The analogy to the German Nazis would have been a lot more poignant and apropos if the German Jews were kicking in their doors and beheading their children. Otherwise, it seems a tad hollow. Also, Gaza is not occupied, Gazans enjoy the right of employment in Israel and many of them work there, and Israel has Arabs in its government. So the "apartheid" argument is weak. The reason for the containment and checkpoints is that Israelis were tired of bombs going off in their public spaces. Not sure I can blame them. I'm sure when bombs start going off in our public spaces, we'll begin a new-found fascination with big walls surmounted by towers and turrets.
But the brutality of Hamas isn’t, as said, substantiative to Berenson’s point. It doesn’t add to “half measures will not deter but incentivize.” Likewise the brutality is non-essential to “Hamas does not desire peace, only the destruction of Israel.” So I explicitly say that I’m not comparing the two ethic grievances, do they have equal merit, doesn’t matter. Hitl0r was not inaccurate in characterizing the aims of Roosevelt et al., it was further a continuation of the pattern of the geopolitics that led to famine in Germany years prior and of the embargo of Japan - complete intransigence, seeking not peace but destruction of Germany and Japan - exactly what the US went and did.
I think you mean that my comparison is not apt for whatever *your* argument RE Israel’s justifications is. But I’m talking about Berenson’s.
I, too, can't help but notice the hypocrisy and inconsistent moral reasoning of the types you mention. I do, however, differ in the categorization of A.B. (and the Free Press lot at Substack) as classical liberals, because I believe they are a little too statist to fit neatly into that category; In our ever-shifting (always leftwards for some reason) political landscape, classical liberals are now considered right of right-of-center, and libs like A.B., B. Weiss, etc have moved from left-of-center into the center-right. That's how I see it anyway. In the very least, it's shifting in that direction. This distinction matters, in my view. Because official public discourse, as you know, is parameterized within a center-left/ center/center-right framework (The is consensus making machine controlling all formal ideas and opinions). Anyhow, you're right, the classical lib position is rapidly departing the scene. How long the Berenson, Weiss, Murray, etc types hold onto the center-right position that they are being shoved into is anyone's guess. Anyhow, as I already said, that's how I see it.
“We’ve tried peace. It didn’t work. The enemy seeks nothing less than to repudiate our right to exist as a nation. Therefore: We now do what the “provocateur” has sought to do to us, and destroy them.”
Good article.
I’d like to add that the first premise was never true. They never tried peace. Only one PM tried a semblance of it - Yitzhak Rabin - and they killed him.
What they did is forced an unbearable unsustainable cruel “might makes right” with our approval on the people they drove out of their homes and into the equivalent of an open air prison.
The fact is, even though the arguments of Hitler and Berenson sound similar, the adversaries of Germany did nothing of the sort to Germans. Therefore, although in the face of it they might sound similar, in context the latter is a predictable reaction to persistent injustice.
Once you deny them the first premise, the rest of the argument falls apart and the roles of villain and victim become obvious.
Yitzak Rabin was the best, I agree wholeheartedly. At one point, US citizens have to see the bigger pattern here which is- they will not allow peace in the region because of the industrial military complex (Big War).
This also explains Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and even the Nordstream bombing. Until we put in power people who stop this, the violence and senselessness will continue. Right now we have literally shifted in three years from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Israel and now a push for Iran.
Israel could live in peace- if people would stop funding Hamas, a worldwide acknowledged terrorist group. Biden/Obama could not allow the Israel /Saudi Arabia accord succeed like the UAE/Israel one did, so they gave 6 billion to Iran. This is similar to when Obama gave 1 billion in cash (on pallets) and gold bars to Iran and 221 million to Palestine on his last day in office. Palestine elected Hamas as their leadership in 2006, there hasn’t been an election since but informal polls show that the people would overwhelmingly elect them again. Well, why would ANYONE in their right mind give cash to a terrorist organization or a country that gives it to them? Give food or medicine but nothing else.
What baffles me, truly baffles me, is you see these highly organized pro-Palestine protests in major cities and then very angry pro-Israel people screaming at them. All of those people voted Democrat. They all voted for this outcome. They all thought that they were on the same side-no there are people in America who hate us but still live here. And Democrats want more of them. So many millions of refugees would be so grateful to come here, but Democrats, in particular then Obama and Biden administrations want those people to come here. Not Yazidis, who were being literally eradicated by ISIS, no they weren’t allowed. Yazidi’s would have made great Americans. How did so many supposedly thinking people really believe the anti-Trump propaganda? He is the only President to visit Israel and the wailing wall.
I don’t know the correct force to deal with Hamas now, they committed atrocities and the reaction must be harsh and severe. But it will ruin peace in the region because now there can be no SA/Israel accord. Just like Biden/Obama wanted it.
Here's some partisan but plaintive "onlooker, why you no OUTRAGE??!!?" article suggesting that, in the past two years, perhaps the American middle has either disappeared, or is suffering foreign-war outrage fatigue, or maybe has seen simply too many media shark-jumps and dirty tricks too recently and has grown doubtful of the narrative's veracity:
Lock a couple million innocent people in an open air prison for the better part of a century after stealing their land from them, allow them just enough calories to avoid starvation, pump money into a militant organization to control them, place a curfew on them, bulldoze their homes occasionally, bomb them now and again, then act surprised when a few of them do something horrific. Israel's policy in a nut shell.
But they haven't always been a couple million people, now have they? And they aren't incapable (or are they), so why have they built nothing of their own? What's prevented them from doing to Gaza what's been done with the land inside Israel's borders?
What's preventing them from building? Bulldozers, walls, bombs, the Israeli army. Do you really not know the situation there? The Israeli government bombs their buildings, they annex land from Palestinians, bulldoze their homes, cut off their water, limit their food intake. Turn off your television. It's lying to you. You're misinformed if you aren't aware of what's happening to those people. Here is something to get your education started:
Do you think the billions of dollars given to them by the US government might have aided in their build up? One group is propped up by the most powerful nation to ever exist, the other is confined to the most densely populated place on earth, cut off from clean water, proper nutrition, free trade, and basic human rights. You might want to rethink your position.
The policy is nuts, and inhumane for the people of Palestine where 75% of the population is 25 and under, supposedly. However, voting in Hamas as your leader is like voting in Al Sharpton. Good luck with that.
I don't disagree, though as far as "stealing" land, this just describes being not-the-loser in an ethnic conflict, one of many in the region. But the ongoing misery of the local Palestinian diaspora's living on a 'reservation' will never be sustainable.
Many don't understand that ordinary Gazans aren't welcome on the Egypt side of the border either --- nor Palestinians generally in the rest of the Arab world. They are pawns.
Egyptians loathe the Palestinians. They destroyed their supply tunnels. That said, when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge in Egypt they liked Hamas. It is the same terror organization. Obama liked the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas too.
Emperor Constantine tried for a 'state' religion in AD325 to quell vicious ethnic fighting in the region and I would not pretend to know the validity of any claims over the right to be there. Accepting that the conflicts that have thrived for centuries across the region as unsolvable is to give up on people period which is unthinkable.
BUT those of any persuasion suggesting that conflict will solve the issue, that a winner of a violent war will end the violence once and for all is demonstrating to the world how limited and confused their thinking actually is.
Anyone suggesting more violence to stop endless violence needs to examine their own ethics, their own moral values. Violence can never stop violence , its an illogical concept, an empty argument and the evidence is the centuries of violence that has NEVER even looked like ending the violence. There are no 'sides', its just violence.
How do you propose that violence can stop violence. Do you mean that one sides beats the other to death to remove the potential source of violence or beats the opposition into complete submission.
For me those arguments justify ANY violence at anytime by anyone on the basis that whoever 'wins' the violent confrontation by whatever means needed to remove or totally disable their opposition has achieved their dominance.
Oh great so we are no different from any other living thing on the planet if physical violence is the only ultimate control and survival method.
In such a world there are not ethics, nor moral values and no one is a terrorist or innocent bystander. Brute force and ignorance wins the day if it disables by death if necessary any opposition. Oh how civilized. What a great display of superior intelligence, of any superiority spiritually. Is it thugs rule??
And all speech is 'Free' so long as you can speak it without some thug belting you in the face for it. The Press is an attempt to control speech by dominance, prevalence in favour of one or another - a non-physical form of violence of the mind which can be extremely damaging.
The state is that social entity which possesses the monopoly on violence. And so everywhere where property can be held without active violence, i.e. where title prevails, violence is stopping violence. All government is less violence than anarchy, e.g. war of all against all. Libertarians just choose to discount the positive in this regard.
I struggle with your reasoning Brian. Violence at any level is about how people resolve differences about anything with violence. At the end of every conflict the talking starts no matter who is supposed victor. Peace and non-violence happens when those involved simply stop the violence for any reason what so ever. There are countless examples where the physical victor actually looses despite totally defeating their opposition. What did they win?
One group or tribe of Maori in New Zealand were so repeatedly violent that the surrounding tribes joined forces and simply wiped out the one permanently antagonistic tribe. I can see the point of violence in this case but when do people find that non-violence settlement of differences is far preferable, more intelligent, more ethically desirable and justifiable than any violence. BTW the victorious Maori neighbors did not occupy the lands of the conquered - apparently European settlers did and look where that got the Maori who had to combine yet again to force the Europeans to a settlement..
What is a settlement? What happens when the fighting stops and the talking begins. Can it be that hard to skip the violence and just start talking?? No one is superior and my rights end where yours begin. Otherwise I should just wack anyone on the head i do not agree with - is that all we have? So civilized !!
The analogy to the German Nazis would have been a lot more poignant and apropos if the German Jews were kicking in their doors and beheading their children. Otherwise, it seems a tad hollow. Also, Gaza is not occupied, Gazans enjoy the right of employment in Israel and many of them work there, and Israel has Arabs in its government. So the "apartheid" argument is weak. The reason for the containment and checkpoints is that Israelis were tired of bombs going off in their public spaces. Not sure I can blame them. I'm sure when bombs start going off in our public spaces, we'll begin a new-found fascination with big walls surmounted by towers and turrets.
But the brutality of Hamas isn’t, as said, substantiative to Berenson’s point. It doesn’t add to “half measures will not deter but incentivize.” Likewise the brutality is non-essential to “Hamas does not desire peace, only the destruction of Israel.” So I explicitly say that I’m not comparing the two ethic grievances, do they have equal merit, doesn’t matter. Hitl0r was not inaccurate in characterizing the aims of Roosevelt et al., it was further a continuation of the pattern of the geopolitics that led to famine in Germany years prior and of the embargo of Japan - complete intransigence, seeking not peace but destruction of Germany and Japan - exactly what the US went and did.
I think you mean that my comparison is not apt for whatever *your* argument RE Israel’s justifications is. But I’m talking about Berenson’s.
Well said, Brian.
I, too, can't help but notice the hypocrisy and inconsistent moral reasoning of the types you mention. I do, however, differ in the categorization of A.B. (and the Free Press lot at Substack) as classical liberals, because I believe they are a little too statist to fit neatly into that category; In our ever-shifting (always leftwards for some reason) political landscape, classical liberals are now considered right of right-of-center, and libs like A.B., B. Weiss, etc have moved from left-of-center into the center-right. That's how I see it anyway. In the very least, it's shifting in that direction. This distinction matters, in my view. Because official public discourse, as you know, is parameterized within a center-left/ center/center-right framework (The is consensus making machine controlling all formal ideas and opinions). Anyhow, you're right, the classical lib position is rapidly departing the scene. How long the Berenson, Weiss, Murray, etc types hold onto the center-right position that they are being shoved into is anyone's guess. Anyhow, as I already said, that's how I see it.
“We’ve tried peace. It didn’t work. The enemy seeks nothing less than to repudiate our right to exist as a nation. Therefore: We now do what the “provocateur” has sought to do to us, and destroy them.”
Good article.
I’d like to add that the first premise was never true. They never tried peace. Only one PM tried a semblance of it - Yitzhak Rabin - and they killed him.
What they did is forced an unbearable unsustainable cruel “might makes right” with our approval on the people they drove out of their homes and into the equivalent of an open air prison.
The fact is, even though the arguments of Hitler and Berenson sound similar, the adversaries of Germany did nothing of the sort to Germans. Therefore, although in the face of it they might sound similar, in context the latter is a predictable reaction to persistent injustice.
Once you deny them the first premise, the rest of the argument falls apart and the roles of villain and victim become obvious.
Yitzak Rabin was the best, I agree wholeheartedly. At one point, US citizens have to see the bigger pattern here which is- they will not allow peace in the region because of the industrial military complex (Big War).
This also explains Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iraq and even the Nordstream bombing. Until we put in power people who stop this, the violence and senselessness will continue. Right now we have literally shifted in three years from Afghanistan to Ukraine to Israel and now a push for Iran.
Israel could live in peace- if people would stop funding Hamas, a worldwide acknowledged terrorist group. Biden/Obama could not allow the Israel /Saudi Arabia accord succeed like the UAE/Israel one did, so they gave 6 billion to Iran. This is similar to when Obama gave 1 billion in cash (on pallets) and gold bars to Iran and 221 million to Palestine on his last day in office. Palestine elected Hamas as their leadership in 2006, there hasn’t been an election since but informal polls show that the people would overwhelmingly elect them again. Well, why would ANYONE in their right mind give cash to a terrorist organization or a country that gives it to them? Give food or medicine but nothing else.
What baffles me, truly baffles me, is you see these highly organized pro-Palestine protests in major cities and then very angry pro-Israel people screaming at them. All of those people voted Democrat. They all voted for this outcome. They all thought that they were on the same side-no there are people in America who hate us but still live here. And Democrats want more of them. So many millions of refugees would be so grateful to come here, but Democrats, in particular then Obama and Biden administrations want those people to come here. Not Yazidis, who were being literally eradicated by ISIS, no they weren’t allowed. Yazidi’s would have made great Americans. How did so many supposedly thinking people really believe the anti-Trump propaganda? He is the only President to visit Israel and the wailing wall.
I don’t know the correct force to deal with Hamas now, they committed atrocities and the reaction must be harsh and severe. But it will ruin peace in the region because now there can be no SA/Israel accord. Just like Biden/Obama wanted it.
Here's some partisan but plaintive "onlooker, why you no OUTRAGE??!!?" article suggesting that, in the past two years, perhaps the American middle has either disappeared, or is suffering foreign-war outrage fatigue, or maybe has seen simply too many media shark-jumps and dirty tricks too recently and has grown doubtful of the narrative's veracity:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/why-are-you-silent-israel-hamas-gaza-jews
Lock a couple million innocent people in an open air prison for the better part of a century after stealing their land from them, allow them just enough calories to avoid starvation, pump money into a militant organization to control them, place a curfew on them, bulldoze their homes occasionally, bomb them now and again, then act surprised when a few of them do something horrific. Israel's policy in a nut shell.
But they haven't always been a couple million people, now have they? And they aren't incapable (or are they), so why have they built nothing of their own? What's prevented them from doing to Gaza what's been done with the land inside Israel's borders?
What's preventing them from building? Bulldozers, walls, bombs, the Israeli army. Do you really not know the situation there? The Israeli government bombs their buildings, they annex land from Palestinians, bulldoze their homes, cut off their water, limit their food intake. Turn off your television. It's lying to you. You're misinformed if you aren't aware of what's happening to those people. Here is something to get your education started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwb2OlqTO0M
Israel was built up under attack or constant threat of attack. If Gaza were full of mindful people, the same could be done there.
Do you think the billions of dollars given to them by the US government might have aided in their build up? One group is propped up by the most powerful nation to ever exist, the other is confined to the most densely populated place on earth, cut off from clean water, proper nutrition, free trade, and basic human rights. You might want to rethink your position.
The policy is nuts, and inhumane for the people of Palestine where 75% of the population is 25 and under, supposedly. However, voting in Hamas as your leader is like voting in Al Sharpton. Good luck with that.
I don't disagree, though as far as "stealing" land, this just describes being not-the-loser in an ethnic conflict, one of many in the region. But the ongoing misery of the local Palestinian diaspora's living on a 'reservation' will never be sustainable.
Many don't understand that ordinary Gazans aren't welcome on the Egypt side of the border either --- nor Palestinians generally in the rest of the Arab world. They are pawns.
Egyptians loathe the Palestinians. They destroyed their supply tunnels. That said, when the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge in Egypt they liked Hamas. It is the same terror organization. Obama liked the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas too.
Emperor Constantine tried for a 'state' religion in AD325 to quell vicious ethnic fighting in the region and I would not pretend to know the validity of any claims over the right to be there. Accepting that the conflicts that have thrived for centuries across the region as unsolvable is to give up on people period which is unthinkable.
BUT those of any persuasion suggesting that conflict will solve the issue, that a winner of a violent war will end the violence once and for all is demonstrating to the world how limited and confused their thinking actually is.
Anyone suggesting more violence to stop endless violence needs to examine their own ethics, their own moral values. Violence can never stop violence , its an illogical concept, an empty argument and the evidence is the centuries of violence that has NEVER even looked like ending the violence. There are no 'sides', its just violence.
How blind and stupid do people have to be??
Of course violence can stop violence. And nonviolence only "works" because the press can determine elections at will via "free" speech.
How do you propose that violence can stop violence. Do you mean that one sides beats the other to death to remove the potential source of violence or beats the opposition into complete submission.
For me those arguments justify ANY violence at anytime by anyone on the basis that whoever 'wins' the violent confrontation by whatever means needed to remove or totally disable their opposition has achieved their dominance.
Oh great so we are no different from any other living thing on the planet if physical violence is the only ultimate control and survival method.
In such a world there are not ethics, nor moral values and no one is a terrorist or innocent bystander. Brute force and ignorance wins the day if it disables by death if necessary any opposition. Oh how civilized. What a great display of superior intelligence, of any superiority spiritually. Is it thugs rule??
And all speech is 'Free' so long as you can speak it without some thug belting you in the face for it. The Press is an attempt to control speech by dominance, prevalence in favour of one or another - a non-physical form of violence of the mind which can be extremely damaging.
The state is that social entity which possesses the monopoly on violence. And so everywhere where property can be held without active violence, i.e. where title prevails, violence is stopping violence. All government is less violence than anarchy, e.g. war of all against all. Libertarians just choose to discount the positive in this regard.
I struggle with your reasoning Brian. Violence at any level is about how people resolve differences about anything with violence. At the end of every conflict the talking starts no matter who is supposed victor. Peace and non-violence happens when those involved simply stop the violence for any reason what so ever. There are countless examples where the physical victor actually looses despite totally defeating their opposition. What did they win?
One group or tribe of Maori in New Zealand were so repeatedly violent that the surrounding tribes joined forces and simply wiped out the one permanently antagonistic tribe. I can see the point of violence in this case but when do people find that non-violence settlement of differences is far preferable, more intelligent, more ethically desirable and justifiable than any violence. BTW the victorious Maori neighbors did not occupy the lands of the conquered - apparently European settlers did and look where that got the Maori who had to combine yet again to force the Europeans to a settlement..
What is a settlement? What happens when the fighting stops and the talking begins. Can it be that hard to skip the violence and just start talking?? No one is superior and my rights end where yours begin. Otherwise I should just wack anyone on the head i do not agree with - is that all we have? So civilized !!