Israeli soldiers are wearing t-shirts that celebrate rape, murder, and infanticide against Palestinians. (See here and here; conical hat tip to LRC.) Of course they don’t just wear warcrime, they actually commit it, but the wearing is certainly evidence – if anyone needed it – of mens rea.
About Roderick T. Long
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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The world is now officially insane.
I have to admit this is difficult to believe. Nobody could be that stupid and callous, can they?
Anon73,
Unfortunately, I’d say they can be…in spades. I am traveling to Israel sometime this year to see a friend. She consciously chose to get out of military duty — very fond of anti-statist ideas and harmony among all.
This kind of stuff makes me uneasy, but I am not going on political business. I am still curious to see is how much intermixing between Arabs/Jews there is in Tel Aviv. My friend describes a Jewish populace generally suspicious of Arabs, but it’s vulgar egoism in some cases e.g. the polarized violent conflict makes individuals wary to risk contact. In some cases, it’s simply people growing up in one of the insular cultures without much chance of exposure to the “other” — social circumstance. She’s also told me that some people more blatantly believe the Arabs are the source of all the world’s troubles. Her own circle of friends is connected to the anarchist/Progressive peacenik/ecological/democratic school community, so I am liable to partially fit in — not a perfect orthodox leftist but close enough.
I once pondered living in Israel, but I scratched that off ages ago. The region is simply too embroiled in this kind of violent conflict. If Israel goes to war with Iran this year, then I am not sure I’ll be taking a trip…
The world does seem to be careening off course ) :
Most of the Israelis I know are anti-militarist. But then, most of the Israelis I know are philosophy professors.
Do you know of any militant philosophy professors?
Not all philosophy professors are anti-militarist…
The nationalist forces are really having a field day in Israel right now. They broke up celebrations of Jerusalem as a capital of Arab culture.
See here: http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072679.html
The right won big in the last election.
The NY Times has a good article on the intellectual origin of incidents like the above:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22BRONNER.html?_r=1
Hi Rod,
I’m sure you would not fallaciously fail to distinguish between criminals and animals within the IDF and the entire IDF itself. The first is a subset of the second.
If you deny the distinction, you would be using the same logic that extreme Israeli nationalists use to justify elimination of the Palestinian population. (For instance, “‘The Palestinian’ blew up a market in Jerusalem. This is unacceptable. Therefore, we should eliminate [all] the Palestinians.”)
I’m sure you would not fallaciously fail to distinguish between criminals and animals within the IDF and the entire IDF itself.
What in my post are you referring to?
What in my post are you referring to?
There’s no modifier in front of “Israeli.” Is it all of them? Has it become a de facto uniform? Is it a popular fad with most of the country’s conscripts? Or a minority? Or very, very few?
Insofar as this is indicative of a military culture that is shameless or even proud with regard to purposive killing of civilians, it would seem to matter whether this phenomena is widespread or not.
Grammatically no modifier is needed. If I’d said “People are making a racket next door,” would you suggest I’d insinuated that all six billion inhabitants of Earth were making a racket next door?
As for whether t-shirts celebrating atrocities are widespread or not, I have no idea. The actual atrocities themselves are of course, alas, fairly widespread, which was my point.
I went back and read through the article and it looks like it IS a fairly widespread phenomenon, at least among snipers. It’s contemptible and the Israeli military ought to crack down HARD on it, mainly for moral but also prudential reasons.
I also agree with you that the atrocities are much, much more important than the t-shirts. But words mean things; they help create norms; and norms matter.
If you believe that Israel has a legitimate cause of action in attempting to halt rocket fire originating in Gaza, then you REALLY don’t want to condone the infliction of additional human suffering and death because it undermines the legitimacy of your mission.
And you’re linking to Iranian TV as your proof that Israelis are actually committing these atrocities?
Glad to see you’re sticking to reliable sources…
PMP: If you’re looking for cross-documentation of Israeli military atrocities b/c you doubt the veracity of Iranian state television, Haaretz, the *Israeli* newspaper that Roderick linked first in his blog post, has written about them as well:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072040.html
It would appear that claims of IDF atrocities are not coming exclusively from Iranian TV, and in fact are being supported by IDF soldiers themselves.
“I’m sure you would not fallaciously fail to distinguish between criminals and animals within the IDF and the entire IDF itself. The first is a subset of the second.
“If you deny the distinction, you would be using the same logic that extreme Israeli nationalists use to justify elimination of the Palestinian population. (For instance, ‘”The Palestinian” blew up a market in Jerusalem. This is unacceptable. Therefore, we should eliminate [all] the Palestinians.’)”
What exactly is your point here?
Bob, that’s a left-wing paper that doesn’t understand how much the IDF loves the Palestinians it murders.
And what are you trying to do, start another Holocaust by not silently accepting Israel’s atrocities?
I’m glad to see you haven’t taken to caricaturing your adversaries arguments. That would be pathetic.
Not a bit of it. It’s actually quite satisfying and enjoyable. To use an analogy you’d understand, it’s a lot like shooting a pregnant woman in the belly.
My point was going to be that if the t-shirts were a few bad apples, that’s regrettable but not that important.
Then I read the haaretz piece and it looked like this was a fairly widespread thing, which people higher up in the chain of command know about but do not stop. And that’s just contemptible, immoral.
It’s not as important as what actually happens militarily–fighting and shooting and suffering and dying–but it forseeably increases the likelihood of atrocities against individuals, which is intolerable.
“I’m glad to see you haven’t taken to caricaturing your adversaries arguments. That would be pathetic.”
And I’m not so glad to see that you haven’t taken to actually responding to the criticism of your criticism. But seeing as how you’re trolling for straw men, you probably can’t.
More war crimes by Israel; I can wait for the next super power (eg China) as I really think they would do the right thing, perhaps not with their own people (just yet), but more in the worlds eye’s.