Kenneth Roth, who was executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022 and oversaw production of the report on apartheid, said that Israeli authorities have long insisted that ending discriminatory policies depended on peace negotiations.
But three decades on, with no real peace process in motion, that explanation “lacked credibility,” Roth said.
Israel has continued to support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, constructing “bypass roads” accessible only to the settlers and expanding military checkpoints — moves that Roth and others say all but eliminated the possibility that the West Bank could someday become an independent, contiguous Palestinian state.
“What’s left is Swiss cheese,” he said.
It is really worrying that one war crime committed by Russia gets condemned unequivocally, while the same war crime committed by Israel is getting a pass.
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I’m just curious how many Palestinians need to die, and how much of Gaza needs to be razed to dust before we’re “even” in the minds of proponents that somehow this war is justified. Legitimately and in good faith, when are we “good” here?
I, for one, do think that the war against Hamas is justified. Israel’s stated goal is to destroy Hamas military capabilities. The paradigm isn’t tit-for-tat until they’re “even”. This isn’t a slap contest. Israel’s paradigm is overwhelming force to destroy the enemy as completely as possible, while also not completely nuking the civilian population. Hamas’s paradigm is terrorism against primarily civilian targets, mainly to prevent Israel and the world from settling into complacency regarding the pre-October 7 state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Which is exactly what was happening before October 7.
No one knows when Israel will consider Hamas sufficiently degraded to end the war on their side. Of course, Hamas will never stop fighting Israel, even if there is a ceasefire. It’ll just take another decade or so to build up their military capabilities again for another attack. Or, there may be a Third Intifadah and a return to suicide bombing and similar tactics. It’s a mess (and always has been).
How much of the population is acceptable as collateral damage? We’re over 1%. Will you condemn Israel at 5%? 10%? 50%? 100%?
Murdering 1% of any countries civilians as collateral damage could never be justified.
No collateral damage is acceptable, but it is unrealistic to think that there will be no collateral damage in war. It is also unrealistic to think that Israel would not respond to the October 7 massacre, and unacceptable for Hamas to use the Palestinian people as human shields to avoid retaliation.
What does that boil down to? Israel has every right to strike back at Hamas. Hamas also has every right to fight against Israel. Because of the way Hamas has dug in to the civilian population and infrastructure, civilian casualties are a given. The number of civilian casualties is a function of two things:
- How intensively Israel tries to kill Hamas and degrade their capabilities, and,
- How effectively Hamas uses the Palestinian population as human shields.
In other words, both Israel and Hamas are to blame for civilian casualties. This is the same in every war. Civilians in a war zone always get fucked, no matter who started the war.
You said that Israel is justified in their war on Palestine. If no amount of collateral damage is acceptable, they would be no longer justified after the first civilians were killed, so you obviously do consider some amount of collateral damage as acceptable.
So I’ll repeat my question: what is the percentage of the Palestine civilian population that has to be killed before Israel is no longer justified in their war? You can answer the question, or you can not do so. The implications of either option are hopefully clear to you.
My point is that no civilian should be killed, but that isn’t realistic nor is it the criteria for engaging in warfare. What percentage of civilian casualties is “enough” is not a precisely answerable question. The best you can say is, “as few as reasonably possible given the circumstances”. No war has zero collateral damage, but that doesn’t mean that war is never justified.
In your earlier comment, you said that reaching 1% of the population killed could never be justified. And yet, about 9% of German were killed in WW2, and yet few would argue that the Allies should have stopped fighting once German casualties reached 1% of the population.
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Gaza is not a country. It’s a besieged reigon inside Israel. Gazans don’t have passports; they are not even allowed to travel out of their borders to even visit the west bank or any place in Israel except for few with job permits who were allowed work in fields inside Israel by day and return by night. Their fuel, electricity, food and water are rationed and controlled by Israel. They drink polluted water and live in poverty and 75%+ unemployment. They get bombed yearly. Israel juat killed more than 22000 in the last 3 months and crippled thrice as many.
It’s worse than an aprthied. It’s much worse than being in prison of any first world country. And the only reason they have Hamas in control is because of these conditions.
Israel used to be an apartheid state, but seeing the horrors they inflict right now it looks more like a nazi state. It ticks all the boxes: locked down ghettos, starvations, stopping press freedom, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity.
The article does a decent job of going into some of the nuance about the different ways the apartheid label might or might not fit things that are thing on. But in the end who cares if we can fit a class of actions into the apartheid label?
Why don’t we just look at the actual actions that are taking place and discuss them for what they are. If Israel levels half of Gaza in intense bombing campaigns that kill tens of thousands of people, then we can see that and discuss what to do about it. Who cares if it doesn’t fit the apartheid label.
I see similar arguments every day now where people are arguing if it’s genocide or ethnic cleansing or apartheid or whatever. What does it change if you’re able to cognitively classify a set of actions with the correct label?
Maybe if you justify your favorite label then you can condemn Israel/Hamas harder, but this doesn’t actually change anything and it doesn’t lead to greater understanding. I’d actually argue that settling on your preferred label actually leads to less understanding. That’s because once you’ve categorized something to your satisfaction, you tend to become more blind to contradictory evidence.
For example, let’s say we all agree that Israel is an “apartheid state”. That label comes with a lot of baggage that’s going to color our views of future actions. We might miss out on changes in Israeli laws or courts or political leadership that contradicts the apartheid label.
Better instead to try and see things clearly as they are instead of trying to force labels onto things. This takes more effort because labels serve as cognitive shortcuts, but the result is a better understanding of what’s actually going on.
I get your point, however, when we label Israel for their actions they can get convicted for their crimes and people can see more clearly the horrors that country inflict. People need labels to understand and recognize it. “if it’s not genocide, it’s probably justified” is what many simple people think. When we label it as something horrible, they are unable to think it’s justified as it’s internationally accepted as a war crime. No doubt about it. Same with apartheid. Hamas is a product of apartheid. Their actions are wrong in any way. No doubt about it. But Israel isn’t a victim but an agressor. That’s why labeling them is so important. So they won’t get away with their war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Why the question mark? It’s old news. Yet another thing where the world looks away, that’s all.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/07/19/israeli-apartheid-threshold-crossed
Dehmahcrussy
Yes. Next question.
I don’t want to get hung up on semantics, I can certainly say it seems unfair. And the actions of Hamas are unforgivable, but imagine being born Palestinian. It must be really shit.
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