So, You Want Proportionality?

Thanks to Business Insider, with tunnel additons by yours-truly:

Feel better now?

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That Criticism is Applicable Here in Israel

Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp, in response to Richard Falk on "Asymmetric Warfare", makes points applicable to Israel and its situation vis-a-vis its situation:

He quotes Richard Falk, professor emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, who wrote recently on the Al Jazeera English website:

“American reliance on drone attacks in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) removes the human altogether from the war theater...Eliminating the presence of human soldiers from the battlefield is a chilling development: historically, the fact that war put soldiers’ lives at risk forced citizens to think about whether a war was morally right, or worth fighting...“Ultimately, what is at stake is the human spirit, which at the moment is being squeezed to near-death by technological momentum, corporate greed, militarism, and secular fundamentalism...Examples include The Gulf War of 1991, the Kosovo War of 1999, and the Gaza Attacks of 2008-09…”

Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp, who spent three decades fighting asymmetric wars and led British ground forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, wrote:

“In his apparent preference for combat operations that ‘put soldiers’ lives at risk’ over tactics and technology that reduce the risk to American forces, Mr. Falk seems to regard warfare as some kind of a game. Perhaps like boxing under Marquess of Queensbury rules, where sportsmanship and fair play prevail. Although the forces of Western democracies must of course rigorously apply the Laws of Armed Conflict, these demand neither sportsmanship nor fair play. On the contrary: no responsible military commander will put his own forces at unnecessary risk.

“Within the constraints of effective prosecution of combat, a commander must take all possible steps to safeguard the lives of his men. This is a practical necessity as well as a moral one - a soldier can’t fight the next battle if he is lying in a pool of his own blood...when an army does go to war it must use all legal means at hand to destroy the enemy and to protect it’s own forces. This patently does not mean giving the enemy a fair chance to kill your own troops. It means outnumbering and outgunning the enemy. Attacking his infantry with withering tank fire and attacking his tanks with vicious airstrikes. It means fighting dirty - with deception, deceit, subterfuge and overwhelming firepower...

...“I don’t know whether Mr. Falk is fortunate enough to have children. But I do wonder whether he would recommend the same ‘sporting’ approach to battle if his son or grandson was the young soldier bent under the weight of 100 pounds of weaponry, ammunition and water, sweating in 130 degrees of heat...

Of course, there is also that (laughable) principle of "proportionality".  Should we in Israel be now firing rockets indiscriminately into Gaza, just as they are doing to us?

From here:

On Thursday, August 18, 2011, eight people were killed and at least 40 others injured in a string of terror attacks on buses, civilian vehicles and soldiers near the Israel-Egypt border. In a premeditated attack, terrorists from Gaza targeted Israeli civilians, who were 20km from reaching Eilat, a popular tourist destination for summer vacations.

Following one of the worst terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians in recent years, terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired almost 90 rockets into major Israeli population centers. In response, the IDF targeted several sites of terror activity.

Falk is such a...fool.

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On Morality in Fighting Terror

Odd, this guy being very left-wing.

Asa Kasher, The philosopher who said 'Yes' to the IDF

[the IDF] operated there not only with the backing of the legal opinion of the office of the Military Advocate General, but also on the basis of ethical theory, developed several years ago, that justifes its actions.

Prof. Asa Kasher of Tel Aviv University, an Israel Prize laureate in philosophy, is the philosopher who told the IDF that it was possible. In a recent interview with Haaretz Kasher said the army operated in accordance with a code of conduct developed about five years ago for fighting terrorism.

"The norms followed by the commanders in Gaza were generally appropriate," Kasher said. In Kasher's opinion there is no justification for endangering the lives of soldiers to avoid the killing of civilians who live in the vicinity of terrorists...

Kasher's argument is that in an area such as the Gaza Strip in which the IDF does not have effective control the overriding principle guiding the commanders is achieving their military objectives. Next in priority is protecting soldiers' lives, followed by avoiding injury to enemy civilians. In areas where Israel does have effective control, such as East Jerusalem, there is no justification for targeted killings in which civilians are also hit because Israel has the option of using routine policing procedures, such as arrests, that do not endanger innocent people.

...There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. The media don't understand the nature of international law. It's not like tough traffic laws...

..."The Geneva Conventions are based on hundreds of years of tradition of the fair rules of combat. They were appropriate for classic warfare, where one army fought another. But in our time the whole business of rules of fair combat has been pushed aside. There are international efforts underway to revise the rules to accommodate the war against terrorism...

...but why should I force him [the IDF soldier] to endanger himself much more than that so that the terrorist's neighbor isn't killed? I don't have an answer for that. From the standpoint of the state of Israel, the neighbor is much less important. I owe the soldier more. If it's between the soldier and the terrorist's neighbor, the priority is the soldier. Any country would do the same."

The decision regarding the magnitude of force used to protect the lives of the soldiers is up to the commander in the field. "The commander must be skilled in gauging the appropriate use of force," Kasher said.

Do You Read German?

Appeared in Austria's "Die Presse", 09.01.2009 (if you don't read German, skip down to the translation):

Immer Ärger mit den Juden

Warum lassen sich die Israelis nicht einfach ohne Gegenwehr ermorden? Früher ging das doch auch!

Österreich bringt im Großen und Ganzen den Juden gegenüber ja eh viel Sympathie auf; jedenfalls solange es sich um tote Juden handelt. Gegen die im KZ ermordeten Juden zum Beispiel hat heute fast niemand mehr etwas.

Etwas anders verhält es sich mit (noch) lebenden Juden. Zwar verurteilte der Bundeskanzler in einem Interview die Raketenangriffe der Hamas auf Israel; im gleichen Atemzug verurteilte er aber auch Israels Versuch, sich gegen diese Terrorangriffe militärisch robust zur Wehr zu setzen.

Vermutlich ist diese Haltung eines entschlossenen Einerseits-andererseits durchaus mehrheitsfähig. Solange Israel ohne jede Gegenwehr hinnimmt, dass ein erheblicher Teil seiner Bevölkerung regelmäßig im Bunker leben muss, um nicht Opfer einer Hamas-Rakete zu werden, tolerieren wir ihr Verhalten. Wehren sie sich dagegen, stellen wir sie auf eine Ebene mit den Hamas-Terroristen. Warum auch können sich die in Israel lebenden Juden nicht genauso geräuschlos und höflich umbringen lassen wie ihre Eltern und Großeltern damals in den europäischen Vernichtungslagern?

Mehr Bewusstsein für Tradition und Kontinuität als die störrischen Juden zeigte hingegen erwartungsgemäß Frankreich: Indem das Außenministerium ebenfalls Hamas und Israel gleichermaßen rügte und damit den Unterschied zwischen Aggressor und Opfer orwellianisch zum Verschwinden brachte, knüpfte die Grande Nation gekonnt an die glorreichen Vichy-Zeiten an, in denen das stolze Frankreich jüdische Frechheiten auch nicht ungestraft hinnehmen musste.

Als Camouflage ihrer Haltung dient all jenen, die von Israel erwarten, sich gefälligst mit Raketen beschießen zu lassen, ohne Ärger zu machen, neuerdings das Argument von der „Unverhältnismäßigkeit“ der israelischen Gegenwehr, also der Umstand, dass deutlich mehr Palästinenser der israelischen Gegenwehr zum Opfer fallen als Israelis dem Hamas-Terror.

Unbestritten ist, dass dies vor allem daran liegt, dass die Hamas ihre Raketenstellungen in Schulen, Kindergärten und Krankenhäusern errichtet, um genau diesen Effekt zu erzielen. Deshalb stellt sich die Frage: Warum hindern die 1,5 Millionen Palästinenser in Gaza die Hamas nicht daran, Raketen auf Israel vom Schulhof aus zu starten? Es ist ja nicht gut vorstellbar, dass die Hamas gegen den Widerstand der eigenen Bevölkerung auch nur einen Tag weiter so Terror gegen Israel betreiben könnte.

Davon, dass die (mit Mehrheit gewählte) Hamas mit Gewalt ihre Raketenstellungen mitten unter Zivilisten errichtet hat, ist bislang nichts bekannt. Damit stellt sich auch die Frage der „Verhältnismäßigkeit“ anders: Solange die Palästinenser dulden, dass die Hamas aus ihrer Mitte, aus ihren Häusern und Schulen Raketen auf israelische Kindergärten abfeuert, können sie nicht wirklich als „unschuldige zivile Opfer“ gelten.

Nicht Israels Gegenwehr ist unverhältnismäßig, sondern die Kritik an dieser Gegenwehr ist es.

Christian Ortner ist Journalist in Wien.
christian-ortner@chello.at

Oh, you don't?

Here then:-

Always Trouble with the Jews

Jan. 8, 2009 18:26
Christian Ortner (Die Presse, AUSTRIA)

Why don't the Jews just let themselves be killed without resistance? After all, that's how it used to be!

On the whole, Austria displays rather a lot of sympathy for the Jews, at least as long as we're talking about dead Jews. For example, today practically nobody has anything against the Jews murdered in the concentration camps.

It's a bit different when it comes to Jews who are (still) alive. True, in an
interview the Austrian Chancellor did condemn Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel, but in the same breath he also condemned Israel's efforts to robustly defend itself against these acts of terrorism.

Presumably this resolute on-the-one-hand/on-the other attitude is entirely capable of securing a majority. As long as Israel puts up, without showing any resistance, with a situation in which a considerable proportion of its population are forced to live in air-raid shelters in order to avoid becoming the victims of a Hamas rocket, we tolerate its behavior. If they defend themselves against these attacks, we put them on the same level as the Hamas terrorist. Why can't the Jews living in Israel let themselves be killed off just as noiselessly and politely as their parents and grandparents did at the time in the European extermination camps?

In contrast, as might have been expected, France showed more awareness of tradition and continuity than the stubborn Jews. While its Foreign Ministry similarly reprimanded Hamas and Israel equally, in the best Orwellian style thereby eliminating the difference between aggressor and victim, the Grande Nation made a masterly connection to the glorious days of Vichy, when proud France also had to put up with acts of Jewish insolence with impunity.

By way of camouflage for their behavior, all those who expect Israel to kindly allow itself to be bombarded with rockets, without making any trouble, have recently started using the argument of "disproportionality" of Israel's resistance, in other words the fact that clearly more Palestinians fell victim to Israel's resistance than Israelis to Hamas' terror.

It is an undisputed fact that the main reason for this is that Hamas sets up its
rocket positions at schools, nursery schools, and hospitals, precisely in order to achieve this effect. Which is why the following question must be asked: Why do the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza not prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Israel from their schoolyards? After all, it is hard to imagine that Hamas would be able to continue carrying out terror against Israel for even one day in the face of resistance by its own population.

So far, there is no information about Hamas (elected by a majority) using force to install its rocket positions right in the middle of the civilian population. Hence the question of "proportionality" must also be asked differently. As long as the Palestinians tolerate Hamas firing rockets at Israeli nursery schools, from within their midst, from their houses and schools, they cannot really be considered "innocent civilian victims."

It is not Israel's resistance which is disproportionate, but the criticism of
this resistance.

My Comment Over At Contentions on Proportionality

Here, #4, at Noah Pollak's blog post where he attacks Andrew Sullivan:

The element of “proportionality” is a false measurement for another reason. It is Hamas’ intention to eliminate Israel, no matter what Israel did to Hamas. Israel’s stated and practiced intention these past 3.5 years since disengagement was to let Hamas rule as long as no rockets were fired. Therefore, one most involve in the mathematics of proportionality the intentions of the violence. For if Israel doesn’t respond harder and stronger and more powerful than Hamas, then Hamas will continue to be able to attempt the elimination of Israel and the death of as many of its Jewish citizens as they can. This is the real disproportionality most miss, and which, in the end, justifies Israel 100:1 actions.