Intent to Kill

>> But different cultures react to constant threat differently. <<

There is some variation, yes. It's also worth remembering that certain responses have been found across a wide range of populations -- there are assorted ways that constant stress can change the human body, like alterations in brain chemistry. I suspect those cluster more tightly than the outward manifestations.

>> That's the worldview that I, and most Jews, grew up with. <<

*nod* It certainly plays into the current situation.

Given that worldview, killing everyone who's against you actually makes sense.

>> The problem, of course, is that the worldview is wrong. At least partially. But that's what we grow up with, anyway.<<

You have put the problem very succinctly and colorfully. Prevailing and repeated evidence can very easily seem to be uniform and complete evidence, if one is not aware of the tendency for that to happen and willing to put some work into countering it. That is not easy. But if you don't do it, you wind up with this blind spot, and at any time something could fly out of there and cream you because you weren't watching for it, you were watching for this other thing that is usually the danger ... until it wasn't.

My grasp of history, among other things, has left me with a lingering distaste for Germany (among others). But about the third or fourth time I ran across something conspicuously clueful from that part of the world, I thought, "Well, crud, I can't just go on ignoring this -- what if something really important is happening over there?" So I had to start watching for repetitions, and indeed a pattern began to take shape. I'm too much of a world-watcher and pattern-senser and scholar to let it slide indefinitely. It's still uncomfortable, although it's getting less so as the scales start to even out somewhat (to say nothing of my intermittent tendency to piss off German and German-friendly readers). I don't always have the energy or patience to do it, but I keep trying, because I'm considerably less comfortable with too big of a blind spot. I have the advantages of having been knocked around by the world rather less, and an education that also included examples of blindsided disasters.

So then, the question loops back around to, how does a traumatized culture teach itself -- or learn from others -- how to become healthy? How do they do that in a way that revives or grows anew their culture, without simply copying from somebody else a version that may not fit well for them? Because right now, what they've learned is mostly stuff from people they hate, who hate them, who abused them ... and they're repeating the cycle by abusing others in extremely disturbingly similar ways. The cycle of oppression and abuse is terribly difficult to break for precisely that reason: it's self-perpetuating.

That is very similar to another vicious circle, child abuse. How does an abused child who grew up with few or no healthy role models, for whom authority was always or almost always a threat rather than a support ... grow up to become a healthy adult and a nurturing parent? Usually, they don't. The rates of suicide, self-harm, domestic violence, substance abuse, child abuse, and other disasters are notably higher in that population; and the number of "survivors" who are fully functional is very small. Part of that is stunted personality from growing up in a toxic environment; part is lack of skills; and part is physical harm down to very subtle biochemical and brain wiring levels. Some of that can be repaired, sometimes, with a great deal of work; but sometimes the damage is just permanent, beyond any current culture's ability to mend. I'm not sure all of it is treatable even if you assembled all the best options from every culture's trove, and nobody does that. So there the problem is, rolling down the slope of history and crushing people in its path.

I am of two minds on the topic of "helping" other nations or individuals. One premise is that, if someone tells you firmly to leave them alone, you do so, because invading someone else's life usually does more harm than good and can deprive them of necessary learning opportunities. Another is that there's a level of doom beyond which it is not moral to let things continue to get worse, because the damage from unwanted intervention is less than that of what is already happening. I'm not sure where Israel really is on that scale, which means I tend to default to "don't mess with it" if asked. The fact that Israel demands both favors and autonomy alternately ... muddies the water there, and is another symptom of dysfunction.

Two things that are fairly clear in my mind: 1) When an individual or nation is being persistently violent and destructive to self and/or others, outside of self-defense prompted by immediate assault, it is a bad idea to give them more resources for causing further harm. That may not stop them, but it will at least slow them down and maybe buy some time for a more positive outcome to occur. By not contributing to the problem, one also avoids sharing the moral burden for the mayhem. 2) When an individual or nation that's having problems, or has had problems, actually does something right and decent, it is a good idea to shower them with praise in hopes of encouraging further growth in that direction. (YMMV.)

In order to change the people, you have to change the context, i.e. the world. But the world of humanity is made of people; in order to change the world, you have to change the people. Chicken and egg. And the stakes are too high to let that situation continue, forever, without trying to change it -- even if all you can do from where you're at is poke at the complicated steaming mess and ponder how the bits go together, in hopes that someday somebody will think of something.

>> Israel is in a very complex military situation. It needs a military that can deal with complex problems in creative and restrained ways. It needs to be able to use appropriate and limited force.<<

I agree.

>> The problem is that its entire military is 18 to 20 years old -- including many of the people in decision-making capacities.<<

Ah, that explains much. They're all still razor-sharp from training ... haven't had time to wear down to a more versatile selection of fillet knives, steak knives, and axes. Not enough time to build experience, either.

>> Our world has become complex enough that I think that countries need militaries composed of people who are at least in their mid-twenties or older.<<

*ponder* I wouldn't throw out the younger soldiers, because they do have their uses. But I would like to see a lot more diversity in terms of age (and gender, etc.) to enable more resilient and layered response options.

>> It's not that Israel is uncivilized: Israel is rather immature, and seriously traumatized.<<

Hrm. I think I'd shuffle the order: traumatized, immature, in a lousy location, and therefore manifesting a variety of dysfunctional behaviors. The end result of that is "uncivilized" by my standard, but it's a different flavor of uncivilized than, say, a country that can't hold a government together for 10 years running or a country that is being mismanaged by a military dictator. Since the root causes are different, the effective solutions are likely to be different.

Traumatized ... is on the fringes of my expertise, and better left to experts. I can surmise that study of nonviolent conflict resolution might be helpful, along with a lot more exploration of both Judaism and Israel's positive-flow culture. You've got a chunk of land, but land doesn't make a nation. Now that you've got ground to stand on, what do you want to do with it? How do Judaism and Israel express themselves as positive concepts, rather than negative reactions to a lot of historical attempts at extermination? There's a deep well of potential there, but a lot of it is untapped or insufficiently coherent. The one thing they bullseyed was language revival. How damaged are the older Israeli people, who fled there from historic horrors? How damaged are the younger generations by that background and the neighboring disasters and what-all else? How much of that damage is reparable, and what can be done to fix it, in hopes of producing healthier and happier people and a more functional nation? Figuring that out is a lot more work, only some of which is accessible to outsiders.

Immature ... only time will solve the core of that. However, a great deal of improvement could be made by examining what other countries have done right and wrong, emulating the former and avoiding mistakes made by the latter. With the founding of America, people did that, and some of the ideas were brilliant and the ideals valiant, although the execution has often fallen far short of the aim. Judaism has a downright epic tradition of scholarly study and logical argument, the potential of which far exceeds current applications.

This raises the question: How long are other countries and the world at large willing to watch Israel flailing around like this? How long is a fair chance to launch a nation, however much damage is done in the learning process? How long is too long to wait while damage is being done, and you should've concluded already that this was not going to work and taken the knife away from the toddler? Those answers I don't have. I am past the point of being comfortable with America's continued funding of Israeli military. Humanitarian aid is different; I'd keep that going.

Then there's the problem of the Middle East in general: the Jews were given territory in a messed-up and disputed part of the world, and it's hard to develop a sane and functional nation when a lot of people in your part of the world routinely murder each other and set things on fire. But we're all stuck with that decision, unless the chaos of government evolution causes the nation to move or dissolve. That means trying to find ways for people to coexist without killing each other or setting things on fire.

>> The Israeli self-identity is based on being a persecuted and oppressed people -- and Israelis have trouble understanding that they have the capacity to be oppressors. <<

This is a crucial point. I've seen it crop up in other instances where Jewish individuals or groups did not realize that they were perceived as powerful, threatening, or oppressive by someone else simply because those concepts did not occur as self-relevant options in their worldview and experience. That seems to be a universal pitfall when any oppressed individual or group comes into power; not only are there skills of self-assessment and control lacking in certain areas, but the temptation to get even or prove that you're not a victim anymore tends to be overwhelming. Then you become part of the problem, and that's how violence perpetuates itself. Teaching the responsible use of authority to people who've had little or no experience with it is almost impossible -- and figuring it all out on your own, from scratch, without outside aid or postitive examples, is even harder. But it does at least offer some possible avenues of exploration.

>> For what it's worth, I'm also Jewish and a Zionist, and believe that Israel has the right to exist and defend itself. I just feel that it's not doing a very good job of it. <<

That's not far from my stance. I think people have a right to self-determination and large groups who want to be their own nation should be free to do so; but I don't think nationhood is an inalienable right if what a nation mostly does is create problems. I think individuals and nations have a right to defend themselves, balanced by an obligation to use diplomatic means to the fullest extent possible and a responsibility to use minimum force required when violence becomes unavoidable. (Few nations measure up to this mark, but I think it's more achievable than holding them to a standard of peace, which they are obviously not ready for yet.) I would like to see Israel mature into a functional and decent nation. But part of that process is that, when you screw up, people shout, "Hey, that thing you just did, that was wrong!"

If all people do is bitch, it's minimally helpful. What's a lot more helpful is figuring out exactly what went wrong, and why, and what could be done to minimize the chance of repetition. The root causes behind Israel's condition are intricate confabulations of doom, which makes it challenging to fix. There are some areas in which outside help might be useful, but Israel is kind of hinky about that -- sometimes they'll take aid for some things, other times they want the rest of the world to butt out. That's another reason I'm not keen on funding their military or selling them weapons; I don't want to give them more rope to go hang themselves or someone else. Sometimes the best help you can give is just to back off and refrain from making a bad situation worse.

Anyhow, thanks for your message. It contains much food for thought, and some stuff I'll be watching for corroboration elsewhere.

>> Oh, yes--I should like to point out that the Israelis
intercepted a blockade runner.<<

The blockade is also killing people, inasmuch as someone who dies for lack of health care/food/water/other supplies is just as dead as someone killed by a bullet. Some folks are just not okay with killing people or starving them to death because you dislike them.

>> They killed nine people. <<

... who, insofar as I have heard, were not threatening violence to the Israeli patrol. (If the reports are incomplete, and the activists were armed and posing a credible threat, then armed conflict is more justified; but it still should not have happened in international waters.) In such circumstances, detaining the offenders is sufficient. Unless, of course, one's goal is to use terrorism, violence, and death threats to discourage everyone else from coming near one's territory; while this is a popular choice, it is not generally considered civilized and can backfire.

>> For that matter,
in spite of having both nuclear and chemical weapons
at their disposal,
they have refrained from using them,
or threatening to use them.<<

I'll allow that they haven't used what they have. I think I've heard complaints about Israel doing some saber-rattling in that regard, though.

>> Perhaps sending innocent people into harm's way
is not the best way to approach the problem? <<

That may well be true. I'm always on the lookout for other possibilities. It still doesn't excuse the unnecessary killing of noncombatants in international waters.

However, conceding that some other approach is necessary pretty much confirms that Israel can't be trusted to honor the rules of engagement -- and not everyone is (or was, prior to this incident, which may have changed some minds) willing to take that stance.

Activism has never been a safe practice. People who do it should be aware of that. But it's still generally considered wrong to shoot activists or other noncombatants.

>> More than that. The pre-frontal lobes of the brain, which, among other things, allow things like "proportional response", aren't fully developed until one's early twenties. <<

I would say that doesn't help; it's a contributing factor rather than a determining factor. People younger than that can show proportional response; I've done it, and I've seen others do it. We are not our bodies; they influence us, but do not wholly limit us.