El Criador de Gorilas is one of Argentina’s leading political blogs. Its pseudonymous author mainly concerns himself with questions relating to voter behaviour here and the United States but occasionaly ventures further afield. I take the liberty of translating part of his his latest - titled “El Criador Makes Himself Even More Unpopular” - post below, with some minor editing.

He starts by referring to an op-ed piece on the Gaza crisis in a local newspaper which calls for an end to the violence and nothing more and then goes on to say that,

If it was just a matter of violence or no violence it would all be really simple. It’s not like that though, for the simple reason that no violence today could lead to much more violence tomorrow. Note that I said could lead to. That’s the kernel of the problem, there’s no certain way of knowing whether it would or not. The dilemma rests on the uncertainty surrounding the result that may be expected from the action. Of course one may choose to act solely out of conviction, that is to say, without considering the consequences and always choose non-violence. The problem with this arises when it leads to one being anihilated.

Furthermore, the notion that the issue is a choice between violence or non-violence doesn’t even work inside our own borders. The state, at the end of the day, is founded on and sustained by violence. The issue, therefore, isn’t violence or non-violence, it’s whether violence is privatized and fragmented or whether the state monopolises, limits and controls violence. If one consistently supports the idea of non-violence one will end up as an anarcho-pacifist who critcises the mere idea of the state. If not, one has to accept that violence is sometimes necessary.

He goes on to make use of Max Weber’s ideas on the clash between an ethics of responsibility and an ethics of conviction to conclude that the violent nature of Israel’s actions cannot, on its own, be used to find them unjustified.