Bill Moyers Morally Flawed Universe

1) "As Israeli Bombing Stops, Gazans Get Busy Rebuilding Damaged Tunnels," A6, by Sabrina Tavernise

2) "Israel and The Use of Force, as Bill Moyers See It," A20 (Letters to the Editor)

Times coverage falls to only a single article and single letter to the editor, but both are of conspicuously poor quality.

*****

1) As Israeli Bombing Stops, Gazans Get Busy Rebuilding Damaged Tunnels

This problematic article details the reconstruction of tunnels that Israel had destroyed during its recent military operations in Gaza. Hamas had used these tunnels to smuggle in weapons as well as certain commercial goods, since Egypt and Israel refuse to engage in economic trade with Gaza while the radical Islamist movement controls the Strip.

This piece propagates significant narrative falsehoods on the conflict, including the belief that:

• Gazan "resistance" (use of terrorism) is simply in response to Israel's "economic blockade."
• Israeli operations are singularly responsible for rising extremism within the Strip.

Regarding Palestinian reconstruction, the reporter relates:The defiant pose seemed surprisingly brazen in light of recent events:

Israel said smuggling tunnels were a prime concern, after Hamas rockets, in attacking Gaza, and it hit dozens of them in airstrikes during the war. But the tunnels are the principal livelihood for many people here, and as soon as the bombing stopped, they were right back in them with their shovels. “Do you think we’d be busy digging underground if there was no embargo?” said Ahmed, a tall man in a leather jacket who was overseeing work on his tunnels on Friday. “If there was no embargo, we’d have real jobs.”

By "defiant pose," is the reporter referring to an unbridled desire to destroy Israel among Palestinian radicals? The way she phrases it, one would think that Palestinians are simply motivated by socioeconomic gain, when it should be clear that Hamas is more interested in destroying Israel than building a viable society. The onus for the "embargo" is placed on Israel when it has no obligation to engage in economic trade with a regime that is committed to its destruction (though Israel humanely continues to provide Gaza with the requisite humanitarian aid so as to avoid a humanitarian crisis).

This all leads to the faulty conclusion that Hamas attacks Israel with the support of Gazans simply because of Israel's economic blockade. No mention is made of Hamas' intense indoctrination of Jew-hatred and unyielding commitment to liberate Palestine. By this logic, attacks against Israel should cease if the crossings were to be open. But when the crossings were open in the past, rockets still dropped into this Israel.

This piece also fails to note that it is not simply Israel that has enacted such an "embargo." Of key significance is Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Why is Egypt not held accountable?

The second key problem is in this pargraph:

Israel has contended that the bombing is a way to drive a wedge between the people and Hamas, but it seems to be having precisely the opposite effect. A tunnel manager in his 30s named Mahmoud said he had felt closer to Hamas since the war, because, however flawed, Hamas was the one group that stood up to Israeli aggression.

Israel's main objective was to halt, or at least strike a severe blow, to Hamas' incessant rocket fire upon Israel - not to "drive a wedge between the people and Hamas." Hamas indoctrination of its people and Palestinian attraction to radicalism is an internal Palestinian problem. To say that Israel is responsible for Palestinian extremism is to deny agency to the Palestinian people (as European colonialists did to their indigenous subjects).

If a reader were curious, they might ask, why is it that Palestinians are so attracted to a political entity that wishes to engage in a life-and-death struggle with Israel and all the consequences it entails? What might that say about the Palestinian psyche and how they view Israel? Why is there such a lack of compromise?

*****
2) Israel and The Use of Force, as Bill Moyers See It

This extremely manipulative op-ed, penned by acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers, makes some egregious assertions. Responding to a William Kristol op-ed critical of his views, Moyers complains that "According to him [Kristol], I 'lambasted Israel' for what I 'called its state terrorism.'" The amusing part of the letter though, is that this is what Moyers goes on to exactly argue - that Israel did in fact engage in state terrorism.

First though, lip-service is provided to Israel's obligation to defend its civilians and Hamas' extremism: "Every nation has the right to defend its people. Israel is no exception, all the more so because Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead. But brute force can turn self-defense into state terrorism."

Is Moyers, an intelligent gentleman, actually arguing that Israel unleashed even a fraction of its force upon Gaza? Apparently he is: "By killing indiscriminately the elderly, kids, entire families, by destroying schools and hospitals, Israel did exactly what terrorists do and exactly what Hamas wanted. It spilled the blood that turns the wheel of retribution."

Moyers does not make a distinction between Hamas' purposeful targeting of civilian targets and Israel's purposeful targeting of Hamas targets in which Palestinian civilians have also incidentally been killed. Civilians die in any conflict, but Israel's desire to avoid civilian casualties is made all the more difficult by the fact that Hamas willfully uses its population as a human shield, showing no regard for their lives. It is appalling that Moyers fails to address this difficult reality.

That Moyers cannot differentiate between the intentionality of both sides is a great moral failing. Instead he establishes a shallow moral equivalence in which Hamas engages in terrorism and Israel engages in state-terrorism. He does not wish to attune himself to the realities of fighting a terrorist force. In Moyers' world, Israel would have no redress to defend itself, because regardless of what it would be doing, it would be guilty of state terrorism.

This morally flawed reality must be denied.