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Fighting Hamas is a just war. Reprisals against civilians, on the other hand, are broadly prohibited. Since Hamas has a vested interest in entangling the two, it is very hard for Israel to keep its hands clean.
The strongest criticisms of Israel involve the parts of it which appear profoundly uninterested in doing so. There are more of these than I would like.
Regardless of intent, every dead civilian lets critics pattern-match to My Lai. That’s the kind of event which shaped the antiwar psyche.
That's basically the first example Bryan Caplan gives in missing moods about why he doesn't trust the war hawks defense of civilian death.
What he expects is more like "It's a sad but necessary drawback to the messy reality of war that sometimes peaceful civilians are swept up as collateral" and yet instead often sees stuff more like "Hell yeah let's wipe them out, the only good [nationality] is a dead one!"
I've always been very ambivalent on the 'missing mood' argument.
On the one hand, if someone's explicitly-stated argument seems like it implies a particular emotion, and the person making the argument lacks that emotion, that does seem like a good sign that the argument is not motivating for them. The argument is excuse or justification, rather than the real motivation for the position.
On the other hand, taken too seriously, the missing mood argument also sounds a lot like, "You don't feel the way that I imagine you ought to feel - therefore you are not serious." But human psychology is extremely diverse and unpredictable, the way people express their deep emotions varies very widely as well, and you should not typical-mind. Caplan summarises it as, "You can learn a lot by comparing the mood reasonable proponents would hold to the mood actual proponents do hold", but the phrase "the mood reasonable proponents would hold" is doing a lot of the work there. What is the mood reasonable proponents would hold? Are you sure? Is there only one such possible mood? How confident are you of what's going on inside another person's head?
I suppose I think missing moods can be a weak piece of evidence, which may suggest that we ought to look more deeply into a person's agenda, but nothing more than that. Unfortunately the actual examples Caplan gives in his piece are unconvincing and suggest a lack of moral imagination on Caplan's own part. Other people don't appear to feel what Caplan thinks they should feel, so he concludes they're insincere. But maybe Caplan is just wrong about they ought to feel. Maybe he's assuming that they accept facts and moral principles that Caplan himself accepts, and if he looked closer he would realise that they don't.
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Caplan isn't that much older than I am, so he's mostly seen the same wars I have. These have been predominantly wars in Islamic countries, where his argument doesn't hold much grip on reality. We are talking about Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, now potentially Iran. These are territories where "Death to Israel" holds 90%+ popularity and "Death to America" is only a few clicks behind.
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No, that's just how human psychology works. Earnestly keeping in mind the pain suffered by the innocent in the prosecution of a just/necessary/Good war is just asking for your enemies to act like puppy-killing utility demons. That's what dehumanization is for, so you can fight and win without being hobbled and cripped (and eventually, raped, murdered and genocided) by your own suicidal empathy.
It's the same reason conservatives post Ghibli memes about crying deportees. They are no longer willing to give a shred of concern or credibility for crocodile tears of the people who caused the situation on purpose. Accusations of cruelty are met with mockery, because if you give an inch they'll let in another 50 million unvetted randos.
It's the same reason progressives never, ever, ever express any concern about the feelings and harm they may cause to their outgroup. It's the same reason no one is even bothering to try to use anything like this argument on Hamas or Iran, or their supporters in the US.
Just round the situation off to "blame goes to the aggressor" and win the damn war.
If he says "X happens", a response of "Yeah that's how people work" is an agreement that X happens, is it not?
That can serve as an explanation for why they do it, but it doesn't dispute Caplan's claim whatsoever then, it's in agreement with it! That instead of taking a somber "sad but necessary" view, they appeal to collective guilt and laugh about it.
You frame your comment like a dissent, while the actual substance is the same just under a different framing.
A: "Why is this marathon runner sweating so much? I would expect them to not want to be sweating. Do they not realize that sweating is unpleasant?"
B: "They're sweating because they are running a marathon. The sweat is an adaptive strategy that makes them better at running marathons. If they did not sweat, they would be worse at running marathons, and probably not be able to do so at all."
A: "Isn't that what I just said?"
B: "No. It really isn't."
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Even though they're outlawed and abhorrent, reprisals are still a frequent though unfortunate part of war and occupation. They have happened in many cases without a significant genocidal or ethnic cleansing objective.
True, but they don’t help beat the allegations.
It would be much harder to accuse Israel of genocide if they studiously avoided anything that hit the general populace. Water, power, etc.
But of course that would come at some cost in Israeli lives. Understandably not popular in Israel.
It didn’t help them in previous wars. No matter what Israel did to avoid casualties, it either wasn’t enough, or it was considered evil. I think this is why they’ve been so gloves off this time. The gloves are pointless, as any sort of fighting back is demonized as apartheid or genocide. So, rather than risk their soldiers to prevent such war crimes, just go for it.
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I really don't think it would. I would describe their current conduct as studiously avoiding the general populace, but the nature of the place of combat means even an 'A' student is going to kill or injure a ton of "civilians" (a term I hesitate to use when the population has elected Hamas, and the only people who would have a chance if another election were held were people calling Hamas too soft on killing Jews).
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Sure, and then they couldn't hit Hamas. This is the same Hamas that builds command centers under hospitals, then accuses Israel of war crimes when said command center gets bombed. Anyway, the various violations Israel is accused of are typically either nonsense (that is, there's no such rule in international law) or they are violations of treaties Israel has not agreed to, such as Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Convention.
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I would say that Israel is not treated quite fairly here. Russia is way more indifferent to civilian casualties, they hammer the energy infrastructure of ukraine more, blew up a fucking dam and so on. And yet no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.
Israel decided instead of doing the fast, cheap and easy way - cover from end to end with napalm and throw a match, to actually put their men in street and urban fights. And also why no is accusing Egypt of starving Gaza when there is another border there. And in theory this is Egypt territory. And they didn't just throw some dry ice or lpg in the tunnels. Now probably not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they care of PR and anyway they are paying the price of a genocide anyway.
I think "no one" is excluding a lot here: the governments of several NATO member states have made such claims, and the ICC (which admittedly isn't held in the highest esteem everywhere) has issued arrest warrants for Russian leaders on genocide or genocide-adjacent charges.
I'm not suggesting you have to agree with those descriptions, but I think it falls well short of "no one."
Probably I didn't phrase it well. Because those are performative pearl cluthing mostly. I don't believe that anyone smart and informed sincerely believes Putin wants or is committing genocide.
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Ukraine's population is 20x the size of the population of Gaza, but the civilian death toll in Ukraine is 3x lower.
So on a per capita basis, Gazan's are dying at a per capita rate of ~42x higher. My incredibly rough math has 1 civilian death per 3,158 Ukrainian citizens (using 2022 population) versus 1 death per 74 Gazans.
Couple of orders of magnitude there.
What’s the civilian death rate in Bakhmut/mariopol/etc? Ukraine’s land area is pretty big, and life in Gaza and life in bakhmut or chernihiv might be a one to one comparison but live in lviv definitely isn’t.
Also, as I understand it, the government of Ukraine doesn't make it a deliberate tactic to hope their own population gets killed so they can get PR wins which bring international pressure on their behalf.
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