israeli-palestine conflict

Either side can easily be portrayed as the underdog, because victimhood is limited only by imagination. So we must consider the question not in terms of who is most oppressed, but who is most reasonable? Who is most willing to compromise, and whose goals will, overall, benefit Israelis and Palestinians most?

It’s amazing how perfectly this conflict encapsulates the spiritual deficit of modernity, how every action may only be taken if it is in compliance with the ‘opinion of the world’, and how both sides only exist still because the mustered the support of actual kinetic powers by making those powers feel sorry for them or ethically appeased by helping... See more

Unlike with South African apartheid, Israel gives its Arab citizens all the rights available to its Jews, and it even has Arabs sitting in the Knesset. Further, Israel allows Palestinians into Israel to work, though, since millions of Arabs want to see Israel obliterated, Israel must carefully vet those it welcomes. And given the flow of weapons in... See more

So it’s useful to ask what absolute power would reveal about Israel and Hamas. In other words, what would each side do if it had nukes and its enemies didn’t? Based on Hamas’s history, and its charter, which calls for the total obliteration of Israel, we can be confident they’d nuke Tel Aviv. And yet, if Israel had nukes, they wouldn’t nuke Palesti... See more

Overall, Israel, like all countries, has committed some crimes and many mistakes. But it has offered more opportunities to the Palestinians than the Palestinian leaders have. And it has proven less tyrannical than any of its Arab neighbors would be if they’d had the same military might and were subjected to the same 75 years of constant existential... See more

When I was a clueless young leftist I too believed Israel was the oppressor and Palestinians were the oppressed, because that’s what everyone around me was saying, and my empty mind was a vacuum that sucked it all up. Once I escaped my echo-chamber, and began to objectively assess the facts, I realized just how unfairly Israel has been demeaned — n... See more

The doctrine of deterrence has taken a beating. Few doubt that Israel can strike back at Gaza in a very powerful way, and yet that wasn’t enough to stop the attacks. I am still trying to digest this one.