Obligatory Flotilla Post

I guess I need to have an opinion about the flotilla incident or my license to blog will be revoked.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one area where I get consistently (and insanely) disappointed with almost all analyses I see, no matter what “side” is taken (the whole notion of sides here is especially ridiculous). If you want a study in the extremes of cognitive bias have a read of some blogs and op-eds: the fallacies pile up. Also most of the items discussed are red herrings. They almost look like they’ve been placed there deliberately to obscure the real issues and stop us from getting to them.

Still, here are some brief disconnected thoughts:

• I agree with Andrew Sullivan that one real issue is of course the blockade itself. Via the Economist, an interesting graphic:
  

  Of course there are good reasons for a military blockade since there was a large inflow of weapons especially rockets that were used to bomb Israeli civilians. But there is a clear non-military component to the blockade as can be seen in the graphic above. Besides the story that the distinction above tells us, there is the question of (say) nails and concrete. Both have been used in bombs made by Hamas so are controlled by Israel. Both are needed for housing. As a result, attacks against Israeli citizens have been curbed as has been…housing. Nothing shows the intractability and insanity of the situation more than nails and concrete.

• If it wasn’t obvious before, the actual flotilla incident makes it clear: once there is a violent confrontation, from a certain perspective the conflict becomes context free. In the “pro-Palestinian” terms the Israeli commandos weren’t justified in turning their weapons on the people attacking them (presumably because they weren’t justified in being there in the first place). In the “pro-Israeli” side, the activists weren’t justified in turning their weapons on the people attacking them for the same reason. I think both ideas are nonsense. At some point everyone in that situation may well have had a legitimate self-defence justification based on their state of mind. That’s the problem with violence as a way to resolve conflict. At the direct point of conflict nobody has any moral advantages. And people of both sides seem to have a very narrow definition of what self-defence is.

• On that note, the idea that “you” as a highly biased observer can know what happened from eyewitness testimony that’s been cherry-picked from your ideological side (or some grainy YouTube footage) is ludicrous. Especially given what we know about eyewitness testimony. I have seen almost nothing but people sure that they know exactly what happened, and funnily enough it matches their prior beliefs about what would have happened.

• I haven’t seen this level of vehemence in a while. One of my Facebook friends had a status post asking those who weren’t open to the media being biased [against Israel] (and to her standing with Israel no matter what) to defriend her. I’m still negative about this level of vehemence since it shows an almost pathological level of bias. But now that I think about it, I’m actually a bit glad that when people see what they perceive to be injustice they can react this strongly. The problem is that this is turned to a conflict which, whilst terrible on the individual narrative level is not that large on a global/statistical level. I just really really really wish that everyone could have the same level of visceral reaction to say the Congo genocide. Please please please go and turn your vehemence towards this as well.