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A defensive war means you were attacked. It does not mean ‘you were attacked for no good reason’. I’m sure there were plenty of Nazi propagandists who could have developed an excellent reason for their invasion of France: “The Versailles treaty was such an evil, it might as well have been an act of war!”
I think you need to flesh out your idea of what exactly constitutes ‘initiating’ and ‘unjustified violence’. I am willing to grant that the initial Zionist colonization of Israel was an injustice to the Palestinians living there, though not a particularly unique injustice historically speaking. I do not see how this gives Palestinians moral carte blanche to assault Israel from now until the end of eternity. At some point they need to accept the facts on the ground. I do not think the Germans would be justified in nuking London in 2024 because in their moral calculus the WW2 bombing of Germany was immoral. I do not think the Turks need to give Istanbul back to the Greeks.
History is a continuum. Nobody ever really ‘started it’
I see this as a category error. America killed half a million Japanese civilians in response to a surprise attack on a military installation which killed 2,500 sailors. Was this wildly out of proportion? The question doesn’t really make sense. There is no version of WW2 where the USA says “right boys, we gave the Japs a good drubbing at Midway, now we’re even stevens.”
Israel is not looking for ‘even stevens’, they are seeking to disarm an enemy which has declared war on them. Any amount of violence is justifiable to achieve such a goal, as long as reasonable efforts are made to direct that violence away from civilian targets.
Because they never end. Both parties think they are in the right, that their escalation is justified. They only finish when one side dominates the other into abandoning their claim.
Be careful what you wish for. Gazan culture (in the broadest possible interpretation of the term) is totally unfit to survive. They cannot exist on their own, and are kept alive only by massive infusions of resources provided by a world which has developed 20th century morality and understands the term ‘humanitarian crisis’. No regional power before the 20th century would ever suffer to have such a dangerous neighbor. Rome, for example, would never have tolerated an aggressive barbarian tribe 100 miles from the capital; They would have been annihilated.
To be clear, if Israel subscribed to your morality, then they would grind Gaza to nothing; Scatter the population to the 4 winds and kill any who resist. We would not be talking about 1% dead as if it were a big number. Such a thing is, historically, the norm.
I feel like I have to reiterate this too many times, but I don't mean to implore Israel to stop; I just want to implore my country (/the Western countries) to stop helping Israel. It can't be helped if people put their self-interest over morality, but as I see it we have no interest in the well-being of Israel.
(Same for your Rome argument; if Rome built its capital in Barbarian territory and got annihilated, sucks for them, but my neck of the woods is not obliged to send them aid.)
Uh, I think that in the ideal case the blood feud ends when both parties recognise that they have done approximately equal damage to each other, and does a greater deal to discourage blood being spilt to begin with. The ancient Scandinavians had a system of blood feuds, but outside of some degenerate cases like Iceland their society survived and prospered.
Again, I'm viewing this from my perspective, not some Kantian "I must deem the Israelis/Germans wrong and stop helping them <=> the Israelis/Germans must realise they are in the wrong themselves and take the boot to the face" universal-or-bust one. If the Germans actually thought the WW2 bombing of Germany was immoral and kept suffering from the consequences, then yes, they should go ahead and nuke London. I would think they are wrong and the Brits are right and send aid to the Brits in that case, without thinking that the Germans are committing any moral mistake beyond just getting the initial moral calculus wrong.
I think Israel-on-Palestine is almost as close to Israel having unambiguously started it as any of those things get in history. Their ancestors were driven out of Israel by Romans almost 2k years ago, the ancestors of the Palestinians always universally treated the Jews that stayed behind or made it back better than any other major power of the day, and the invading Israelis had no meaningful cultural ties to the area remaining apart from a carefully nursed religious belief. Then some Germans go genocidal on the Jews, and the answer of the allied powers that defeat Germany is to... enable the Jews to invade and displace the Palestinians? In what world was this a sane and just solution, as opposed to the obvious choice of carving out Israel from the defeated Axis powers? With some care you could even have used a part of Italy, finally avenging the original sin from two thousand years ago.
I am trying to understand your position, so please let me know if I have got this right:
• Israel is inherently bad/unjust, by the nature of it's creation.
• Because of this, there is nothing that Israel can do that would be good/just, excepting perhaps to dissolve itself.
•Similarly, there is nothing that Palestinians could possibly do to Israel that would be bad/unjust, and no Israeli response to any Palestinian action (excepting perhaps to just take a bloody nose) could be good/just
•You do not implore Israel to stop. I think this is not because you think Israel is justified in any moral sense, (i.e. blood feud) but because you acknowledge that asking Israel to behave justly under your model would be asking the impossible. You simply ask that uninvolved actors act according to the 'Israel is inherently bad' idea
Is this fair? If so, what separates Israel from all previous historical colonisations, or even conquests? Why don't the Turks have to give Istanbul back to the Greeks? Would Aborigines in Australia/Canada/America be justified in waging war against their colonisers? Would their colonisers be justified in defending themselves?
If not, what actions could Israel take, short of dissolving itself or losing its identity as a Jewish state, that would allow it to achieve the status of a state which is allowed to defend itself, in your eyes?
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