Did Israel conduct a deliberate attack?

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2024

One meaning of "everything's possible:" Did Israel stage a deliberate attack on those humanitarian aid trucks, resulting the deaths of seven aid workers? 

Kevin Drum explores that question in a post which carries this headline:

Did Israel deliberately destroy an aid convoy?

We strongly recommend that you read Kevin's post. It creates a chance to ponder the way the world (sometimes) works.

Kevin starts by listing five bullet points which make it hard to believe that the attack was some sort of "fog of war" incident. His assessment comes next, as shown:

DRUM (4/3/24): So the only remaining question is: Why? Did the Israeli military deliberately destroy an aid convoy? Or, despite everything, did they somehow misidentify the trucks as Hamas?

I can hardly bring myself to believe it was deliberate. That would be monstrous. On the other hand, Israel's ongoing efforts to starve the Gazan population have been pretty monstrous. What's more, their recent acquiescence to increasing aid shipments has been very much against their will. Deliberately destroying an aid convoy would certainly be a very effective way of continuing their starvation policy by the simple expedient of scaring off humanitarian organizations. Finally, in addition to all this, it's just very hard to believe that an operation so precisely calculated and carried out was due merely to sloppy intel or a careless fog-of-war mistake.

I still don't believe it was deliberate. I can't. But it sure is getting harder.

We understand Kevin's reaction—and his reluctance. Beyond that, and for obvious reasons, we'll offer no final assessment of our own.

We have no reliable way to form an assessment. On the other hand, this:

Any decision which humans can make will eventually be made by someone. 

No matter how cruel, or even how evil, some such decision may seem, if the decision can be made, it has been made at some point in the past. And it will be made, once again, by someone in the future.

We understand Kevin's reluctance to say that Israel did this. On the other hand, he says in his post that Israel has already adopted a "starvation policy." How far away from that is this next possible step?

A few months ago, we introduced the concept of "disregarded peoples." Within the American journalistic context, Gazan citizens come close to being such a disappeared population—and the views and feelings of Israeli leadership cadres may have moved well beyond that.

We've often thought, in recent weeks, about the 1964 film, The Pawnbroker. The thumbnail runs as shown:

The Pawnbroker (film) 

The Pawnbroker is a 1964 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez and Morgan Freeman in his feature film debut. The screenplay was an adaptation by Morton S. Fine and David Friedkin from the novel of the same name by Edward Lewis Wallant.

The film was the first produced entirely in the United States to deal with the Holocaust from the viewpoint of a survivor. It earned international acclaim for Steiger, launching his career as an A-list actor.

[...]

In 2008, The Pawnbroker was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Plot 

In Nazi Germany, Sol Nazerman, a German-Jewish university professor, is sent to a concentration camp along with his family. He witnesses his two children die and his wife raped by Nazi officers before she is killed.

Twenty-five years later, Nazerman is haunted by his memories. He operates a pawnshop in an East Harlem slum while living in an anonymous Long Island housing tract with his sister-in-law, who is also a Holocaust survivor, and her husband. Numbed and alienated by his experiences, he has trained himself not to show emotion...

The plot summary continues from there. Long story short, the Steiger character is a concentration camp survivor who has largely lost his soul in the process. Terrible things can happen to people who are subjected to so much vicious treatment.

With regard to the present-day situation, we've rarely seen a major topic which is so selectively reported and discussed within the mainstream American context. We refer to the coverage of actions by Israel itself, but also to the coverage of people here in the United States who are said to be (take your pick) "pro-Palestinian" or "pro-Hamas."

Some columnists have started describing and discussing the domestic pro-Palestinian / pro-Hamas situation, especially on college campuses. It seems to us that major news orgs are staying very far away from the general topic.

Tomorrow, we're expecting to suggest that Kevin hasn't been watching enough Red American cable news of late! We think he misstated the facts concerning a recent bit of Fox News journalism. (Our own blue tribe is rarely aware of what's being said and done over there.)

We think Kevin misstated the facts of that recent matter. We think he does a very good job laying out some basic facts concerning the deaths of those aid workers.

Everything is possible! If some type of decision can be made, at some point someone will.