"Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop."

"News consumers worldwide were galvanised over the weekend by disturbing photos like those of the Gazan child Muhammad al-Matouq, who appeared on the front page of Britain’s 'Daily Express' and then on that of 'The New York Times' and elsewhere as the symbol of Israel’s cruel starvation of innocents. After the photographs were seen around the world it became clear that the child in fact suffers from cerebral palsy and other conditions unrelated to starvation. The suffering child ended up being less the intended symbol of Israeli evil than of how genuine misery can be put to use by practitioners of narrative war. ...

"[This is not new.] A few weeks into the Gaza war that began on October 7, 2023, we Israelis learned from every major press outlet in the West that we’d just bombed a hospital and killed hundreds of people. The devastated Al-Ahli hospital was on front pages around the world, with a New York Times headline reporting 'at least 500 dead.' Furious protests erupted, and a mob burned a synagogue in Tunisia.

"The story was fake. A misfired Palestinian rocket had landed near the hospital, which was intact.

Around the same time, we started reading that Israel’s response to the October 7 terror attack—a war that Palestinians started, and which had barely begun at the time—was actually a 'genocide,' an ideological slur thrown at Israel by Soviet propagandists, Arab dictators, and the Western left beginning in the 1970s. ...

"Reports of impending hunger engineered by Israel in Gaza have been commonplace not just since the beginning of this war but for at least a decade and a half, since Hamas seized the territory and Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade that supposedly turned Gaza into an 'open-air prison.' The famine never materialised. Now we hear claims that this same period of supposedly extreme deprivation was actually a Gazan idyll that Israel has cruelly destroyed in this war.

"Very little of what is reported here, in other words, is what it seems. This is nothing new. Over the years, Israelis have been accused of fake massacres and rapes. The country’s actions are lied about almost daily by people describing themselves as journalists, analysts, and representatives of the United Nations, often using statistics that are themselves untrue. ...

"But one of the most awful prices [ of being unmoored from objective reality] was made clear this past week, with reports of acute hunger in Gaza.

"In a blizzard of ideological fiction, how are sane citizens in Israel, or anywhere else, supposed to know what’s true and to do the right thing? It’s not an exaggeration to say, as we’re seeing right now, that the answer to this question can be a matter of life and death. ...

"[O]ur plight as journalists is only marginally better than that of the average citizen. ... [T]here [are] nearly no trustworthy sources regarding reality in Gaza—certainly not the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which answers to Hamas; or Palestinian reporters intimidated by Hamas; or the international organisations, like the UN refugee agency UNRWA, embroiled in various forms of collaboration with Hamas. All of the above are engaged in a successful information campaign that uses Palestinian suffering, real and imagined, to catalyse international anger and tie Israel’s hands.

"The international press isn’t the answer. During my years as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press, I saw coverage altered by Hamas threats to our staff, while this fact was concealed from readers. I know firsthand that nearly no information coming from Gaza can be taken at face value.

"But neither can ... Israelis trust [their] own government, which has regularly misled the public ....

"And we can’t trust much of the information from the army, which regularly spins information overtly or by omission. ...

"When I asked ... a senior government official, with connections at the highest levels here and abroad—if people are starving in Gaza, he answered honestly, 'I don’t know.' ...

"Ohad Hemo, the Palestinian affairs reporter for [Israel's] Channel 12 News, the country’s most widely watched news programme ... report[ed] last Wednesday [that f]ood warehouses serving Hamas fighters are still full, ... and the crisis wasn’t only Israel’s fault. However ..."there is hunger in Gaza, and we need to state this loud and clear.” ... [A] senior figure in the Israeli military told one of my colleagues at the end of last week that while there isn’t mass starvation as claimed by pro-Hamas propaganda, Gaza really is on the brink this time.

"This explains why Israel, in panic mode, began air-dropping aid this weekend, along with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, and has declared 'humanitarian pauses' to let food reach civilians—essentially unilateral ceasefires without any reciprocation from Hamas. There are now indications that food prices are dropping and that some of the scarcity is being addressed, but the situation for many civilians remains dire.

"Israel says Hamas bears the responsibility, as the group has diverted aid both to hoard for its fighters and to sell to finance the war—and then cynically uses Palestinian suffering as a propaganda tool. ... [Earlier this year] Israel began trying to conclusively break Hamas’s control of food by providing it through a new organisation, American-run and Israeli-affiliated, called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

"Because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is an acute threat to its power, Hamas has been doing what it can to foment unrest around its distribution sites, kill its workers, and intimidate people accepting its food. ... —[which] has often meant chaotic scenes of thousands of men descending on the distribution sites and picking them clean, coming into dangerous and sometimes fatal contact with Israeli soldiers who are understandably scared of disguised Hamas fighters and unprepared for the kind of mass chaos they’re expected to control.

"It’s impossible to know how many Palestinians have been killed in these incidents, because Hamas numbers are part of the group’s information war. ...

"An experienced Israeli civilian involved in the aid efforts, from an organization that works both with international aid groups and the Israeli military, said on Friday that mass starvation is not yet the reality but could be in the near future. ...

"You might have thought that hunger in Gaza would work against Hamas, forcing the group to have mercy on its own civilians and accept the ceasefire desired by Israel and the U.S. and currently under discussion in Qatar. But Hamas knows that the opposite is true: The disaster they’ve engineered in Gaza fuels the global campaign against Israel. ...

"One of the terrible facts of this war is that the Palestinians who started the war, and who constructed the twisted battlefield on which it has been fought, won’t act to save their own people. Starvation and death serve the Hamas plan. That means that Israel must decide how far it wants to push—and when to stop."

~ Jerusalem-based columnist Matti Friedman from his post 'Is Gaza Starving? Searching for the Truth in an Information War.'

Time to learn what causes peace

Pic: German city in ruins after World War II

"I see many people blaming the U.S. and Israel for the perils faced by uncivilised countries in the Middle East and for never-ending wars. People say that instability of Middle East was caused by US interference in the region in its pursuit of economic and geopolitical interests. I do agree that US foreign policy is often worthy of contempt, but I think this vision is short-sighted and ignores essential factors in the region: harmful ideology and resulting barbarism.

"Consider Japan and Germany: they are now regarded as peaceful and civilised despite having been bombed and nuked by the U.S.

"Could this transformation be due to the fact that the U.S. and its Western allies won the WAR against evil regimes?

"After this victory, did the Japanese and Germans learn from their experiences, make better choices, and abandon harmful ideologies?

"I believe that blaming the U.S. and its Western allies for the issues in the Middle East demonstrates a misunderstanding of what defines a civilised country and what truly fosters peace.

"To blame the West for Middle East perils is as absurd as blaming the U.S. for the ruins of Germany and Japan after World War II, rather than holding the brutal Nazi and Japanese imperial ideologies and regimes accountable for unleashing hell on earth in the first place.

"It is about time for enough people to learn what truly causes peace between people and nations.

"I don’t believe it comes from compromising with evil or through unconditional love. I believe people make choices, we judge them, act accordingly, and give them what they deserve. Justice exists.

"I believe people can find out what makes a cause just, and what brings about peace among men. But it requires the willingness to think and seek it out."

~ Felipe Lapyda

For once, Trump was decisive when needed [UPDATED]

[UPDATE: Facts have been revealed since Trump's statement revealing that whatever trust was place in him, it was once gain misplaced. See below...]

THE GOOD (OR MOSTLY)

For once, Trump was decisive when needed. And almost as authoritative in his statement afterwards as required. Almost.

A short time ago [he said], the U.S. military carried out massive, precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime. Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise.
    Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.

Clearly stated. The identification of Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism is crucial. 

[UPDATE: The identification of Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism is still crucial. Putting a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror remains important. .And the U.S. military did carry out strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. All else is conjecture.]

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not. Future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier. 

[UPDATE: No evidence has been tendered since as to the success of the primary objective. Evidence exists that 400kg of the nuclear material targeted was removed from the facility at least two days before the mission. Evidence about which Vance and Trump are thoroughly evasive. Vance admits he has no clue. Trump has no idea, and less interest, in the level of destruction.]

The claim that nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated is as yet unproven, and must be taken on trust. (Something in which this Administration is in short supply, unfortunately). Even with fourteen of 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs of the kind used on the underground facilities, doubt still remains that they would have had the capacity to fully succeed. Independent corroboration will hopefully follow, however (fingers crossed), and all being well will put an end to the kind of destruction a nuclear-powered state sponsor of terrorism could do.

And however ironic it might seem to talk about peace after a substantial (though surgical) military attack, the removal of Iran's nuclear threat—coupled with the destruction by Israel of Iran's proxies, should at least put the idea in any rational mind still left in the Iranian regime that peace would be a good thing going forward. 

For 40 years, Iran has been saying. Death to America, death to Israel. They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East, and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular. [UPDATE: This remains true.] So many were killed by their general, Qassim Soleimani. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue.

[UPDATE: The New York Times suggests a stronger motivation for Trump's decision to go was simple FOMO.]

A good reminder that, no matter the US's own desires for the last forty years, Iran has been at war with their "Great Satan" since 1979. So this response is not wholly either unprovoked, nor without justification. 

With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight. Not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. 

This is all very probably true.

Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have a press conference at 8 a.m. at the Pentagon. 

No further corroboration of nuclear enrichment et al was given. Simply operational details.

[UPDATE; Nor has any been given since.]

And I want to just thank everybody. And, in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Boilerplate. But ("I want to just say, we love you, God") very strange boilerplate. Even at his most serious, Trump can't help but misfire.

The most important thing said here is that the world's number on state sponsor of terrorism has had its nuclear rug pulled out from under it. We hope. 

That this follows the defanging by Israel of Iran and its regime and its proxies around the Middle East.

That this followed telegraphed red lines that, for once, came with real consequences.

[O]ne thing that follows is that threats and deadlines from the Trump administration, unlike those from the Obama and Biden administrations, will be taken seriously in the future. Obama’s “red line” was bluster; Trump’s was not. He gave the Iranians a deadline and when they failed to comply, he destroyed [we hope] their nuclear capability.

[UPDATE: His unilateral announcement of ceasefires since, his flip-flopping from "Unconditional Surrender" to "God bless Iran," his childish tantrums over his grandstanding being ignored, have all overturned whatever gains were made.]

The unspoken topic not touched upon here is what happens now to the regime itself.

[UPDATE:  Trump and Vance could not care less.]

"After 46 years of this regime’s hollow bluster, we’re seeing the first light of victory,” a 45-year-old lawyer from a suburb of Tehran told The Free Press. “I feel the same way the French felt on D-Day.” Not a universal feeling, but neither is he alone.

Iranian regime change has to be on Iranians themselves. "Thanks to the benevolence and heroism of the Israelis, [they] now have an unprecedented opportunity to liberate [them]selves from the ideas and institutions that have enslaved [them] for nearly half a century." The best the west could and should do from here on is help make the argument on their behalf that it is necessary, and make the external conditions possible for them to succeed. 

[UPDATE: "Incredibly, a growing body of evidence indicates that a solid majority of Iranians have, in the last two or three years, come to reject their regime. I was shocked but delighted to learn that atheism is now an accepted position for Iranians. ... Ordinary Iranians no longer accept the theocracy’s legitimacy."]

THE BAD

"And here is our evidence that Iran's nuclear programme is an objective threat," said nobody. Nobody in the Administration even attempted to make the cogent case. 

That is a complete failure.

[UPDATE: And remains so.]

The only attempt made was Trump's curt dismissal of his own security advice that it was no threat. "Trust me, bro" seems the only argument tendered. [UPDATE: And remains so.] Yet Trump is far from the credible source on which anyone would want to rely in coming to judgement, let alone his chosen Defence Secretary.

Was the Iranian nuclear programme an objective threat? Probably. Did the Administration attempt to make the case? They didn't bother. [UPDATE: And still haven't.]

That's bad.

So too, probably, is the quiet suspicion that we might be watching a late sequel to Wag the Dog. After all, who's now talking about those Epstein files ...

THE UGLY

The Administration didn't bother making the case for there being an objective threat, as they should have ... and instead, earlier in the week, Trump's own handpicked National Security Advisor spoke to Congress in direct contradiction to the Trump case. "We have no evidence that Iran is building a nuke" said Tulsi Gabbard echoing direct Russian talking points, and suggesting her briefing came from somewhere further away than just down the Potomac.

And you'll remember that this president, like every other, swore an oath to preserve and defend the US Constitution—a Constitution demanding that only Congress can authorise going to war. Even under the War Powers Resolution of 1973. the president's strikes against Iran are "completely and unambiguously unlawful." [UPDATE: And remains so.] So there's that. 

The identification of Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism is crucial. One could only wish in other news to hear a similar condemnation of Russia as the leading sponsor of global disruption, nihilism, and European war. But one thing at a time, I guess. [UPDATE: Meanwhile, Ukraine waits...]

"The time has come to move toward freeing all the people in the Middle East, thereby making the whole world safer."

"Iran under the mullahs is a totalitarian dictatorship, like Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and communist North Korea. Dictatorships, by their nature, have no claim to sovereignty.

"Iran’s mullahs, ayatollahs, and other varieties of witch doctors are a cross between a horde of fanatics and a criminal gang. To speak of their enslavement of their own populace as if it had a particle of legitimacy means the rulers have the right to subjugate and terrorise those caught in its jaws. Such relativism does to morality what jihadists did to the World Trade Center on 9/11.

"As one Iranian escapee asked on social media: Why is it, do you think, that there are no Iranians in the West protesting Israel’s attack? The absence of protests by Iranian refugees tells you all you need to know about the nature of the Iranian regime. ...

"Dictatorships do not recognise any rights of their enslaved subjects. They cannot, therefore, claim some 'right to rule.' ...

"Once we cease to think in collective terms, the principle becomes clear: among fully free countries, it does not matter which one has jurisdiction over the area in which you live. Your life and happiness depend on your rights being protected, not violated, by whichever government has jurisdiction.

"Whether or not one lives under the jurisdiction of a rights-protecting government, not the colours of the flag one lives under, is the life-or-death issue. ...

"The time has come to move toward freeing all the people in the Middle East, thereby making the whole world safer. The time has come to end the Islamic Regime in Iran."

~ Harry Binswanger from his post 'Why not end the Iranian dictatorship?'

That said ...

"Iran [is] a country that is vaster, more populous, and significantly more complex than Iraq. ...

"Should Israel continue on its current trajectory, including the targeting of the Islamic Republic’s civilian and energy infrastructure, it will break the Iranian state. But the Israelis are neither capable of, nor inclined to, pick up the pieces afterward. Rather, they will 'internationalise' the problem.. ...

"Optimists may note that Iran isn’t Iraq — an ethno-sectarian hodge-podge cobbled together within artificially drawn borders. Unlike Iraq, Iran’s ethnic constituents have long related organically as Iranians.

"But while this is true, even this innate coherence couldn’t ease the deeper struggle: the difficulty of rebuilding order in a context of profound, culturally ingrained tension between state and society. ..."

~ Sohrab Ahmari from his post 'The regime change maniacs are back'

Still, Iranians deserve better. Much better. And so does everyone the mullahs and their proxies have terrorised since 1979.

PS: A few Iranian and related folk I follow on Twitter...

Masih Alinejad

𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎

Kareem Rifai

mersedeh_eye

Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن

Ali Safavi

Alireza Jafarzadeh

Nasser Sharif

Hamid Azimi

Nasrin Saifi

NCRI-FAC

People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK)

"A Palestinian Mandela"?

"If there ever was a Palestinian Mandela, their greatest threat was not Israel, but other Palestinians, along with surrounding despotic regimes that patronised the most fanatical and violent among them. ...
    "The history is there for anyone not too lazy, or too ideologically committed, to see. What may [help understanding here] is to view the PLO and Hamas as a dictatorship first ... and a resistance movement a distant second. When you’re in the business of war ... what use do you have for peace? Or peacemakers? They’d be akin to inviting cockroaches into your restaurant."

~ Dane Giraud from his post 'John Minto: The man who knew too little…'

"It just seems like failure."

"I have reasons to talk about why I actually think this is good for Israel, and I’m proud that we’re doing this deal. But putting those aside, I have such disappointment—overarching, overwhelming disappointment—that after 470-plus days, where we’ve landed is on this deal. Yes, we’re celebrating the three who came out yesterday. Yes, we’re going to continue to advocate for the 94 over the coming months as the deal is currently structured. But I’m just disappointed that this is the best that all of us can do after all of the fighting, all of the sadness, all of the tragedy. That the best we’ve landed on is this complex, tenuous deal that gets out roughly three people a week over 42 days, then leaves two-thirds of the people to be renegotiated later while there’s suffering on all sides. It just seems like failure."

~ Jon Goldberg-Poli, father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was killed in Hamas captivity, in the interview with Matti Friedman: 'Hamas Murdered Their Son. What Do They Think of the Ceasefire?'

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… "

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… 

for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche's quote seems an apt one to memorialise today's ceasefire in Gaza. 

Hamas was empowered by Netanyahu's Israel in order (said Netanyahu) to divide Palestinian power. On October 7 a Hamas mob overran slipshod Israeli barriers to rape, butcher and burn 1200 innocent souls and kidnap another 250. And then Netanyahu's Israel began what it said was a battle to eliminate Hamas.

With more signing up daily to join Hamas than can possibly have been eliminated — and Hamas's leader promising ever more atrocities to replicate the "miracle" (his word) of October 7— it seems that the battle to eliminate, or even subdue, Hamas is lost. But in those 471 days of bombings, air strikes and savagery, so too might be the battle for Israel's own soul.

As the Middle East's even remotely individualistic liberal democracy, that could be the biggest loss.

Remembering October 7

"The first anniversary of the October 7 attacks by Hamas against Israel is approaching. Not a day since has passed when the consequences and after-shocks of that terrible day have not been felt around the world. More than any other event in living memory, it has polarised and divided people everywhere.
    "Eight weeks after the attacks, I was invited to the Israeli Embassy in Wellington to watch the 47 minutes of footage compiled by the Israeli Government called 'Bearing Witness.' ... Did watching 'Bearing Witness' alter any of my opinions? Yes, it did.
    "I expected to see men, women and children slaughtered but the level of hatred and barbarity was incomprehensible. Often the mutilation continued after the victim was killed as if that were only one stage in a process that would continue until what was left was unrecognizable. We saw 139 killings or bodies but in many cases the bodies were so disfigured or burned that they ceased to look human. ...
    "It does, I think, at least partially explain Israel’s ferocious response in the year that has followed the attacks. In my view, anyone in the Israeli government or military who viewed that footage would conclude that they face an immediate existential threat. Their enemies do not simply wish to take territory or wage a war – killing was not enough. Their enemies that day wished for the elimination of every Jewish man, woman and child until nothing remained but dust. That was the point that I did not fully appreciate until I saw this footage. ...
    "October 7 and Israel’s response will undoubtedly be debated for a lifetime. Hopefully we will live to see a peaceful resolution to this most intractable of conflicts."

~ Philip Crump from his post 'Bearing Witness to October 7'

"We are now in the truly surreal situation where privileged Westerners seem distressed over the death of Nasrallah while Muslims in Lebanon, Syria and Iran are dancing in celebration over it."

"Only one word captures the vibe in the West following Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah: anguish. Everywhere you look there is dread over what Israel has done, and fear of what it might unleash. Disquiet drips from every newspaper. You hear it in the trembling timbre of news anchors. You see it in the feverish warnings of ‘anti-war’ types that the Middle East now stands upon the precipice of apocalypse. You hear it in Guardianistas’ shrill damning of Israel as a ‘pugnacious out-of-control force’ that now even takes out terrorists ‘against the United States’ explicit wishes’. ...
    "Our elites really have no clue that civilisation itself is on the line in Israel’s war with its tormentors. ...

    "We are now in the truly surreal situation where privileged Westerners seem distressed over the death of Nasrallah while Muslims in Lebanon, Syria and Iran are dancing in celebration over it. Moneyed genderfluid kids on the manicured lawns of Columbia in NYC might be experiencing pangs of grief, or at least worry, following the killing of Nasrallah. But feminists in Iran, anti-Hezbollah activists in Lebanon and the families of the Syrians Hezbollah helped to butcher when it sided with Assad in the Syrian Civil War are elated. Surely, nothing better captures the moral disarray of the woke of the West than their bitter tears for an Islamist extremist whose Jew hatred, misogyny, homophobia and rank authoritarianism made him the enemy of every Muslim in the Middle East who longs for the thing these pampered Westerners enjoy: liberty."

~ Brendan O'Neill, from his post 'Why is the West so anguished over the death of Hassan Nasrallah?'

 

"Horrendously, anti-Semitism comes to be seen as a morally virtuous position."

 

"First it was Columbia, now anti-Israel protests have spread across America. ... The ‘rage of the privileged against the world’s only Jewish nation’ ... now rings out on leafy campuses from California to Boston.
    "In these ostensibly ‘anti-war’ protests, students have demanded the total destruction of Israel, while waving placards in support of Hamas and singling out Jewish professors and students for abuse. The terrifying orgy of anti-Semitism that has been unleashed in America’s top universities should disturb everyone. ...
    "Since the start of their education, today’s students have imbibed a crude understanding that people can be sorted into different groups according to skin colour, gender and sexuality ... indoctrinated into a view that the world can be divided between oppressors and the oppressed. ... taught to loathe their own country and made defensive of their privilege ...
    " In this context, aligning with Palestinians and demonstrating hostility to Israel makes perfect sense. It allows students to identify with an oppressed group and distance themselves from their own nation and culture. That such sentiment can so easily tip over into anti-Semitism is unsurprising. Students have been deluded into thinking that the more extreme their demands for the abolition of Israel, and the more vile their targeting of Jews, the better they show their own virtue.
    "Horrendously, anti-Semitism comes to be seen as a morally virtuous position."

~ Joanna Williams, from her op-ed 'How anti-Semitism became a virtue on American campuses'

Israel + Gaza: What Would Thatcher Do Today? (WWTDT?)

"For a party that has failed to escape [Margaret] Thatcher’s long shadow, ... perhaps what is most remarkable is how far the current [U.K.] Conservative Party’s aspiring populist wing diverges from Thatcher’s own approach to the conflict. Following [Israel']s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a disaster that she correctly foresaw would birth new and harder threats to both the Western order and Israel’s own security, Thatcher placed an embargo on British weapons sales to Israel, a policy that was not lifted until 1994. Her rationale, as she told ITN, was that Israeli troops had 'gone across the borders of Israel, [to] a totally independent country, which is not a party to the hostility and there are very very great hostilities, bombing, terrible things happening there. Of course one has to condemn them. It is someone else’s country. You must condemn that. After all, that is why we have gone to the Falklands, to repossess our country which has been taken by someone else.'...
    "For Thatcher — perhaps counterintuitively, viewed through the prism of today’s Conservative party — the 'plight of the landless Palestinians' was a major foreign-policy concern. ... Striving to find a workable peace, Thatcher asserted the only possible solution to the conflict was an approach which balanced 'the right of all the states in the region — including Israel — to existence and security, but also demanded justice for all peoples, which implied recognition of of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.' Writing of her visit to Israel in 1986, the first by a British prime minister, Thatcher remarked that 'The Israelis knew… that they were dealing with someone who harboured no lurking hostility towards them, who understood their anxieties, but who was not going to pursue an unqualified Zionist approach.' Instead, she 'believed that the real challenge was to strengthen moderate Palestinians, probably in association with Jordan, who would eventually push aside the… extremists. But this would never happen if Israel did not encourage it; and the miserable conditions under which Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza were having to live only made things worse.' ...
    "To Thatcher, peace would entail not an independent Palestinian state — she thought this unviable, and most probably undesirable — but the incorporation of the West Bank and Gaza under the rule of Jordan’s Anglophile King Hussein. Yet when Thatcher signed on to an European Community declaration of support for Palestinian statehood, just days after the PLO confirmed its commitment to the destruction of Israel, and was condemned for this by the Labour leader Jim Callaghan — British attitudes on the conflict were yet to assume their present form — Thatcher responded in robust terms. “The words in the communiqué I support entirely,” she told the House. “They concern the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own future. If one wishes to call that ‘self- determination’, I shall not quarrel with it. I am interested that the Right Hon. Gentleman appears to be attempting to deny that right. I do not understand how anyone can demand a right for people on one side of a boundary and deny it to people on the other side of that boundary. That seems to deny certain rights, or to allocate them with discrimination from one person to another.”
    "Strikingly, Thatcher condemned Israel for its annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, for its attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear power plant, and for its seizure of Palestinian land for settlements, including the housing of Soviet Jewish refugees: as she told the House in 1990, 'Soviet Jews who leave the Soviet Union – and we have urged for years that they should be allowed to leave – should not be settled in the Occupied Territories or in East Jerusalem. It undermines our position when those people are settled in land that really belongs to others.' Indeed, as she later remarked in her memoirs, 'I only wished that Israeli emphasis on the human rights of the Russian refuseniks was matched by proper appreciation of the plight of landless and stateless Palestinians.' With such sentiments, it is doubtful that today’s self-proclaimed Thatcherites would find a prominent place for Thatcher herself in their nascent faction."

~ Aris Roussinos, from his article 'What Thatcher can teach the pro-Israel Right'

 

"Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximise casualties among their own population."

"Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximise casualties among their own population. And that only works for them if there is a host of outsiders, 'progressives,' who will agonise over and blame Israel for that suffering. ...
    "ISIS and Hamas learned strategy from the same playbooks. ... Hamas ... develop[ed] a jihadist strategy based on ... theological justification for ... 'attention-grabbing' atrocities to attract recruits and sow fear in the enemy's hearts.' ...
    "Westerners clearly misperceive Hamas when they imagine that their actions on October 7 were spontaneous and opportunistic; rather, it appears that the strategy of atrocity was theoretically informed, well designed, and then executed to elicit an overwhelming Israeli response and to put the Gazans at peril."

~ Michael Hochberg & Leonard Hochberg, from their post 'The Strategy of Atrocity in the Gaza War'

"Please tell me why a ceasefire is being demanded instead of that Hamas release the hostages and surrender their leaders." [updated]

 

"There are many horrific things happening in Gaza. It's called war. And it's especially awful when the combatants are not easily identified. Like any decent human being and like most if not all of my neighbours here in Israel, I want to minimise the deaths of innocents in Gaza. I want to minimise the deaths of our soldiers. At the same time, the depth of the depravity of October 7, the unhesitating publicly stated willingness of Hamas to do it again, the continued rocket attacks coming out of Gaza, the fact that they still hold over 100 of our people hostage, our willingness to accept the deaths of our soldiers rather than burn the whole thing to the ground because that would be vile and disgusting, the complicity of the UN and other international organisations in the theft and corruptions surrounding humanitarian aid ... why are we, Israel, the bad guys? Please tell me what Israel should be doing differently. And please tell me why a ceasefire is being demanded instead of demanding that Hamas release the hostages and surrender their leaders? Please explain what I'm missing."

~ Russ Roberts, from Econ Talk, from his Twitter post

UPDATE: 

 

"Attempting to defend Israel on ancestral or biblical grounds will not work...."

"The right of Jewish people to establish and maintain the state of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is based not on their ancestral roots in the region—nor on the story of God granting the land to Abraham—but on the fact that Israel is essentially a rights-respecting nation. 

    "This is what legitimises Israel’s existence. This is what justifies its use of retaliatory force against those who attack its citizens and residents. This is the principle by which Israel and its supporters are morally good, and Hamas and its supporters are evil. 

    "Attempting to defend Israel on ancestral or biblical grounds will not work. Why? Because collectivism—including racism—is false, and because God doesn’t exist and thus can’t grant anything to anyone. 

    "Why make a big deal of this? Because human lives and the existence of Israel are at stake, and because facts are stronger than falsehoods and fiction."

~ Craig Biddle

RELATED:

17 questions for those protesting for Palestine, including:

1. Do you think Israel has the right to exist?

3. If so, what is the right response of any sovereign state to being invaded by a group that engages in a sadistic slaughter of your people and takes hostages?

4. If [not], what do you want done to the people in Israel who live within those boundaries?

8. Do you believe Hamas will miraculously abide by the ceasefire you are now calling for, when the last time it was under a ceasefire, it invaded Israel and slaughtered over 1,000 civilians? If so, why?

9. When Hamas next breaks a ceasefire, what should Israel do in response?

10. When Hamas shelters underneath hospitals, schools and homes, and uses those shelters to prepare munitions, to plan further attacks and hold hostages, what should be the right response to it?

11. If Israel withdrew (again) from Gaza, and opened the sea and airspace to Hamas, do you think it would build Gaza into a city of peace and prosperity where Palestinians could thrive, or would it use it as a staging post to wage war against Israel? What has history taught about this since 2007?

                                                    >>READ MORE

 

"There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred—than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes"

"There is no surer way to infect mankind with hatred — brute, blind, virulent hatred—than by splitting it into ethnic groups or tribes. If a man believes that his own character is determined at birth in some unknown, ineffable way, and that the characters of all strangers are determined in the same way — then no communication, no understanding, no persuasion is possible among them, only mutual fear, suspicion, and hatred. Tribal or ethnic rule has existed, at some time, in every part of the world, and, in some country, in every period of mankind’s history. The record of hatred [and its result] is always the same."

~ Ayn Rand, from her 1977 lecture 'Global Balkanisation,' examining the meaning of “ethnicity” and the consequences of “modern tribalism” in politics -- quoted in Tom Bowden's post 'Tribalism Divides Us — Only Individualism Can Unite Us'

Gaza lecture "not in any way rewarding if you hoped for a real history lesson"

"Canterbury University lecturer Josephine Varghese’s recent piece on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza presents the plight of Palestinians as – to use her words – a ‘textbook example of institutional Western racism and colonial violence.’ ... Coloniser is just the latest in a long chain of accusations made against the Jew. ... Coloniser is simply our latest ‘shape.’ ...
    "Varghese’s case, as written, would be compelling to excitable students, a chapter or two deep in their first Chomsky, but not in any way rewarding if they had hoped for a real history lesson. In her brief and highly selective retelling of the conflict, there is no mention that Israel/ Palestine was liberated by the West after 400 years of Turkish rule. The collapse of any empire inevitably leads to competing ethnic groups seeking statehood – the bullet of a Serbian nationalist was the opening shot of the Great War. In the case of the Levant, and after offering autonomy to Arabs in the wider region, partition was decided upon by the UN. Varghese doesn’t mention that the Arabs rejected partition and instantly started a multi-front war against Israel that they lost or that Jordan and Egypt occupied the West Bank and Gaza respectively as a result and didn’t create out of these territories an independent Palestinian state. Varghese says that the 'Palestinian experience is one of human suffering, dispossession, and subjugation' but, along with leaving out the self-inflicted wounds listed above, fails to mention a chosen path of terror over subsequent decades, nor that their leaders rejected multiple peace deals, some of which even offers displaced Arabs a ‘right of return’. Even as recently as the Trump presidency, Mahmoud Abbas, the ‘moderate’ leader of the PLO, rejected a peace deal before he had even seen it. Is this the action of a leader who wants to end an occupation? Why would Varghese leave all this out, one wonders? ...
    "Why would a self-declared Marxist stoop so low to distract from the crimes of Hamas – a Hard-Right fascist terror army? A self-confessed death cult? Shouldn’t her worldview be anathema to anyone on the Left? Shouldn’t she be the very first person to challenge murderous theocratic fascism?
    "An autopsy on Varghese’s piece is as much an autopsy on socialism itself – which for all practical purposes is dead as a viable political movement. What remains is a post-truth Zombie animated by the parasite of regressive bourgeois identitarianism that is now shambling mindlessly toward the reactionary’s eternal target."

~ Dane Giraud, from his post 'Socialism is dead and the Jews are battling its corpse'

 

Proportionality in self-defence

I rarely cite a Lord here, and just as rarely a KC. But here we go, below, with a lengthy opinion by one Lord Verdirame, KC, on how Isreal's legitimate defensive goals against Hamas may be met -- as delivered to the UK House of Lords two days ago. 

There has been a lot of talk about proportionality in the law on self-defence. I refer to the words that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, used a few days ago on the test of proportionality. It does not mean that the defensive force has to be equal to the force used in the armed attack. Proportionality means that you can use force that is proportionate to the defensive objective, which is to stop, to repel and to prevent further attacks.

Israel has described its war aims as the destruction of Hamas’s capability. From a legal perspective, these war aims are consistent with proportionality in the law of self-defence, given what Hamas says it does and what Hamas has done and continues to do.

Asking a state that is acting in self-defence to agree to a ceasefire before its lawful defensive objectives have been met is, in effect, asking that state to stop defending itself. For such calls to be reasonable and credible, they must be accompanied by a concrete proposal setting out how Israel’s legitimate defensive goals against Hamas will be met through other means. It is not an answer to say that Israel has to conclude a peace treaty, because Hamas is not interested in a peace treaty.

Proportionality also applies in the law that governs the conduct of hostilities, not only in self-defence. The law of armed conflict requires that in every attack posing a risk to civilian life, that risk must not be excessive in relation to the military advantage that is anticipated. That rule does not mean, even when scrupulously observed, that civilians will not tragically lose their lives in an armed conflict. The law of armed conflict, at its best, can mitigate the horrors of war but it cannot eliminate them. The great challenge in this conflict is that Hamas is the kind of belligerent that cynically exploits these rules by putting civilians under its control at risk and even using them to seek immunity for its military operations, military equipment and military personnel. An analysis of the application of the rules on proportionality in targeting in this conflict must always begin with this fact.

There has also been some discussion about siege warfare. The UK manual of the law of armed conflict, reflecting the Government’s official legal position—it is a Ministry of Defence document—says:

“Siege is a legitimate method of warfare … It would be unlawful to besiege an undefended town since it could be occupied without resistance”.

Gaza is not an undefended town. It is true that obligations apply to the besieging forces when civilians are caught within the area that is being encircled, and those obligations include agreeing to the passage of humanitarian relief by third parties. But it is not correct to say that encircling an area with civilians in it is not permitted by the laws of war.

A further point that concerns the laws of war is also of particular relevance to the British Government’s practice. It has already been mentioned that the Government have taken the view that Gaza remains under Israeli occupation, even though Israel pulled out in 2005. The traditional view until 2005 was that occupation required physical presence in the territory. That view is consistent with Article 42 of the Hague regulations of 1907, which states that a territory is occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the occupying power. Again, it is also the view taken by the UK manual of the law of armed conflict, which reflects the UK’s official legal position and states that occupation ceases as soon as the occupying power evacuates the area. The European Court of Human Rights, in its jurisprudence, has also adopted a similar approach to occupation. So I have always been rather baffled by the British Government’s position on this issue, which, as far as I know, has not changed. Yes, it is true that Israel has exercised significant control over the airspace and in the maritime areas, but even as a matter of plain geography it takes two—Israel and Egypt —to control the land access points to Gaza.

More fundamentally, it is Hamas that has been responsible for the government and administration of Gaza. I appreciate that this is a legal matter on which the Minister may not want to respond immediately but it is an important one, because the legal fiction that Israel was still the occupying power under the laws of armed conflict has been relentlessly exploited by Hamas to blame Israel for everything, while using the effective control that it has over the territory, the people and the resources to wage war.

On a final note, I would like to say something briefly on the way in which the war is being reported. When a serious allegation is made, particularly one that could constitute a war crime, the immediate response of the law-abiding belligerent will be to say, “We are investigating”. The non-law-abiding belligerent, by contrast, will forthwith blame the other side and even provide surprisingly precise casualty figures. The duty to investigate is one of the most important ones in armed conflict. What happened in the way in which the strike on the hospital was reported is that the side that professes no interest whatever in complying with the laws of armed conflict was rewarded with the headlines that it was seeking.

[Hat tip A Halfling's View. Link added. Emphases mine.]

How does an open society cope with the reality that some of its members do not believe in an open society?

Russ Roberts has posted a great Twitter/X thread on the aftermath of October 7, which he sees as "a test for the West and for all open societies—societies that purport to tolerate and even embrace diversity of opinion, culture, and political opinion. Societies that nominally believe in freedom of speech and the press." Such societies, he suggests, "are now at a crossroads ..."

For context, Russ is -- and has been for some while --- the host of the thoughtful and wide-ranging podcast EconTalk (one of the few to which I listen), and a long-time advocate of free speech, reflected on the many folk invited on to his show, including intellectual opponents. He recently moved from the US to Israel to take up the role of President of Shalem College, Jerusalem.

It's worth reading some of the replies too ...

The aftermath of October 7 is a test for the West and for all open societies—societies that purport to tolerate and even embrace diversity of opinion, culture, and political opinion. Societies that nominally believe in freedom of speech and the press. Such societies are now at a crossroads and must think about the direction they wish to head. Reasonable people can disagree about who is responsible and in what amounts for the quality of civilian life in Gaza before October 7. Reasonable people can disagree about whether pressure should be put on Israel to temper its military response to the pogrom of October 7.

Debates over these questions happen here in Israel and they happen in other open societies around the world.

But what do you do about Jew-hatred? What do you do when anti-Zionism is clearly not merely a disagreement with Israeli policy but comes in a flavor that is about Jews and not just Israelis? An open society believes in freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. But how does an open society like Australia’s deal with a crowd of hundreds if not thousands who chant not just “F**k the Jews” but “Gas the Jews” on the steps of the Sydney Opera House? The police discouraged Jews from coming to that rally. Is that the right response? Is there an alternative? How does an open society like England’s deal with 100,000 people marching in the streets chanting “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea” in the aftermath of the October 7th pogrom? Those two slogans are a demand for ethnic cleansing—an Israel without Jews. People at that rally waved flags of Jihad—religious war. The police struggled to respond and ultimately did nothing in the moment to the flag waver. Should they have?

A friend of mine told me last night that an identifiably Jewish man—he was dressed in traditional Hasidic clothing—was assaulted in Heathrow Airport. He didn’t die. I don’t know how badly he was hurt. Open societies typically call this a “hate crime.” Is that enough? The man who was hurt went to the police but there is little they offered to be able to do. One answer is to stop being identifiably Jewish, and many Jews, fearful of violence, have lowered their profile.

On the Global Day of Rage that Hamas proclaimed in the aftermath of the October 7 pogrom, Jewish children attending Jewish schools were told not to wear their school uniforms. Some schools cancelled classes on that Friday. Is that the right way for an open society to respond--fo Jews to avoid being publicly Jewish—an inversion of sorts of requiring Jews to wear a yellow star in Nazi Germany?

Last night, at George Washington University, someone projected giant signs on the sides of buildings saying “Glory to the Martyrs” and “From the river to the sea.” Should celebrating the murder of Jews be protected speech in an open society?
And then there are the people tearing down the posters about the kidnapped adults and children in Gaza. Such actions are at least a tacit endorsement of child abduction. Is that free speech? Hate speech? Or a legitimate political protest?
Political disagreement is at the heart of an open society. Celebrating the deaths of your political opponents seems like something different. I don’t think an open society can survive if some of its members use violence or the threat of violence to silence their opponents.
How does an open society cope with the reality that some of its members do not believe in an open society?  

I recently read Stefan Zweig’s memoir, 'The World of Yesterday.' It’s a masterpiece [agree - Ed.] describing Zweig’s intellectual and cultural world in Vienna and the rest of Europe before and after World War I. He struggles to explain the rise of Hitler but ex post, he understands that part of Hitler’s success was due to how his supporters used violence and intimidation to silence his opponents and to raise the cost of their meeting and gathering publicly. We’re getting a small taste of that now in America and elsewhere. Two nights ago in Skokie Illinois there was a pro-Israel rally and some Jews gathered for an impromptu evening prayer service. Nearby, maybe twenty yards away, a crowd of dozens, held back by barriers, screamed “Allahu Akbar” at them. Police were there, too, restraining them. But what if such disrupters come into the synagogues and elsewhere, with disruptive tactics and implicit threat of violence? Who will stop them? Will the Jews fight back or lower their profile? 

There are lots of videos online of people gleefully pulling down those posters of kidnapped children and adults. Sometimes people watching nearby ask them not to do it. They beg those tearing down the posters for an explanation. No one steps in their way, though. No one fights them or tries to keep the despoilers from hiding the victims. I get it. We’re all afraid of people who seem willing to do violence to us. But how can an open society tolerate this? What does an open society do when some of its members are happy to use violence or the threat of violence to curtail the freedom of other members of that society? Tom Palmer of the Cato Institute once told me that there should be free speech for everyone except those who hold ideologies that do not believe in free speech. I was offended. Free speech should have no exceptions based on political grounds, I argued. I’ve since changed my mind. Tom was right.  Someone who hates Jews or any other group and supports their murder or abuse and who uses violence or the threat of violence to silence those who disagree cannot be tolerated in an open society. But how to implement that intolerance of intolerance? 

We now have the unbearable audio of one of the murderers on October 7th calling his parents and proudly declaring that he killed 10 Jews. Not ten Israelis. Not ten Zionists. Not ten white colonialists. Not 10 settlers. Ten Jews. Here in Israel, we have no illusions about what we’re up against. We know there are people who don’t just want our land. They want to kill us along the way. And they seem to enjoy it.  

There’s a genuine debate here in Israel about whether a ground offensive in Gaza will be worth the lives of the soldiers and the Gazan civilians who will die. But no one is debating whether it’s a good idea to kidnap children or kill their parents in front of them before abducting them. We know what we’re up against. Old-fashioned Jew-hatred. And we’re not going to hope it goes away. We’re going to fight. 

The open societies in the West elsewhere are going to have to come to terms with the reality that some of its citizens want to live in a very different kind of kind of society and are willing to use violence and the threat of violence to intimidate and harm people they disagree with. There is no simple answer to coping with this reality. It is easy to say that you’re against it—all the right people have said all the right things. But soon the West and the open societies may have to do the right thing. Deciding what that is and how to implement that decision is the terrible dilemma facing the West right now.

“How is Israel supposed to do it?” [updated]

"As the days pass ... the world’s sympathy for Israel and its residents butchered by Hamas is morphing into sympathy for the Palestinians. And indeed, Palestinian civilians deserve sympathy for being the victims of Hamas as well. But as most people agreed—and many still do—after the attack Israel had little choice but to uproot Hamas once and for all.
    "The question I’m asking is this “How are they supposed to do it?” ...
    "Israel will not survive unless it can defend itself. Yet when it tries, it gets harshly criticised. NONE of the strategies listed above ... will [avert the death of civilians as a byproduct, particularly because Hamas uses its citizens as human shields and isn’t really concerned whether they die]; nor [will any] avoid criticism of Israel, mainly because many, at least on the Left, despise Israel: not just the government, but the country’s mere existence. I have reluctantly concluded that those who criticise Israel for any method it uses to defend itself, no matter what that method may be, share the Palestinian view that Israel needs to be erased. These people give lip service to the view that Hamas needs to be erased, but they’re lying about the object."

~ Jerry Coyne, from his post 'A few thoughts on the war'

"As Arabs, our message to the world cannot be restricted to eliciting global sympathy for the children of Gaza. We cannot depict ourselves as helpless children, behind whom we hide our failure to control our Hamas thugs who massacred 1300 non-combatant Israelis. This is a moral failure ...
    "The Palestine disaster (nakba) is not a disaster of land loss or military defeat. It is a disaster of absence of leadership that can articulate the Arab alternative to war and death. We ask the world to stop the Israeli war on Hamas, but what do we offer as an alternative to stopping the war? Just let those Hamas thugs who massacred 1300 Israelis get away with their crime (because there is a history of dispute)? Ask Israel to go back to October 6? Knowing that Hamas can break out of the Gaza fence and repeat its massacre any minute? Hamas must go. We Arabs must help get rid of it, and most importantly, we must show that we have a plan for the day after Hamas."

~ Hussain Abdul-Hussain

RELATED READING:

* "Following a litany of failures, Israel must now contemplate a menu of bad options."
    The Gazan Gordian knot - Shmuel Bar, QUILLETTE

"The moral difference between Israel & her enemies comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?"

"For nearly twenty years neither Jordan nor Egypt (which held the Arab lands of Palestine) enabled the creation of a Palestinian state. Indeed the very concept of a 'Palestinian homeland' was only invented after 1967 -- after the Six Day War when Jordan, Egypt and Syria tried to wipe Israel off the map --- and each ended up losing territory to Israel.
    "It has all come a long way, in that Israel has since accepted Palestinian sovereignty over Gaza ... withdrawing completely in 2005. This gave the Palestinian Authority a chance to choose peace ... However Palestinians in Gaza did not choose peace, they chose to break away from the Palestinian Authority and give power to Hamas - an Islamist death cult...
    "Hamas wants an Islamist theocracy, with no tolerance for other or no religion, no tolerance for political plurality. It promotes martyrdom to children, it promotes traditional submissive roles for women, it promotes death to homosexuals and lesbians and it promotes death to Jews. Its ideal is a totalitarian state of obedience to radical Islamism. It is a death cult, that celebrates the death of innocent people. ... nihilists who are antithetical to any sense of life, to any belief that individuals exist to pursue their own purposes, their own lives, their loves, passions, interests and joy....
    "Hamas are enemies of Palestinians, they don't want peace for Palestinians and certainly don't want peace [with] Israel, they want it destroyed....
    "There is plenty of room for criticism of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian occupied territories. Ultimately, it will be right only when the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza can govern themselves (in secular states, with liberal democracy, and no ability to wage war against their neighbours) and when Israel respects their right to do so. However, there will be no peace whilst Hamas thinks it is better to kill Israelis than to build an economy and society based on Palestinians producing, trading, living and thriving...
    "If you sympathise with Palestinians you will oppose Hamas. If you believe in individual freedom and human rights you'll oppose Hamas. However ... I have yet to see any semblance of an organisation set up by Palestinians supporting a relatively free open liberal democracy; nothing remotely resembling anything like what exists either in Israel, or even other former dictatorships like Bulgaria or Georgia.
    "It would be wonderful for Palestine to be free, for there to be a Palestinian Arab state alongside Israel, that shares trade, investment, employment and lives in peace side by side. Some Israelis don't want that, they do want the Greater Israel of the full occupation. A lot more Palestinians don't want that all: they want the Jews pushed into the sea.
    "Golda Meir once said 'We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.' Unfortunately, too many of them want their children to be martyrs, and too many useful idiots in the West are happy to support them doing it."

~ Liberty Scott, from his post 'The Islamofascist death cult of Hamas'

Sam Harris on the moral difference between Israel and her enemies: 

"The moral difference [between Israel and her enemies] comes down to understanding the answer to this question: what would each side do if they had the power to do it?"