewhere: anti-semitism was cancer throughout Europe, “you shall not live amongst us, you shall not live like us, you shall not live” was a progression in progress throughout the region. Britain can look smug, but never had the opportunity to find out how real its virtue was.
Goldhagen wants to claim that anti-semitism of the horrific form of Germany 1933-45 was something specific to Germany culture or politics, and happened for uniquely German reasons. I think he’s giving everyone else a free pass: as soon as the whistle blew, the occupied countries largely joined in with a will.
| 15 January 2009, 1:51 pm |
xyzzy - Of the four options, I agree with you that 2 is about right.
I need to reread Goldhagen’s book - I don’t think that 1 is his main thesis. For me, what’s interesting about his views is that they offer a meaningful explanation of why the perpetrators, on an individual level, actually committed their crimes.
On the basis that it is non-exclusive, I think his explanation also provides meaningful insights into Hamas and Islamism. It was the reports of torture from Mumbai last month that reminded me of his book, and the similarities between the Nazis’ and the Islamists’ eliminationist ideologies.
Yes, Goldhagen’s book is about Germans, so it is right that he should focus on the development of German eliminationist anti-semitism.
But I think that the notion that there was something uniquely evil about German culture or Germans is a straw-man, and easily disprovable.
| 15 January 2009, 3:09 pm |
I suspect that we have different readings of http://web.archive.org/web/20040604232202/www.goldhagen.com/mca0.html
I shall re-read Goldhagen’s book.
| 15 January 2009, 4:35 pm |
xyzzy - thanks for the link, I hadn’t seen this
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