Completely agree with every word. I believe there were options available to Hamas than setting fire to children - and many successful liberation movements seem to have managed without such actions.
I also think the violence and the defence of violence we've seen has had the very significant impact of alienating moderate Israelis from the idea of granting concessions to the Palestinians; sort of like 'We fought for peace and you killed us anyway.'
Pro Palestinian propaganda is a shape-shifting monster. I remember being a student in the US in 1996 and hearing Leftists attack the Oslo peace process, which was being negotiated between the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left. Thanks to 138 suicide bombings becoming a ‘negotiation tactic’ of the Palestinians in 2000-2002 the Israeli Left took a massive political hit for being gullible about the prospects of land-for-peace delivering security. It has never recovered. As a consequence, the Israeli Right has ruled most of the last 14 years, and pro Palestinian propagandists now get to call Israel ‘right wing’, while forgetting to mention just how virulently on the Right Hamas is.
The claim from ‘progressives’ that “supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is a progressive cause” is both delusional and shameless.
People keep saying leftists support Hamas and Hezbollah but who are these leftists supporting Hamas? Most leftists who have no connection to Israel barely know anything about Hamas and Hezbollah and the few that do regard them as frightening and vile. It’s true they don’t make statements against Hamas but this is probably because there wouldn’t be much point. The US government doesn’t fund Hamas or Hezbollah and Hamas and Hezbollah wouldn’t read or know about their statements.
'Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements.' - Judith Butler.
It would obviously be incorrect to say that the left supports Hamas and Hezbollah. But there's definitely a strain of far-left thinking which is incredibly naive (to say the least) about what those groups represent.
I wonder if you’re sealioning or actually don’t know how to widely Leftists in the academic, news media and cultural worlds support Hamas and Hezbollah, even after a massacre of over a thousand civilians and kidnapping of two hundred more.
I'm assuming this comment isn't addressed to me? I do think there are elements of the left who are soft on those groups. I just wouldn't say 'the left' - I know plenty of people on the left who know exactly what those movements represent.
Ha, no, not at all. I wasn’t sure if Ro is asking sincerely or not. Tone doesn’t carry well in text comments. And yes, I am aware of variations on the Left, and how certain labels are very locals specific. In the US I am a liberal Democratic Party voter. A liberal in Canada is a very different beast. In my university town progressives are the group that struggle with calling things as they are, distinguish Hamas’s goals from Palestinian goals, and their actions from those of Israel.
I appreciate your writing on this conflict and in general.
This is another superb piece of writing on the situation in Israel-Palestine: crisp and with laudable moral clarity. Thanks James.
I have little to add, other than to put down some (rather abstract) thoughts I've had about what "root causes" and "contexts" might mean on a philosophical level. I don't know if they have much relevance really, but they help clarify my thinking when I hear people use these ideas.
First "root causes" (I know they aren't talked about here, but I think they are the strong version of "contexts"). I confess I have no idea what people mean when they refer to "root causes" of conflicts. Causality is such a thorny subject in philosophy: it was Hume's scepticism about causes that shook Kant of his "dogmatic slumber" - that we should be very dubious about applying it. We don't have to be Humean sceptics - we can accept causality exists between billiard balls - to see that even in well controlled conditions causality is extremely difficult to determine in the natural world. And which one is the "root" cause? I confess I would not even know how to begin about positively identifying such a thing. I suspect even the most brilliant historians with omniscient perspective would never agree on the "root cause" of anything of significance.
Now "contexts". Of course you are right in that any conflict will have relevant contexts. Contexts are much weaker things - we will happily concede that any background, correlation, or history whatsoever forms part of the "context". Then the question becomes: what context is important to us? Is it the Shoah, or the Nakba?
Undoubtedly, contexts are empirically important to establish what happened, and what might happen. They form part of empirically understanding the world. But I tend to think that the important thing speakers of "contexts" want to argue for is that they have moral weight. And morality is traditionally seen as distinguishable from empiricism (and "is" is not an "ought").
A little knowledge of moral philosophy makes this very hard to sustain. Of the three major theories of ethics, "context" plays very little role. Kant's deontology is quite explicitly divorced from context: [you should act like] every action of yours should become a "universal maxim". Virtue ethics does have contexts, but that is largely about the content of one's character (not "oppression" or some externality). After all, who thinks beheaders of babies have a flourishing character?
Perhaps you could argue that Utilitarianism takes contexts into accounts. Maybe the context determines what the maximum utility will ultimately be. A real tough sell this. "Yes," says the utilitarian, "I kidnapped a holocaust survivor: but the means justified the ends".
I believe this is what people mean when they say "they are explaining something, not excusing it" (another thought-terminating cliche). This is correct: to explain is to provide an empirical model, but no ethical justification. But ultimately the only way to justify the "contexts" argument is some monstrous Utilitarian calculus where these acts of "violent resistance" somehow ultimately lead to greater utility.
And for that you need an accurate empirical model. So it is striking just how poor empiricists the "contexts" purveyors are. Really, nothing will change their minds (which is what empiricism is!) - in fact they are idealists, bound onto a theoretical understanding of conflicts which cannot move forward.
As you say, excluding the irrational: sadism, racism and antisemitism - from our empiricism is a sure-fire way to fail in understanding these conflicts. And our morality can stand entirely apart.
This is another superb piece of writing on the situation in Israel-Palestine: crisp and with laudable moral clarity. Thanks James.
I have little to add, other than to put down some (rather abstract) thoughts I've had about what "root causes" and "contexts" might mean on a philosophical level. I don't know if they have much relevance really, but they help clarify my thinking when I hear people use these ideas.
First "root causes" (I know they aren't talked about here, but I think they are the strong version of "contexts"). I confess I have no idea what people mean when they refer to "root causes" of conflicts. Causality is such a thorny subject in philosophy: it was Hume's scepticism about causes that shook Kant of his "dogmatic slumber" - that we should be very dubious about applying it. We don't have to be Humean sceptics - we can accept causality exists between billiard balls - to see that even in well controlled conditions causality is extremely difficult to determine in the natural world. And which one is the "root" cause? I confess I would not even know how to begin about positively identifying such a thing. I suspect even the most brilliant historians with omniscient perspective would never agree on the "root cause" of anything of significance.
Now "contexts". Of course you are right in that any conflict will have relevant contexts. Contexts are much weaker things - we will happily concede that any background, correlation, or history whatsoever forms part of the "context". Then the question becomes: what context is important to us? Is it the Shoah, or the Nakba?
Undoubtedly, contexts are empirically important to establish what happened, and what might happen. They form part of empirically understanding the world. But I tend to think that the important thing speakers of "contexts" want to argue for is that they have moral weight. And morality is traditionally seen as distinguishable from empiricism (and "is" is not an "ought").
A little knowledge of moral philosophy makes this very hard to sustain. Of the three major theories of ethics, "context" plays very little role. Kant's deontology is quite explicitly divorced from context: [you should act like] every action of yours should become a "universal maxim". Virtue ethics does have contexts, but that is largely about the content of one's character (not "oppression" or some externality). After all, who thinks beheaders of babies have a flourishing character?
Perhaps you could argue that Utilitarianism takes contexts into accounts. Maybe the context determines what the maximum utility will ultimately be. A real tough sell this. "Yes," says the utilitarian, "I kidnapped a holocaust survivor: but the means justified the ends".
I believe this is what people mean when they say "they are explaining something, not excusing it" (another thought-terminating cliche). This is correct: to explain is to provide an empirical model, but no ethical justification. But ultimately the only way to justify the "contexts" argument is some monstrous Utilitarian calculus where these acts of "violent resistance" somehow ultimately lead to greater utility.
And for that you need an accurate empirical model. So it is striking just how poor empiricists the "contexts" purveyors are. Really, nothing will change their minds (which is what empiricism is!) - in fact they are idealists, bound onto a theoretical understanding of conflicts which cannot move forward.
As you say, excluding the irrational: sadism, racism and antisemitism - from our empiricism is a sure-fire way to fail in understanding these conflicts. And our morality can stand entirely apart.
There’s a huge difference between the Shoah and the Nakba. Jews around the world were not attacking Germany. The extermination of Jews was planned as a response to an imaginary threat, an antisemitic Nazi fantasy.
The Nakba is the result of a civil war, where the Palestinian majority along with several invading Arab armies planned a genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews ‘from the river to the sea’. Their ‘catastrophe’ was their failure to achieve that goal. While a resulting Palestinian refugee situation was hard for those who voluntarily left or where expelled (both happened), it’s not at the same moral level at all as the Holocaust. Palestinians took arms with plans to massacre and expel Jews. Jews in the 30s and 40s did not try to exterminate the German people.
Add to that the historical fact that Palestinians who remained in Israel became full Arab Israeli citizens over the next 19 years. At the same time Jews were completely ethnically cleansed from the West Bank where they had lived for hundreds of years. There is no valid equating of the two, except when decades of pro Palestinian propaganda turn a brain to mush.
Thanks Arr. Your core point on the utter incomparability - historically and morally - of the Shoah and Nakba I certainly would not dispute. Indeed I'd argue this incommensurability puts us essentially in agreement.
I fear you have misread my argument somewhat (it is abstract and I can always strive to be clearer).
My point is that relying on picking an overarching "context" - out of many - to explain a conflict is dubious even in purely empirical terms, and I believe is unsupportable as a guide to future moral action. As a material matter, as well as a thousand other factors great and small, the Holocaust and Nakba (the latter however understood) are undoubtedly part of the historical background of this conflict. My argument is in fact explicit that we should not make any comparison between these - as speakers of "contexts" do - to justify future actions which are otherwise unjustifiable.
Make no mistake: this does not mean we cannot make ethical judgements of these historical events and learn from them. We can accept that the Holocaust was the greatest moral disaster to befall mankind (a view I am sympathetic towards). Accepting that the unspeakable evil of the Shoah, and the Nakba are incommensurable on some fundamental level makes us even less likely to accept the model speakers of "contexs" want to adopt: playing top-trumps to find the winning "context" to make our future moral decisions for us.
This is another superb piece of writing on the situation in Israel-Palestine: crisp and with laudable moral clarity. Thanks James.
I have little to add, other than to put down some (rather abstract) thoughts I've had about what "root causes" and "contexts" might mean on a philosophical level. I don't know if they have much relevance really, but they help clarify my thinking when I hear people use these ideas.
First "root causes" (I know they aren't talked about here, but I think they are the strong version of "contexts"). I confess I have no idea what people mean when they refer to "root causes" of conflicts. Causality is such a thorny subject in philosophy: it was Hume's scepticism about causes that shook Kant of his "dogmatic slumber" - that we should be very dubious about applying it. We don't have to be Humean sceptics - we can accept causality exists between billiard balls - to see that even in well controlled conditions causality is extremely difficult to determine in the natural world. And which one is the "root" cause? I confess I would not even know how to begin about positively identifying such a thing. I suspect even the most brilliant historians with omniscient perspective would never agree on the "root cause" of anything of significance.
Now "contexts". Of course you are right in that any conflict will have relevant contexts. Contexts are much weaker things - we will happily concede that any background, correlation, or history whatsoever forms part of the "context". Then the question becomes: what context is important to us? Is it the Shoah, or the Nakba?
Undoubtedly, contexts are empirically important to establish what happened, and what might happen. They form part of empirically understanding the world. But I tend to think that the important thing speakers of "contexts" want to argue for is that they have moral weight. And morality is traditionally seen as distinguishable from empiricism (and "is" is not an "ought").
A little knowledge of moral philosophy makes this very hard to sustain. Of the three major theories of ethics, "context" plays very little role. Kant's deontology is quite explicitly divorced from context: [you should act like] every action of yours should become a "universal maxim". Virtue ethics does have contexts, but that is largely about the content of one's character (not "oppression" or some externality). After all, who thinks beheaders of babies have a flourishing character?
Perhaps you could argue that Utilitarianism takes contexts into accounts. Maybe the context determines what the maximum utility will ultimately be. A real tough sell this. "Yes," says the utilitarian, "I kidnapped a holocaust survivor: but the means justified the ends".
I believe this is what people mean when they say "they are explaining something, not excusing it" (another thought-terminating cliche). This is correct: to explain is to provide an empirical model, but no ethical justification. But ultimately the only way to justify the "contexts" argument is some monstrous Utilitarian calculus where these acts of "violent resistance" somehow ultimately lead to greater utility.
And for that you need an accurate empirical model. So it is striking just how poor empiricists the "contexts" purveyors are. Really, nothing will change their minds (which is what empiricism is!) - in fact they are idealists, bound onto a theoretical understanding of conflicts which cannot move forward.
As you say, excluding the irrational: sadism, racism and antisemitism - from our empiricism is a sure-fire way to fail in understanding these conflicts. And our morality can stand entirely apart.
I am curious about the claim that ‘Arab antisemitism long predates the creation of Israel...’ for a variety of reasons. One reason is that antisemitism in its virulent forms (as an ideology about the Jews) is a Christian and European creation. It’s a very particular set of ideas, not just hostility towards people who are Jewish because they are immigrants or others or to dominate them. The Romans made the Israelites’ lives hell but not because of antisemitism. Jews fled Europe for the Ottoman Empire as being a minority with restrictions due to minority status is better than being exterminated. However, I know by the early 20th century immigration of European Jews to Palestine did cause friction leading to more excessive hostility.
But it does seem strange to imply that there is something particularly antisemitic about Palestinians when it was the Europeans that did the pogroms and the Holocaust against a defenseless people whereas in Palestine the clashes are not best explained by libels or ideology but by political causes. They actually had something to fight about whereas in Europe Jews were not engaged in a power struggle which they could conceivably win but were scapegoated and persecuted as a weaker group.
I suppose it might be more accurate to say that Jew-hatred predates the establishment of Israel. Yes, there was an Islamisation of antisemitism which occurred through the influence of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood (which we see today in Hamas), or in the influence of European fascism on Ba'athism, but Judeophobia is certainly present in traditional Islam and in the Middle East prior to the establishment of Israel. Point taken though.
When Palestinians where the majority in Israel, before Holocaust refugees arrived and nearly a million MENA Jews escaped pogroms and persecution around the Arab world (many of which started before the state existed), they lynched and massacred Jews in the exact same way black Americans were targeted in the South by the racist white majority.
Palestinians massacred Jews in many riots during 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-1939, then during the civil war 1947-1948. Attacks from Egyptian controlled Gaza killed Jews in these same villages during the 1950s and 1960s before Gaza was captured in 1967.
If you believe Jewish communities were not massacred, forced into exile and persecuted in the Arab world by Muslim rulers you need to pick up some books. It happened just like in Europe, for religious reasons too.
As for something particularly antisemitic, Palestinian leader Amin Al Husseini spread Nazi propaganda against Jews, recruited Muslims for the Waffen SS, and triggered anti Jewish pogroms in Iraq against Jews from a community that lived in Iraq for thousands of years (Farhud). By all definitions that is Palestinian antisemitism, not “resentment of immigration”. Do you also excuse White Nationalist attacks on refugees migrating to Europe with similar excuses?
Of course I don’t believe there were massacres of Jews, etc. Independently, of all these horrible things happening,I want to know more about and understand antisemitism and asking people questions is one way that I have learned more about it.
Completely agree with every word. I believe there were options available to Hamas than setting fire to children - and many successful liberation movements seem to have managed without such actions.
I also think the violence and the defence of violence we've seen has had the very significant impact of alienating moderate Israelis from the idea of granting concessions to the Palestinians; sort of like 'We fought for peace and you killed us anyway.'
Excellent analysis
This is an excellent informed piece of writing
Pro Palestinian propaganda is a shape-shifting monster. I remember being a student in the US in 1996 and hearing Leftists attack the Oslo peace process, which was being negotiated between the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left. Thanks to 138 suicide bombings becoming a ‘negotiation tactic’ of the Palestinians in 2000-2002 the Israeli Left took a massive political hit for being gullible about the prospects of land-for-peace delivering security. It has never recovered. As a consequence, the Israeli Right has ruled most of the last 14 years, and pro Palestinian propagandists now get to call Israel ‘right wing’, while forgetting to mention just how virulently on the Right Hamas is.
The claim from ‘progressives’ that “supporting Hamas and Hezbollah is a progressive cause” is both delusional and shameless.
People keep saying leftists support Hamas and Hezbollah but who are these leftists supporting Hamas? Most leftists who have no connection to Israel barely know anything about Hamas and Hezbollah and the few that do regard them as frightening and vile. It’s true they don’t make statements against Hamas but this is probably because there wouldn’t be much point. The US government doesn’t fund Hamas or Hezbollah and Hamas and Hezbollah wouldn’t read or know about their statements.
'Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements.' - Judith Butler.
'We are all Hezbollah now' - Socialist Worker. https://thecharnelhouse.org/2016/04/30/reflections-on-left-antisemitism/we-are-all-hezbollah-with-socialist-worker-papers/
It would obviously be incorrect to say that the left supports Hamas and Hezbollah. But there's definitely a strain of far-left thinking which is incredibly naive (to say the least) about what those groups represent.
I wonder if you’re sealioning or actually don’t know how to widely Leftists in the academic, news media and cultural worlds support Hamas and Hezbollah, even after a massacre of over a thousand civilians and kidnapping of two hundred more.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/tgif-it-got-worse
I'm assuming this comment isn't addressed to me? I do think there are elements of the left who are soft on those groups. I just wouldn't say 'the left' - I know plenty of people on the left who know exactly what those movements represent.
Ha, no, not at all. I wasn’t sure if Ro is asking sincerely or not. Tone doesn’t carry well in text comments. And yes, I am aware of variations on the Left, and how certain labels are very locals specific. In the US I am a liberal Democratic Party voter. A liberal in Canada is a very different beast. In my university town progressives are the group that struggle with calling things as they are, distinguish Hamas’s goals from Palestinian goals, and their actions from those of Israel.
I appreciate your writing on this conflict and in general.
This is another superb piece of writing on the situation in Israel-Palestine: crisp and with laudable moral clarity. Thanks James.
I have little to add, other than to put down some (rather abstract) thoughts I've had about what "root causes" and "contexts" might mean on a philosophical level. I don't know if they have much relevance really, but they help clarify my thinking when I hear people use these ideas.
First "root causes" (I know they aren't talked about here, but I think they are the strong version of "contexts"). I confess I have no idea what people mean when they refer to "root causes" of conflicts. Causality is such a thorny subject in philosophy: it was Hume's scepticism about causes that shook Kant of his "dogmatic slumber" - that we should be very dubious about applying it. We don't have to be Humean sceptics - we can accept causality exists between billiard balls - to see that even in well controlled conditions causality is extremely difficult to determine in the natural world. And which one is the "root" cause? I confess I would not even know how to begin about positively identifying such a thing. I suspect even the most brilliant historians with omniscient perspective would never agree on the "root cause" of anything of significance.
Now "contexts". Of course you are right in that any conflict will have relevant contexts. Contexts are much weaker things - we will happily concede that any background, correlation, or history whatsoever forms part of the "context". Then the question becomes: what context is important to us? Is it the Shoah, or the Nakba?
Undoubtedly, contexts are empirically important to establish what happened, and what might happen. They form part of empirically understanding the world. But I tend to think that the important thing speakers of "contexts" want to argue for is that they have moral weight. And morality is traditionally seen as distinguishable from empiricism (and "is" is not an "ought").
A little knowledge of moral philosophy makes this very hard to sustain. Of the three major theories of ethics, "context" plays very little role. Kant's deontology is quite explicitly divorced from context: [you should act like] every action of yours should become a "universal maxim". Virtue ethics does have contexts, but that is largely about the content of one's character (not "oppression" or some externality). After all, who thinks beheaders of babies have a flourishing character?
Perhaps you could argue that Utilitarianism takes contexts into accounts. Maybe the context determines what the maximum utility will ultimately be. A real tough sell this. "Yes," says the utilitarian, "I kidnapped a holocaust survivor: but the means justified the ends".
I believe this is what people mean when they say "they are explaining something, not excusing it" (another thought-terminating cliche). This is correct: to explain is to provide an empirical model, but no ethical justification. But ultimately the only way to justify the "contexts" argument is some monstrous Utilitarian calculus where these acts of "violent resistance" somehow ultimately lead to greater utility.
And for that you need an accurate empirical model. So it is striking just how poor empiricists the "contexts" purveyors are. Really, nothing will change their minds (which is what empiricism is!) - in fact they are idealists, bound onto a theoretical understanding of conflicts which cannot move forward.
As you say, excluding the irrational: sadism, racism and antisemitism - from our empiricism is a sure-fire way to fail in understanding these conflicts. And our morality can stand entirely apart.
Remember that a large faction of Palestinian nationalists have always be drunk on extermination of Israel. This isn’t new.
This is another superb piece of writing on the situation in Israel-Palestine: crisp and with laudable moral clarity. Thanks James.
I have little to add, other than to put down some (rather abstract) thoughts I've had about what "root causes" and "contexts" might mean on a philosophical level. I don't know if they have much relevance really, but they help clarify my thinking when I hear people use these ideas.
First "root causes" (I know they aren't talked about here, but I think they are the strong version of "contexts"). I confess I have no idea what people mean when they refer to "root causes" of conflicts. Causality is such a thorny subject in philosophy: it was Hume's scepticism about causes that shook Kant of his "dogmatic slumber" - that we should be very dubious about applying it. We don't have to be Humean sceptics - we can accept causality exists between billiard balls - to see that even in well controlled conditions causality is extremely difficult to determine in the natural world. And which one is the "root" cause? I confess I would not even know how to begin about positively identifying such a thing. I suspect even the most brilliant historians with omniscient perspective would never agree on the "root cause" of anything of significance.
Now "contexts". Of course you are right in that any conflict will have relevant contexts. Contexts are much weaker things - we will happily concede that any background, correlation, or history whatsoever forms part of the "context". Then the question becomes: what context is important to us? Is it the Shoah, or the Nakba?
Undoubtedly, contexts are empirically important to establish what happened, and what might happen. They form part of empirically understanding the world. But I tend to think that the important thing speakers of "contexts" want to argue for is that they have moral weight. And morality is traditionally seen as distinguishable from empiricism (and "is" is not an "ought").
A little knowledge of moral philosophy makes this very hard to sustain. Of the three major theories of ethics, "context" plays very little role. Kant's deontology is quite explicitly divorced from context: [you should act like] every action of yours should become a "universal maxim". Virtue ethics does have contexts, but that is largely about the content of one's character (not "oppression" or some externality). After all, who thinks beheaders of babies have a flourishing character?
Perhaps you could argue that Utilitarianism takes contexts into accounts. Maybe the context determines what the maximum utility will ultimately be. A real tough sell this. "Yes," says the utilitarian, "I kidnapped a holocaust survivor: but the means justified the ends".
I believe this is what people mean when they say "they are explaining something, not excusing it" (another thought-terminating cliche). This is correct: to explain is to provide an empirical model, but no ethical justification. But ultimately the only way to justify the "contexts" argument is some monstrous Utilitarian calculus where these acts of "violent resistance" somehow ultimately lead to greater utility.
And for that you need an accurate empirical model. So it is striking just how poor empiricists the "contexts" purveyors are. Really, nothing will change their minds (which is what empiricism is!) - in fact they are idealists, bound onto a theoretical understanding of conflicts which cannot move forward.
As you say, excluding the irrational: sadism, racism and antisemitism - from our empiricism is a sure-fire way to fail in understanding these conflicts. And our morality can stand entirely apart.
There’s a huge difference between the Shoah and the Nakba. Jews around the world were not attacking Germany. The extermination of Jews was planned as a response to an imaginary threat, an antisemitic Nazi fantasy.
The Nakba is the result of a civil war, where the Palestinian majority along with several invading Arab armies planned a genocide and ethnic cleansing of Jews ‘from the river to the sea’. Their ‘catastrophe’ was their failure to achieve that goal. While a resulting Palestinian refugee situation was hard for those who voluntarily left or where expelled (both happened), it’s not at the same moral level at all as the Holocaust. Palestinians took arms with plans to massacre and expel Jews. Jews in the 30s and 40s did not try to exterminate the German people.
Add to that the historical fact that Palestinians who remained in Israel became full Arab Israeli citizens over the next 19 years. At the same time Jews were completely ethnically cleansed from the West Bank where they had lived for hundreds of years. There is no valid equating of the two, except when decades of pro Palestinian propaganda turn a brain to mush.
Thanks Arr. Your core point on the utter incomparability - historically and morally - of the Shoah and Nakba I certainly would not dispute. Indeed I'd argue this incommensurability puts us essentially in agreement.
I fear you have misread my argument somewhat (it is abstract and I can always strive to be clearer).
My point is that relying on picking an overarching "context" - out of many - to explain a conflict is dubious even in purely empirical terms, and I believe is unsupportable as a guide to future moral action. As a material matter, as well as a thousand other factors great and small, the Holocaust and Nakba (the latter however understood) are undoubtedly part of the historical background of this conflict. My argument is in fact explicit that we should not make any comparison between these - as speakers of "contexts" do - to justify future actions which are otherwise unjustifiable.
Make no mistake: this does not mean we cannot make ethical judgements of these historical events and learn from them. We can accept that the Holocaust was the greatest moral disaster to befall mankind (a view I am sympathetic towards). Accepting that the unspeakable evil of the Shoah, and the Nakba are incommensurable on some fundamental level makes us even less likely to accept the model speakers of "contexs" want to adopt: playing top-trumps to find the winning "context" to make our future moral decisions for us.
The danger for Israelis is that talk of ending the occupation of Palestine means the end of Israel
This is another superb piece of writing on the situation in Israel-Palestine: crisp and with laudable moral clarity. Thanks James.
I have little to add, other than to put down some (rather abstract) thoughts I've had about what "root causes" and "contexts" might mean on a philosophical level. I don't know if they have much relevance really, but they help clarify my thinking when I hear people use these ideas.
First "root causes" (I know they aren't talked about here, but I think they are the strong version of "contexts"). I confess I have no idea what people mean when they refer to "root causes" of conflicts. Causality is such a thorny subject in philosophy: it was Hume's scepticism about causes that shook Kant of his "dogmatic slumber" - that we should be very dubious about applying it. We don't have to be Humean sceptics - we can accept causality exists between billiard balls - to see that even in well controlled conditions causality is extremely difficult to determine in the natural world. And which one is the "root" cause? I confess I would not even know how to begin about positively identifying such a thing. I suspect even the most brilliant historians with omniscient perspective would never agree on the "root cause" of anything of significance.
Now "contexts". Of course you are right in that any conflict will have relevant contexts. Contexts are much weaker things - we will happily concede that any background, correlation, or history whatsoever forms part of the "context". Then the question becomes: what context is important to us? Is it the Shoah, or the Nakba?
Undoubtedly, contexts are empirically important to establish what happened, and what might happen. They form part of empirically understanding the world. But I tend to think that the important thing speakers of "contexts" want to argue for is that they have moral weight. And morality is traditionally seen as distinguishable from empiricism (and "is" is not an "ought").
A little knowledge of moral philosophy makes this very hard to sustain. Of the three major theories of ethics, "context" plays very little role. Kant's deontology is quite explicitly divorced from context: [you should act like] every action of yours should become a "universal maxim". Virtue ethics does have contexts, but that is largely about the content of one's character (not "oppression" or some externality). After all, who thinks beheaders of babies have a flourishing character?
Perhaps you could argue that Utilitarianism takes contexts into accounts. Maybe the context determines what the maximum utility will ultimately be. A real tough sell this. "Yes," says the utilitarian, "I kidnapped a holocaust survivor: but the means justified the ends".
I believe this is what people mean when they say "they are explaining something, not excusing it" (another thought-terminating cliche). This is correct: to explain is to provide an empirical model, but no ethical justification. But ultimately the only way to justify the "contexts" argument is some monstrous Utilitarian calculus where these acts of "violent resistance" somehow ultimately lead to greater utility.
And for that you need an accurate empirical model. So it is striking just how poor empiricists the "contexts" purveyors are. Really, nothing will change their minds (which is what empiricism is!) - in fact they are idealists, bound onto a theoretical understanding of conflicts which cannot move forward.
As you say, excluding the irrational: sadism, racism and antisemitism - from our empiricism is a sure-fire way to fail in understanding these conflicts. And our morality can stand entirely apart.
I am curious about the claim that ‘Arab antisemitism long predates the creation of Israel...’ for a variety of reasons. One reason is that antisemitism in its virulent forms (as an ideology about the Jews) is a Christian and European creation. It’s a very particular set of ideas, not just hostility towards people who are Jewish because they are immigrants or others or to dominate them. The Romans made the Israelites’ lives hell but not because of antisemitism. Jews fled Europe for the Ottoman Empire as being a minority with restrictions due to minority status is better than being exterminated. However, I know by the early 20th century immigration of European Jews to Palestine did cause friction leading to more excessive hostility.
But it does seem strange to imply that there is something particularly antisemitic about Palestinians when it was the Europeans that did the pogroms and the Holocaust against a defenseless people whereas in Palestine the clashes are not best explained by libels or ideology but by political causes. They actually had something to fight about whereas in Europe Jews were not engaged in a power struggle which they could conceivably win but were scapegoated and persecuted as a weaker group.
I suppose it might be more accurate to say that Jew-hatred predates the establishment of Israel. Yes, there was an Islamisation of antisemitism which occurred through the influence of Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood (which we see today in Hamas), or in the influence of European fascism on Ba'athism, but Judeophobia is certainly present in traditional Islam and in the Middle East prior to the establishment of Israel. Point taken though.
When Palestinians where the majority in Israel, before Holocaust refugees arrived and nearly a million MENA Jews escaped pogroms and persecution around the Arab world (many of which started before the state existed), they lynched and massacred Jews in the exact same way black Americans were targeted in the South by the racist white majority.
Palestinians massacred Jews in many riots during 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-1939, then during the civil war 1947-1948. Attacks from Egyptian controlled Gaza killed Jews in these same villages during the 1950s and 1960s before Gaza was captured in 1967.
If you believe Jewish communities were not massacred, forced into exile and persecuted in the Arab world by Muslim rulers you need to pick up some books. It happened just like in Europe, for religious reasons too.
As for something particularly antisemitic, Palestinian leader Amin Al Husseini spread Nazi propaganda against Jews, recruited Muslims for the Waffen SS, and triggered anti Jewish pogroms in Iraq against Jews from a community that lived in Iraq for thousands of years (Farhud). By all definitions that is Palestinian antisemitism, not “resentment of immigration”. Do you also excuse White Nationalist attacks on refugees migrating to Europe with similar excuses?
Of course I don’t believe there were massacres of Jews, etc. Independently, of all these horrible things happening,I want to know more about and understand antisemitism and asking people questions is one way that I have learned more about it.