Letters

LETTERS More on Israel, Lebanon, Gaza Editors: In his response to my criticism of his arguments on Israeli policy in Lebanon and Gaza (Winter 2007), Michael Walzer ignores most of the evidence I pointed to as well as the arguments I made that Israel has been deliberately imposing collective punishment against civilians , their institutions, and their infrastructures in Lebanon and Gaza. For example: 1. Walzer objects to my quote from General Gur about how Israel had always deliberately attacked Arab civilians , on the grounds that Gur was a "cruel and stupid " blusterer. But Gur was not merely stating his personal views of what should be done; he was describing what Israel had in fact already done and continued doing, and no one has challenged his facts. 2. To illustrate that Israel deliberately caused mass civilian suffering of the Lebanese population in last summer's war, I cited reports in Ha'aretz and other Israeli media, strongly worded charges by prominent Israeli establishment figures, reporting by the New York Times, and detailed reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Walzer ignores all of this except the HRW report, which he wrongly claims was inaccurate. The Amnesty International report came to a similar conclusion, that Israel had committed "war crimes": "The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than 'collateral damage.' " 3. Similarly, Walzer ignores most of my long list of the ways in which Israel has deliberately imposed collective punishment on the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, responding only to one item, the impact on Palestinian health systems. Walzer claims that in 2000 Palestinian health standards were "relatively high" compared to other Arab countries and have declined only since the "admittedly harsh" Israeli reaction to the intifada. It is a non sequitur to compare Palestinian health standards with other Arab countries for which Israel has no responsibility. More important, that takes us to Walzer's overall argument: if it weren't for the intifada, Israeli policies would be much less harsh. No doubt. Occupiers usually prefer to rule peacefully —so long as their rule is not challenged. That tells us nothing about the justice of the occupation or of all forms of resistance to it, except terrorism. 4. Which leads to my final point. Walzer asserts that my statements concerning the need to deal seriously with the problems of Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorism are just "throwaway lines," else I would have more fully discussed what to do. Aside from the problem of insufficient space, I am not a Palestinian and have no moral responsibility for their actions or hope of influencing them. However, as an American Jewish Zionist, I do feel partly responsible for the behavior of the Israelis and their uncritical American Jewish supporters, so I have no choice but to hope that I have a chance—in theory, anyway—of persuading Israelis and American Jews that Israel's policies have been not only morally wrong, but destructive of the best interests of Israel. JEROME SLATER Buffalo, N.Y. Michael Walzer Replies I am not going to debate Israel's sins with Jerome Slater. Some he gets right, it seems to me; some he exaggerates. I criticized a couple of the exaggerations, but that is not the crucial issue between us. We actually agree on the last point he makes in his letter: that Israel's best interests are not served by its occupation and settlement policies . What was wrong with his original piece was its radical one-sidedness: he was unwilling to acknowledge Israel's vulnerability or to offer any description at all of the character of its enemies. Now he gives us two excuses for those omissions. The first is insufficient space. But the editors gave him four thousand words (and then a little more when he asked for that). I could say everything I wanted to say, at least in outline, about any subject in the world in four thousand words. Slater's one-sidedness was the result of his own political commitments and priorities, not of Dissent's word limit. His second excuse is...