13 senators are proposing an amendment to the Ukraine and Israel aid bill that would call for specific reports and condition military aid to all recipients on adherence to U.S. and international law. Sen. Van Hollen, who serves on the appropriation and foreign relations committee and is one of my own Senators, is one of the sponsors, who shared his rationale in a December 6 op-ed.
I’m speaking strictly in my personal capacity here and am not an expert on this conflict nor on the laws of war, but security assistance is a topic I’ve studied and written about. This is a measure that mainly seeks to reinforce existing law and policy, notably the Leahy Law and Biden Administration’s update to the conventional arms transfer policy. I hope it is the final bill, but even failing that I think it’s important to get Congressional Democrats on the record on their position here. There are ongoing debates within the Biden administration, some of which have a generational character as for younger officials most of their experience with the conflict has been shaped by the divisive incompetence of Prime Minister Netanyahu and steadily expanding settlement activity that undermine any hope of a two state solution.
On the larger conflict I’ve found the reporting of Ezra Klein to be particularly useful, but also depressing, as it does make clear the extent to which the two sides were not ripe for agreement even before the horrendous terror attacks by Hamas and the deaths of over 15,000 civilians and thousands of children from Israel’s counter-attack. I’d specifically recommend and have included gift links to the episodes with Amjad Iraqi and Yossi Klein Halevi on Palestinian and Israeli perspectives, respectively.
My own druthers is that Robert Pape has it right, and a highly targeted counterterrorism campaign against Hamas plus unilateral steps towards a two state solution is the best path forward for Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu will almost certainly not take such steps, but there is room for establishing what the U.S. ask is here, even if there’s no plausible Palestinian partner in part due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s allowing Qatari money to reach Hamas to keep Palestinian leadership divided.
Finally, I think the passions of this political argument make sense. There are many dead, the U.S. is a both a funder and major arms provider to one side, and hopes for peace are increasingly out of reach. However, these debates have been replete on all sides with Manichean thinking that passion is often ill suited to judging hard problems and for persuading others in the United States to pursue a better course of action.
I find compelling the criticism of the weight the Israeli military is putting on civilian lives and the larger restrictions of the flow of aid, let alone the outrageous statements by some in the Israeli government that lay groundwork for ethnic cleansing. I think the classic elements of just war theory, both proportionality and whether the war has a genuine chance of success, are highly relevant to the war in Gaza but that expansive definitions of genocide are not helpful either for stopping industrial killing or large scale civilian deaths in wars. There are no complexities to condemning Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine, but I think that is also not genocide, with possible specific exceptions like spiriting away children in an attempt to kill a Ukrainian identity.
Within the United States, there does appear to be rising anti-Semitism as well as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry. I also think that expanding the definition of antisemitism to include anti-Zionism is counterproductive to fighting anti-Jewish bigotry. Both need to be fought and, at least based on statistics provided by advocacy organizations, anti-Semitism in particular was a burgeoning problem even before the war, which seems consistent with what I’ve been seeing online and hearing from some Jewish friends. I do not think, despite thoughtful arguments by advocates, that a one state solution is at all plausible. And while Israel’s history has ties to the history of European colonialism, I reject referring to those favoring a Jewish state within Israel’s 1948 borders, or something like them, as settler-colonialists. While someone embracing an opposing form of nationalism or lefties that critique the founding of most states may be wrong and counterproductive to achieving peace, that does not make their views illegitimate.
In closing, this is bloody hard and I certainly may be wrong in some of my views. I am still working through how much leverage I think the U.S. has, though if leverage is absent that may suggest pulling back regardless. But I did want to share my views in part to give friends and colleagues a chance to argue against me if they desire it. Rarely do we reach the sort of prudent calculus necessary in this conflict in isolation and without giving others a chance to critique our specific views.
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