Disengagement 710 - Ethnic cleansing!

[Squeezingwildoranges]

If the current Israeli government manage to expel all Palestinians from the land, should all Israelis be held culpable for not trying to stop it.

People often assume that because something is morally horrific, there would automatically have been mass opposition—but history doesn’t really support that assumption. Governments can carry out terrible policies with significant public indifference, ignorance, or passive acceptance.

During the Troubles, there was plenty of anti-Catholic prejudice in Britain, and many people were either indifferent to or hostile towards the Catholic community in Northern Ireland. So the idea that the British public would automatically have opposed a policy that ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics seems pretty naïve to me.

And no, as I have previously stated upthread it wouldn't make them culpable in the crime.

I think I need to clarify something here. When I say culpable in the crime I obviously mean from a moral standpoint, not a legal one. According to Karl Jaspers, in a democracy where citizens possess the right to vote, protest, and speak out, the threshold for moral responsibility is higher than in a dictatorship and if they do not object they provide the encouragement for the state to act.

I understand the distinction you’re making between legal and moral culpability. My opinion is that the distinction doesn’t change my position: I think people are neither legally nor morally responsible for the actions of their government simply because they are citizens of that country. I think the Jaspers argument is persuasive to an extent: in a democracy, citizens generally have more avenues to object, organise, protest, vote, and speak out, so it’s reasonable to argue that this creates a greater degree of moral responsibility than under a dictatorship.

Where I’d qualify it is that I don’t think mere failure to object automatically makes someone morally culpable for what the state does. There’s an important difference between actively supporting or enabling something, knowingly remaining silent when you have a meaningful opportunity to intervene, and simply being one ordinary citizen among millions with limited knowledge, influence, or agency.

So I’d say democratic citizenship can create a higher capacity for moral responsibility, but whether someone is actually culpable depends on what they knew, what they supported, what they could realistically have done, and whether their inaction meaningfully contributed to the wrongdoing.

The thing is all Israelis are very invested in the Palestinian issue and the Gaza war. There is no way anyone can say they don't know what's been going on. The Disengagement 710 plan is so controversial, once again, I don't think anyone can simply not have an opinion. In a general population, you are always going to have active and passive responses, whether for or against. It is not the active responses which this thread is relevant to, that question is easy, it is the passive. If an individual passively opposes the plan but does nothing, then they are enabling the government by allowing them to carry out the plan. For me, if people are enabling their government to carry out a crime against humanity, they share the moral guilt of allowing that crime to be committed. It is an opinion and that is mine.

I strongly disagree with the idea that someone who passively opposes a government policy but does nothing therefore shares the moral guilt for the actions of that government.

Knowing what is happening does not automatically create responsibility for it, and disagreeing with a government does not mean an individual has the power to stop it. People have different circumstances, different levels of influence, and different ways of responding to political events.

More importantly, I think we need to be extremely careful about assigning collective moral guilt to an entire population for the actions of its government. Governments make decisions; individuals can support them, oppose them, protest them, vote against them, or simply feel powerless in the face of them. Those are not morally equivalent positions.

I absolutely believe people should speak out against what they believe is wrong when they are able to do so. But there is a significant difference between failing to take action and actively supporting or participating in wrongdoing.

We can have a serious moral disagreement about what people ought to do without declaring everyone who remains passive morally responsible for the consequences of government policy.

I won’t be engaging with this thread any further. The OP is entitled to their opinion, as am I, but I stand by my view that this thread is antisemitic in nature.

At this point, the constant back-and-forth is neither constructive nor productive. I’ve made my position clear, and I have nothing further to add.

So did I so fair enough. I do however strongly disagree that the thread is antisemitic. It didn't sound antisemitic when I applied to Northern Ireland did it.

But even if there are protests in Israel they won't be big enough for you.

If 1% of the population protest, according to you they would still be culpable because not enough others joined them. And so are the people who would but can't because they have work or caring responsibilities or live too far from the nearest protest or can't go because of medical needs or disability or are children who are too young to even understand what's going on. Israeli children are culpable, but Palestinain adults who celebrated 7/10 are not because of your completely unevidenced assertion that they probably felt bad about it later.

I think it's perfectly normal and human to make judgements, I don't believe that any humans are above that. I don't think that there will be any form of culpability from the UN or International courts etc directed towards all Israelis but certainly lots of people would look at Israelis sideways if Israel ethnically cleanse millions of people.

I've certainly seen threads on mumsnet where all men from certain countries are judged as unsavoury to put it lightly. Mumsnet doesn't delete those threads and they crop up at least 5 times a week. People make judgements, some warranted, some not, some good, some bad, Israelis are not going to be exempt from that no matter what name people want to put on that judgement.

1%?? That's a hundred thousand. If a hundred thousand people protested that would be amazing. The government would have to think twice about committing a crime against humanity then.

Eh?? So.. talk us through why you wouldn't issue any consequence or sanction on people to blame for genocide or forced expulsion from their land..

If that's your belief: why do you care if they're to blame or not?!?

What a pointless question then!

I agree that it gives a higher threshold. With democracy comes a collective responsibility for the government that society votes in, in a way that doesn't exist in a dictatorship m

Also, it's a very distant situation where in democracy, criticism of the government is allowed, people can protests etc, compared with countries where protesting may get you killed.

I don't think failing to stand up against crimes against humanity crimes makes you specifically complicit in those crimes against humanity but it does make you someone who for whatever reason chose to look the other way, and that has its own moral implications.

If I saw adults beating up a young child, as a bystander I would have no legal responsibility to stop them or even call the police. But my choice to ignore it is not morally neutral. I feel the same about countries on a larger scale. If you know that your country is committing crimes against humanity and you choose to look the other way, you are the same as the person watching and assault and doing nothing.

What was the consequences for the US when they murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians on Aug 6 1945 and even worse on the 9th.

I absolutely agree with you. I thought I had made that clear.

Yeah, I was just agreeing with the concept you suggested nof increased society responsibilities where we are as a society responsible for choosing our government.

So one percentage is above your arbitary threshhold. Fantastic. But doesn't change what I said in my post.

I never once said I had an arbitrary threshold. I have said I want to see evidence of opposition to a democratically elected government intending to commit the internationally recognized crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing by the citizenry of that country.

Well this thread and ops argument have definitely convinced me that we need to hold Jordanians accountable for their actual ethnic cleaning that has already happened in Judea and Samaria. Obviously we can all happily know we are morally superior to the Jordanians that didn't stop it happening.

Thank op for clearing that up. Hopefully the Jordanian people will now pay repatriation to the generations of Jewish families and effected. At the very least we all need to pat ourselves on the back for being morally superior than Mo the supermarket worker that did not stop the ethnic cleaning of Jews.

I really don't think there is any point engaging further with the OP.
From the very first post, it was obvious what the true message was.

Even though we all know if it was about any other group, this thread would've been shut down, I now hope this thread stands.

The obvious racism and toxicity towards Israelis/Jews is something that should shame all of us.

Please don't mischaracterize my thread. The question is purely about the concept of collective moral responsibility when a democratic government proposes an internationally recognized criminal policy. It is a simple philosophical debate, not an act of racism. If you don't wish to participate in the debate, you really aren't obliged to.

You said that if a certain undefined percentage of a country don't go out and protest every single citizen of that country - which by definition includes those who did protest and those who are unable to - are culpable. Except in Palestine. They can celebrate mass murder and not be held culpable because they probs felt really sorry about it later.

Just to be clear before I answer this, are you comparing the current democratic Israeli government with the totalitarian monarchy of King Abdullah?

Please show me where I said any of that.