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Violating the Limit of Moral Equivalence: October 7, 2023 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-11-04

I’ve been dismayed by recent Israel-Palestine discourse on Daily Kos. Some, including myself, perceive that there is a strong anti-Israel bias and a lesser but still dismaying amount of antisemitism being voiced on the site. I know that many will attack me for this diary, but I believe that this piece encapsulates why no prior actions by the Israeli government justifies the October 7 attack. The crux of the argument, included in the Nuremberg trial verdicts is this:

A city is bombed for tactical purposes… it inevitably happens that nonmilitary persons are killed. This is an incident, a grave incident to be sure, but an unavoidable corollary of battle action. The civilians are not individualized. The bomb falls, it is aimed at the railroad yards, houses along the tracks are hit and many of their occupants killed. But that is entirely different, both in fact and in law, from an armed force marching up to these same railroad tracks, entering those houses abutting thereon, dragging out the men, women and children and shooting them.

For the record, I mourn the Palestinian victims of this war as well as the Israeli victims. I deplore the Netanyahu government and the many cruel and illegal actions it has undertaken over the past ~30 years. I support the Palestinians’ right to live in their own state and to govern themselves. But I do not accept any arguments that Israeli military actions in Gaza are as depraved as the October 7 slaughter. Hamas cynically uses Palestinian noncombatants as human shields. That is tragic and those civilians are twice victimized, once by Hamas and again by the IDF.

And also for the record, there is no justification for targeting Jews outside Israel, either physically or verbally. Israel’s government is far from blameless, but attacking Jews outside Israel is a clear demonstration of antisemitism and can’t be justified in any way.

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