Tuesday, June 23, 2009

On IDF Morality and the Law

I attended on conference last week and found that Arlene Kushner wrote something which I'l steal:

"The Fights to be Fought"

Last Thursday, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, in conjunction with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Foundation), sponsored a conference: "Hamas, the Gaza War, and Accountability Under International Law."

A number of points made at that conference are worth sharing here. But I begin with what was for me a highlight:

Maj.-Gen. (res) Yaakov Amidror, chairing the session on "International Law & Military Operations in Practice," told us a story:

Years ago, he served in Intelligence for the IDF Northern Command. After considerable effort they had finally located a key member of Hezbollah, who had been responsible for Israeli deaths and was planning more of the same. He was inside a building, and his car sat outside. They planted a bomb under his car, with intentions of detonating it when he got in.

When the mark entered his car, however, he had a child with him.

Said General Amidror: "We didn't ask what international law said, we asked ourselves what was moral. Could we detonate that bomb with a child in the car?"

They decided they could not, and so they watched the Hezbollah terrorist (marked for another day) and the child drive away together.


Amidror speaking:



Photo Credit: YMedad

2 comments:

Yacov said...

Nice distinction and expected from civilized Israelis. The movie Sword of Gideon illustrates that dilemma quite well.
But before we pat ourselves on the back- how about the IDF gestapo like Gush Katif [and other] expulsions ?
Shameful.

YMedad said...

I do not think it appropriate to use loaded terminology connected with either Nazis or Holocaust, no matter the pain and the subjective feelings, to what Jews do or the IDF does. There are enough critical expressions that one can use without resorting to those, even if the analysis is the same.