One very effective debate tactic is to assert a fact that “feels” like it contradicts your opponent’s position, but really doesn’t. This is a play on the concept Stephen Colbert refers to as “truthiness.”
Consider this situation: I’m encountering severe financial difficulties, so much so that I’ve concluded the only chance for my family is if they can collect on the life insurance policy I just purchased. My problem of course is that the policy won’t pay if my death is a suicide. But while standing on a corner I see my enemy staggering, drunk, across the intersection, about to be struck by an oncoming car. I’d love to see my enemy meet an early death, but my higher priority is my family. So, like actors in scenes from movies we’ve all seen, I dart out and push my enemy to safety a split second before the car ends my life.
The insurance company wouldn’t even consider invoking the suicide clause here, so effective is the sleight of hand. But what if they did? My heirs would say “How could you accuse him of suicide; he saved another man’s life? He was a hero.” They’d be correct, of course, except perhaps the hero part, but their assertion wouldn’t contradict my suicide. It would just feel like it does. The truth is that I took my own life. Saving my enemy’s life was a mere by-product of that act. In actuality, saving my enemy’s life was not in my thinking a benefit I sought from my action. Rather, it was a cost I had to pay.
How does all this apply to Israel?
In the recent Gaza war, Israel killed 2,000+ Palestinians, wounded 10,000+ more, destroyed thousands of homes, businesses, schools and hospitals, and left almost one-quarter of the population homeless. When that was characterized as a massacre, Israel and its American supporters screamed foul, claiming that Israel took all steps possible to minimize the casualties and other damage, doing only what was absolutely necessary to address Hamas’ rocket capacity and eliminate the tunnels.
When the “minimum civilian damage” claim was made, the debate largely devolved into whether Israel indeed was doing all it could to minimize collateral (i.e., civilian) damage, including of course the 2.000+ deaths. The clear implication was that if Israel minimized civilian damage, no massacre occurred and, as the U.S. Senate concluded unanimously, Israel had acted in self-defense.
The question almost nobody asked was, assuming Israel did act to minimize damage, did it nonetheless intend to inflict that “minimum” level of damage. Why? Because the purported effort to minimize the damage felt like it contradicted a motivation on Israel’s part to inflict the “minimum” damage.
But it didn’t. Israel could have acted to minimize the damage for political reasons, while being motivated primarily, even exclusively, by a desire to inflict that minimum level of damage.
So, I wonder, how would Israel have responded if an all-powerful Genie had presented himself to Israeli leadership prior to the Gaza war and informed them how the war would play out, then offered them an alternative? He would eliminate entirely Hamas’ rocket capacity and crash the tunnels, but otherwise leave Gaza as is, if Israel would forfeit the lives of 63 soldiers (as opposed to the 64 it would lose in the war) and the same number of civilians Israel would lose to rocket fire in the war, and pay 95% of the direct and indirect economic cost of the war.
Would Israel have chosen the Genie’s alternative, or would it have chosen the war it just fought? The Genie’s option would have spared the life of one Israeli soldier; it would have addressed the rockets and tunnels more completely than the war option; and it would have saved Israel tens of millions of dollars. If Israel’s exclusive objectives were the rockets and the tunnels, it would have accepted the Genie’s proposal.
But the Genie’s proposal would have been a pretty terrible deal. Israel would have been trading the lives of 63 soldiers to save the lives of a fraction of that number of Israelis who otherwise would die from the rocket arsenal the Genie promised to eliminate, and would have been paying hundreds of millions to make that awful trade. Moreover, it would be forfeiting the huge economic boost it otherwise would realize from the rebuilding of Gaza.
And the Genie’s deal hardly would qualify as “mowing the lawn,” an objective often articulated by Israel or on its behalf.
Would the complete elimination of Hamas’ military capacity even have served Israel’s needs? Doesn’t Israel need Hamas as the bogeyman to justify its own defense spending, as well as the military aid it receives from the U.S.?
So, would Israel have rejected the Genie’s offer? If so, what is the answer to the ultimate question: If you accept the proposition that Israel minimized the collateral damage it had to inflict in order to address Hamas’ rockets and tunnels, was that minimal damage nonetheless Israel’s primary objective in Gaza?
And, if it was, did Israel thus commit an act of genocide?
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If I haven’t made the point Bob, you never denied being as good a spokesperson for Harmas, but pointed out I was shouting? It wasn’t shouting, it was unbelievable astonishment at sucha statement.
Are you a spokesperson for Hamas???
“I’m not angry Bob”
That’s interesting those are my exact words about you — neither intellectually coherent, focused or humorous. I fact I get the feeling I’m conversing with a child.
Why your writing on this blog is perfectly clear, but whether its intelligent and informed perspective is another matter. My only purpase in reponding to you is to bring balance to a distorted and disconnect fragments of “disinformation.”
Try sticking to the substance of your posts rather than your imagined sensitivity to my responses.
To Deborah Montesano | September 20, 2014 at
“Bob is far from disconnected from American values. Likening him to Hamas is a cheap shot. I appreciate the continuing blogs that put the situation in perspective.”
Are you kidding me! Bob Lord could not be a better spokesperson for Hamas than Hamas themsleves. WHAT PERSPECTIVE?????
• My name is Ciro. If you click on my icon it will confirm who I am, and just a bit about my background.
• As an engineer and corporate analyst with over fifty years centering on defining truths, either in the engineering design of an end item, or the workflow and the decision making processes of corporate entities both in industry and academia.
• There is no anger Bob, just straight talk about specific issues you conveniently circumvent with irrelevant analogies to avoid answering.
• My comments to your posts were not intended as invective but feedback from someone who has as much intelligence as you and quite likely more.
• About you’re alluding to racism – it’s a tiresome overworked maneuver to create a distraction to end discussion of an untenable position.
• Instead of answering a direct question Bob, you try to divert your answer by creating non-issues.
• Implying I have anger issues and racist does not get you off the hook from replying to my questions. You’ve got to do better than that.
“I”m not angry, Bob”
Really? Then why, 14 minutes after you made that comment to me, did you type a comment to Deborah Montesano in which you resorted to the use of all caps, which is universally regarded as the print form of yelling?
Look, my purpose in writing for this blog is not to answer your questions. I’ll engage with conservatives whom I find likable and who have a modicum of intellectual curiosity, or at least good humor. I find that you have neither.
Bob is far from disconnected from American values. Likening him to Hamas is a cheap shot. I appreciate the continuing blogs that put the situation in perspective.
Israel’s Brilliantly Effective Sleight of Hand
Posted on September 20, 2014 by Bob Lord | 1 Comment
https://blogforarizona.net/israels-brilliantly-effective-sleight-of-hand/#more-30584
First of all Bob Lord, it takes a sick mind to think of suicide to pay for a family’s care, and sadly a sick mind to present such a scenario.
How you can believe any thinking person who resonates with the moral ethos of Israel can swallow the unreal disconnected fantasy scenarios you present, it makes one wonder just whom are you speaking to???
If there are those who resonate with you, what’s the purpose of repeating what they already know? If your attempting to blow smoke at people like me, you already know where were we’re coming from.
Your so disconnected from the America people and norms of morality that one wonders if you’re an agent of Hamas?
You know, Ciro (or whatever your actual name is), the thought occurrs to me that you and I could be characters in the original of the movie Twelve Angry Men. I’d be the juror who first voted not to convict and continued to ask tough questions of the other jurors as the movie played out. You of course would be the last juror to cave, sobbing uncontrollably after you inadvertently revealed your own racism as the reason for your insistence on a conviction.
Why don’t you try putting some of that anger aside and bringing some intellect to the table instead? You can hurl invective at me if you wish, but it won’t get you anywhere on this site, not even with the conservatives who comment here.
I agree. Both sides have to make concessions! Hamas must recognize that Israel has the right to exist and stop the rocket barrage into southern Israel.
Israel must recognize Hamas as a political entity to negotiate with and stop building the settlements in the West Bank. Good luck!!!
Bob, is it just possible that you are too much in sympathy with the Pallestinians that you overlook their errors and the evil that they sometimes perpetrate? No one in this conflict has clean hands.