one-sided condemnations of Israel are commonplace on the Left now
Maybe it isn't human nature to watch two groups fighting and blame both of them for the violence. We like to find fault and cast blame and pick sides, not to view the violent interactions of two groups as part of a system of ongoing mutual violence.
As I've written about recently, there's this idea of just retaliation, that once one side "starts" a war, the other side can do whatever the hell it wants until it has wiped out its enemy. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor (68 civilians killed), so the US gets to drop nukes on Japan (~200,000 civilians killed).
The notion of deterrence rests on the justness of overwhelming retaliation. How would it be a deterrent to future Japans if the US had limited itself to acts that only killed up to 68 Japanese civilians?
It was this history of overwhelming retaliation that I feared after 9/11 in the US. I believe in my (previous) LJ at the time that I predicted the US retaliation could take hundreds of thousands of lives. The men who committed 9/11 all died that morning, leaving the US with no target for our retaliation, so we had to go after EVERY TERRORIST ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD, AND EVERY COUNTRY IN WHICH THEY RESIDED.
Anybody who is harmed by the US, and so retaliates against us, will receive the same overwhelmingly disproportionate retaliation from us.
So Israel thinks they get to do the same. I estimate that over 1% of the residents of Gaza have already died from Israel's retaliation. I'm not sure how high this will go before it is over. Poland lost an estimated 17% of its population during WW2, but that was over six years. Gaza has lost 1% in just over one month. Gaza is currently experiencing a worse punishment than Poland did during WW2, if averaged over time. Of course, Poland did nothing "wrong" to deserve the invasion by Germany and the Soviet Union.
Or ... did it? Poland didn't exist at all during the 19th Century. Then it was carved out from both German and Russian territory in 1918 after WWI. Not satisfied with these newly acquired lands, Poland began attacking most of its neighbors and seized additional land containing millions of people. Then a coup removed Poland's democratically elected leaders.
Nowadays we in the US tend to portray Poland as an innocent victim of Nazi Germany, ignoring the Soviet Union's role in the 1939 invasion, ignoring that Poland wasn't a democracy, and that Poland had seized land by force from its neighbors.
Instead of viewing the invasion of Poland as part of a CENTURIES-LONG battle between various groups over the same lands, we found fault and cast blame and picked a side. Eventually more Germans died in WW2 than Polish. Massive retaliation, yeah.
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Sigh. Me writing these little essays in this tiny corner of the Internet isn't going to change human nature. But once again I'm finding the Left distracted from the ongoing battle for economic equality by --> nationalisms. Instead of supporting the working class in both Israel and Palestine, the Left has picked the side of Palestinian nationalism.
Nationalism and war are capitalism's friends. By keeping us divided into ~200 nations and keeping us fighting over land and taking sides. The stock market loves it.
Nite-nite
As I've written about recently, there's this idea of just retaliation, that once one side "starts" a war, the other side can do whatever the hell it wants until it has wiped out its enemy. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor (68 civilians killed), so the US gets to drop nukes on Japan (~200,000 civilians killed).
The notion of deterrence rests on the justness of overwhelming retaliation. How would it be a deterrent to future Japans if the US had limited itself to acts that only killed up to 68 Japanese civilians?
It was this history of overwhelming retaliation that I feared after 9/11 in the US. I believe in my (previous) LJ at the time that I predicted the US retaliation could take hundreds of thousands of lives. The men who committed 9/11 all died that morning, leaving the US with no target for our retaliation, so we had to go after EVERY TERRORIST ORGANIZATION IN THE WORLD, AND EVERY COUNTRY IN WHICH THEY RESIDED.
Anybody who is harmed by the US, and so retaliates against us, will receive the same overwhelmingly disproportionate retaliation from us.
So Israel thinks they get to do the same. I estimate that over 1% of the residents of Gaza have already died from Israel's retaliation. I'm not sure how high this will go before it is over. Poland lost an estimated 17% of its population during WW2, but that was over six years. Gaza has lost 1% in just over one month. Gaza is currently experiencing a worse punishment than Poland did during WW2, if averaged over time. Of course, Poland did nothing "wrong" to deserve the invasion by Germany and the Soviet Union.
Or ... did it? Poland didn't exist at all during the 19th Century. Then it was carved out from both German and Russian territory in 1918 after WWI. Not satisfied with these newly acquired lands, Poland began attacking most of its neighbors and seized additional land containing millions of people. Then a coup removed Poland's democratically elected leaders.
Nowadays we in the US tend to portray Poland as an innocent victim of Nazi Germany, ignoring the Soviet Union's role in the 1939 invasion, ignoring that Poland wasn't a democracy, and that Poland had seized land by force from its neighbors.
Instead of viewing the invasion of Poland as part of a CENTURIES-LONG battle between various groups over the same lands, we found fault and cast blame and picked a side. Eventually more Germans died in WW2 than Polish. Massive retaliation, yeah.
-----
Sigh. Me writing these little essays in this tiny corner of the Internet isn't going to change human nature. But once again I'm finding the Left distracted from the ongoing battle for economic equality by --> nationalisms. Instead of supporting the working class in both Israel and Palestine, the Left has picked the side of Palestinian nationalism.
Nationalism and war are capitalism's friends. By keeping us divided into ~200 nations and keeping us fighting over land and taking sides. The stock market loves it.
Nite-nite