One of the best things I’ve read about Gaza
Seeking moral clarity
The following clarifies and summarizes a lot of my thinking about Gaza. You may want to read the entire substack post on which it is based.
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, held a group discussion with students from various backgrounds. His purpose was to see if they could agree on moral principles that should apply to the Hamas- Israeli conflict. BTW, I fully agree with six of the seven principles they listed.
“Last weekend, [Reich] met with a group of students to talk about what’s happening in Israel and Gaza. Some were Jewish, some were Palestinian, one was Israeli, some were from other nations in the Middle East.
The purpose of the meeting was to see what they could agree on, morally. As you can imagine, emotions ran high. After several hours, they agreed to seven moral principles.
1. What Hamas did on October 7 was morally despicable.
2. Hamas’s avowed aim to murder all Jews is morally despicable.
3. What the Israeli government has done since then in Gaza is also morally despicable. This precipitated a discussion about how Hamas could be rooted out without the killing of innocent civilians, including large numbers of children.
4. The murder or kidnapping of innocent civilians is morally wrong.
5. Israel’s policies toward Palestinians have been segregation and discrimination, based on ethnicity and religion, which are morally wrong. THIS IS WHERE I DISAGREE: I believe that hatreds between the two groups are so entrenched that the best solution is to create a truly effective wall between the two communities. It will take at least several decades if not generations to work through these deadly feelings. If there ever was a time for a divorce, this is it.
6. It is morally wrong to urge genocide against any group — whether they constitute a religion, ethnicity, race, or nation.
7. All of us have a moral obligation to do everything within our power to prevent and stop all forms of genocide, all killing of innocent civilians, and the promotion of hate.
THE CONTEXT: On another website, which shall remain nameless, I have been accused of spreading Hamas propaganda and being a “Jew-hating weirdo. My posts there have been focused on how the IDF could kill more of Hamas and kill fewer civilians.
But, there are many, many Jews who support the principles enunciated above. I will stand with them as long as I can stand.
BTW, I'm working on a long post about the US-China relationship. I'm also working on a Christmas newsletter. See you again soon!
I also disagree with #5. I, however, see it as not so much ethnicity and hate, I see it as being rooted in religion, and therein lies the perpetual gap that will never be closed until their governments (this goes for us and the rest of the planet) are not affected by theocrats but use only reason and science as a measure of what is right and what is wrong. If you haven’t guessed by now, yes, I am an atheist. I look at history and almost every war has some religious basis for the perpetrator's lack of reasoning and not being able to see the others' point of view. Be secular. Be safe. No God, know peace.
I find that so much of this moral allocation and balancing completely misses the only important point: namely, that this is a war. There is no morality in war. War is the absence of morality. Starting a war is immoral. Ending it is moral. That is all. The narratives of the "sides" are irrelevant.
The moral focus needs to be on ending the war by helping the Palestinians surrender the idea that their national existence requires the elimination of Jews and the Jewish state from the land of Palestine. That war was lost decades ago, but in spite of their continuous suffering, most Palestinians are still full of fight and don't want to stop. They would rather bequeath this war to their children. Which means the war will go on, and they will - of necessity - continue to suffer.
The chain of consequences over the decades of conflict have narrowed the Palestinians' options down to this one narrow path. They cannot save their children and return to the land of Palestine unless the war ends, and it cannot end until they walk that path or are pushed through it. If they surrender they can be raised up and helped. If not, not.