In January, 2003, Avishai Margalit, a philosopher and George Kennan Professor at the Institute of Advanced Study, published in The New York Review an essay, "The Suicide Bombers," that at the time seemed to me an antidote to the 9-11 Manichaeism served up by the Bush administration and seems to me now an antidote to the tired refrain, following predictably upon Israel's recent attack on Gaza, concerning Israel's "right to defend itself." The essay, available here, is a sober and dispassionate assessment of the suicide bombers who were then, at the height of the second intifada, inflicting death, despair, and panic upon Israeli civilians living inside their country's pre-1967 borders. Without excusing, Margalit attempts to understand, and the exercise has the effect of drawing away a veil raised by shouts of "terrorist" and "evil-doer." A couple paragraphs from his concluding section are representative:
Israel claims it is fighting a war against the "infrastructure of terrorism," but in fact it is destroying the infrastructure of the entire Palestinian society, not only its security forces and civil administration but much else as well. Many of the Israeli countermeasures are not only cruel but also irrational. As Ian Buruma recently reported in these pages, at the height of the olive-picking season, Israeli settlers have prevented Palestinian villagers from tending their own olive trees, fully aware that producing olive oil is one of the major activities of the Palestinian economy, the main source of income for many Palestinian villagers, and a source of pride as well. To make matters worse, settlers have not only been preventing the Palestinians from picking their olives but have been stealing them for themselves. This is simply one small example of a policy that is not just bad but also irrational.
Still, even when it is clear that Israeli policies toward the Palestinians are evil and irrational, it is far from clear how to confront the suicide bombers in ways that are rational and effective, as well as morally justified. This is why the moderate left is in trouble in Israel. The public is scared and in despair, and has no use for moralizing comments. It wants strategic solutions for stopping the suicide terror.
Instead of the familiar mantra regarding Israel's "right to defend itself," how about assessing the ethics and utility of what it does to defend itself? That seems to me a reasonable activity, and when it is pursued, sixty years of failed policy come into focus. Israel's response to its own failures has been to ratchet up the violence, and when that has failed to ratchet it up further, until now, in the immediate aftermath of its latest offensive, an Israeli academic and former soldier in its army confesses that the Gaza action "seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash." It isn't working, hasn't for sixty years. Should not that be taken into account?
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