Category: News and politics

Effective protest

In the face of rising arrests on university campuses of protesters against Israel’s war in Gaza and West Bank, I will explore what forms of protest are proper and effective. I will not address the merits of one view or another as I have already done so in several earlier blogs. I support the measures that will best achieve Israel’s security and prosperity as well as those measures that will best achieve Palestine’s security and prosperity. The two are inseparable.  https://wcoats.blog/2023/10/10/israel-and-the-wbgs-next-steps/

As with international relations more generally, diplomacy is preferred and invariably more successful in the long run to war. War should be the absolute last resort when every effort at diplomacy has failed, if at all.

What does this mean for the war in Gaza and between Israel and its West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) neighbors more generally? Diplomacy begins with correctly understanding the views of the other side. It involves talking with each other. American University protests are largely by students protesting Israel’s behavior vis a vis Hamas and more broadly its Palestinian neighbors.

“The students are protesting against Israel’s actions in the war with Hamas. The Columbia University Apartheid Divest coalition, which consists of more than 100 student groups, is calling for the university to financially divest from companies and institutions that ‘profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine’…. Protesters camping on the university lawn say they believe the war in Gaza amounts to ‘genocide’ of Palestinians….

“’I’m here continuing the Jewish tradition of standing against oppression and injustice, especially as we approach Passover, a holiday that celebrates our own liberation and commits us to fighting for everyone else’s,’ the Jewish Voices for Peace at Columbia said in an online statement.”  https://abcnews.go.com/US/columbia-university-student-protests-israel-gaza-war-continue/story?id=109493377

These protestors clearly have something to discuss with U of Columbia’s Administration. I have no idea whether they are or not. Peaceful public demonstrations of support for demands to impress the other side with the existence of broad support is certainly an appropriate and often effective part of pressing demands. Public debate of the pros and cons of these demands, as guaranteed by our First Amendment right to free speech, can be a powerful way to refine demands and to educate the public of their merits.

But our freedom of speech has limits. We may not yell “Fire” in a theater in which there is no fire. We may not credibly threaten physical harm as in “Kill the Jews.”  On the other hand, the charge that damning the Israeli government for its war in Gaza (or any other unwanted policy) is antisemitic is as wrong as charging me with anti-Americanism for damning some of President Biden’s policies (such as using my tax money to provide the Israeli army with weapons with which they are killing women and children in Gaza).

But many protestors at Columbia U sat up tents on the campus in violation of university rules and on April 18th more than 100 of them were arrested and removed from the campus. The right to free speech is not the right to violate the law and Universities (or other property owners) have the right to remove violators. The boundaries for the proper right to free speech are set out in the following article by FIRE’s President Greg Lukianoff https://greglukianoff.substack.com/p/hypocrisy-projection-civil-disobedience?r=1n8osb&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

When protestors feel so strongly about an issue that they knowingly break the law to dramatize their position, they must expect and accept the legal consequences. But this is the equivalent of going to war when the prospects for diplomacy have been exhausted. An extreme example was the self-immolation of US Airforce officer, Aaron Bushnell, in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC. “He was a 25-year-old serviceman who, on February 25, 2024, set himself on fire as a form of protest against what he described as the experiences of Palestinians at the hands of their colonizers and declared that he would no longer be complicit in genocide.” Self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell – Wikipedia

Today’s student protests, most of which have been peaceful and legal, are often compared to the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964, in which I participated. Traditionally, meaning at least during the time I was a student there, we sat up our recruiting tables along Bancroft Avenue near its intersection with Telegraph Avenue just outside the campus.

On September 14, 1964, Dean of Students Katherine Towle “announced that existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of political causes or candidates, signing of members, and collection of funds by student organizations at Bancroft and Telegraph would henceforth be ”strictly enforced.” FSM Leaflet: Chronicle of the Free Speech Controversy (fsm-a.org)

We, and by we I mean students across the entire political spectrum, protested. Within a week most all student groups, including the University Young Republicans of which I was President, loosely organized into a United Front for presenting our “demands” to the Dean.

On September 27, 1964, the United Front held an all-night vigil on the steps of Sproul Hall. These steps, which became a major staging place for Free Speech Movement (FSM) speeches and demonstrations, are midway between the Telegraph and Bancroft Avenue intersection and Sather Gate. On September, 30 five students who refused to remove their card table were indefinitely suspended from the University. The next day, October 1, during a rally in front of Sproul Hall, Jack Weinberg was arrested for refusing to leave his CORE table. When he was put into a police car, students immediately surrounded it and prevented it from leaving as students began to speak to the crowd from the roof of the police car and the Sproul Hall steps. The next day the student crowd grew to 3,000 and the Alameda Country police force had grown to 500.

On October 3, leaders of Berkeley’s political organizations met on the Sproul Hall steps and formed the Free Speech Movement. Each group had a member on its council and thus I was a member of the FSM Council by virtue of being President of the University YRs. Days of speeches on these steps followed. On one occasion my address to the crowd followed that of Mario Savio the de facto leader of the FSM. Mario was an inspirational speaker and never called for violence. I also stressed the importance of peaceful discussions with the University administration aimed at restoring our traditional political activities on Bancroft.

It should not be surprising that with such a diversity of members on the FSM Council views differed on how to proceed. An important misunderstanding, which persists in the general public to this day, was that Dean Towle’s banning of political activity was not actually a reference to campus activities. The Telegraph and Bancroft location of our club tables was off the campus on city territory and the city had complained to the University that it had not approved such use of its sidewalks.

When control of the FSM Council was taken over by the radical left, Marxist faction, led by Bettina Aptheker, I resigned and joined with the presidents of four other groups genuinely fighting (peacefully) for free speech on campus to help steer student protest toward genuine free speech. It was clear from Bettina’s speeches that she wanted to steer the movement toward violence. Our small group consisted of the presidents of the University Conservatives, University Young Democrats, Young Peoples Socialist League, Young Socialists and myself. We meet at 2:00 am every few days in the office of Professor Seymour Lipset because the YPSL president was his research assistant and had a key to Lipset’s office. Our goal was to represent to the University administration the broader student body commitment to genuine free speech and the exchange of different ideas.

December 2, two to three thousand students peaceably occupied Sproul Hall sitting in for two days. Mario Savio led the occupation with the following words:

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! Now, no more talking. We’re going to march in singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’” 

And Joan Baez stood there singing it as they walked in. In the early hours of December 4 Alameda police carried out and arrested 800 students.

For some reason our group of five moderate left and right wing groups were never interested in meeting with the Chancellor of the Berkeley campus, Edward Strong. Clark Kerr was the president of the whole university system and we ultimately met with him and made our case that his administration had not done a very sensible thing in clamping down on all of our traditional political activities. We argued that we thought there was a way of both satisfying the law and re-establishing our tradition of open, free speech that would satisfy everybody except Bettina Aptheker. Happily, this is what happened, in part by clarifying that student activities needed to be on the campus and not on the streets of Berkeley.

Sadly, we too often choose war when diplomacy would produce a better outcome.

Playing by the rules

This morning’s NYTimes proclaimed that:“The Biden administration, responding to the death of Aleksei A. Navalny, unveiled its largest sanctions package to date as the war in Ukraine enters its third year.”

On November 30, 2023, Phillip Dean Hancock was executed in Oklahoma. As the death penalty has been eliminated in most countries and such killing is considered immoral by millions of people around the world, what sanctions would be appropriate for them to impose on the U.S.?

A quite different case arises from killing an enemy in someone else’s country (aside from in war, where anything seems to be “allowed.”)  On February 13 of this year, Maxim Kuzminov, a former Russian military pilot who defected to Ukraine, was found dead with multiple bullet wounds in Villajoyosa, a city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. The murder is suspected to have been organized by Moscow. What measures should Spain take against Russia in response (hopefully the U.S. will keep its nose out of other people’s business—fat chance)?

On January 3, 2020, the U.S. assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, in Baghdad. More recently, on February 7, 2024, Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior commander in Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Iraqi militia, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. What measures should Iraq (and Iran) take against the U.S.?

The rule of law is a fundamental aspect of our freedoms and the prosperity it has made possible. The international rules based order is an extension of those principals internationally and has served, though imperfectly, the same purposes globally. The U.S. has become an Imperial power who doesn’t obey the rules it tries to impose on others. Thus, American influence in the world is declining rapidly. We will all suffer as a result.

Anne with an E

Several weeks ago I complained that the biggest winners of this year’s Emmy awards were series I had stopped watching after a few episodes because there were virtually no characters in them to like and the real world already has enough bad apples. In response to my complaint my former IMF colleague, Marta Castello Branco, who had been a member of the IMF technical assistance missions that I led to the central banks of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in 1992-3, recommended that I watch “Anne with an E.”  Boy was she right.

In three seasons with ten episodes each, “Anne with an E” follows the adventures of a brilliant, well-read but socially inept orphan girl adopted at the age of 13 by a relatively old brother and sister who had never married. The drama takes place in Canada around 1800. Anne is super smart and used her expansive imagination and extensive reading of the classics to survive the cruelties of 12 years in an orphanage before her adoption. She talks faster than a speeding bullet and is rarely quiet. The series is essentially about the coming of age experiences of children in a small farming community as seen largely through Anne’s eyes.

Being a homely red head, Anne’s growing up challenges are more than most, which can be difficult enough for the average child.  The series frankly and honestly treats the racial biases toward blacks, native Indians, gays, and other minorities at the time, the ugliness of school bullies, and the ridged moral codes of the towns people. But through the ups and downs of life most members of the farming community learn and grow in their understanding of their fellow community members.  Anne plays a large role in the struggle to make the world a better place while trying to understand her own place in it. There are plenty of people to like. The show is excellently cast and performed and gripping and uplifting. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Thank you Marta.

Trump’s second go

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently stated that:  “I don’t think people are voting for Trump because of his family values. If you just take a step back and are honest, he’s kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration, he grew the economy quite well, tax reform worked. He was right about some of China….  I don’t like how Trump said things, but he wasn’t wrong about those critical issues. That’s why they’re voting for him. People should be more respectful of our fellow citizens. When you guys have people up here [on a CNBC panel] you always ask them why — not like it’s a binary thing that you’re supporting Trump or you’re not supporting him– but why are you supporting him.” “Jamie Dimon on Trump”

In addition, during Trump’s administration many excessive regulations were revoked or reduced. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos promoted school choice and restore due process to college rape cases. Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reduced greenhouse gas emissions, improved water quality, and cleaned up contaminated sites while strengthening cost benefit assessments of environmental regulations. And much more.

His administration did many bad things as well.  His advisors Stephen Miller and Peter Navarro implemented protectionist, buy American trade policies that hurt our economy. His crazy withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership was an ill advised gift to China. He Imposed a travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program, separated families at the US-Mexico border and withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which was designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Trump’s promise to leave Afghanistan was not kept (and was later very badly executed by President Biden). His initial love affairs with North Korea’s President Kim Jong Un and China’s Xi Jinping exploded into hostility. If reelected Trump promises revenge against his enemies. He promises to strip tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections in order to dismantle the “deep state.” He promises to impose tariffs on all imported good and to revoke the visas of students studying in the U.S. who are critical of the U.S. None of these is keeping with the traditions and policies that have helped make America great.

On the other hand, I hope that he would keep his promise not to send American soldiers to Taiwan should China attack it militarily, which would be insane. Whether we would get the better or worse policies under another Trump administration would also depend on the team that he would bring with him.

Trump’s small-minded pettiness, dishonesty, vindictiveness, and egotism are on daily display. He is not someone I would invite into my home. But we are right to look at the policies he pledges and is likely to pursue if elected President again in 2024. As with his previous administration, his next one, if reelected, will depend on those who join and run his administration.

My expectation is that Trump will be more careful next time to choose loyalists rather than the most capable. It is also likely that the most capable people would refuse to be part of another Trump administration. I expect the worst.

The Houthi’s and Us

After almost a decade of trying to end Saudi Arabian bombing of the Houthi government in Northern Yemen, President Biden has ordered multiple American bombing attacks on Northern Yemen because of Houthi attacks on ships sending arms to Israel in support of its genocide in Gaza. You might need to read that sentence again to get all its parts.

The first point is that once again the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the Congress must authorize war before the President can launch one, has been violated. And why did Biden think it necessary to bomb Yemen? Because the Houthi attacks were interfering with our shipment of weapons to Israel in support of Israel’s vicious murder of Palestinians by bombing and starvation. “The group’s official spokesman reiterated that attacks on vessels transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait toward the Suez Canal will continue until “Gaza [receives] the food and medicine it needs.” That shouldn’t be hard to accomplish.

Even if the US Congress authorized the American bombing of Yemen, it would be bad policy for the U.S., for the Palestinians, and for Israel. “Weighing additional US responses to Houthi Red Sea attacks” America’s interest should be peace and prosperity for all in the Middle East (and all the world). Supporting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza does not serve that goal and makes the U.S. complicit in Israel’s genocide. Moreover, Europe’s relative silence and the silence of any of us to Israel’s inhuman war in Gaza (including Biden, Trump and Nikki Haley) makes them all complicit. “War in Gaza exposes European philosophy ethically bankrupt”

The march toward the aridification of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank is too unbelievably savage to spell out. Such a fate should not be wished on any people. “Unfolding genocide as ever single person in Gaza goes hungry” “Israel’s Netanyahu its Cromwell”

But this war, following a century of Zionist mistreatment of Palestinians in their homeland, is destroying Israel. “Israel is facing existential threats from inside and out-there’s one solution” Israel is committing suicide. To survive, Israel must become a secular democratic state that give equal rights and fair treatment to all who inhabit it. “One state solution for Palestine/Israel”

U.S. leadership is failing once again and is waning. The lust for war by the hawks has overpowered American self-interest once again. War with Iran can’t be far behind. Taiwan can wait (a bit).  “Gaza and Yemen sound death knell for US led rules based global order”

One State Solution for Palestine/Israel

I have long supported the “two state solution” for the Levant envisioned by the Oslo Accords. I led IMF technical assistance teams that launched the Palestine Monetary Authority as called for in the Oslo Accords. “Oslo-the Play”   After listening to the following presentation by two very knowledgeable Jews, I have changed my mind: Max Blumenthal & Miko Peled 

In supporting a Two State Solution I had assumed that the alternative One State Solution had to be a democratic Jewish state as sought by Zionists, which would have required that Israel eliminate, one way or another, enough Palestinians to establish and retain a large Jewish majority. This is, of course, exactly the policy Israel had followed since its founding and most conspicuously in its current devastating attack on Palestinians in Gaza.  “A one state solution”

Miko Peled, the son of a distinguished Israeli general, proposes a One State Solution in which Israel’s Jews give up its being a Jewish State. Rather Israel, from the River to the Sea, would be a democratic state in which all residence would enjoy equal treatment under the law. But can Zionists be convinced to support a secular Israel of Jews and Palestinian, both the descendance of Abraham. In a recent meeting of the Committee for the Republic, Rabbi Yaakov Shapiroargued that Zionism is antisemitic and should be repudiated:  “Antizionism is not Antisemitic”

In a realistic assessment of the current situation, Natan Sachs argues that neither a one state nor two state solution is possible any time soon because of the lack of trust on both sides after 70 years of oppressive Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and the vicious attack on Israel by Hamas on Oct 7. However, he argues that continuing to kick the can down the road has been a disaster and must end. The U.S., now providing the bombs with which Israel is slaughtering innocent Palestinian men, women, and children, must order an immediate ceasefire before millions in Gaza starve to death and the war escalates to Lebanon and beyond.  “UN Human Rights Experts warm of unfolding Genocide in Gaza”

The U.S. must also use it considerable leverage to end new Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Settler (and Israeli Army) abuse of Palestinians living there and strengthen the Palestinian Authority. Since WWII the U.S. has given Israel more than $260 billion in foreign assistance (over $3.3 billion annually in recent years), more than to any other country.

“It is time, rather, to couple a political horizon with serious, transformative, solution-oriented yet hard-nosed conflict management: imperfect, messy, halting, unsatisfactory for all, and yet preferable by far to the current reality…. The United States must set the ground rules for the long interim period before true conflict resolution might be possible and enforce these rules vigorously…. Even if a solution to the conflict is currently unavailable, aimlessly kicking the can down the road is not a reasonable strategy. That approach was not conflict management; it was a strategy that allowed the conflict to manage both sides.”  “Peace between Israelis and Palestinian remains possible”

In my view a single state with full citizenship with equal rights for all inhabitance would be the best long run outcome but it will not be easy and will take time for interim Israeli occupation to build mutual confidence for drafting and adopting such a constitution (like England, Israel does not have a written constitution). Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other parts of greater Israel housing important Jewish, Islamic and Christian sites must be fully protected by religious liberty provisions of the constitution.  While such an outcome will take many years to achieve, interim measures must build to that outcome.

From the River to the Sea

I oppose the death penalty, but on occasion have said (and perhaps written) that I am tempted to relax my opposition for those who deliberately spread lies (or bomb babies). This is my cherished right in the U.S. where we enjoy (still to some extent) our freedom to say whatever we want. I strongly oppose antisemitic statements as well as false claims that condemning acts of the Israeli government is antisemitic. But I defend the right of people to says such things (but would never invite them to my home). It is also my right to condemn their rudeness.

The demonstrations of Jewish (Israeli) and Arab (Palestinian) students condemning Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza (and increased violence against Palestinians in the West Bank) are understandably intense. To be clear, violence from demonstrators toward anyone (such as blocking access to class) is not protected by our First Amendment right to free speech and would be certainly condemned by me. But shouting death to the Palestinians or to the Jews without actual threats of violence is protected. The First Amendment is not needed to protect speech we agree with or like but speech we disagree with and/or are offended by. The benefits of such freedom in our society are huge but seem to need renewed support.

I am particularly annoyed by deliberate distortions of the meaning of chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” I share that aspiration. Indeed, everyone from the river to the sea should be free. Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, was censured by House lawmakers for saying it.

Unfortunately, disapproval and disagreement have morphed into inappropriate sanctions:

“The brother of a British-Israeli man who had been killed during Hamas’ attack on 7 October…

 told the BBC that he found the marches in the UK for Gaza upsetting and intimidating. Chants like ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ were, he observed, evidence of deep-rooted and growing antisemitism in British society.

“The problem is not just that many British Jews assume the UK has an antisemitism problem based on a highly dubious interpretation of the chant’s meaning. It is that establishment media organisations are echoing that misunderstanding and treating it as more newsworthy than Israel killing Palestinian babies, with the UK government’s blessing. It is just one illustration of a pattern of reporting by western media outlets skewing their news priorities in ways that reveal a racist hierarchy of concern. Jewish fears are of greater import than actual Palestinian deaths, even babies’ deaths. 

“The hypocrisy is especially hard to stomach, given a central Israeli justification for its subsequent genocidal rampage through Gaza. Israel promoted the claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 Israeli babies on 7 October – a story that was widely reported as fact, even though no evidence was ever produced for it.”  “Israel-Palestine war: Gaza slogan bigger news than murder of babies”

New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s attack on the President of MIT, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania for defending free (if repugnant) speech was particularly disgusting and alarming. The President of the U of Penn, Liz Magill, was evening forced to resign. While there may be some grey areas between shouting that all Arabs or all Jews (or Trumpeters) should die and actually threatening their lives, the attacks we have been seeing on the freedom to say nasty things is dangerous to a valued American institution. So is the increasing loss of civility (good manners). To preserve (or reestablish) the society we cherish, we need to use our freedom to speak to defend both speech and manners.

One of our Strengths

Two sights/thoughts are sure to bring tears to my eyes. One is seeing a child loose hope for its future. Almost nothing is sadder. The other is seeing people fighting for causes they believe in to help another person or society more generally. These happy tears are a response to the goodness in people.

But not everyone shares the same view of what the right cause is. Our founding fathers had the great wisdom to know that only by confronting the arguments for opposing views could we hope to find common ground or at least to understand and respect other views even if we did not share them and thus live peacefully together. So, in the very first Amendment to our constitutions (the Bill of Rights) they established that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

We seem to be coming out of the sad generation over protected by “helicopter moms” who were so afraid of hearing something they might disagree with that they tried to ban such speech or demonstrations in direct violation of our Constitution. But the dangerous and pathetic Woke generation seems to be passing. The sharply different views over the tragic war in Israel and Palestine are testing our commitment to the wisdom of free speech and step by step that wisdom seems to be winning.

While the Millennials (the scardicat, afraid of their shadows generation mom kept from developing protective skins) tried to shut down and prevent encounters (speeches, demonstrations, etc.) that might offend their views (sought “safe spaces”), Gen Z seems to be reverting to the openness and search for the truth championed by our founding fathers.

There have always been some dissenters in every generation. Sadly a few people are just nasty (redneck fascist types). It’s hard for me to know how to characterize an adult like Governor DeSantis who cancels the self-governance contract with Disneyland and ordered the ban of the pro-Palestinian student group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) from university campuses in Florida, because he doesn’t like what they are saying. “A Land of Immigrants”

We should go out of our way to hear views we might disagree with, but to be construction we should urge our “opponents” to debate politely, to be civil, and do so ourselves.  Name calling, for example calling criticism of the Israeli government “antisemitism,” does not contribute to better mutual understanding of difficult issues. Our demonstrations should always be peaceful. We have work to do on those fronts, but the urge to ban seems to be retreating. The following article about the evolving situation of opposing views on the Israeli/Hamas/Gaza wars is encouraging to me and well worth reading. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-facing-suspension-mit-university-students-continue-pro-palestine-advocacy

Vivian Silver and Hamas

Vivian Silver, ”a 74-year-old Canadian Israeli peace activist, had vanished from her duplex in Kibbutz Beeri” on Oct 7 and is now one of the 242 hostages held by Hamas following their savage assault on Israel that killed 1,400 men women and children. “Israel war peace activist sons”

Israelis were and are divided over how Israel should respond to this attack. As of this writing (Nov 8) Israel’s bombing and ground attacks have killed over 10,000 Palestinians over half of them women and children. This ratio of Palestinians killed to Israelis killed (10 to 1.4) is about the same as the average over the last 50 years.

Israel’s savage attack on the people of Gaza was, in the words of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, “revenge”.  “Defending Israel”  But at a meeting in Jerusalem of hostage families, including Vivian’s two sons, Eli Cohen, the country’s foreign minister claimed that “Military pressure… would give Israel leverage in a hostage negotiation.”

Yonatan Zeigen, one of Vivian’s two sons, “believed that a ground invasion was not just bad strategy — it was immoral. It was a line Vivian might have said.”

Some days later while visiting the ruined remains of his mother’s home a solder leading a military tour of the ruins asked Yonatan: “’What do you think needs to be done about the hostages?’ And maybe it was because of where they stood, a few feet from his mother’s bedroom. Or because he was tired of trying to veil his opinions. This time, he made the moral argument.

“‘A cease-fire to save them,’ Yonatan replied.

“’Because the fighting puts them at risk?’ the soldier asked.

“’Yes, and I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.’

“’You don’t think it’s right to kill the terrorists?’

“’I think first we need to focus on the kidnapped people, and then make a major shift, and that will not come from war but from peace.’”

All of the above quotes are from the Washington Post article linked above. I recommend that you read it. I quote it at length to emphasize that every war casualty is an actual person with families and loved one impacted by their tragedy and that Israeli public opinion is very divided.

Hamas’ attack on Oct 7 was vicious and must be thoroughly condemned. Anger is a natural and understandable reaction, but it is not wise to determine how Israel can best protect itself from such atrocities in the future out of anger. Revenge is for foolish children. “Israel’s war in Gaza and Genocide” “Palestinian citizens Gaza war enemies”

Why did Hamas do what they did? Asking that question and seeking honest answers is not to forgive their atrocities but is necessary input to the development of a reaction that serves Israel best long run interest (which is living peacefully with its neighbors). We need to know and face up to Israel’s history of brutal treatment of the Palestinians they drove off their land to create Israel and those that continue to live in the so called West Bank and Gaza Strip. “Palestine Israel in perspective”

The brutal treatment of the Jews over their long history is well known and must not be forgotten either.

During one of my first visits to Israel to help implement the Oslo Accords provision for a Palestine Monetary Authority, I was driven by a very lovely estate in East Jerusalem by one of my Palestinian counterparts. She said: “that was my home and the home of my ancestors until the Jews drove us out. But I have given up demanding my ‘right of return’.” In 1948, Israeli forces drove an estimated 750,000 Palestinians out of their homes during the creation of Israel. In 1948, Israeli forces drove 750,000 Palestinians out in the Nakba – The Washington Post  The illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank aim to complete the job. “Amid the mourning Israel’s settlement enterprise celebrates a great victory”

Israel will not enjoy, and flourish in, peace until it establishes just relations with its Palestinian neighbors. But the necessary two state solution outlined in the Oslo Accords is hampered by an incompetent Palestine Authority. I don’t generally favor excessive American interference in other countries affairs, but we must stop allowing Israel’s illegal settlements and their mistreatment of Palestinians and must more actively promote an effective and honest Palestinian government. We have the financial and other leverage to do so.

Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, makes similar points that are well worth reading:   “Dominique de Villepin-on-the-conflict-in-Palestine”