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What should a country do with conquered territory?

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Thank you, Olex, for the link. Your simple response does the most justice to the discussion on this thread so far.

I suggest that whoever started this thread read the whole essay and not just the piece covering "the question of occupation". Sadly, after reading all the posts here a majority of the responses run parallel and support "The Just War Theory" (besides Myron, who actually had a reasonable argument, everything else has been just plain sad).

Edited by Gal
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mrocktor, how is it possible that you agree with the article completely? The article, as I see it, proclaims that "All civilians of an enemy country are guilty, simply because they live there". I conclude that from the following two paragraphs, taken from that article:

What specific military actions would have been required post-9/11 to end state support of Islamic Totalitarianism is a question for specialists in military strategy, but even a cursory look at history can tell us one thing for sure: It would have required the willingness to take devastating military action against enemy regimes—to oust their leaders and prominent supporters, to make examples of certain regimes or cities in order to win the surrender of others, and to inflict suffering on complicit civilian populations, who enable terrorist-supporting regimes to remain in power.

and also:

Observe what it took for the United States and the Allies to defeat Germany and Japan and thus win World War II. Before the Germans and Japanese surrendered, the Allies had firebombed every major Japanese city and bombed most German cities—killing hundreds of thousands. Explaining the rationale for the German bombings, Churchill wrote, “. . . the severe, the ruthless bombing of Germany on an ever-increasing scale will not only cripple her war effort . . . but will create conditions intolerable to the mass of the German population.” And as we well know, what ended the war—and the Nazi and Japanese Imperialist threat to this day—was America’s dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan.

bold emphasis is mine.

Since the article offers no way of distinguishing between complicit population and non-complicit population, yet offers to target civilians as a military tactic, I conclude that the article suggests that "They are all guilty, simply because they live there". It is also clear from the fact that the article supports the mass killing of Germans and Japanese, without first examining their individual "complicity". Their "complicity" is justified based on the country they live in.

This clearly contradicts your opinions:

  • "Yes, the rights of people that did not take part in aggression are not voided by their countrymen's moral breach"
  • "Were specific Arabs wronged during the creation of Israel - I'm sure they were. Were "the Arabs" wronged? No, you can only violate the rights of individuals - a race, a nationality or a religion have no rights."
  • "Protecting the rights of your citizens does not give you a moral blank check to ignore the rights of men outside your country"

There is a really long discussion about this subject in Israel's disproportionate use of power.

I don't agree with certain points made in the article, I think the article lacks basic explanations to support it's conclusions, and that in certain cases can be interpreted in two ways.

As for this thread, I realised that the task of determining, at each stage of Israel's History, whether or not we were at war with the population in the west Bank and Gasa is just too difficult to achieve in a matter of a few days. Sometimes it's hard to determine whether the attacks were a result of poverty and lack of freedom over long years, or a result of the population's political views. If anyone else is familiar with the History of Israel and would like to do it, it would be great.

In conclusion of the discussion so far: the answer to "what should a country do with conquered territory" is: "if it wishes to hold that territory permanently it should protect the rights of those individuals who live there and acknowledge their right to hold on to their lands and property in that area, (All of this after the war has ended), it should judge the civilians who are suspected to aid the efforts of the enemy in special tribunals, it should tax those people and punish them"

When trying to apply this to Israel, after the war of liberation, I realised that it was a wrong way of looking at it, since there was a reason to believe that the majority of the population was hostile to Israel, and would use any freedom granted to deny the rights of Jews. In fact, that means that Israel was still at war even after the war with the Arab Nations was over. I stooped at that point, realising the work needed to be done was too much for me at this time, for a period of a few days.

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Since the article offers no way of distinguishing between complicit population and non-complicit population...
You didn't define this clearly: complicit in what way? With some actions or defaulting on actions or letting it happen as it goes? What is a definition of non-complicit population?
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mrocktor, how is it possible that you agree with the article completely? The article, as I see it, proclaims that "All civilians of an enemy country are guilty, simply because they live there".

I don't read it that way. I read it as:

1. Civilians who support the war effort are guilty (providing war materiel, providing food to combatants, providing shelter to combatants, providing intelligence to combatants etc).

2. Civilians who *morally* support the war effort are guilty (rejoicing in the streets when airliners impact buildings comes to mind).

3. It is an innocent's moral responsibility to confront, hide or get the hell out if he does not support what his govrement is doing.

4. If the innocents are compelled by force to aid the war effort, their blood is on the hands of whoever compelled them - not on the country defending itself.

As a consequence of (1) and (2) it is rightful to destroy infrastructure and industry that is supporting the war effort.

As a consequence of (3) and (4) the responsibility for "collateral damage" rests entirely on the aggressors side.

Deliberately targetting civilian populations *not* supporting the war effort and *not* sanctioning it is immoral. Think bombing the kurds in Iraq. That would have been immoral.

In conclusion (...)

I agree with your summation. In my opinion by maintaining a double standard in the occupied territories with regards to the protection of individual rights, Israel basically remained at war with the palestinians continuously. I'm not saying that this was incorrect (your point about the intent to deny israeli's rights is taken), the lack of recognition that a war was on and not acting to win it (by destroying the enemy) was the mistake.

mrocktor

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You didn't define this clearly: complicit in what way? With some actions or defaulting on actions or letting it happen as it goes? What is a definition of non-complicit population?

Well, Olex, it is not my job to define it. It is the job of the writers of the article to define the words they are using. Why didn't this question come to your mind when you read the word "complicit" in the article?

Anyway, the way I decide if someone is complicit or not is more general than the criterions most people use. I want to start from the definition (if I may regard it as so) of mrocktor to what constitutes complicity [with the acts of rights violation by one's government] during a war:

  • Civilians who support the war effort are guilty (providing war materiel, providing food to combatants, providing shelter to combatants, providing intelligence to combatants etc).
  • Civilians who rejoicing in the streets when airliners impact buildings comes to mind

I'm sure that the list is incomplete, and there are many other concrete means to provide help to the war machine. Anyway, the problem with those criterions is that they lead to an incorrect judgement of whether or not someone has acted immorally during a war. For example, a person might pay taxes to the government, but on the other hand, contribute to forces that oppose the aggressor.

Most of the Christians in Lebanon can be an example of that.

Moreover, the actions that a man can take to oppose his government (or the aggressor) differ according to the amount of freedom that citizens have. When spies of the government are spread all over the country and merely speaking one's mind is a life threat, not to mention refusal to pay taxes or attempts to leave the country, it would be unfair to say that someone is complicit because they pay taxes etc if they are willing to fight against the regime, if given a chance to do it effectively. Of course that people who take advantage of the government's policy and encourage it to accumulate wealth, are guilty as heck.

Now, what do I mean by "the actions that a man can do to oppose the aggressor"? I said that there is a limit to those actions. What is the meaning of that? Obviously, to avoid paying taxes, a man can kill himself. When that man is called to fight for a goal he despises, he HAS the option of refusing and having his family killed or going to jail (depending on the type of regime). So what is the reason why I regard those options as "non-options"? The reason is that man's actions should be judged according to the proper hierarchy of values of a rational man, and according to the effectiveness of the actions needed to be taken to achieve the goal of eliminating the evil forces. Judging "complicitness" just according to whether or not one is paying taxes would be context dropping.

I am aware that Ayn Rand said that the population of a certain country is responsible for the government it has, including the worst dictatorships. However, I never saw any explanation WHY. And since I am not a puppet, willing to accept anything said to me on faith (even if it is Ayn Rand who says it), I will stick to my own standard to judge whether or not someone is guilty of the crimes of his government or not.

Moreover, I don't think that anyone can deny that the proper hierarchy of values of a man should be dropped when deciding whether or not someone has acted morally or not, the case of war being one of them, Because it would contradict principles of Objectivism.

To make my stand clearer, I need to add the following things:

1) Anyone who is known to be complicit in a war, is a justified target for the defending military. (Complicit being acting not according to a rational man's proper hierarchy of values. An example of this would be a citizen supporting the regime with demonstrations. I think anyone in such a demonstration is a justified target)

2) When attacking targets of the enemy if any innocents are killed on the way (see the IDF strikes in Lebanon) the blame is with the aggressor. The defending military should not avoid targeting the aggressor's means of fighting in fear of hurting innocents, but targeting civilians (which are not known to be not-innocent) is wrong.

Of course that this issue is huge and what I said does not cover everything that needs to be said. Moreover, I'm not sure how relevant it is for the discussion of conquered territory and the citizens in it, but Olex, I think I answered your question.

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  • 2 weeks later...
I am aware that Ayn Rand said that the population of a certain country is responsible for the government it has, including the worst dictatorships. However, I never saw any explanation WHY. And since I am not a puppet, willing to accept anything said to me on faith (even if it is Ayn Rand who says it), I will stick to my own standard to judge whether or not someone is guilty of the crimes of his government or not.

From the article:

“Individual citizens in a country that goes to war,” Ayn Rand once said in response to a question on this topic,

are responsible for that war. This is why they should be interested in politics and careful about not having the wrong kind of government."

And this answers your "why".

"If in this context one could make a distinction between the actions of a government and the actions of individual citizens, why would we need politics at all? All governments would be on one side, doing something among themselves, while we private citizens would go along in happy, idyllic tribalism. But that picture is false. We are responsible for the government we have, and that is why it is important to take the science of politics very seriously. If we become a dictatorship, and a freer country attacks us, it would be their right."

Governments are meant to serve and protect their people, therefore there should be a direct relationship between a government and its people. That is exactly why the people should take responsibility for their government, why the people should get involved in their government. For their own protection. When you claim that you don't understand why a population for a country should be responsible for it's government you deny the relevance between the people of a nation and their own government.

I think Ayn Rand is the last person who would ever say anything based on faith.

Well, Olex, it is not my job to define it. It is the job of the writers of the article to define the words they are using. Why didn't this question come to your mind when you read the word "complicit" in the article?

I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the article it explains the meaning of complicit to you, just like I was able to find an answer to your claim that the article didn't give a precise explanation as to why people should be responsible for their own governments. I could have told you myself (it's actually common sense, if you think about it), but I found the bit in the essay to prove to you that it certainly exists.

Edited by Gal
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I have a question for all this that goes a little further into the base of the conflict over there and whether they have any right to occupy Plestinian lands at all. Was the creation of the current Isreali state moral in the first place? If the Palestinians trying to gain a country by resorting to terrorist bombings, kidnappings, and other acts to force Isreal to recgonize them is immoral, why was it any more moral for the Jews to resort to terrorist bombings and other similar tactics to gain an Isreali state from the British?

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A careful distinction should be made between sovereignty and property.

The text below is essentially what I posted on HPO in April 2004.

... the whole reason there is a mess in the Middle East concerning Israel is the fact that the United Nations took Arab land, specifically Palestinian land and gave it to foreigners to settle.
What the United Nations did in 1948 was to give sovereignty over some territories, and not ownership, to a Jewish, respectively an Arab, state.

Ownership and sovereignty are completely different concepts. Sovereignty is about which (or whose) legislation is valid for people living inside a territory, and ownership is about who can acquire, use or sell something.

For example, here in Switzerland we have land which is owned by Swiss, but also some by Germans, British, Italians, Austrians, Spaniards, Americans, Russians, Romanians and what not. It is owned by these people because they bought it. Germany, UK, etc. has no say about how this land is used, sold or bought; only the owners have. All this land is, however, under Swiss sovereignty, that is all people who live on this land are subject to the Swiss law, and the rules of ownership are also Swiss.

Now, sovereignty may change, for example when a territory is included in another country, but this does not cancel the ownership.

Any civilized, or even semi-civilized, country has/had the concept of ownership and made this distinction. It was the case of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled in the geographic region called Palestine until 1918, and also UK, which did it between 1918 and 1948.

Accordingly, if the Jews wanted to settle in Palestine, they had to buy the land which was owned, from the respective owners.

Which they did, especially massively after about 1870. It wasn't possible otherwise, because the Ottoman, respectively the British Empire did have and did enforce the concept of ownership, and prevented theft of private property.

If these arguments are not sufficient, I provided elsewhere(*) a quote from a work by a reputed historian, Paul Johnson, which directly acknowledges the fact of land buying be Jews in Palestine.

Now, when the Jews established a state, the state of Israel, in 1949, this fact did not suppress ipso facto the titles of ownership on land and other property detained by non-Jews. And if there were cases of property theft, these are to be solved, and possibly punished, in the courts, according to law.

All based on a fictional book known as the Bible or the Torah, or whatever floats your boat.

If what you mean is that the Bible cannot *give* something to someone, this is correct: the Bible is not a property title.

Just because there is a really old book saying that some land belong to an ethnic group is no reason to take land from another group 2,000 years later.

This is not what really happened: as shown above, what was given to future Jewish state was the *sovereignty* over a portion of land, and not *ownership*. At the same moment, sovereignty over another portion of land was given to a future Arab state, which also never existed before, but some people refused it.

Moreover, the sovereignty which was given to them, was taken not from a state called Palestine (which never existed), but from UK (or, more exactly, UN). In any case, in the last at least 200 years there was no Arab sovereignty over whole or part of the region now called Palestine.

================

(*)In Paul Johnson's "A History of the Jews" I found many oblique references of land being purchased from, primarily Turkish, but also Jordanian and local Arab owners, the Rothschilds being big contributors. A more direct reference is this:

The scale of the settlements pushed up the price of land,

and Jewish settlers and agencies found the Arabs hard

bargainers: "every dunam of land needed for our colonization

work [had] to be bought in the open market", complained

Weizmann, "at fantastic prices which rose ever higher as our

work developed. Every improvement we made rased the value

of the remaining land in that particular area, and the Arab

landowners lost no time in cashing in. We found we had to

cover the soil of Palestine with Jewish gold".

(p. 435, HarperPerennial, soft cover, ISBN 0-06-091533-1)

There could be better references in this book, but this is what I found in the first 10 minutes of search.

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