"Israel has achieved that piece with Egypt" should be "peace"
Having made a correction I feel I ought also to express an opinion. While all, or nearly all, of the things you've said are true, this is not an even handed attempt to understand the situation, but a polemic in defence of Israel. A proper response from me would be a similar length to your article, which I don't have time or will to type, but as an example - you missed out "There can be no lasting peace while Israel prevents Palestians having an viable economic life." One can understand why they do that - Palestinans have a habit of using whatever resources they get to attack Israel. But you can also understand why the Palestinians do that - Israel has a stranglehold on their lives.
There's a vicious cycle here, and it's hard to see how to break out of it other than both sides simultaneously being willing to change. I think there have been times in the past when Israel has been willing to change, but Palestians haven't been. I think today neither are willing to take a peaceful path.
When there is no moral equivalence between two sides, an 'even-handed' approach is actually not more accurate, but misleading - it would be a Fallacy of the Middle Ground. You seem to suggest I pretended to write one thing but then wrote another
but as the title says: I stand with Israel.
I would note this is a fraught subject and suggest that as we have a live email thread on this subject, if you want to continue the discussion we do so there!
That's fair - you signaled throughout that you were making an argument in favour of Israel, and I'm like a man pointing out that this article is in English.
I would like to say more about even-handedness though. Imagine an essay about WW2 atrocities. One could write an 'even-handed' article which spent half its word count on Axis atrocities and half on allied. This would be profoundly distorting - an extreme Fallacy of the Middle Ground.
One could write an essay which only described Axis atrocities. This would be a better essay being closer to the truth, but it would still be a distortion. I think "Everything (or almost everything) in this essay is true, but it is not even-handed, there were also some Allied atrocities such as the Bengal famine and the firebombing of Dresden" would be a fair response to this essay.
Finally, one could write an essay which covered all atrocities above a certain severity, no matter who committed them. The result would be 95%+ about Axis atrocities. This to my mind is the even-handed essay. It doesn't assert equivalence (in fact, it demonstrates inequivalence) nor does it fall into the Fallacy of the Middle Ground.
Hopefully that was sufficiently abstractly put to be an admissible continuation in a public setting. Totally take the point that discussions about the situation in Gaza have a nasty habit of turning as vicious as the situation in Gaza.
I do take your point, but I'd suggest even-handedness isn't as staightforward as you suggest.
The BBC has chosen to report the latest death figures in every article on the current conflict; it didn't do that for the Iraq War (nor the recent strikes against the Houthis or Iran). I'm sure one can justify either approach but it has big implications for how a conflict is perceived. Which approach is more even-handed? I suspect the decision is driven by the editors' perception of the relative moralities of each conflict.
Notably, in your example, you've smuggled in the assumption that Dresden was an atrocity - when actually that's the key fact that is contested! Or take the 20,000 French civilian deaths caused by the D-Day landings and subsequent two months of fighting. Would you put them in your list of 'Allied atrocities'? I've rarely seen them mentioned in histories of D-Day - but no doubt General Armin Van Roon would put them in his list.
Overall, I suspect we are largely in agreement here, on the principles if not the specifics. I'm sure you agree that it's not always straight-forward to be even-handed, and equally I certainly agree I could have written the post in a different style if I'd chosen to.
Yes, there's an important distinction between "they killed a lot of civilians because their intention was to kill a lot of civilians" (Holocaust, starvation of Russians, Japanese occupation), "they killed quite a few civilians because their deaths were unavoidable in achieving a military objective of the first importance" (D Day) and "they killed a lot of civilians because they were reckless about civilian harm in the pursuit of legitimate military objectives" (Dresden, Bengal).
"Israel has achieved that piece with Egypt" should be "peace"
Having made a correction I feel I ought also to express an opinion. While all, or nearly all, of the things you've said are true, this is not an even handed attempt to understand the situation, but a polemic in defence of Israel. A proper response from me would be a similar length to your article, which I don't have time or will to type, but as an example - you missed out "There can be no lasting peace while Israel prevents Palestians having an viable economic life." One can understand why they do that - Palestinans have a habit of using whatever resources they get to attack Israel. But you can also understand why the Palestinians do that - Israel has a stranglehold on their lives.
There's a vicious cycle here, and it's hard to see how to break out of it other than both sides simultaneously being willing to change. I think there have been times in the past when Israel has been willing to change, but Palestians haven't been. I think today neither are willing to take a peaceful path.
Sorry, just noticed this.
When there is no moral equivalence between two sides, an 'even-handed' approach is actually not more accurate, but misleading - it would be a Fallacy of the Middle Ground. You seem to suggest I pretended to write one thing but then wrote another
but as the title says: I stand with Israel.
I would note this is a fraught subject and suggest that as we have a live email thread on this subject, if you want to continue the discussion we do so there!
That's fair - you signaled throughout that you were making an argument in favour of Israel, and I'm like a man pointing out that this article is in English.
I would like to say more about even-handedness though. Imagine an essay about WW2 atrocities. One could write an 'even-handed' article which spent half its word count on Axis atrocities and half on allied. This would be profoundly distorting - an extreme Fallacy of the Middle Ground.
One could write an essay which only described Axis atrocities. This would be a better essay being closer to the truth, but it would still be a distortion. I think "Everything (or almost everything) in this essay is true, but it is not even-handed, there were also some Allied atrocities such as the Bengal famine and the firebombing of Dresden" would be a fair response to this essay.
Finally, one could write an essay which covered all atrocities above a certain severity, no matter who committed them. The result would be 95%+ about Axis atrocities. This to my mind is the even-handed essay. It doesn't assert equivalence (in fact, it demonstrates inequivalence) nor does it fall into the Fallacy of the Middle Ground.
Hopefully that was sufficiently abstractly put to be an admissible continuation in a public setting. Totally take the point that discussions about the situation in Gaza have a nasty habit of turning as vicious as the situation in Gaza.
I do take your point, but I'd suggest even-handedness isn't as staightforward as you suggest.
The BBC has chosen to report the latest death figures in every article on the current conflict; it didn't do that for the Iraq War (nor the recent strikes against the Houthis or Iran). I'm sure one can justify either approach but it has big implications for how a conflict is perceived. Which approach is more even-handed? I suspect the decision is driven by the editors' perception of the relative moralities of each conflict.
Notably, in your example, you've smuggled in the assumption that Dresden was an atrocity - when actually that's the key fact that is contested! Or take the 20,000 French civilian deaths caused by the D-Day landings and subsequent two months of fighting. Would you put them in your list of 'Allied atrocities'? I've rarely seen them mentioned in histories of D-Day - but no doubt General Armin Van Roon would put them in his list.
Overall, I suspect we are largely in agreement here, on the principles if not the specifics. I'm sure you agree that it's not always straight-forward to be even-handed, and equally I certainly agree I could have written the post in a different style if I'd chosen to.
Yes, there's an important distinction between "they killed a lot of civilians because their intention was to kill a lot of civilians" (Holocaust, starvation of Russians, Japanese occupation), "they killed quite a few civilians because their deaths were unavoidable in achieving a military objective of the first importance" (D Day) and "they killed a lot of civilians because they were reckless about civilian harm in the pursuit of legitimate military objectives" (Dresden, Bengal).
Yes - that's a very useful framework to think about things through.
Mind you, I know (sensible, thoughtful) people who would argue strongly for putting Dresden into each one of your three categories.