[Welcome, John Swift Roundup readers! If you want to see the post to which this is a footnote, it's here.]
There is no way to say this without appearing to endorse or at a minimum condone terrorism, but I will ask it anyway.
Bear in mind first that Palestinians have been and are living under illegal occupation by an apartheid state (Israel has been found to be such by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B'Tselem, among others), their people killed, their land stolen, their right to statehood denied.
Bear in mind second that the Gaza Strip has been described more than once as the world's largest outdoor prison.
And bear in mind third that our nation, the United States, was born on a principle of a right to revolution.
With all that in mind, here is the question: If Israel has a right to self-defense, do the Palestinians?
Put another way, does an oppressed, occupied people have a right to resistance, a right to rebellion?
If not, why not? Why do they lack the right were have declared for ourselves?
And if they do, just what is it you say the Palestinians should have done and should now do to that end? Don't say "stop terrorism," because I didn't ask you what you would have them not do, but what you would have them do. What effectual means of resistance are open to them which you would accept?
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2 comments:
long ago - as an undergraduate - i read something by john locke, influential english philosopher
a phrase he used that i hadn't encountered before struck me - "an appeal to heaven" - by which he meant resorting to deadly force to settle political disputes
my own moral intuition is one shouldn't kill people unless it's necessary - and no more than necessary - and in no crueller ways than necessary - but the way things are is that in this world there is no law, there is only power - maybe there is justice in the next life, or the one after that
Thank you for the comment. They are always appreciated.
For myself, I hold always at least the hope for justice in this life, the only one we can be sure exists, even if that hope is based only on the contention that the concept of justice itself has power.
Hope springs eternal and all that.. :-)
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