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Bad Arguments and Bad Friends

Ross: But the fact that Israel’s policy choices are understandable doesn’t make them wise. Taken case by case, there are good arguments for the Lebanon war, the Gaza incursion, and now the blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip [bold mine-DL]. But when you add them up, you’re left with a strategic course that promises short-term victories […]

Ross:

But the fact that Israel’s policy choices are understandable doesn’t make them wise. Taken case by case, there are good arguments for the Lebanon war, the Gaza incursion, and now the blockade of the Hamas-ruled strip [bold mine-DL]. But when you add them up, you’re left with a strategic course that promises short-term victories (of a sort), without any hope of long-term stability.

There really aren’t good arguments for the actual Lebanon war, Gaza incursion and the blockade. One can imagine an Israeli military action against Hizbullah in 2006 that would not have generated the near-universal condemnation that the actual war did, but the Olmert government opted for overkill, unnecessary devastation of an entire country and the displacement of a million people. There isn’t a good argument for what Israel did four years ago. It is easy to forget now, but much of the world sympathized with Israel’s initial response to the Hizbullah attack that had resulted in the capture of three Israeli soldiers. For once, when “pro-Israel” hawks said that no other country would tolerate such an attack most of the rest of the world, at least at the official and state level, nodded in agreement and offered expressions of support. That lasted for a few days until Israel widened the war against all of Lebanon. Here in the U.S., we followed the rapid progression from defenses of Israel’s great restraint to celebrations of its disproportionate violence.

Likewise, one can imagine a more limited response in late 2008 and early 2009 in Gaza that would not have devastated the enclave as Operation Cast Lead actually did, and one can imagine how Israel could have kept its Turkish ally appraised of its intentions well in advance of the operation, but once again that was not what Olmert’s government did. It is possible to envision an embargo on weapons coming into Gaza that would not involve annihilating Gaza’s private sector and reducing the population to dependence on outside aid and Hamas-provided services, and so it is also possible to imagine an alternative scenario in which there is no international mobilization of activists intent on drawing attention to the terrible human costs imposed by the blockade, but that is not reality. What we have seen over the last four years is a consistent effort to take the one good argument Israel can use in these situations, the argument for self-defense, and stretch it and abuse it beyond all recognition.

Those of us who specialize in all those “phony” critiques were pointing out the strategic folly of what Israel was doing when it was doing it. Meanwhile, Israel’s “admirers” were automatically blessing every decision made by the Israeli government, as most of them continue to do to this day. Naturally, the people who have been making the argument that Israel has no strategy or at least has a self-destructive one must not be involved in “raising and re-raising the strategic issues that Israel’s government seems incapable of contending with at the moment.” It is much better to leave it with people who have spent the last four years looking the other way, making excuses and still claiming that there are good arguments for what Israel has done.

One might think that critical, but ultimately friendly and supportive people would be considered Israel’s “real friends.” Real friends certainly wouldn’t wait for years and even decades as a country with which they sympathize becomes increasingly reckless and indifferent to consequences before saying something. Many Western critics of particular Israeli policies aim to make their arguments more welcome by casting them in terms of what best serves Israel’s long-term interests, but there may come a time when there will no longer be any interest in trying to help an ally that has no interest in correcting its mistakes.

Perhaps it would be best to scrap all of this friendship language and try to use more critical thinking and less sentimentality when discussing these matters. Even if they are trying to be, it shouldn’t be important whether Israel’s Western critics are genuinely its “real friends” or not. What ought to matter is that Israel’s self-professed friends and defenders have enabled and encouraged Israel’s government to pursue reckless policies that are to the detriment of the well-being of Israelis and their country. What ought to matter most in this debate is correcting the substance of the policies of an American ally in a way that serves the long-term interests of both the United States and Israel. At the moment, practically the only people who seem seriously interested in making those corrections are the ones making those “phony” critiques.

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