Bloodbath in Gaza

[Alpha Centauri]

An interesting point was made on one of The Independent's blogs two days ago...

... do you remember how the British Govt sent the RAF to bomb Dublin and Cork after the IRA bombs in British cities? No, and nor does anyone else

[Philidor]

I remember talking to a white South African racist during apartheid who explained to me, patiently, that "bleck" people don't feel pain the same way as white people -- "It's a scientifically proven fect!"

Something similar's happening over Gaza. When a Palestinian mother loses her child to an Israeli air raid she doesn't feel the same pain as an Israeli housewife. Accordingly, it's reasonable to kill more Palestinians than Israelis, and anyone who argues differently is an anti-Semite, a dangerous Jihadist and should have their phone bugged by MOSSAD.

[Kuhlau]

It always amuses ... no, distresses me, that Jews are afforded immunity against accusations of racism despite the fact that the faith to which many of their more orthodox number adhere openly claims that they are the 'chosen people' - presumably, making them a 'superior' race? We didn't tolerate it when a European nation tried to assert something very similar in the middle of the 20th century, yet now we do? Curious.

I've often thought that if the Jewish people really are the chosen race, then God can't like them very much. Look at the land he 'gave' them ... and the neighbours, too.

FK

[Philidor]

I cling to the subversive idea that everyone's chosen, that an Arab child has the same value as a Jewish child. But it's a sentimental, irrational, hopelessly old fashioned concept. It's obvious that a rich, Western child is worth far more than a poor, third world street urchin. To claim otherwise is Godless socialism. To make such a claim at Christmas is plain provocative.

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Reiner Torheit

An interesting point was made on one of The Independent's blogs two days ago...

... do you remember how the British Govt sent the RAF to bomb Dublin and Cork after the IRA bombs in British cities? No, and nor does anyone else

Ah, but this is a basic difference between the Jewish moral tradition and the Christian.

Christ (reportedly) says "turn the other cheek"; but the Jewish tradition is based on vengeance (and - especially - a belief in the chosenness of the Jewish people).

However, the whole situation is horribly complicated, and doesn't admit of simple solutions (or - depressingly - any at all). The "Palestinians" are (predominantly) Muslim Arabs (my "scare" quotes simply identify the relative recency of the notion of Palestinians as distinct from Arabs generally), and therefore are committed (if they are "good" Muslims) to the globalising project of Islam rather than to the defence of a specific nation or territory.

I'd be tempted to say "thank God I'm an atheist" if I didn't understand the full extent of the mischief that these miscellaneous God-botherers (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) cause in the only world I can be sure of! The trouble is that it is only Jewish and Christian secularism that the so-called left in the West now promote, never Muslim (because that would be politically incorrect, nay "Islamophobic")!

[Alpha Centauri]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

The "Palestinians" are (predominantly) Muslim Arabs .....

..... and therefore are committed (if they are "good" Muslims) to the globalising project of Islam rather than to the defence of a specific nation or territory.

Are you really sure about that? Maybe it might be true to say that some or many within Hamas have that mindset. But Hamas are not the Palestinians. This misrepresentation lies at the heart of the reaction of the current (until Jan 20th) American Administration, and the vicious words of war-criminal-in-chief Condoleeza Rice.

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Reiner Torheit

Are you really sure about that? Maybe it might be true to say that some or many within Hamas have that mindset. But Hamas are not the Palestinians. This misrepresentation lies at the heart of the reaction of the current (until Jan 20th) American Administration, and the vicious words of war-criminal-in-chief Condoleeza Rice.

A couple of years ago I read a book which completely transformed the way I think about the world. That book was Thirty-Six Murders & Two Immoral Earnings by Ludovic Kennedy. (For the benefit of non-British readers, Kennedy is a venerable Scottish investigative reporter, famous in the UK.) Kennedy is, among many other things, a passionate opponent of capital punishment.

The book examines a number of miscarriages of justice that occurred in the English-speaking world, including the cases of Craig and Bentley, Stephen Ward (one of the "immoral earnings" cases) and Richard Hauptmann (of the Lindbergh Baby case, about which Kennedy has also written an entire book, The Airman and the Carpenter).

I have never needed to be persuaded that capital punishment is evil, but the real shock to my system when reading this book came from Kennedy's challenging the "adversary system" of English Common Law (and those systems, such as the American one, that are derived therefrom). This system revolves around the notion of two opposing counsels each engaging in a battle to present their own case as cogently as possible, and at the same time to destroy that of their legal adversary. Thus the concern is less with truth (except where it assists the case) and more with presentation.

Kennedy contrasts this adversary system unfavourably with the French "inquisitorial" system. This sounds fearsome, conjuring up images of the Inquisition, but its purpose is not for opposing counsels to present their own case as convincingly as possible, while destroying that of their adversary; rather, it is to determine the material facts of the case, or indeed whether there is a case to answer.

I have no legal training (apart from music I'm unemployable), so I have no idea whether the French system really is superior to the Anglo-Saxon one in practice. (Indeed, I'm inclined to have grave doubts, having read Jeremy Mercer's disturbing account of the last man to be guillotined in France, the Tunisian Hamida Djandoubi, in When The Guillotine Fell.)

No, what Kennedy's book prompted me to consider was the extent to which this adversarial principle controls not merely the conduct of criminal trials in the Anglosphere but the entire framework of political debate (it is no coincidence that so many politicians in the English-speaking world have a legal background).

One consequence of this adversarial principle is a widespread, but largely unexamined, assumption that in any dispute or conflict between two parties, one of the parties must be in the right, and the other, by default, must be in the wrong. Advocacy requires, in other words, the taking of sides.

(We saw this spectacularly during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia with the Serbs chosen by the Western media and political classes to be, in every instance, the "bad guys".)

Another consequence, flowing from the first, is that they who are not with you must be against you. (This in turn has led to probably the silliest political cliche of recent times: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend.")

You seem to have me down as some kind of apologist for the Neocons (whom I frankly detest), just because I have not adopted - as the liberal-left in the West generally have - the Palestinians (and Muslims generally) as a kind of mascot.

I take the view, however, that in a dispute or conflict between two sides there are a number of possibilities beyond that of one party being completely (or predominantly) in the right and the other completely (or predominantly) in the wrong. The merits of their cases may be so equally balanced that it takes a judgement of Solomon to bring peace and justice to the situation. Or they might simply both be in the wrong!

[Kuhlau]

So to summarise, are you suggesting it's probably six of one and half a dozen of the other in this long-running Middle East conflict?

FK

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Kuhlau

So to summarise, are you suggesting it's probably six of one and half a dozen of the other in this long-running Middle East conflict?

FK

I have no real idea, although I suspect that it probably isn't that simple. (My earlier point was that there are various possibilities beyond the basic one of one party having a monopoly of virtue and the other a monopoly of vice.)

I certainly think that public opinion is manipulated by the mass media to serve the current agenda of our ruling elites, and that the "liberal-left" are no more free of the resulting biases and distortions than the conservatives that they deride and feel superior to.

[micrologus]

Where is Barak Obama? Why does he stay silent?

Already 520 Palestinians died, mostly civilians.

Isn't that 'An Act of Terror', Mr. Bush?