Student "Statement of Solidarity"...

Against the Jewish People

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A few days back I shared a bit about a repulsive “Statement of Solidarity With [Pro-Hamas] Student Protestors” by faculty and staff at Connecticut College. Sure enough, as evidence mounts that pro-Hamas faculty play an outside role in instigating pro-Hamas students, a few days later some 16 Connecticut College student groups issued a “Statement of Solidarity With the Palestinian People” that was, while admirable in theory insofar as it reflected student passion and activism, in content—well, let’s just say it’s apparent they have been learning from their professors. I share here my response to that statement in the student newspaper, an anonymous objection to my response, then my response to that objection.

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One must commend the moral earnestness and activism reflected in the student “statement of solidarity” published here and thus inviting discussion. Yet we would be doing its authors and many signatories (15+ student groups!) a disservice, indeed failing to give them due respect, did we not subject the statement to the “critical thinking” that Connecticut College boasts about teaching here. Thus in the spirit of constructive engagement I attempt that here. (I am brief here, but happy to engage in further good-faith conversation.)

One is moved by the earnestness but saddened to see that its moral concern does not extend to the Israeli and Jewish lives lost from October 7 onwards and for the 130+ people currently held hostage by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including Americans and children. Nor to the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have also been displaced from or lost their homes and the millions who have been bombarded relentlessly with 16,000+ homicidal rockets and missiles. It rightly condemns the war and its concomitant destruction and loss of civilian life, yet strangely omits the proximal and distal causes, hence justification, of this war—not merely the barbaric Hamas massacre of October 7 but the five wars Hamas has started since violently taking over Gaza in 2007 and the thousands of Israelis Hamas has murdered since launching with its openly genocidal Islamic supremacist charter in 1988. It rightly condemns the destruction of hospitals and universities yet strangely omits the war crime militarization of those sites by Hamas that by international law removes their protections and justifies their targeting. In fact it omits mention of Hamas altogether, its genocidal aims and its many murderous actions (including against its own civilians), except to complain that the College called it the “Hamas-Israel” war. That is a neat trick: if we pretend Hamas does not exist, then it looks like Israel is just waltzing in and blowing things up for no reason. Who wouldn’t be against that?

But Hamas does exist. And it is very relevant to understanding what is happening now, and what must be done in order for there to be something like a fair resolution to the ongoing conflict that might actually involve something like justice for both peoples.  

In the same vein there is the sometimes tendentious depiction of reality, shared, perhaps not coincidentally, with the faculty solidarity statement that appeared to coincide with it.

Even accepting at face value the casualty numbers that Hamas itself generates (which one almost surely should not) there is nothing remotely resembling a “genocide” occurring in Gaza. There is a war; both sides are fighting; civilian casualties are each one a tragedy but there has yet to be a war without them. Anyone disseminating this inflammatory misrepresentation reveals their cards: they are not motivated by “saving lives” but by supporting Hamas and its quest to destroy the one sliver of a Jewish state in the world, along with the murder and ethnic cleansing of seven million Jews that Hamas itself says that will entail. For it is Hamas that seeks genocide of a civilian population, openly in its charter and in literally every public remark since October 7 (“We will do October 7 again and again, as many times as necessary!”); it is Hamas that guarantees a forever war, by their own principles, words, and deeds; and it is in fact in an act of anti-genocide that Israel is attempting to remove this genocidal threat, and rescue its hostages. It is a just war fought overwhelmingly by just means. There is literally no country in the world that would not respond to a similar active genocidal threat and perpetrator on its borders as Israel has.  If you actually want to “save lives” you must remove the party endlessly promoting war. And that requires condemning Hamas, not supporting it.

Remember, the war could stop today: Hamas could release the hostages. It could have stopped months ago: Hamas could have released the hostages. Many people could get behind that ceasefire. But Hamas itself has rejected at least a half-dozen absurdly generous ceasefires, including just this past week, an odd thing to do if its people were facing genocide. It rejected them because it wishes to continue fighting, because it believes it can destroy Israel. Those who (like this statement) simply demand a “ceasefire”—without demanding that Hamas return the hostages, and without demanding that Hamas cease its forever war against Israel—are demanding merely that Israel cease while Hamas continues to fire. That isn’t “saving lives” but supporting war, supporting the Hamas war effort and goals, and therefore supporting the murder and ethnic cleansing of seven million Jews.

Israelis may perhaps be forgiven for not consenting to go along with that.

The war is terrible. All war is terrible. The 100 other conflicts going on in the world right now are all terrible, including those involving orders of magnitude more casualties and more displacement and more suffering than this war, yet for some reason not one person on this campus seems to care about. (Just in the past week there are reports of Turkey bombing Kurds, of Russia bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, of the tens of thousands dead in Myanmar and millions displaced, of the hundreds of thousands dead in Sudan and millions displaced and in active famine, etc. Crickets.) But, curiously, when Jews defend themselves against an openly genocidal group perpetrating repeated genocidal acts for four decades, culminating in a barbaric slaughter directly targeting babies, children, pregnant women, disabled, and elderly, the world, and this campus, and this statement, erupt, accusing the Jews of genocide. In so doing they obscenely transform a Jewish effort to protect Jews from genocide into the evil perpetration of genocide—and in so doing advancing the genocidal program against the Jews.

One appreciates the moral earnestness of this statement, then, but perhaps not those moral conclusions.

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Parriah

May 10, 2024 at 8:21 pm

Professor Pessin, you’re argument regarding the hyper-fixation of the general student body on “one sliver of a Jewish state in the world” is contradictory in itself as you are also extremely hyper-fixated on the small (but inherently wrong) civilian casualties and civilian hostages, compared to the over 40,000 civilian deaths in Palestine. You discuss the morality of the issue by stating that Hamas has killed “babies, children, pregnant women, disabled, and elderly”, but coincidentally your moral judgment disappears when Israeli forces killed more than 13,000 Palestinian children in Gaza. You critique us for not being able to think critically, I would hope that as a professor of philosophy, you would have critically thought that two wrongs don’t make a right.

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Thanks so much for engaging. I appreciate your points, which are serious and merit a serious response, hence what follows—so thank you.

My concern about the “hyper-fixation” is that it reflects a bigoted double standard: no one cares when *far worse* things are happening elsewhere, they only care when Jews are defending themselves. No one even cares about Palestinian civilians suffering elsewhere either (look at how they’ve fared in Lebanon and Syria; world (and this campus) response: crickets). That suggests that what’s driving campus responses is not positive admirable concern for Palestinians (or for human rights) but negative bigoted concern against Jews. (That one “fixates” on the allegedly 40,000 dead in Gaza (see below) and ignores far larger numbers elsewhere is an indication of that.)

What’s absolutely fair, and I think you’re correctly getting at this, is to critique Israel’s conduct in this war, from the perspective of universal principles (such as ordinary morality and in particular from international law and human rights). But then one must equally critique Hamas’s conduct in this and all the previous wars it has started, and in its four-decade record of suicide bombings, terrorist attacks, and rockets, culminating in the barbaric October 7 slaughter. (For the record, Hamas openly and repeatedly violates every tenet of ordinary morality, international law, and human rights.) Curiously Hamas is entirely missing in the campus protests and conversations, in the student letter here, and in the faculty letter. And without Hamas in that conversation one removes the entire context and justification for Israeli actions, which is necessary for fairly critiquing its conduct.

I’m not sure why you think my “moral judgment disappears”: I acknowledged that civilian casualties are each one a tragedy and that the war is just terrible. I feel the agony of Palestinian civilian deaths, and especially children, as I feel that of Israeli (and Yemenite and Sudanese and Kurdish etc). You seem to, too, when you grant that the murder of Israelis was “inherently wrong.” But “moral judgment” requires making moral distinctions, and unfortunately there is a tremendous moral difference between the two sides. Hamas *targets* civilians; Israel targets Hamas, which by embedding itself among civilians and openly using its population as human shields (just this week they proclaimed, for maybe the dozenth time since October 7 that I’m aware of, how much they welcome the blood of their women and children), necessarily results in incidental civilian casualties. On October 7 Hamas intended to murder as many Jews as possible, and was limited only by its ability to do so; in response Israel has the ability to kill nearly every Gazan, but is limited only by its intention *not* to do so. Those facts alone—indisputable as far as I can see—distinguish the entities and the moral evaluation of their actions, the former being the one actually pursuing genocide (wrong) and the latter defending itself therefrom (not wrong). “Moral judgment” distinguishes the genocider from the one defending itself from genocide, thus regrettably compels the distinction in moral status between the civilian casualties. Each casualty is a heartbreaking tragedy, but one side, regrettably, has a moral justification the other lacks.

There is no country in the world that would not attempt to remove an ongoing active genocidal threat from its borders, not to mention rescue its hostages; by any universal principles universally applied, Israel is fighting a just war here, which, like every war, regrettably, involves civilian casualties.

The question now is whether Israel’s conduct in this war is adequately just, which is why it is fair, even necessary, to examine and critique it as you commendably do. Here we need some facts, and are hampered by the fact that Hamas controls the information that comes from Gaza and can report whatever it wants. You say “40,000 civilian casualties”; I’ve not seen anyone else claim that, so I’m curious about your source. Until this week the U.N. was reporting “35,000” total casualties (see link below)—numbers it takes directly from Hamas—and while Hamas doesn’t bother distinguishing civilians from fighters, surely no one believes that Israel has failed to kill a single Hamas fighter in these seven months? The IDF claimed as of a month ago that they had killed about 14,000 Hamas fighters, and even Hamas admitted a few months back that 6,000 of its fighters had been killed. We cannot know, but even taking Hamas’s figures at face value (surely questionable) the ratio of civilian:fighter casualties remains extremely low compared to all similar armed conflicts. By universal standards that is *remarkable*, particularly in this context: urban warfare with Hamas embedded among civilians whom it uses as human shields, militarizing hospitals, schools, and mosques, and with hundreds of miles of tunnels used for military purposes literally running under everything.

But it’s actually even more remarkable than that. Just this week the U.N. released revised figures (see link below) in which they report in fact not 35,000 but only *25,000* “identified” casualties, and they revise steeply downwards the numbers of “women and children.” That includes cutting the previous claim about the number of children (that you cite) nearly in half, to 7800. Each one is a horrific tragedy but when looked at “objectively,” which is necessary for this conversation, we must admit the following facts: (1) Hamas’s figures are not trustworthy, and (2) if the IDF turns out to be remotely right about Hamas casualties (and in every past war their figures turned out to be reliable), then we are talking about 14,000 fighters out of 25,000 total casualties. This would be a literally historically unprecedentedly low civilian:fighter ratio, even given the urban, human-shield context.

The only reasonable conclusion is that Israel is taking unprecedented measures, and executing them with unprecedented skill, to minimize civilian casualties. By all universal and international norms, this is a just war being prosecuted by just means.

It’s painful, it’s horrible, and every civilian casualty is a tragedy, but it’s true.

You say that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I am not sure how seriously you intend this as a moral principle relevant to international norms and laws governing warfare. Do you mean no country, or even no person, should ever defend themselves from violent attack because that would involve inflicting violence on the perpetrator? So one country can attack another and the other should not respond? Would you use this principle to condemn Hamas for October 7, not to mention all its previously started wars and suicide bombings and terrorist attacks, because no matter what alleged grievances they may have against Israel “two wrongs don’t make a right”? Normally we recognize that where it is wrong to attack a person or a country, it is not wrong to defend oneself from that attack or attempt to prevent the perpetrator from attacking. Since Hamas has spent four decades intending and perpetrating genocide against Israeli Jews in particular, and openly declaring it will do October 7 “again and again, as many times as necessary,” it is *not* wrong for those Jews to defend themselves and attempt to remove that genocidal threat, as long as they do so by “just” means, respecting universal moral and legal principles, as I argue they do above.

You seem to apply that principle, though, in a very limited way, by just comparing casualty numbers: there were fewer Israeli casualties on October 7 than the larger number of Gazan casualties, so the latter is therefore “wrong.” (“Hyper-focus” again: if comparative numbers matter, then why are there no encampments about the much much larger number of civilian casualties from Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and more?) But that is just not how military conflicts are considered from a universal perspective. No one simply compares casualty numbers in a war and reaches any moral conclusions. The Allies killed far more German civilians than the Germans killed Allies’ civilians but that fact doesn’t mean the Allies behaved wrongly. No one ever says that when you are defending yourself you are only allowed to kill the same number that the other side has inflicted on you and then must stop, or that you must offer more of your own civilians to be killed in order to keep prosecuting the war.

What universal norms and the laws of war do require is “proportionality,” but that explicitly does not imply parity in casualty counts. It means roughly that civilian casualties must be proportional to the military objective in play. You are never permitted to directly target civilians but a certain number of incidental civilian casualties is acceptable proportional to the military objective: you can’t kill many civilians for a small military objective, but you can kill proportionally more, regrettably, for a large one. That obviously has a degree of subjectivity but is best measured by the civilian:fighter ratios discussed above, and there the case is crystal clear. Israel’s remarkably low civilian:fighter ratio indicates it is obeying proportionality to an unprecedented degree.

What all that indicates is that you’re comparing the wrong numbers. It’s not the number of Israeli dead on October 7 compared to the number of Gazans dead. It’s the degree of the threat compared to the number of civilians necessary in order to neutralize the threat. It’s thus the number of Israelis that Hamas, left undefeated and undisturbed, *would* murder compared to the number of Gazan dead required to neutralize the threat. Hamas openly declares its desire and intention to murder all seven million Jews in Israel. By any reasonable universal standard if it requires several tens of thousands dead to prevent seven million from being murdered, assuming this is pursued justly by targeting the fighters, then that is adequately proportional. (The alternative is to say that Israel must allow millions of its citizens to be murdered in order to protect several tens of thousands of Gazans from dying. But that is outrageous.)

Horrible, and tragic, but that doesn’t stop it from being true.

War is terrible. But remember this war would stop instantly if Hamas surrendered and returned the hostages. Civilian casualties would cease instantly. That is the ceasefire I personally am longing for, for the removal of the true genocidal threat, for the prospect of genuine enduring peace in the region, and for the mutual welfare of both Israelis and Palestinians, most of all the children. Any other outcome amounts to promoting the genocidal threat, guaranteeing the ongoing war, and generating continued civilian casualties on both sides. 

What’s happening I believe is that you—along with so many others—are applying standards to the Jews that you simply do not apply anywhere else. Israel has no interest in killing Gazan civilians, but doing so is unavoidable given its justified interest in protecting its citizens from decades of Hamas-perpetrated genocide. By actual universal norms Israel is fighting a just war by overwhelmingly just means. The worldwide (and this campus) campaign to portray *Israel* as engaged in genocide, to suggest that what it is doing is “wrong” because more Gazans are dying than Israelis, requires applying standards to Israel that literally no one applies anywhere else and in fact is aimed at stopping Israel from defending itself. It is thus in service of the Hamas agenda, supportive of the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Israel’s seven million Jews, and thus pro-war and pro-genocide.

https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-215