There are a dozen problematic moral equivalencies drawn or assumed in the conversation about Palestinian land claims and (a separate issue, in my opinion) Hamas terrorism.
One of them is destruction equated to depravity. I think the evidence that Hamas committed disgusting acts-acts which have no military value-is undeniable at this point. In my extensive combing of the internet for evidence for/against the allegations I’ve happened across the audio of a young Hamas fighter calling his parents (“Dad! get Mom…”) using the phone of a Jewish woman and bragging in ecstasy that he killed ‘ten Jews with his bare hands!’ and that his ‘hands are covered in their blood!’ a dozen times. I consider the allegations of rape and mutilation credible because: Hamas has not made any statements or released any footage to counter the claims; Israeli medical examiners and other professionals bound by ethics have all confirmed them; I have seen footage and some limited video myself; Hamas is a movement similar in composition and ideology to ISIS, & Hamas is openly committed to the deaths of maximum numbers of Jews; Hamas certainly killed many children (including infants) and took others hostage. The weight of the evidence certainly leans against Hamas.
Why do I spend so much time repeating these claims, which are uncontroversial in many American circles? Simply because I am in communication with many Muslim immigrants who doubt the narrative of Hamas atrocities. They won’t acknowledge this, but it’s simply because of religious and political ‘in-group’ biases: namely, Hamas might help to engineer the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in order to manipulate global public opinion and policymakers but they’re still on the Palestinian/Muslim team, therefore accusations against them (or by Israelis) should be treated with the strongest skepticism.
As someone who is not on either team I can tell you that I find this reasoning faintly disgusting. I think it’s, ironically, part of the reason Islam is in such a mess today: irrational and collective emotional grievances and a tendency to regard co-religionists as morally superior to kaffirs. Christians in the West do not think like this, I can assure you. It’s certainly not propelling the Muslim world toward peace and a flourishing civil society.
Let’s go out on this precarious limb and assert that Hamas did rape and mutilate women and children. One common (perhaps the most common) refrain is “Israel kills hundreds of people with bombs and artillery shells!”
This conflates destruction with depravity. I will use an example to illustrate the moral error here. Charles Sweeny was the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped ‘Fat Man’ (the first military atomic weapon) on Hiroshima in 1945. He was free of remorse until the end of his life, apparently, although he’s proximally implicated in the killing of tens of thousands. We have no reason to doubt that Sweeny was not a psychologically normal man (perhaps a little low in conscientiousness or neuroticism, but not abnormally so). His deployment of the bomb in the context of a military operation dissipated some of the responsibility and his distance from the slain assures him a great deal of psychological protection. If Charles Sweeny had killed a single child with his bare hands we could safely regard him as a moral monster, despite that act being less than 1/50,000th as destructive as his bombing mission.
THAT is the reason I am disgusted by Hamas. Their tactics have no military rationale anyway (indirect fire, like their rockets, without any forward observers or adjustment of fire are the most wasteful and foolish military tools that probably exist). They lack the discipline or honor to wage a real counter-insurgency war and they lack the moral leadership to pursue nonviolent tactics and mass civil disobedience. The fact that their leadership (like the late Mrs. Arafat) shelter in luxury in the rich world while using the language of revolution only furthers indicts them. We’ve known for two decades that they are petulant children, happy to trade their young men for useless ‘symbolic’ blows against the Jews. Now we know beyond any doubt that they are depraved animals as well.
Israel could kill 10,000 Palestinians in military operations without it equaling a single mutilated child. Hamas’ depravity shocked me and shocked millions of other people around the world who are usually disinterested observers to this fight. It also assured their complete destruction, try as they might to hide among schools and apartment blocs. The sooner the better, I say.
“Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” - Golda Meir
Photos released by an Israeli Medical Examiner’s office, showing an adult and a child who had been bound together by wire before being set on fire.
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Destruction versus Depravity
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There are a dozen problematic moral equivalencies drawn or assumed in the conversation about Palestinian land claims and (a separate issue, in my opinion) Hamas terrorism.
One of them is destruction equated to depravity. I think the evidence that Hamas committed disgusting acts-acts which have no military value-is undeniable at this point. In my extensive combing of the internet for evidence for/against the allegations I’ve happened across the audio of a young Hamas fighter calling his parents (“Dad! get Mom…”) using the phone of a Jewish woman and bragging in ecstasy that he killed ‘ten Jews with his bare hands!’ and that his ‘hands are covered in their blood!’ a dozen times. I consider the allegations of rape and mutilation credible because: Hamas has not made any statements or released any footage to counter the claims; Israeli medical examiners and other professionals bound by ethics have all confirmed them; I have seen footage and some limited video myself; Hamas is a movement similar in composition and ideology to ISIS, & Hamas is openly committed to the deaths of maximum numbers of Jews; Hamas certainly killed many children (including infants) and took others hostage. The weight of the evidence certainly leans against Hamas.
Why do I spend so much time repeating these claims, which are uncontroversial in many American circles? Simply because I am in communication with many Muslim immigrants who doubt the narrative of Hamas atrocities. They won’t acknowledge this, but it’s simply because of religious and political ‘in-group’ biases: namely, Hamas might help to engineer the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians in order to manipulate global public opinion and policymakers but they’re still on the Palestinian/Muslim team, therefore accusations against them (or by Israelis) should be treated with the strongest skepticism.
As someone who is not on either team I can tell you that I find this reasoning faintly disgusting. I think it’s, ironically, part of the reason Islam is in such a mess today: irrational and collective emotional grievances and a tendency to regard co-religionists as morally superior to kaffirs. Christians in the West do not think like this, I can assure you. It’s certainly not propelling the Muslim world toward peace and a flourishing civil society.
Let’s go out on this precarious limb and assert that Hamas did rape and mutilate women and children. One common (perhaps the most common) refrain is “Israel kills hundreds of people with bombs and artillery shells!”
This conflates destruction with depravity. I will use an example to illustrate the moral error here. Charles Sweeny was the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped ‘Fat Man’ (the first military atomic weapon) on Hiroshima in 1945. He was free of remorse until the end of his life, apparently, although he’s proximally implicated in the killing of tens of thousands. We have no reason to doubt that Sweeny was not a psychologically normal man (perhaps a little low in conscientiousness or neuroticism, but not abnormally so). His deployment of the bomb in the context of a military operation dissipated some of the responsibility and his distance from the slain assures him a great deal of psychological protection. If Charles Sweeny had killed a single child with his bare hands we could safely regard him as a moral monster, despite that act being less than 1/50,000th as destructive as his bombing mission.
THAT is the reason I am disgusted by Hamas. Their tactics have no military rationale anyway (indirect fire, like their rockets, without any forward observers or adjustment of fire are the most wasteful and foolish military tools that probably exist). They lack the discipline or honor to wage a real counter-insurgency war and they lack the moral leadership to pursue nonviolent tactics and mass civil disobedience. The fact that their leadership (like the late Mrs. Arafat) shelter in luxury in the rich world while using the language of revolution only furthers indicts them. We’ve known for two decades that they are petulant children, happy to trade their young men for useless ‘symbolic’ blows against the Jews. Now we know beyond any doubt that they are depraved animals as well.
Israel could kill 10,000 Palestinians in military operations without it equaling a single mutilated child. Hamas’ depravity shocked me and shocked millions of other people around the world who are usually disinterested observers to this fight. It also assured their complete destruction, try as they might to hide among schools and apartment blocs. The sooner the better, I say.
Photos released by an Israeli Medical Examiner’s office, showing an adult and a child who had been bound together by wire before being set on fire.