Listening to this discussion, as well intentioned as it is, is like (forgive the analogy) discussing how it was "explicable" that Manson attracted followers to butcher a very pregnant Sharon Tate on her living room rug. With all the high powered intellect here (or perhaps because of it) this discussion comes off as a sophomoric intellectual exercise with a resonance that doesn't permeate the ivory tower of academia. Exhibit A is Bessner's suggestion that describing Hamas' butchery as "terrorism" merely delegitimizes that form of political violence. Let me make it plain: Israel is not " basically annihilating a population" any more than the Allies were doing the same to the Germans in Dresden. Hitler's actions were "explicable" too. How else to explain his sway over millions. But there is good and there is evil. Raping women to the point of breaking their pelvis, cutting off their breasts, dragging their limp bodies through the Gaza streets to be spit on, burning babies alive in their cribs, looking a disabled wheelchair-bound teenaged girl in the eye and riddling her with bullets.....this is evil. It also signals (as if anyone had doubt) that Israel is not facing a Manson cult bent on wreaking a little havoc. It is facing an existential crisis no less than the West in 1939. Had Bessner been alive then, would he have attempted to understand Hitler's need for Lebensraum by saying "I think you have to look at the root causes of the actual issue" and then explored how the victors treated Germany following the Great War? And further, should that analysis have mitigated the Allies' mission of complete victory and German surrender? That is where we are. Let's not complicate it. Hamas does not desire a two state solution. It wants Israel wiped off the map. Israel is fighting for its survival.
Listening to this discussion, as well intentioned as it is, is like (forgive the analogy) discussing how it was "explicable" that Manson attracted followers to butcher a very pregnant Sharon Tate on her living room rug. With all the high powered intellect here (or perhaps because of it) this discussion comes off as a sophomoric intellectual exercise with a resonance that doesn't permeate the ivory tower of academia. Exhibit A is Bessner's suggestion that describing Hamas' butchery as "terrorism" merely delegitimizes that form of political violence. Let me make it plain: Israel is not " basically annihilating a population" any more than the Allies were doing the same to the Germans in Dresden. Hitler's actions were "explicable" too. How else to explain his sway over millions. But there is good and there is evil. Raping women to the point of breaking their pelvis, cutting off their breasts, dragging their limp bodies through the Gaza streets to be spit on, burning babies alive in their cribs, looking a disabled wheelchair-bound teenaged girl in the eye and riddling her with bullets.....this is evil. It also signals (as if anyone had doubt) that Israel is not facing a Manson cult bent on wreaking a little havoc. It is facing an existential crisis no less than the West in 1939. Had Bessner been alive then, would he have attempted to understand Hitler's need for Lebensraum by saying "I think you have to look at the root causes of the actual issue" and then explored how the victors treated Germany following the Great War? And further, should that analysis have mitigated the Allies' mission of complete victory and German surrender? That is where we are. Let's not complicate it. Hamas does not desire a two state solution. It wants Israel wiped off the map. Israel is fighting for its survival.