In his regular podcast, Leonard Peikoff addresses questions on how Objectivism applies to your everyday life, and on alternating weeks Yaron Brook sits in as the guest host addressing questions on how Objectivism applies to politics, economics and current events. This week Yaron took on the Hamas-Israel War.
Steve Simpson interviews Elan Journo on the Hamas-Israel War. Points covered, among others: the cause of the war, the cycle-of-violence myth, the nature of Israel’s enemies, the goals of Hamas, how to judge a country, and the conflict between the “laws of war” and self-defense.
I’ve argued that Israel’s goal in the Gaza war should be to eliminate the threat from Hamas (and allied Islamist groups). That means defeating the enemy, by uprooting its infrastructure and leadership, in order to make the Islamist cause of Hamas and its allies unrealizable (a point I make at length in my book). Difficult though that may be, it is a necessary goal.
After years of terror — and thousands of rocket attacks — Israel is now waging a war of self-defense. But that war is, unfortunately, being undermined by the so-called international laws of war. So argues ARI fellow and director of policy research Elan Journo on Breitbart.com.
Refuting the propaganda about “massacres” of “defenseless” Palestinians in Gaza, William Saletan at Slate documents how by “the standards of war, Israel’s efforts to spare civilians have been exemplary.”
At Room for Debate, on the New York Times opinion pages, there's a four-way exchange on this question: “can reconciliation between [the Palestinian factions] Fatah and Hamas end up improving the chances of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, which have dimmed as American-backed talks have foundered?”
