Robert Reich has been referenced here many times. December 14, Professor Reich published a piece on Substack about the current Middle East conflict. It is worth amplification.
Reich describes meeting with students to discuss tragic events in Gaza and Israel. It was a mixed group, some Jewish, some Palestinian, and some with other backgrounds. They sought common ground as they examined what basic moral principles were at stake. Conclusions the group determined:
- 1. What Hamas did on October 7 was morally despicable.
- 2. Hamas’s avowed aim to murder all Jews is morally despicable.
- 3. What the Israeli government has done since then in Gaza is also morally despicable.
- 4. The murder or kidnapping of innocent civilians is morally wrong.
- 5. Israel’s policies toward Palestinians have been segregation and discrimination, based on ethnicity and religion, which are morally wrong.
- 6. It is morally wrong to urge genocide against any group — whether they constitute a religion, ethnicity, race, or nation.
- 7. All of us have a moral obligation to do everything within our power to prevent and stop all forms of genocide, all killing of innocent civilians, and the promotion of hate.
Few would be surprised that segregation and discrimination lead to deadly disputes in a region that has experienced conflicts for millennia. A two-state solution seems a necessity for establishing peace in the area, but Jerusalem lawyer Daniel Seidemann says that might require relocation to Israel of 200,000 Jewish settlers. He says Israel has the capacity but “does not have the will to relocate one settler.“
I suspect only strict international sanctions would prompt Israel’s acceptance of a two-state solution. But those sanctions will not be applied as long as major Western nations continue to have little regard for people whose ancestors have populated the region for thousands of years.
The present situation is appalling by any measure. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is conducted not just on the battlefield. It is also waged in Western media. Despite pressure, the usually pro-Israel New York Times reported November 25:
While wartime death tolls will never be exact, experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century.
People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.
Precise comparisons of war dead are impossible, but conflict-casualty experts have been taken aback at just how many people have been reported killed in Gaza — most of them women and children — and how rapidly.
Many Western media outlets display bias in reporting. Notice the outsized attention paid to the IDF killing three Israelis compared to 75,000 Palestinian casualties. Emma Paling of The Breach reported that CBC News’ The National featured 42 per cent more Israeli voices than Palestinian in its first month of coverage and the public broadcaster barred employees from sharing outside journalism about Gaza, contradicting CBC’s general policy.
During World War I, decisions concerning the future of Palestine were made by powerful nations without much concern for people living in the region. BBC provides a simplified history of Israel and Palestine in the last 110 years. This is part:
Britain took control of the area known as Palestine following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled that part of the Middle East, in World War One.
The land was inhabited by a Jewish minority and Arab majority, as well as other, smaller ethnic groups.
Tensions between the two peoples grew when the international community gave the UK the task of establishing a “national home” in Palestine for Jewish people.
To Jews, Palestine was their ancestral home, but Palestinian Arabs also claimed the land and opposed the move.
In 1947, the UN voted for Palestine to be split into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem becoming an international city.
In 1948, Britain withdrew and Jewish leaders declared the creation of the State of Israel.
In a war in 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as most of the Syrian Golan Heights, Gaza and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula.
Most Palestinian refugees and their descendants live in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in neighbouring Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Neither they nor their descendants have been allowed by Israel to return to their homes – Israel says this would overwhelm the country and threaten its existence as a Jewish state.
In the past 50 years, Israel has built settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where more than 700,000 Jews now live. Settlements are held to be illegal under international law – that is the position of the UN Security Council and the UK government, among others – although Israel rejects this.
Categories: International
in-sights.ca 
It has long been said that the first casualty of war is the truth.
Morality must rank a very close second.
I’m currently re-reading Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World”, and in light of Norm’s latest article on morals was struck by this passage:
“What realm of human endeavour is not morally ambiguous? Even folk institutions that purport to give us advice on behavior and ethics seem fraught with contradictions. Consider aphorisms. Haste makes waste. Yes, but a stitch in time saves nine. Better safe than sorry; but nothing ventured nothing gained. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire; but you can’t tell a book by its cover. A penny saved is a penny earned; but you can’t take it with you. He who hesitates is lost; but fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Two heads are better than one; but too many cooks spoil the broth. There was a time when people planned or justified their actions on the basis of such contradictory platitudes. What is the moral responsibility of the aphorist? Or the Sun-sign astrologer, the Tarot card reader, the tabloid prophet?
Or consider the mainstream religions. We are enjoined in Micah to do justly and love mercy; in Exodus we are forbidden to commit murder; in Leviticus we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves; and in the Gospels we are urged to love our enemies. Yet think of the rivers of blood spilled by fervent followers of the books in which these well-meaning exhortations are embedded. In Joshua and in the second half of Numbers is celebrated the mass murder of men, women, children, down to the domestic animals in city after city across the whole land of Canaan. Jericho is obliterated in a kherem, a “holy war”. The only justification offered for this slaughter is the mass murderers’ claim that, in exchange for circumcising their sons and adopting a particular set of rituals, their ancestors were long before promised that this land was their land. Not a hint of self-reproach, not a muttering of patriarchal or divine disquiet at these campaigns of extermination can be dug out of holy scripture. Instead, Joshua ‘destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded’ (Joshua 10:40). And these events are not incidental, but central to the main narrative thrust of the Old Testament. Similar stories of mass murder (and in the case of the Amalekites, genocide) can be found in the books of Saul, Esther, and elsewhere in the Bible, with hardly a pang of moral doubt. It was all, of course, troubling to liberal theologians of a later age.
It is properly said that the Devil can “quote Scripture to his purpose.” The Bible is full of so many stories of contradictory moral purpose that every generation can find scriptural justification for nearly any action it proposes – from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to Judaism and Christianity. You can find it deep within Islam, the Hindu tradition, indeed nearly all the world’s religions. Perhaps then it is not so much scientists as people who are morally ambiguous.”
Sagan’s words could have been written with the current hostilities surrounding Gaza in mind. Except that it seems to me that rather than ambiguous morals, there seems a definite lack thereof. And as convinced as all sides are that their ultimate goal is morally sound, the terrible means they use in an attempt to achieve the end are likely to continue unabated.
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The 7 principles are good. However, number 7 is not attainable. Human nature and vested interests will prevent that. In most conflicts its about land and money and neither side wants to give it up. Its just not the fight between Hamas and Israel but look around the world. China wants Taiwan, Argentine wants another country for its oil, parts of Africia are fighting constantly over who gets what. Canada, N.Z., Australia, who signed their statement, are still not through with treating Indigenous People as if they weren’t human beings. The Rohinda are being murdered, it just goes on and on. Moti has treated Muslims terribely and violated their human rights.
the “settlers” need to get out of where they are. Now Israel says it would be hard to aborb them but the majority are from the U.S.A. Now of course any one who is jewish can apply for Israeli citizenship or has a Jewish parent or Grandparent.
The 3 Hamas leaders living in Quatar have acquired billions and they’re not going to give that money up or their life style. Two have about $3BILLION and one has only $2BILLION. How they got it? Well 12% of children in Gaza die from dirty water, that was prior to the current war
Principles are always nice, as long as they don’t impact you and yours. Not much is going to change in Gaza, West Bank and Israel. Anti Semitism is alive and well in this world and has been for centures. Its just now, the Jewish people have a homeland and they’ve armed it. As they used to say, Never Again.
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The failure to acknowledge or analyze the historical fact of Zionism as a European colonial, racist, genocidal ideology blinds one from understanding the tragedy of Palestine, let alone purporting to promote resolutions.
The propaganda that we all swim in has proven to be exceptionally effective thus far.
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I would say “…European and North American colonial, racist, genocidal ideology…”
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I agree that USA backing of Zionism is critical today but still believe it is important to recognize the ideology’s roots in late 1800’s early 1900’s Germany amidst the growth of many nationalist movements in Europe at the time.
I found this link to be thought provoking for its crisp assertions many of which I was not aware.
Solidarity
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/israeli-colonialism-must-be-abolished
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