Thursday, July 20, 2006
Alan Dershowitz makes the simple observation that international law is simply behind the time (if it was ever with them): Arithmetic of Pain
While Israel does everything reasonable to minimize civilian casualties — not always with success — Hezbollah and Hamas want to maximize civilian casualties on both sides. Islamic terrorists, a diplomat commented years ago, "have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain. . . . Palestinian casualties play in their favor and Israeli casualties play in their favor." These are groups that send children to die as suicide bombers, sometimes without the child knowing that he is being sacrificed. Two years ago, an 11-year-old was paid to take a parcel through Israeli security. Unbeknownst to him, it contained a bomb that was to be detonated remotely. (Fortunately the plot was foiled.)
This misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war. The distinction between combatants and civilians — easy when combatants were uniformed members of armies that fought on battlefields distant from civilian centers — is more difficult in the present context. Now, there is a continuum of "civilianality": Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents — babies, hostages and others completely uninvolved; at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually...
Worth emphasizing: "This chorus of condemnation actually encourages the terrorists to operate from civilian areas." One thing that I have found recently (OK, not even so recently) is that the term "war crime" can be applied as a term of art to almost any activity that even inconveniences a civilian population. I would submit that this devalues and causes contempt for the term, thus weakening it.
Here is a Human Rights Watch FAQ on the current conflict. If one were to edit out HRW's own possibly tendentious conclusions and stick to the principles laid out, instead using your own judgement to measure things up, Israel's actions seem to stand it in good stead. But when one reads something like this...
"...it is illegal under international humanitarian law, as noted below, to use military force to squeeze the civilian population, to enhance its suffering, or to undermine its morale, regardless of the ultimate purpose..."
...one realizes just how much of a term of art these things become, and how easily twistable they are. You can't even "undermine its morale"? That's an awfully broad canopy -- especially in a day and age where civilian populations are actually electing terrorists, and terrorists are existing among civilian populations. Surely there must be some price to pay.
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