Jeff “Maximos” Martin replied to my criticism and while I could make a reply over there, I’m doing so here so all you guys will go visit the nice site that they all have there.
I’m accused of demanding what Jeff says is not necessary, but I don’t think so. I wasn’t demanding that he make the gestures against terrorism to prove his good faith. I assumed that. However the subject was the just war doctrine, and that requires us to examine carefully the events leading up to Israel’s use of force against Hamas. I still maintain that any examination of the subject that does not include that entire picture, is incomplete and will leave one prone to misleading conclusions.
Honestly: If I thought badly of Jeff for what he wrote, I would have e-mailed Paul with my concerns about his site. I wouldn’t have thrown up a front pager and made a serious reply, directing traffic in his direction.
As for the subject of the mainstream press, I only brought it up because Jeff in his original article used Israeli press accounts as the basis of his suggestion that Israel had not exhausted alternatives to war before beginning the counteroffensive. I quote: “Going solely by the level of ongoing controversy in the Israeli press, where policies towards the Palestinians are subjected to critiques more diverse and extensive than the run of things in America, I’d say not.”
I don’t trust the press anywhere in the western world when it comes to certain matters. Matters relating to Islam are most definitely included in that. Israel is no more immune than we are to the effects of self-flagellating cosmopolitans elevating every foreign subculture, no matter how perverse, over the western tradition.
Jeff goes on later to explain in that way only he can the same old ‘cycle of violence’ theory, which puts terrorist actions and Israeli responses on an equal footing. Each one is a response to the other, therefore nobody has the moral high ground. I disagree. When “Hamas did these [terrorist attacks in the name of exterminating Israel] because Islamic motifs became more prominent in the Palestinian resistance with every year of failure to attain more secular goals,” that was not a legitimate response to anything Israel did. You don’t just get to declare a genocidal war. That is the gravest of all threats, I still believe, and the fact that Israel did take steps which empowered Hamas shows a great deal of good faith on their part. But it appears this disagreement will not be resolved in a few Internet posts.
I’m not sure who I was psychoanalyzing though, nor do I recall when.