James Joyner has a pretty good round-up of media reports and commentary on Israel’s war against Hamas at Outside the Beltway. He concludes:
It may well be that the answer to Khalidi’s question is Yes. It’s not obvious that a Gaza strip governed by Palestinians, and which would almost surely eventually become the launching place for more terrorist attacks on Israel, is an acceptable end state. Alas, such ethnic cleansing is a war crime and not a small one.
While declarations that Israel is effectively an apartheid state are overblown, they are not without basis. Zionism and pluralism are, almost by definition, incompatible. Either Israel is a Jewish state, run by and for Jews, or it is not.
which illustrates the point I have been making here for some time. Although means and objectives of Israel and Hamas are not symmetric which renders attempts at equivalence meaningless, the United States should not support Israel’s objectives full-throatedly. I agree with Rashid Khaledi’s conclusions cited in James’s post:
It is past time for the United States to cease repeating empty words about a two-state solution while providing money, weapons and diplomatic support for systematic, calculated Israeli actions that have made that solution inconceivable — as it has for roughly half a century.
It is past time for the United States to cease meekly acquiescing to Israel’s use of violence and more violence as its reflexive response to Palestinians who have lived for 56 years under a stifling military occupation.
It is past time to accept that American efforts to monopolize a tragically misnamed peace process have helped Israel to entrench what multiple international human rights groups have defined as a system of apartheid that has produced only more war and suffering.
although I disagree with his premises.
Nowhere in any of the articles or opinion pieces cited is there any criticism of Hamas’s failure to protect Gazan civilians (quite the opposite) or Egypt’s refusal to accept Gazan refugees. I attribute those omissions to misplaced paternalism.
James follows that up with a post on just war theory. Having actually read what Augustine, who first enunciated the principles of just war theory, wrote, I can only observe that Augustine did not share the misgivings expressed by his modern critics or followers.
In response to the question that forms the title of this post, I don’t believe that we should support Israel’s full goals and it is not ours to strategize its operations. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is not our conflict and we are only involved that to the extent that we have put ourselves in that position.
