Just war

Both Ross Douthat and Daniel Larison have been musing about the merits of Just War theory and its applicability to the Gaza conflict.

The problem with this approach--i.e., approaching the normative question of what actions are just in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--is that a reliance on abstract theories aiming for general applicability is ultimately futile in this context. In polite society, the notion that Israel doesn't have a right to be a Jewish state is anathema. Yet the notion that nation-states should be purely secular--in the abstract--is a much more common position that the idea that Israel shouldn't be Jewish. The point here is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sui generis, and bringing abstract principles into this particular conflict ultimately results in the abandonment of the principle or adopting a position that ensures the intractability of the conflict.