Comment by DiogenesKynikos
2 years ago
Israel knowingly strikes civilian targets. There is an investigation published by Israeli and Palestinian journalists here,[0] which goes into the details of how Israel picks targets.
The long and the short of it is that:
a. Israel does not care how many Palestinian civilians die in its air strikes this time around.
b. The Israelis actually positively want to inflict a huge amount of pain on the Palestinian population in this conflict. That is one of the political goals, in order to demoralize the Palestinians. Israeli officials have publicly said that they want to teach the Palestinians a lesson that they will remember for 50 years.
If you just listen to the vicious, dehumanizing way Israeli politicians and media talk about Palestinians, and look at how indiscriminately Israel is bombing Gaza, all the claims by internet commentators that Israel is trying to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties look absurd.
0. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
First, thank you for engaging civilly on this.
> Israel knowingly strikes civilian targets.
I prefer to use the term IDF, largely under the control of Netanyahu. This emphasizes the role of his brand of politics. Netanyahu's political aims are despicable, evidenced by his attempt to upend the Israeli Supreme Court. It is also encouraging to see the IDF protest Netanyahu's moves. (Aside: Doesn't this protest by the IDF give you some comfort that they won't succumb to the worse impulses of Netanyahu?)
Now to respond... I'm not trying to zing you in any way, deny atrocities, or oversimplify. I do this out of genuine curiosity. (I'm lucky that I'm relatively removed from the situation. If I was closer, my rationality would probably be out the window. If I were to make one point it would be this: I want people to recognize the clouding effect of emotion more often. Some ethicists call for cooling off periods after tragedies for this exact reason.)
I'm not trying to promote a particular course of action. My aim is to tease apart the ethics, and hopefully I can get a better understanding of the moving parts.
> Israel knowingly strikes civilian targets.
How often, roughly? Percentages matter. All civilian deaths are horrible, but practically, military operations can be assessed by the numbers. I'm sorry if this sounds callous, but it isn't. Not caring about numbers at all would be even worse.
What are the causes? Seems to me:
1. Hamas uses human shields. This changes the decision space for the IDF. I'm leaning towards the view that these deaths cannot be mostly pinned on the IDF, morally. They belong mostly on Hamas. I don't like my intellectual attempt to somehow split culpability like this, but I'm not sure of a better framework. What do you think?
2. You are claiming there is another factor: demoralization of the Palestinians. I would like to think this is small percentage, but I have not looked at it in detail. To the extent this is true, it is abominable. To the extent Netanyahu's warped ideology and corruption are culpable, he should be stopped.
> How often, roughly? Percentages matter.
You're talking about this in such a sanitized, anodyne manner.
Israel is systematically destroying all civilian infrastructure in Gaza. At the end of this campaign, there will be almost nothing left standing in Gaza. That's the obvious goal of the campaign.
To then look at the Israeli military campaign and talk about it as if it were some highly targeted action is just detached from reality.
This is not just Netanyahu's war. The main opposition parties also support it, as does the large majority of the Israeli population.
> You are claiming there is another factor: demoralization of the Palestinians. I would like to think this is small percentage, but I have not looked at it in detail. To the extent this is true, it is abominable.
Have you been following statements by Israeli politicians, government ministers, media personalities, etc.? This is how the campaign is seen and talked about in Israel. Revenge and teaching the Palestinians a lesson are the major motivations.
> You're talking about this in such a sanitized, anodyne manner.
From this I would guess you are very close emotionally to the situation. Please recognize that not everyone has the same proximity nor the same kind of emotional response. Some cry, some hate, some oversimplify, some want heroes and villains. Some analyze it to death, trying to find a way through. We struggle with it in different ways.
I strive to look at the overall situation. This includes suffering all around. It also includes culpability, which isn't the same as harm. Then I try to make sense of it. From different lenses: ethical, legal, geopolitical, and humanitarian. They all matter and all have different blindspots.
What I'm seeing you do here is very common. You want me to recognize the pain. I try, but I can't: the scope is impossible and overwhelming. You want me to recognize your pain. Again, I can try. But I will never be able to satisfy you. I cannot; this is too awful.
Nor do I really want to feel all of the pain. It would be completely immobilizing. I do not want to be paralyzed by the emotions. I strive to use reason in service of ethics, for reason informed by emotions. I oppose rationalization and oversimplification, which tend to be driven by emotions.
I'm not crafting a political message here. I'm seeking the truth, best I can. Relatively few people do this. Most people have an agenda in play. My agenda is this: we need clearer thinking and less exaggeration. We need to be guided by reason in _service_ of our values. Emotion alone, particularly short-term outrage, would steer us wrong.
You may seize upon any perceived difference of opinion to criticize me. Because I'm here in front of you, because it is something you can do, something that will make you feel better. I get it.
And I'm listening, I'm considering your points. I just can't respond to _all_ of them all at once.
Back to your claim:
> You're talking about this in such a sanitized, anodyne manner.
I can do both: I can talk about percentages, and I can care about people as individuals.
It a common flaw in people to think that asking mathematical questions is somehow fundamentally callous or perhaps even immoral.
In my conception of ethics, the deliberate _avoidance_ of rigorous thinking is a huge mistake. Mathematical thinking is part of the toolset for rigorous thinking. We need to avoid reasoning errors lest me make poor moral decisions. To ignore mathematical aspects (such as probabilities and statistics) would only leave language, which is notoriously imprecise, loaded. We don't need to avoid mathematical analysis; we need _better_ analysis.
As an example, how does the organ transplant system work? By having everyone call in favors? Perhaps there is some of that, but that is not the intended standard. Is the hope to somehow sort out a constrained situation only using _words_? No, there is a big component of mathematics involved, such as factoring in tissue compatibility and the expected lifespan for each candidate.
Please, let go of any claims that mathematical thinking is inherently callous. Would it feel any better for someone who didn't get a transplant to hear "Don't worry, the committee didn't use any callous math. We painstakingly went over all the candidates. We just felt your case wasn't as important, relatively speaking." What's the difference? And "not using math" would totally miss the point. The best we can hope for is something approaching justice by way of some kind of trusted system. I'd rather have a system with some mathematical components than none at all. It is hard to imagine any system at scale not doing some kind of ranking or scale at all. Otherwise it would have to be some exhaustive pairwise comparison over all options... But I digress.
Of course the application of mathematics to most real world situations has some degree of imprecision and uncertainty. But typical language is much worse! And, it depends on how you frame up the math. Choose the better ways rather than rejecting the entire approach. At least mathematics can be written down and criticized clearly. In this way, it is just a more precise form of language. So don't blame the math nor people that want to consider it as one lens. I'm not saying mathematical calculations are the _only_ lens. I'm saying that avoiding all mathematical thinking is clearly worse.
When I hear people say (not your words but I think it conveys your feeling) 'stop being mathematical; use your heart' ... to me that comes across as often (a) a false dichotomy; (b) making too many assumptions about that other person; (c) a rhetorical technique that discourages careful thought; (d) as I explained above, actually a flawed way of doing ethical reasoning to the extent it avoids rigor.
It is hard to do proper ethical reasoning shortly after your neighbors are killed. Emotions are too high. But that it is when it is most needed; to temper some of our worst instincts.
Clear thinking and reasoning invites _more_ information, not less. But when you look at purely emotional reasoning, it too often takes the form of e.g. "Listen to my emotions! Acknowledge them! Treat them as central!". However, doing that would be to fixate on emotions only. We don't want to exclude the full range of useful perspectives on the situation, which include mathematical analysis.
2 replies →