Should Have Been an Easy Vote

 

After the atrocities of October 7^th the governments of Germany, Britain, and other European countries denounced the terrorists and announced their support for Israel. Recently at the UN they had a chance to put a small part of their money where their mouths were in a vote in the general assembly on a resolution for an immediate cease fire, meaning a victory and no serious consequences for Hamas. It was an easy test to pass, but most of them and most of America’s other allies failed it. A few did not. Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and a few countries in Latin America and the Pacific joined the United States in voting no. Germany, Britain, Italy, Japan, Ukraine(!), Australia, Canada, Estonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, and Sweden could not work up the nerve to oppose the resolution, but at least avoided siding directly with the terrorists by abstaining. Belgium, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, and France threw in with Hamas. A cynic might think the commitment of some of our friends in Europe and elsewhere to defending the liberal, civilized order is less serious  than they would have us believe, except of course when their sorry  hides are the ones being threatened. That cynic would have a point.

Students for Hamas

 

Private employers and citizens are free to refuse to hire or do business with someone because of his beliefs. They have that right. The question is whether they should. I think that most of the time they should not. In a free and diverse society one will find people with all sorts of opinions about all sorts of things. Tolerant acceptance of such diversity of opinion usually is a good thing. A person’s opinion one way or the other about whether to believe Rachel Levine when he tells people he is a woman or whether Donald Trump is nuts does not have much to do with what sort of worker or vendor he is and should not be disqualifying.

However there are exceptions when the beliefs and opinions are bad enough that ostracism is justified. For example I see nothing wrong with the blacklisting of communists in Hollywood in the years after World War II. I would not want to hire someone who was a supporter of and propagandist for the regime of Josef Stalin and an obedient member of an organization controlled by that regime’s secret service. Lately some employers have announced they will not be hiring students who rallied in support of Hamas’s murderous savages and the atrocities they committed. That seems reasonable to me. I would not want to spend time around people who think gang rape, purposely slaughtering infants, and torturing and intentionally murdering civilians as a tactic are good admirable activities. The excuse that the students are just kids does not work. They are young adults - older than many enlisted men and women in the armed forces – and responsible for their actions and deserving of the consequences.

Israel and Hamas

 

First one has to state the obvious. People are not the same everywhere. Those in Hamas committing atrocities are inhuman savages, and so is anyone cheering them on in their savagery. Then one can make the point that that does not apply to all Muslims or even to all Palestinians in Gaza. The ideal solution for dealing with Hamas’s terrorists would be (to paraphrase Jacob McCandles) to hunt them down and kill them, every mother’s son of them. A good practical solution is to come close enough to that ideal that they and their organization no longer have a capability to do harm. Hamas is known for using civilians as human shields, even to operating out of schools, mosques, and hospitals, causing enemies to hold back for fear of harming innocent civilians. This time the priority should not be to harm Hamas some, while avoiding civilian casualties, but rather to destroy Hamas, while inflicting as few civilian casualties as are consistent with that objective. The blame for civilian casualties in Gaza is Hamas’s, just as the blame for civilian casualties in the American bomber offensive over Germany was Hitler’s. Americans should support Israel in its war, and the American government should be ready to take direct action to free Americans held as hostages and to punish those who harm Americans. Beyond that the government should find a way to make the rulers of Iran suffer painfully, since Iran is behind the attack.