Sam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
l33tminion) wrote2023-10-10 09:42 pm
l33tminion) wrote2023-10-10 09:42 pm
In Our Days
I'll have time to talk about more prosaic things on the home front eventually, maybe, but to add to this year's parade of horrors, Israel is now at war, kicked off by Hamas launching a brutal series of cross-border terrorist attacks. It's been appalling to see some nominally-liberal people completely lose the plot with this, to the extent that they ever had it. Hamas are a bunch of nihilistic monsters. There's a difference between recognizing that injustice and desperation are conditions that bring out the worst in people (and help the already-worst people rise to prominence and power) and thinking that the worst in people is actually somehow good. Some means are never justified, and "ends justifies the means" arguments also require that the ends be both good and achievable. Hamas aren't going to accomplish any larger geopolitical end, and it would be terrible if they did.
I'm terrified that Israel is heading towards ends that are similarly genocidal. (Reports that the Netenyahu government actively bolstered Hamas and dismissed warnings about the current attack increase my fears that they are also willing or even hoping to have the situation tumble over some sort of precipice.) Hopes of a two-state solution seem dead, there's only so much de facto control someone can have over a territory before you start to seriously damage your ability to comprehend the situation by denying that de facto sovereignty, even if you were trying to hold space for some once-potential future.
Israel (the world, but especially Israel) has a powerful need to change the circumstances of the people in Gaza and the West Bank. As powerful, perhaps, as the Palestinians' need to change their own circumstances. Enacting that change through mass displacement or mass murder is simply not acceptable. Expecting that the status quo can be maintained while things get worse forever is not reasonable. It's too important to be about whose need is greater or who is more responsible. It's too important not to put the burden on whoever can get it done. Which includes Israel, if anyone. It sure seems like a task where having a functioning economy, an actual military, and pluralistic, democratic political institutions (to the extent that it does and can keep them) would help.
Then again, maybe no one is up to the task. It's easy to succumb to despair.
There is a powerful need in the world for justice and peace. You can't have the former without the latter. Good luck getting the latter without the former. An attitude of "we'll have peace after one last settling of scores" won't get it. There is some sense in which the wrongs of the past can never be righted, the past is immutable. At best you can right the wrongs of the present, a task that needs grounding in historical context but is not the same as turning back the clock.
Still, modern history does have its share of cases where vicious, hateful conflicts somehow managed to end. It's not impossible. It's maybe not impossible.
I'm terrified that Israel is heading towards ends that are similarly genocidal. (Reports that the Netenyahu government actively bolstered Hamas and dismissed warnings about the current attack increase my fears that they are also willing or even hoping to have the situation tumble over some sort of precipice.) Hopes of a two-state solution seem dead, there's only so much de facto control someone can have over a territory before you start to seriously damage your ability to comprehend the situation by denying that de facto sovereignty, even if you were trying to hold space for some once-potential future.
Israel (the world, but especially Israel) has a powerful need to change the circumstances of the people in Gaza and the West Bank. As powerful, perhaps, as the Palestinians' need to change their own circumstances. Enacting that change through mass displacement or mass murder is simply not acceptable. Expecting that the status quo can be maintained while things get worse forever is not reasonable. It's too important to be about whose need is greater or who is more responsible. It's too important not to put the burden on whoever can get it done. Which includes Israel, if anyone. It sure seems like a task where having a functioning economy, an actual military, and pluralistic, democratic political institutions (to the extent that it does and can keep them) would help.
Then again, maybe no one is up to the task. It's easy to succumb to despair.
There is a powerful need in the world for justice and peace. You can't have the former without the latter. Good luck getting the latter without the former. An attitude of "we'll have peace after one last settling of scores" won't get it. There is some sense in which the wrongs of the past can never be righted, the past is immutable. At best you can right the wrongs of the present, a task that needs grounding in historical context but is not the same as turning back the clock.
Still, modern history does have its share of cases where vicious, hateful conflicts somehow managed to end. It's not impossible. It's maybe not impossible.