Weiszklee

The fear of treating people better than they deserve seems to screw up people's thinking in a variety of contexts. For instance, some conservatives oppose welfare (either altogether, or "too generous" welfare) on the grounds that *some* recipients are shitty and undeserving.

In response, some liberals seem to dodge the question of desert and focus on the public good (maybe they're utilitarians who think desert is fake, or maybe they're Rossian pluralists who think desert is one value among others), or else argue that all or nearly all welfare recipients *are* deserving. Whatever the merits of these two liberal approaches, I want to broaden the range of responses. For instance, I note the following:

Due to the world's complexity and our own *immense* ignorance (about other people's situations, about the consequences of our policies and actions, etc.), we are often faced with the dual risks of (A) treating people *worse* than they deserve vs. (B) treating people *better* than they deserve.

Maybe both are bad. But I think it is often much worse to treat someone *worse* than they deserve, than to treat someone *better* than they deserve.

Often, we can easily take steps that would avert many risks-- indeed, avert occasional *guarantees*-- of treating people better than they deserve. But these steps are often absurd and clearly wrongful. I will give an example.

Suppose it is good to treat ordinary people with basic civility-- give them the time of day when they ask, and hold the door for them.

But also suppose it is bad to treat (say) a wife-beater with basic civility. You *shouldn't* give him the time of day when he asks, and you *should* let the door close in his face if you're leaving the store at the same time as him.

But we usually don't know who the wife-beaters are. Every time you hold the door open for a stranger, you *risk* holding the door open for a wife-beater. If you hold open the door for strangers regularly, then you nearly *guarantee* that you'll occasionally hold the door open for a wife-beater. That's bad.

Now, there is only one reliable way to eliminate our risk of holding the door open for a wife-beater: NEVER hold the door open for anyone.

But that's absurd. Obviously it is good to show basic civility to strangers, even though this creates risks-- and cumulatively creates guarantees-- that we will thereby treat some people better than they deserve.

There are probably a great many cases where we ought to risk treating people better than they deserve, in order to avert the risk of treating people worse than they deserve. This may not always be the case. But I think it raises a lot of questions for *when* we should risk treating someone better or worse than they deserve, and what this implies for public policy such as welfare, prison reform, and more.

Perhaps some people deserve to be in prison for a long time. Many people resist prison and sentencing reform, for fear that it treats many horrible people better than they deserve. That may be true. But I think the evidence is clear that vast numbers of prisoners are treated vastly worse than they deserve. Some people are sentenced for too long. Some prisoners are beaten or sexually assaulted. Some people are wrongly imprisoned, or imprisoned for actions that shouldn't be crimes. Etc.

A few truths about Israel-Palestine that are in my view basically indisputable

For the leftists:

1. There is absolutely no conceivable scenario where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolves with Israel not existing as a state and not retaining at least the 1967 borders (besides the remote but technically possible chance of a binational state). The idea that Israel proper will be “decolonized” is an absolute fantasy. I understand there might be tactical value in disputing this, as like a “high opening bid” in negotiations so that when the inevitable compromise comes you can concede the fantasies and agree to something like 1967 borders. But you must understand that that is all it is.

2. Islamists being in charge of Palestine as a polity makes the prospect of a sovereign Palestinian state in the world even more unthinkable than it already was. A more secular-leaning party like Fatah (or some other party that doesn’t exist yet or is currently only marginal) coming to power is basically a precondition for any independent Palestine.

3. Violence will inevitably be part of the negotiation for a resolution to the conflict. Violence is not an alternative to “peace talks”, violence is part of the peace talks. But as a corollary to this, people should recognize that Palestine is never going to “win” militarily. There is no conceivable scenario where Israel is defeated decisively on the battlefield. These attacks are part of a negotiation, a credible signal that says “see what we’re capable of?” But crucially, they’re not capable of fending off the Israeli counterattack. Israel will retaliate and kill 10 times as many people and there’s nothing the Palestinian forces can do to prevent that. That’s what I mean. Israel won’t be defeated, merely harassed.

4. The Palestinian liberation movement--both in the earlier days when led by secular-leaning and leftist groups like the PLO and PFLP, and in its current form led by Hamas--commits atrocities against civilians much more routinely and comfortably than almost any other national liberation movement in the last half-century. All terrorist groups get their share of blame and condemnation, but it's simply false to say that all of them behave the same and therefore the condemnation means nothing. Groups like the IRA, PKK, ANC, FRELIMO, and West Papua National Liberation Army have not historically committed the same kinds of atrocities at anything like the frequency and routineness that Palestinian liberation groups do. All have committed some atrocities, and you can try to make an argument that those are just the eggs that have to be broken in order to make the omelette. But since they all have committed substantially fewer atrocities, that suggests clearly many of Hamas and co.'s are excessive.

5. A significant portion (perhaps the majority?) of Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews who have emigrated to Israel since its founding were forced to flee the various Arab countries they used to live in due to pogroms and expulsions in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. This history offers yet another reason people doubt the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in a single state.

For the liberals and/or Zionists:

1. There's a reason there is a world consensus in favor of a two-state solution along the 1967 borders and it's not that the whole world is controlled by Hitlerites. Israel's position is indefensible. There is no version of international law or the concept of national self-determination that allows Israel to indefinitely occupy the Palestinian territories or to annex any part of them. Israel is an international outlier. No other country in the world occupies a densely-populated stateless territory full of 5 million stateless citizens. That's not a thing that's allowed to exist in international law. The only legitimate stateless territory is Antarctica, where no people live.

The Palestinian territories--Gaza and the West Bank, as defined in 1967--are either (1) the sovereign territory of a sovereign state, in which case Israel is at war with that country, occupying that country, and the settlements are therefore completely illegal and outrageous; or (2) they are the sovereign territory of a single state that encompasses all of the former Mandate of Palestine, in which case Israel has built an enormous system of apartheid that denies citizenship, freedom of movement, and civil rights to approximately 1/3 of its population, who are segregated in strictly-controlled unrecognized bantustans. It can't be both, you have to pick one or the other. Israel cannot settle the West Bank if the West Bank is some foreign country that Israel is at war with and legitimately occupying. And if it's not a foreign country, if there is no foreign country, then by default it is Israeli territory that must enshrine the equal rights of all its inhabitants. You don't get to pick and choose the elements of each of the two scenarios that benefit you more.

2. For the last five decades, Israel has killed ten times as many people as Palestinian forces have. Their only fig leaf of defense is that they kill the majority with bombing, rather than shooting, which is impersonal and allows an infinitesimal degree of deniability that the civilians they're killing are being intentionally killed. You'll have to forgive the world for not granting this fig leaf much credit. Furthermore, no one cares about the lengths the "most moral army in the world" is supposedly going to in order to minimize civilian harm when the result is the same as always: a 10-to-1 ratio of retaliatory killing that colonial armies throughout modern history have enacted whenever there is violence by the natives. If you'll return to the list of national liberation struggles above, you'll note that not all of them were suppressed by their enemies with such an enormous ratio. The British in Northern Ireland often resorted to brutality in their war to suppress the IRA, but they did not kill ten times as many as the IRA did. Even if Israel's war were completely legitimate, they are clearly being excessive.

3. Attacks by Palestinian forces against Israel cannot possibly be defined as "unprovoked". The status quo in the West Bank is the slow-motion annihilation of any possibility of a Palestinian state as the settlements continue to expand and become entrenched to the point that any possibility of their eventual evacuation becomes increasingly remote. To think that the attempted interruption of this status quo by counter-offensives from Palestinian militants is some kind of aggression on their part is preposterous. They're under occupation and they're fighting it, as is their right. Particular acts in the fighting most assuredly constitute war crimes, but the idea that the fighting itself is criminal is categorically false.

Unless, of course, you were to admit that there is no foreign country under occupation, it's all just sovereign Israeli territory, in which case these are domestic terrorists, not occupied foreigners. Then they would be criminals again, though only criminals against an illegitimate apartheid regime.

The idea that Israel proper will be “decolonized” is an absolute fantasy

For people with long enough memories that might not be such an outlandish idea, places with very large populations of white colonizers have been emptied during the 20th century, say the 2 million French pied noires in Algeria - did any of them stay behind?

(Wiki says 30k in the 90s down from 1 million, I was pretty sure of the 2 million figure but I don't remember where I read it. Not about to get into a wikipedia edit war over it)

*looks inside*