mAcOdIn said:
I dunno, I just feel like using it's conclusion would somehow validate the report, which in turn would validate the blockades and change the argument form "blockades yay or nay" to "blockade, stricter or looser." Maybe that is the most realistic thing right now but it's already a huge concession it's like playing to lose.
Blockading terrorists so that they find it much harder to get rockets, bombs, etc. to blow up your people up with, and the money to buy that stuff with, most definitely isn't wrong.
What's your argument again, anti-Israeli or utilitarian? The former is obvious; the latter would be "there is more overall human suffering in Gaza now than there would be in Gaza and Israel combined if there was no blockade," which, I think, is most definitely no sure thing. The violence would without question get worse. I quite doubt that other benefits would make up for that.
(from the report)
However, the report was critical of Israel's land blockade of the coastal enclave, calling on Israel to "examine of the medical needs of the people of Gaza in order to find ways to improve the current situation."
The commission also urged the Israeli government to examine ways to "focus its sanctions on Hamas while avoiding harm against the civilian population."
This is true, Hamas is the target and the sanctions certainly should be focused on things that would help Hamas. The problem is, Hamas controls Gaza, and a large number, probably a majority, of the Gazan people support them. That must make it quite difficult to determine which things support Hamas and which don't. Still though, certainly a focus on things that would help Hamas fight and those things only would be best, while allowing through humanitarian supplies.
The problem with these things often is, thoguh, that even if you do allow through humanitarian supplies, regimes often don't give them to the people. For instance, Saddam Hussein's Iraq was blockaded through most of the '90s. The sanctions were heavily criticized by peace groups who said things about how many Iraqis were dying because of lacking medical supplies and such, but while that was likely true, that was only part of the story. The other part was that (in the aftermath of the Gulf War and after Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear facility earlier on) the sanctions successfully stopped Saddam's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs. Sadaam had had all three in the '80s, but was never able to re-constitute them, and a big part of the credit for that has to go to the sanctions. There's no question this was a very good thing.
Also though, as I said these regimes often keep the stuff. If you give them medical supplies or whatever, who are they going to go to, the sick people or the army's supplies? It's likely to be the latter. Humanitarian supplies must be sent anyway, of course, but just because they're being sent doesn't mean people actually get them. This varies from place to place, of course.
The financial pressure sanctions put on bad regimes -- Saddam's Iraq, post-revolutionary Iran, Hamas, the Burmese junta, North Korea, etc -- also does have a negative impact. Critics often say how sanctions only hurt the people, while the leaders aren't as affected because they have more money, I would say that the truth is that while the people sadly do suffer, the leaderships do as well. Sure, Saddam had a lot of palaces, but he didn't exactly have the same military, nuclear/chemical/biological weapons program, etc. that he had had before. Not even close. That wasn't just because of the first Gulf War, but because of the sanctions and blockade and no-fly-zone as well.
That is to say, without the sanctions and blockade there would be many more attacks coming into Israel from Gaza. The Israeli government has a right to defend its people from attack, and to stop blockade-breaking -- or, in this case, publicity-seeking -- efforts. They should examine which things are banned and which aren't and do what more they can to help the Gazan people despite themselves (they're the ones who elected Hamas, after all), though. That would be good on all levels. But the basic concept of sanctions is one that I support and I think works. It should only be applied against regimes that really deserve them -- the US sanctions against Cuba clearly are absurd in their totality, a lingering Cold War relic. Though punishing them some for their repressive government would be fine, we go way too far; of course our standards are very inconsistently applied, as there are many other repressive regimes that we support instead of oppose, I still support having them when we can. I only wish that we could do something against China (the world's biggest human rights abuser) too... I know though, that's unlikely to say the least.) Considering who run Gaza, some kinds of restrictions are reasonable to try to restrict their capacity for violence.
Also, though, as for the raid, yes of course they should have tried harder to not kill people. The flotilla had to be stopped, though. Sanctions only work when you control what's getting into a country, and such a blatant publicity attempt couldn't be allowed to get through. Of course getting stopped and maybe shot at has to have been the whole purpose of the flotilla from the beginning -- it was quite obvious they wouldn't be let through, and when they resisted and didn't stop they got just what they were expecting, a disproportionate Israeli military response that they could bash Israel in the world press with. That doesn't excuse the killings, but it's not like they were innocent victims. I don't doubt that at least some of the killings were in self defense, they were attacked. But the amount of force used was probably disproportionate. I can't say much about the quality of the whole report itself though, I haven't read it.
Of course considering that drawing out the Israeli military like that was pretty much the whole point of the flotilla, it's too bad that Israel played right into their hands (PR-wise, but also in terms of human cost of course) by killing people while stopping the ships. They had to be stopped, but it seems like there must have been some less violent way to do it. Would have been much better all around. With the extremist right in control of Israel right now, though, evidently they just didn't care about that.
It's difficult. On the one hand, I do believe that when you're talking about casualties in war, numbers matter -- that is, that fewer deaths is good. You have to balance that against potential harm, though, either for Gaza with Israel or for Afghanistan and Pakistan for the US. More people may die immediately thanks to the war (though many, many fewer than would have in past decades, thanks to improving technology; in Vietnam millions of Vietnamese people died, while in Iraq and Afghanistan, civilian casualties, while tragically high (there surely are many people on our side who should be punished for crimes but never will be, sadly), have been pretty low compared to that war. Still they're still far too high, people's ability to ignore casualties from countries of peoples that are not their own is understandable psychologically but unfortunate, perhaps some of the conflicts were unavoidable (not Vietnam or Iraq, those never should have happened) but the scale of death? More could be done about that.), but would things be even worse long term if you did nothing and left the other side as is? That's a very difficult calculation to make, but there are cases where I think action is justified. And that's one place where sanctions and blockades come in, as a good measure that punishes a country or area, without the additional chaos of a war.
I mean, returning to Israel and the Palestinian territories, the sanctions may be tough on Gaza, but is there much question that another war would be worse?
Peace is what everyone should want there, but in that part of the world, but in that part of the world particularly, the path to a wide peace definitely does not look promising, both because of Israel and because of rivalries between the other Middle Eastern states (the Iranian nuclear program is a threat to Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well as Israel and the US and Europe, for instance). It's pretty sad.
quadriplegicjon said:
Even internal Israeli reports are saying that their blockade is too extreme and harmful to innocent civilians. I hope peace groups inside Israel latch onto this aspect of the report to put pressure on the government, but the controversial flotilla findings will likely overshadow this part.
That's entirely possible, there are a variety of views within Israel. As a liberal (American) I don't like the fact that Israel is controlled by the far right. It will be very difficult to achieve peace in the Middle East as long as the conservatives are in power in Israel, that much is clear. I'm not sure if this will hurt the government, though. It mostly supports the governments' actions, after all. Still, there is some criticism in it, so perhaps it'll do something. We'll see. Commissions anywhere have a mixed record on that, just think of how many American commissions have made suggestions that the government has ended up ignoring.
On the note of peace, true peace with Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. is of course impossible until they abandon their stated ultimate goals of destroying the state of Israel. That's why the focus of peace talks is between Israel and the West Bank PLO, because peace there is, while quite difficult thanks to some hard to reconcile positions, the status of East Jerusalem probably the most important among them, certainly possible in the not-too-distant future. The goal is, I think, that eventually Gaza and such will see how much better off the West Bank is (I mean, in a situation where there's been a peace treaty, land swap both sides agree on, and Palestinian state in the West Bank; it may seem impossible, but it's not, just hard. Very difficult to get anywhere with with this Israeli government, but still not impossible.) and they will decide to ditch support for Hamas and terrorism and make peace too. They would end up better off in the end.
weekend_warrior said:
I thought the Israelis were the good guys. Why they starting shit with er'body?
This thread is heavily dominated by opponents of Israel and of the blockade, it's not exactly a balanced perspective... those ships went to Gaza specifically to make press trying to get through the blockade and almost certainly being stopped, likely with some force if they refused to stop as indeed they did not. Israel used too much force in response to that, but the whole thing was a definite provocation. Israel bashers such as many of the people in this thread then used that against Israel, as they will anything they can that makes Israel look bad.
mAcOdIn said:
I wanted to expand on this.
For one, I don't think that is really true. I think, hope, that there's actually a rather wide difference in what countries truly feel about Iran versus the line everyone takes with Iran essentially at our(the US) behalf. Basically, I feel that modern Western European countries are so comfortable with their relative regional peace and the status quo that if the US says that Iran's a bad guy they'll go along with it just because they don't really want to rock the boat, but I don't think most nations actually believe half the shit they say about Iran. I pretty much think they're cowards.
Second, I think the Western world would do much more to bring Israel in line against a nation like Iran than they would Greece, to use your example. If Greece was getting up in arms over Israel I think the Western nations would feel they have a much better shot at restraining Greece than they do Israel, hence I don't think much good would actually come of a Western friendly nation being at odds with Israel. Iran, on the other hand, isn't really controllable by us, between the two countries we have much more pull over Israel than Iran, if it came down to a showdown between those two, if we were going to stop it, I think there's a decent chance we'd lean on Israel.
That's all assuming that someone's going to get talked down. There's the possibility that things escalate, I obviously don't like that but it may be necessary for that to happen for this to ever be resolved.
The bogeyman in the room with this whole thing, of course, is the Iranian nuclear program. They get nukes and the situation in the whole Middle East gets very different... I don't necessarily think that Iran would suicidally nuke Israel, but even so it certainly would be a top-order threat. It'd probably cause a chain reaction in the whole region too, as the Saudis would then need a nuclear program, and perhaps others as well (Turkey? Egypt?). Iran getting nukes would not be a good thing for world peace, to say the least, I (and the American government) think. The problem is, though, what you can do. Invasion's a terrible idea (I certainly would be opposed, just like I was with Iraq). Bombing's tough, they have lots of facilities. It would probably set them back, but would it stop it? Talking... we're trying that now, but they aren't exactly being willing to give up much, it seems to mostly be a stall for time. The newest idea seems to be that somewhat successful computer virus, and that's really a clever idea, but it won't stop their nuclear program forever...