Sunday, March 8, 2009

Morality and War in Gaza from the Israeli Perspective

here is the link or click on the title (video is fuzzy for a few seconds): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoAh8yJKLw


With the humanitarian uproar following the Gaza strike, one must wonder where the Israeli/Jewish moral tradition stands on this issue. This post acknowledges the Israeli's conflict with morality and war in Gaza; Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman analyses the justification for the Israeli strike:


There are two kinds of wars:

  • A war of self-defense

      • Israel claims their war falls into this category because of the rockets Hamas had been launching into Southern Israel

      • is a moral war

  • A war of agression

      • is an immoral war

The issue with the war in Gaza:

  • although it is a moral war, the question is whether it can be fought on moral terms

  • A war can only be fought on moral terms when those attacked are "those who actively engage in threatening you or your society" (do not involve the civilian population).

The great challenge:

  • with Hamas, it is "impossible to surgically attack the combatants alone"

  • Dr. Hartman notes that Hamas uses the population as a human shield

Reaction to this challenge:

  • Dr. Hartman acknowledges that these casualties are unacceptable and challenges the "Israeli moral story and moral vision".

  • I'd like to note that popular, anti-Israel comparisons between their war activities in Gaza and Nazi war activities (or other undesired metaphors) may strike at the heart of this insecurity. Can they now claim a moral high ground? Following the Gaza strike, have they lost their moral credibility?

Dr. Hartman concludes by saying that the war on Gaza is a war of self-defense (and thus a moral war). Although there is difficulty in fighting this war on moral terms, Israelis still have a right to protect itself. At the end, Dr. Hartman summarizes it as a battle against the immoral (terrorists), where those with moral standards must be able to survive. That civilians must be involved is "the tragedy of terrorism".

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Rebuilding Gaza


The question of how to rebuild Gaza holds an obvious amount of complexity and political tension. Looking into information on donors and the international community's commitment to it, it seems that many countries have the means and will to undertake the project, but are still unclear how the planned and funded reconstruction will come to fruition.
As of yet, International donors have pledged 4.5 billion dollars to rebuild the Gaza strip and prop up the Palestinian Authority as a whole. The money (to be spent over the next two years) is intended to repair the damage caused by the Israeli offensive against Hamas militants. According to Egyptian organizers of the fundraising event, "the outcome exceeded their expectations." Leading up to the conference, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas requested three billion dollars in order to make adequate reparations. From the 70 or so countries that made donations to the fund, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the EU promised the most money. Donors insisted that the funds were not to be channelled through Hamas...
However, the United Nations and aid agencies have made frequent statements stating that rebuilding the coastal enclave would be a daunting task so long as border crossings with battered Gaza remained as closed and tight as they are currently. "The situation at the border crossings is intolerable. Aid workers do not have access. Essential commodities cannot get in," UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told donors at a conference on Gaza in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
Bringing it all back home, an article from the Jerusalem post states...
"US President Barack Obama and the European Union favour channelling aid through the PA - although the European Commission Representative in Jerusalem, Christian Berger, said the EU was waiting to see the outcome of Egyptian-brokered reconciliation talks between the Palestinian factions. "
In the meantime, International agencies are still assessing the scale of the destruction in preparation for a drive for reconstruction pledges, possibly through the use of NGO's.
But with the international community refusing to deal directly with Hamas, the militant group which controls Gaza, how is the money able to be spent? Whom does the 'international community' direct the multiple-billions to, and who will be heading these initiatives? Palestinians? Humanitarian Aid workers? Israel? I'm not insinuating that the money be filtered throough Hamas, just that this political hairball will be down a lot of throats until it comes close to a solution; which, as usual, seems like a long and difficult hall.
A few videos on the topic can be found in the links below...
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Before You Boycott Israel

I found this video on YouTube elaborating the accomplishments of the Jewish and of Israel. It describes how boycotting Israel would be nearly impossible because so many things that people use daily incorporates innovations produced by the Jewish nation, such as computer chips and certain medicines.
It is impossible to miss the sarcasm in the narrator's voice as he describes how to effectively boycott Israel to show lack of support. In addition to the sarcasm, the narrator paints Israel as a Western state essential to civilized living. In the end especially, it shows Israel as the victim of terrorists (while it doesn't specifically say Palestinians) and anti-Israel groups.
The disrespectful discourse on the comment board shows how there is clearly more opinions than the one shown in the video. I find the comments particularly interesting. The majority of them do not reference the video at all, but rather attack Islam and Muslim culture. However, there are some extremely hateful comments about Israel and the Jewish faith. As I am writing this, a particularly hateful one was posted by the user "WeKnowz."
The reaction the the video, in my view, is more powerful than the actual video. It shows how radical some people are about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Although it is uncertain whether these users would be saying such things if they could not do so anonymously, it is a bit of a shock to see how much hate some people have toward another group. Although I am certainly aware that it exists, I was still startled when I read some of the comments.

Here is the link- I was having major issues embedding it or doing anything else that made sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saeky9I5T9c&feature=channel
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Othering the Muslim World


Whilst searching for media for this project, I couldn't help but notice the overwhelming number of Orientalist, and sometimes overtly racist, depictions of Muslims and the Arab world in general. Take these two cartoons. Not only are Arabs and Muslims depicted as violent, barbaric people, but cartoons of this nature have largely gone unnoticed. The cartoons in large part center around depictions of Muslims as bearded, turban-wearing, and somewhat less-than-human, buffoons. In the first cartoon I've posted, members of the Hamas party are depicted as gray-bearded rats that need to be exterminated by Israel, while in the second, Muslims are depicted as barbaric, demented, and, to an extent, mentally challenged (the caption reads "Abdul always knew how to impress the ladies").
It's also key to note that the cartoonist, like many others, has incorrectly depicted the stereotypical Muslim wearing a turban— barely any Muslim men wear a headpiece that looks like this, and yet it is possibly the most embedded symbol in Western depictions of Muslims. Furthermore, there is something very troublesome about mass media infantilizing a serious issue, like the Muslim world's anger with Dutch cartoonists depicting Mohammed, especially when it serves to propagate these types of representations. So, with that, here's a starting question for this post: Why don't we as a society take more issue with these representations?
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