Their response should be to leave the occupied territories, which aren't theirs to begin with, and to recognize a Palestinian state. Israel has held millions of Palestinians under military occupation for more than half a century, and it's way past time that that ended.
Israel left Gaza and then blockaded it, and has carried out major bombing campaigns against Gaza and ground invasions several times.
The conflict is not limited to Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues to build its illegal settlements, to subject the Palestinian population to a humiliating and brutal military occupation, and to kill Palestinians regularly (several hundred in the West Bank this year).
Until Israel leaves the occupied territories and allows the Palestinians to live as normal people, there will be Palestinian resistance. A few years ago, the people of Gaza tried nonviolent resistance, protesting at the border fence. Israel responded with live ammunition, killing hundreds of protestors.
The Palestinians have tried every way to obtain their freedom: protest, negotiation, armed resistance. Nothing works. Israel is, by far, the stronger party, and it does what it wants to the Palestinians with no consequences.
Israel is stronger than Palestine, sure, but that's not the most relevant comparison to think about. Think about all the neighboring countries that do not recognize Israel's right to exist. Think about their financial and military support for Hamas. Think about all the extremists that come from Syria and Iran to help Hamas.
Notes: I'm offering these statements in a self-contained way that I hope is fair. / I'm not claiming any one side is blameless. / I reject any moral equivalence between the IDF and Hamas. / I reject belief systems that say adherents should kill non-believers. / I don't support Netanyahu; he's not fit for the job. / I want to reduce the suffering of all people, including the people of tomorrow. / The past is gone; we can only work for a better future. / I hold out hope for a moderate 'middle' of everyday Israelis and Palestinians wanting peace. / Moderate views can only traction if the extremist elements on all sides are reduced. / By reduced I mean with minimum coercion. / But I'm not a pacifist; violence is sometimes necessary albeit never to be celebrated.
> Israel left Gaza and then blockaded it, and has carried out major bombing campaigns against Gaza and ground invasions several times.
The blockade is for fear of Hamas gaining even more weapons, a fear that seems incredibly justified given what Hamas did. The bombing campaigns were mostly responses to Hamas firing rocket attacks at Israel.
> The conflict is not limited to Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues to build its illegal settlements, to subject the Palestinian population to a humiliating and brutal military occupation, and to kill Palestinians regularly (several hundred in the West Bank this year).
Yes, I completely agree that Israel's actions in the West Bank, the settlement program and the resultant military rule are terrible and should be condemned.
> The Palestinians have tried every way to obtain their freedom: protest, negotiation, armed resistance. Nothing works. Israel is, by far, the stronger party, and it does what it wants to the Palestinians with no consequences.
I'm sorry, but this is a misread of history. The Palestinians have been offered a state multiple times, and have walked away from the negotiations every time. Israel has successfully negotiated a peace with historic enemies like Egypt, given back huge amounts of land in the process, these peace agreements have lasted for 40 years now.
Only with the Palestinians this negotiation has not worked, despite Israel having offered between 95% and 99% of the land Palestinians claimed they wanted.
Though to be clear, Hamas's official position, near as I can tell, remains that Israel itself must be completely destroyed and all the land given "back" to Palestinians.
The backdrop of most Israeli's having "given up" on the idea of a peace agreement was the failure of multiple attempts at reaching a deal, attempts that the Palestinians walked away from, and that resulted in terror attacks killing Israeli citizens.
That all said, Israel has more-or-less checked out of the peace process for the last 15 years, if not actively undermined it by weakening any serious leader that could've helped achieve peace. And given that Israel is the stronger party, I think it's not morally justified to "give up", Israel must keep striving for peace, and trying to make conditions on the ground that will allow for an eventual peace agreement.
> The Palestinians have been offered a state multiple times ...
No Israeli government has yet offered the Palestinians a sovereign state. The offers that have been made have been for some sort of entity with limited autonomy, but under effective Israeli control. The Palestinians have not simply "walked away" from negotiations. They have repeatedly tried to negotiate something better. After the Camp David negotiations broke down, the Palestinians returned to negotiate at Taba. Those talks ended because of the upcoming Israeli elections (which were won by the hard Right, which absolutely opposes any Palestinian state).
If you go back and read about the history of the Oslo process, the Israelis systematically reneged on their promises throughout the 1990s. The PLO made major concessions which were not reciprocated, and it ultimately got nothing.
Israel didn't just make peace with Egypt out of the goodness of its heart. Egypt gave Israel an enormous scare in the 1973 war. That experience made the Israelis realize that it was possible for them to lose a war against Egypt in the future. The Israelis have no such fear of the Palestinians now. If the Palestinians had an army like Egypt, things would be very different.
Israel is also able to make peace with Egypt, Jordan and the other Arab states because Israel doesn't covet their land. But the desire to have all of historic Palestine is fundamental to Zionism, and Israel never intends to leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
> No Israeli government has yet offered the Palestinians a sovereign state.
I'm not sure why you think that, that's exactly what the peace process of the 1990s and early 2000s was about. E.g. the Camp David Summit.
> If you go back and read about the history of the Oslo process, the Israelis systematically reneged on their promises throughout the 1990s. The PLO made major concessions which were not reciprocated, and it ultimately got nothing.
That's not at all true. The Palestinian Authority was formed and given control in the West Bank, independently of this Israel left Gaza and gave Palestinians control there. The peace process broke down in part due to the terror attacks that were happening in Israel, many carried out by Hamas in order to stop the peace process.
> But the desire to have all of historic Palestine is fundamental to Zionism, and Israel never intends to leave the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Some people in Israel certainly think this. Not a majority of Israelis. And the peace processes did offer land to the Palestinians including the WB.
I'm not saying Israel has done everything right, it's certainly done a lot of things wrong, and the for the last fifteen years has done things against the peace process. But it is still a true fact, attested to by people involved in the peace processes, that Israel did make offers, the Palestinians did reject them and walk away. And that has happened multiple times, including the founding of the state of Israel. (People like to relitigate this one, and there's certainly a compelling reason that Palestinians disliked the UN's partition plan - but it's still a fact that the Palestinians and Arabs generally rejected the peaceful offer, chose war instead, lost the war, and therefore lost more territories than they could've had had they accepted the partition plan to begin with.)
> I'm not sure why you think that, that's exactly what the peace process of the 1990s and early 2000s was about. E.g. the Camp David Summit.
Actually, one of the fundamental flaws of the Oslo process was that Israel did not have to commit, at the outset, to recognizing a Palestinian state. The PLO recognized the state of Israel, and in return, Israel agreed to negotiate with the PLO. What the final status of the Palestinians would be was very much up in the air.
Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords, said that there would be a Palestinian "entity," by which he meant something with partial sovereignty, under significant Israeli control.
Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist, and Netanyahu came to power. Netanyahu was totally opposed to the peace process, and both he and his party have always fundamentally opposed any Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu refused to carry out the promised military withdrawals, and generally stalled and sabotaged the peace process at every turn. He simply didn't believe in the process.
Ehud Barak won the elections in 1999, and tried to revive the Oslo process. However, he was unwilling to make an offer that met the Palestinians' bottom line: a sovereign Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. The "state" that the Palestinians were offered in 2000 at Camp David would not have controlled its own borders, airspace or water. The Israeli military would have maintained bases in the Palestinian state, overseen the Palestinian borders, and had the right to conduct military incursions into the Palestinian state. The Palestinian state would have been demilitarized (except for the IDF, of course), and the Israelis would have had veto power over its foreign policy.
Beyond that, Barak was demanding major territorial concessions (the Palestinians would have had to give up the most important parts of East Jerusalem, and Palestinian territory would have been cut up by corridors annexed to Israel), and refused any meaningful right of return for Palestinian refugees. That's the offer the Palestinians rejected at Camp David.
The Palestinians continued negotiating with Israel in 2001 at Taba, but those negotiations ended because Barak was facing another election.
The hard Right won again in the Israeli elections in 2001, and that was really the end of any peace process.
> The Palestinian Authority was formed and given control in the West Bank, independently of this Israel left Gaza
The PA was given partial control in a minority of the West Bank. To put it crudely, the Israelis offloaded the duty to take out the garbage and do the laundry to the PA, but maintained ultimate control. The PA has no army, and its police forces act to a large extent as auxiliaries of the Israelis, tasked with keeping the Palestinians quiet.
> Actually, one of the fundamental flaws of the Oslo process was that Israel did not have to commit, at the outset, to recognizing a Palestinian state. The PLO recognized the state of Israel, and in return, Israel agreed to negotiate with the PLO. What the final status of the Palestinians would be was very much up in the air.
But.. there wasn't a Palestinian state to recognize. Agreeing to negotiate with the PLO was what made the PLO the internationally-recognized party representing the Palestinians, which didn't exist before.
> Netanyahu refused to carry out the promised military withdrawals, and generally stalled and sabotaged the peace process at every turn. He simply didn't believe in the process.
Yes, I'm hardly a fan of Netanyahu (I think Hamas is responsible for the murders on October 7th, but if any one person is most responsible for there not being peace, it's Netanyahu).
As for the rest of your post - yes, Palestinians were offered terms that they didn't like. That's part of negotiations - you don't like an offer, you come back with demands you will accept. And more importantly, it's part of compromise.
Some Israelis also believe Israel should own the entire land. Israel agreed to compromise on that. In 1947, Israel agreed to the UN partition plan, which was also a compromise.
Look, the Palestinians are in a shitty situation that's only getting worse, and there's a lot of legitimate grievances (on both sides), there really are. But at multiple times in this history, Israel agreed to what it views as compromises in order to get peace, and Palestinians have not agreed to similar compromises. This is, as far as I can tell, an accurate read of history, as told both by Israelis, but also by e.g. participants of the process.
Israel has done a lot of crappy things that minimize the chance at peace, especially over the last 15 years, but the Israeli left really did have the majority buy in in the country and the country really did try to make peace, the Palestinians could've had their own sovereign state by now, but they rejected it. I don't think in hindsight you can possibly consider this justified, given where it's lead.
There actually was - the PLO declared a state in 1988. More than that, Israel did not commit to future recognition of a Palestinian state, or declare that the Palestinians had a right to a state. Those are things the Palestinians pushed for in the lead-up to Oslo, but the Israelis refused to do them. On the Israeli side, the dominant view was that the Palestinians could maybe get some sort of autonomy within Israel, but not a state. Up until this day, no Israeli government has ever recognized the right of the Palestinians to a state.
> That's part of negotiations - you don't like an offer, you come back with demands you will accept.
That's exactly what the Palestinians have done, over and over again. Arafat walked away because Barak gave an ultimatum: either accept this offer, or nothing. Arafat didn't accept that offer, so that was it.
The Palestinians and Israelis met again several months later to restart negotiations in Taba, Egypt, and those continued until the Israelis walked away (because of the upcoming elections).
> the Palestinians could've had their own sovereign state by now, but they rejected it.
Again, I don't know what you're referring to, because no Israeli government yet has ever offered the Palestinians a sovereign state. If you think a demilitarized entity with highly non-contiguous territory (broken up by Israeli settlements and military corridors), with Israeli military bases, Israeli control over all border crossings, Israeli control over airspace, and Israeli veto power over foreign policy is sovereign, then we disagree about the meaning of that word.
> But at multiple times in this history, Israel agreed to what it views as compromises in order to get peace, and Palestinians have not agreed to similar compromises.
Giving half of Palestine to the Zionists was not a "compromise." It was an unbelievable imposition by outside powers on the local population of Palestine. Remember that in 1947, the overwhelming majority of the native population of Palestine was Arab. Almost the entire Jewish population was made up of recent European arrivals (i.e., within the last decade). The demand that the native population accept that a foreign people get half the territory was objectively insane, and no people anywhere would ever have accepted it. The Zionists accepted it because they believed that it was a springboard towards obtaining all of Palestine - Ben Gurion was very clear about that.
Leading up to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians gave up most of their central demands, forswore armed resistance to the occupation, and limited their aspirations to a Palestinian state on just over 20% of their historic land, leaving the other 80% to Israel. The Palestinians recognized the state of Israel, without reciprocal recognition from Israel, and simply asked the Israelis to let the Palestinians have their little bit of Palestine in peace. It took years for the Palestinians to even persuade the Israelis to agree to negotiate on those terms. Until 1993, the Israelis refused to meet with the PLO. It was only the outbreak of widespread civil disobedience, protests and riots in the occupied territories that finally led Israel to begin negotiations with the PLO.
> I don't think in hindsight you can possibly consider this justified, given where it's lead.
My view is that the PLO made a fatal error in agreeing to the Oslo Accords. They gave up almost everything Israel wanted, with only vague hints that the Palestinians would get something at the end. The Palestinian Authority has no real power, and actually lessens the burden of the occupation for the Israelis, since the Israelis no longer have to provide basic services to the occupied population. The Israelis did not promise to accept the 1967 borders. They did not promise that they would recognize a sovereign Palestinian state. They only really promised to negotiate a "final status," which was left vague.
As I said a few comments above here, Israel is, by far, the stronger party. It holds almost all the cards: it has overwhelming military superiority over the Palestinians, is able to operate almost unhindered in most Palestinian land, is far richer, and is backed by the world's foremost superpower. Israel is able to maintain its occupation of Palestinian land with almost no consequences. It can continue to expand its settlements in the occupied territories and to build new settlements, without having to fear anything more than the occasional wagging finger from some American or EU diplomat. The Israelis really believe they can have it all. The only problem, from the Israeli perspective, is that the Palestinians still exist on the land, but the Israelis will eventually move to "solve" that problem. We may be seeing their solution now in Gaza, as Israel destroys almost every single building and pushes the remaining, 100% homeless Palestinian population towards the Egyptian border.
There was no reason so far to believe that "Palestinian resistance" will end if Israel leaves the occupied territories. In fact these territories were occupied during an attempt by Arabic population to destroy Israel - which didn't include West Bank back then.
Yeah, but since it won't stop otherwise either, it's better for Israel to maintain stronger military position, which occupation provides, rather than making unilateral gestures in the faint hope for peace.
What you're saying is that millions of human beings should be subjected to brutal military occupation indefinitely, because their oppressors are afraid for their own safety, should they give up control.
If you declare war on someone, you should prepare to be occupied if you lose. The fair way out of occupation is a sustainable peace guaranteeing safe existence to Israel. And it requires a lot of good will from Arab population in both Palestine and neighboring countries that has been missing since 1948 (or even earlier if you consider Arab revolts in British Palestine).
That is kind of how occupation works? But that was not my point. My point is that if you wage an aggressive war, you deserve being occupied. Like Germany, Japan, Serbia or Iraq. And the way out of occupation is to convince your neighbours that you are not willing to attack again. Otherwise they will have no other choice than to keep you in a state that you can not attack again. And that is a miserable state indeed.
There is no comparison between aggressive imperialist world powers like Germany and Japan, on the one hand, and an almost powerless people living under foreign military occupation, like the Palestinians.
What you're doing here is just giving a justification for unlimited military repression of the Palestinian people by Israel. It reminds me of the phrase, "The beatings will continue until morale improves." The Palestinians will take their beatings until they completely prostrate themselves before their oppressors and accept what they're being offered: nothing.
Gaza did not elect Hamas. Hamas got 43% of the vote (their opposition was notoriously corrupt) and then they fought a civil war against the Palestinian Authority to assume control of Gaza.
That's inaccurate, Hamas won the 2006 legislative election. The reason they fought a civil war was because Fatah (with the backing of US and I think Israel) was trying to take control over Gaza despite the elections, and they fought to "keep control" of it.
From Wikipedia:
> The Palestinian legislative election took place on 25 January 2006 and was judged to be free and fair by international observers.[18][19] It resulted in a Hamas victory, surprising Israel and the United States, which had expected their favoured partner, Fatah, to retain power.
This is clear: the Palestinians have now suffered tremendously more over the last month than the Israelis. But differential _suffering_ is not a valid basis for moral analysis. And _harm_ is not the same thing as _crime_.
You are certainly correct. But every ethnic group of people has a right to exist in their place.
To my eyes, there is enough evidence to warrant an investigation to determine if Palestinian civilians have been criminally murdered and forcibly relocated en masse.
Also to my eyes, there is enough evidence that Hamas military murdered, kidnapped, raped, and brutalized Israeli civilians such that an Israeli military response was justified.
> No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.
> Pillage is prohibited.
> Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.
All deaths are tragedies, yes. But it is not valid to say that all deaths are equal crimes. These are not morally equivalent:
A. 1,000 people killed in the name of religion
B. 1,000 people (civilians) killed despite efforts to target only military targets
I don't claim to know the _quality_ of the IDF's efforts to minimize civilian deaths, but I do know that intent matters here. The IDF has attempted (imperfectly of course) to reduce civilian deaths. Hamas does nothing of the sort. They are happy to kill non-combatants; any infidel will do.
I want fewer deaths. Yes. It is heartrending to see the suffering on both sides. I welcome pressure on the IDF to minimize non-military casualties.
Would any amount of public opinion stop Hamas from murdering again? Only to the extent it reduces their funding, recruiting, and operations. Israel, OTOH, is much more receptive to public opinion, inside and out.
Hamas has designed their entire operation so that innocent people take the brunt of even the most targeted military operations. If the IDF attacks, there will be collateral damage and lost Palestinian lives. It is awful. However, this does not mean than IDF attacks are immoral in the big picture. Allowing Hamas to continue risks future violence. So what response is ethically warranted?
Netanyahu and the IDF arguably could do better. No major actors in the region are blameless. But blamelessness isn't the standard here; I reject any claims of moral equivalence. Hamas massacres indiscriminately. The comparison matters.
The basic argument in favor of Israel goes like this: some degree of IDF incursion into Palestine and aggression against Hamas is required to save future lives from more massacres. It is only question of how much and when.
Perhaps the IDF should have waited some length of time to build more of an international coalition? I'll grant this. I'm not an expert. If it were possible to merely assume a defensive posture and stop them, I would say, sure try that. But I think that has been tried and it cannot work. Am I missing something?
Minimizing death isn't the perfect ethical metric, but it is a reasonable starting approximation. To do so, we have to factor in all deaths, across a long time scale. I don't think there is any neat way to do it. It is a fucking mess; we chose the least worst option.
I have no hate. If someone I knew had been killed, it might be impossible to have any emotional distance. I reject ideas that cause people to hate each other. I don't claim to know the right answers. But I know some answers are worse than others.
I'm also less interested in blame. I'm interested in the future. What options might work? What actors would undermine the potential for a lasting peace? Find extremists wherever they are: Palestine, Israel, or the surrounding region. Neutralize them in the least invasive way possible. Use public opinion if possible. Condition aid if needed. Use coercive action, including military action, if the previous options don't work.
Israel knowingly strikes civilian targets. There is an investigation published by Israeli and Palestinian journalists here,[0] which goes into the details of how Israel picks targets.
The long and the short of it is that:
a. Israel does not care how many Palestinian civilians die in its air strikes this time around.
b. The Israelis actually positively want to inflict a huge amount of pain on the Palestinian population in this conflict. That is one of the political goals, in order to demoralize the Palestinians. Israeli officials have publicly said that they want to teach the Palestinians a lesson that they will remember for 50 years.
If you just listen to the vicious, dehumanizing way Israeli politicians and media talk about Palestinians, and look at how indiscriminately Israel is bombing Gaza, all the claims by internet commentators that Israel is trying to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties look absurd.
I prefer to use the term IDF, largely under the control of Netanyahu. This emphasizes the role of his brand of politics. Netanyahu's political aims are despicable, evidenced by his attempt to upend the Israeli Supreme Court. It is also encouraging to see the IDF protest Netanyahu's moves. (Aside: Doesn't this protest by the IDF give you some comfort that they won't succumb to the worse impulses of Netanyahu?)
Now to respond... I'm not trying to zing you in any way, deny atrocities, or oversimplify. I do this out of genuine curiosity. (I'm lucky that I'm relatively removed from the situation. If I was closer, my rationality would probably be out the window. If I were to make one point it would be this: I want people to recognize the clouding effect of emotion more often. Some ethicists call for cooling off periods after tragedies for this exact reason.)
I'm not trying to promote a particular course of action. My aim is to tease apart the ethics, and hopefully I can get a better understanding of the moving parts.
> Israel knowingly strikes civilian targets.
How often, roughly? Percentages matter. All civilian deaths are horrible, but practically, military operations can be assessed by the numbers. I'm sorry if this sounds callous, but it isn't. Not caring about numbers at all would be even worse.
What are the causes? Seems to me:
1. Hamas uses human shields. This changes the decision space for the IDF. I'm leaning towards the view that these deaths cannot be mostly pinned on the IDF, morally. They belong mostly on Hamas. I don't like my intellectual attempt to somehow split culpability like this, but I'm not sure of a better framework. What do you think?
2. You are claiming there is another factor: demoralization of the Palestinians. I would like to think this is small percentage, but I have not looked at it in detail. To the extent this is true, it is abominable. To the extent Netanyahu's warped ideology and corruption are culpable, he should be stopped.
You're talking about this in such a sanitized, anodyne manner.
Israel is systematically destroying all civilian infrastructure in Gaza. At the end of this campaign, there will be almost nothing left standing in Gaza. That's the obvious goal of the campaign.
To then look at the Israeli military campaign and talk about it as if it were some highly targeted action is just detached from reality.
This is not just Netanyahu's war. The main opposition parties also support it, as does the large majority of the Israeli population.
> You are claiming there is another factor: demoralization of the Palestinians. I would like to think this is small percentage, but I have not looked at it in detail. To the extent this is true, it is abominable.
Have you been following statements by Israeli politicians, government ministers, media personalities, etc.? This is how the campaign is seen and talked about in Israel. Revenge and teaching the Palestinians a lesson are the major motivations.
> You're talking about this in such a sanitized, anodyne manner.
From this I would guess you are very close emotionally to the situation. Please recognize that not everyone has the same proximity nor the same kind of emotional response. Some cry, some hate, some oversimplify, some want heroes and villains. Some analyze it to death, trying to find a way through. We struggle with it in different ways.
I strive to look at the overall situation. This includes suffering all around. It also includes culpability, which isn't the same as harm. Then I try to make sense of it. From different lenses: ethical, legal, geopolitical, and humanitarian. They all matter and all have different blindspots.
What I'm seeing you do here is very common. You want me to recognize the pain. I try, but I can't: the scope is impossible and overwhelming. You want me to recognize your pain. Again, I can try. But I will never be able to satisfy you. I cannot; this is too awful.
Nor do I really want to feel all of the pain. It would be completely immobilizing. I do not want to be paralyzed by the emotions. I strive to use reason in service of ethics, for reason informed by emotions. I oppose rationalization and oversimplification, which tend to be driven by emotions.
I'm not crafting a political message here. I'm seeking the truth, best I can. Relatively few people do this. Most people have an agenda in play. My agenda is this: we need clearer thinking and less exaggeration. We need to be guided by reason in _service_ of our values. Emotion alone, particularly short-term outrage, would steer us wrong.
You may seize upon any perceived difference of opinion to criticize me. Because I'm here in front of you, because it is something you can do, something that will make you feel better. I get it.
And I'm listening, I'm considering your points. I just can't respond to _all_ of them all at once.
Back to your claim:
> You're talking about this in such a sanitized, anodyne manner.
I can do both: I can talk about percentages, and I can care about people as individuals.
It a common flaw in people to think that asking mathematical questions is somehow fundamentally callous or perhaps even immoral.
In my conception of ethics, the deliberate _avoidance_ of rigorous thinking is a huge mistake. Mathematical thinking is part of the toolset for rigorous thinking. We need to avoid reasoning errors lest me make poor moral decisions. To ignore mathematical aspects (such as probabilities and statistics) would only leave language, which is notoriously imprecise, loaded. We don't need to avoid mathematical analysis; we need _better_ analysis.
As an example, how does the organ transplant system work? By having everyone call in favors? Perhaps there is some of that, but that is not the intended standard. Is the hope to somehow sort out a constrained situation only using _words_? No, there is a big component of mathematics involved, such as factoring in tissue compatibility and the expected lifespan for each candidate.
Please, let go of any claims that mathematical thinking is inherently callous. Would it feel any better for someone who didn't get a transplant to hear "Don't worry, the committee didn't use any callous math. We painstakingly went over all the candidates. We just felt your case wasn't as important, relatively speaking." What's the difference? And "not using math" would totally miss the point. The best we can hope for is something approaching justice by way of some kind of trusted system. I'd rather have a system with some mathematical components than none at all. It is hard to imagine any system at scale not doing some kind of ranking or scale at all. Otherwise it would have to be some exhaustive pairwise comparison over all options... But I digress.
Of course the application of mathematics to most real world situations has some degree of imprecision and uncertainty. But typical language is much worse! And, it depends on how you frame up the math. Choose the better ways rather than rejecting the entire approach. At least mathematics can be written down and criticized clearly. In this way, it is just a more precise form of language. So don't blame the math nor people that want to consider it as one lens. I'm not saying mathematical calculations are the _only_ lens. I'm saying that avoiding all mathematical thinking is clearly worse.
When I hear people say (not your words but I think it conveys your feeling) 'stop being mathematical; use your heart' ... to me that comes across as often (a) a false dichotomy; (b) making too many assumptions about that other person; (c) a rhetorical technique that discourages careful thought; (d) as I explained above, actually a flawed way of doing ethical reasoning to the extent it avoids rigor.
It is hard to do proper ethical reasoning shortly after your neighbors are killed. Emotions are too high. But that it is when it is most needed; to temper some of our worst instincts.
Clear thinking and reasoning invites _more_ information, not less. But when you look at purely emotional reasoning, it too often takes the form of e.g. "Listen to my emotions! Acknowledge them! Treat them as central!". However, doing that would be to fixate on emotions only. We don't want to exclude the full range of useful perspectives on the situation, which include mathematical analysis.
> When I hear people say (not your words but I think it conveys your feeling) 'stop being mathematical; use your heart' ...
That's not what I'm saying. I'm not trying to be offensive, but what I'm saying is that I don't think you're at all aware of what's going on in Gaza and Israel. Take this statement you made earlier, for example:
> You are claiming there is another factor: demoralization of the Palestinians. I would like to think this is small percentage, but I have not looked at it in detail. To the extent this is true, it is abominable. To the extent Netanyahu's warped ideology and corruption are culpable, he should be stopped.
Israeli officials at all levels have been saying since October 7th that they will take revenge, that they will punish the Palestinians, etc. It's not just Netanyahu. The President of Israel has said that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. The defense minister has said that the Palestinians must be taught a lesson that they don't forget for 50 years. People in the IDF who are involved in targeting say that inflicting suffering on the civilian population is a deliberate aim, because they think that that will force Hamas to give in.
You wrote a lot of text to say that you're the only one being rational here. It's not a question of being rational vs. irrational, but rather of knowing vs. not knowing what's happening.
> I don't claim to know the _quality_ of the IDF's efforts to minimize civilian deaths, but I do know that intent matters here. The IDF has attempted (imperfectly of course) to reduce civilian deaths.
What was the IDF's "intent" in ordering 1.1M Northern Gazan residents to flee to "safety" in Southern Gaza, and then spending the next ten days increasing the bombing of Southern Gaza by 85%?
What is the "intent" in "minimizing civilian deaths" by (even before this conflict) routinely turning off Gaza's electricity, often for several days to as much as a week? Or for turning off its fresh water?
Assuming these are all true, without any mitigating factors, there is still a significant effort to reduce civilian deaths. Yes, like I can, the IDF can do better. External forces can and should apply pressure to the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.
I'll try to clarify: I don't I care as much about any vague notion of "intent". I care about reasonableness in the sense of paying attention, gathering reliable information, and acting rationally based on the probabilities.
I can speak about some rough criteria for thinking about the moral tradeoffs, but unless I was very close to the situation, I wouldn't have the specificity to comment on particular choices. For example, did your example about cutting off electricity serve a military purpose? What was the analysis?
Again, criticizing the details is important, but we can't forget that the IDF is making some effort. And Hamas is using human shields. So it isn't correct to put the blame solely on the IDF.
I get the sense that Hamas' evil is simply taken for granted while the IDF is held to a higher standard. That asymmetry is problematic; it would lead to world public opinion turning against even against the best-possible-version of the IDF. There simply is no amount of civilian deaths that is a good thing. It is all awful. We have to compare this against the horror that would come from the continued existence of Hamas. We have to chose the lesser of the evils.
Again, I'm supportive of better options. I'm just not close enough to know what they are. Israel should hunker down and ramp up defenses? Wait until there is an international coalition to manage the attack on Hamas while providing services so that civilian impact isn't as tragic? Maybe that could work. Who would lead that? The UN?
> I get the sense that Hamas' evil is simply taken for granted while the IDF is held to a higher standard. That asymmetry is problematic
Of course it is. One is considered a terrorist organization. The other is meant to be the disciplined military of a civilized country (Note here I am not trying to imply the Palestinian people are any way uncivilized).
Part of this also ignores that for a long time, Israel fostered and encouraged Hamas because it was politically expedient to do so. For them to pull the "woe is us, whatever are to we to do" is a little on the nose.
You might argue about explicit and implicit, but then...
Israel "ordered" 1.1 million residents of Northern Gaza (Hamas makes up <40,000 people) to flee south due to their bombing of Northern Gaza on October 13.
It then increased bombing of Southern Gaza in the ten days following that evacuation order by eighty five per cent.
