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Research on the Ethics of War in the Context of Violence in Gaza

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Abstract

The paper first demonstrates the ability to provode objective data and analyses during war and then examines the need for such objective gathering of data and analysis in the context of mass violence and war, specifically in the 2009 Gaza War. That data and analysis is required to assess compliance with just war norms in assessing the conduct of the war, a framework quite distinct from human rights norms that can misapply and deform the application of norms such as proportionality and obligations not to target civilians.

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Notes

  1. Cf. Foucault (1986); Pease (2002)

  2. “A Debate on the Academic Boycott of Israel,” York University, 11 May 2009.

  3. Walis Salem and the late Edy Kaufman wrote a set of guiding principles for Israeli/Palestinian Academic Cooperation for UNESCO: “Translating Shared Adherence to Academic Freedom into Action” dedicated to “significantly increasing the percentage of Israeli and Palestinian academics and intellectuals engaged in constructive dialogue” and set out a shared set of principles that excluded boycotting academic institutions and to build on the developing shared “Arab-Israeli Research Cooperation 1995–1999” (see Meria 4:3, 2000, 1–6) that had developed before the outbreak of the second intifadah. See also the Rome Principles signed at the University of Rome, La Spienza in May 2004 by the rectors and presidents of five Israeli and four Palestinian universities and research institutes. Essentially, they were influenced by the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (FFIPP) advocating “the meaningful reconciliation between conflicting ethnic groups and denominations through joint educational and cultural projects”. (23-4) and was rooted in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the principles of academic freedom of the International Association of Universities and the Constitution of UNESCO.

  4. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2006, “Israel’s civil liberties ratings improved from 3 to 2 due to a marked decrease in terrorist attacks in 2005, as well as a surge of civic activism surrounding the country’s ‘disengagement’ from the Gaza Strip.” Freedom House, “Freedom in the World — Israel (2006).” http://www.freedomhouse.org/inc/content/pubs/fiw/inc_country_detail.cfm?year=2006&country=6985&pf. The Report went on to note: “Press freedom is respected in Israel, and the country features a vibrant and independent media landscape...While newspaper and magazine articles on security matters are subject to a military censor, the scope of permissible reporting is wide and there is a broad range of published material…the independent judiciary and an active civil society adequately protect the free media.”

  5. For an argument on why the restrictions were not illegal, see Weiner and Bell 2008 and for a refutation of Amnesty International’s claim, see “Amnesty International’s anti-Israel stance undermines human rights and international law,” Prof. Avi Bell, Jurist Hotline Blog, January 5, 2009

  6. Ibid, 41.

  7. Rather than 500,000, Sri Lanka’s displaced numbered just over 192000. OCHA, 7 May 2009.

  8. The numbers reported by more detached reports at the time varied between 52 and 66.

  9. Kofi Annan appointed 12 members to the Jenin Inquiry from a wide variety of countries. The Report by the Jenin Inquiry Regarding the Israel invasion of the Jenin Refugee Camp from 3-18 April 2002 (Brian Woods and Ray MacMillan eds.) [http://www.jenininquiry.org/Jenin%20Inquiry%20Report.pdf]

  10. Palestinian Centre for Human Rights http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2008/22-01-2009.htm

  11. These include Abu Zakaria al-Jamal (3.01.09), Mahmoud Shalpokh and Muhammad Hilou (4.01.09), Muhammad Farid Abdallah, Muhammad Abdallah Obeid and Iyad Hassan Obeid (5.01.09), Ayman Siam (6.01.09), Abdul Karim Rafeeq Hassan and Bilal ‘Abdul Hadi ’Ali (7.01.09) Amir Mansi (10.01.09), Abu Muhammad al-Marri (13.01.09) but Said Mamoud al-‘Emari was recorded as killed on 12.01.09 (perhaps the same person) whose deaths had previously been reported as combatant deaths somewhere on the dates indicated. Cf. CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, Media Analysis, 23 May 2009. http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1603.

  12. Feldman and Blau 2009. The evidence for the police being involved with the security forces fall into two categories:

    1. a)

      Pre-vetting: to prevent terrorists from being recruited into the police force, the Palestinian police, in accordance with the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Police Act, were to be selected in cooperation with Israeli security forces (Annex I, Article II, Oslo Accords, but Hamas (following in the footsteps of the PA) did not submit a list of all potential police recruits to Israel for approval (Annex I, Article IV (4)) Not only has Israel been denied pre-vetting rights, but known terrorists were recruited into the police force;

    2. b)

      Instead of 9,000 police permitted under the Gaza-Jericho accord of May 1994 (Annex I, Article III (3)), first 20,000 and then 24,000 (Oslo II, Annex I, Article IV (3)) were deployed; that figure has been exceeded by at least 10,000 and perhaps 26,000.. Reports suggest that the Palestinian security forces may exceed 50,000 men.

  13. There is no connection between the ILD sanctioning an action and such an action being both legal and ethical. Further, it certainly does not mean that the ILD was “objective”; the ILD may be more militant and pro-IDF than comparable civilian bodies, either because of internal pressures or simply the cultural atmosphere and the imperatives of war to provide the tools to allow the army to operate legally as a restraint without impeding its effectiveness. Finally, the ILD operates within a human personal context with a different role when the head of the ILD is the more reticent Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch (in contrast to his predecessor, the renowned and widely respected Daniel Reisner) and the head of Southern Command in charge of Operation Cast Lead is General Yoav Gallant with a reputation as a cowboy indifferent to legal niceties.

  14. Yuval Shany has a record of being strict in the interpretation of international law in the conduct of war since, in the same interview, he claimed that IDF targeting of Hamas ministry buildings unrelated to the military “that do not serve a military purpose is a violation of the rules of war. The buildings are civilian sites and must not be attacked” but the ILD countered that since Hamas is categorized as a terrorist organization, the entire governmental infrastructure serves terrorist principles and is not immune from being targeted presumably on the basis of the logic that any form of governance under the control of terrorists is a legitimate target not because it serves terrorist purposes, but because they contribute to the support of the terrorist organization.

  15. The Electronic Intifadah, http://electronicintifada.net/bytopic/687.shtml

  16. Cf. Khan 2009; for the attack in Pakistan, see: www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522518,00.html.

  17. UNICEF’s Executive Director, Ann M. Veneman, used the same figure of 300 child deaths on 14 January 2009. http://www.unicef.org/turkey/pc/ep26.html “Over 300 children have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded, since the beginning of the Gaza crisis on 27 December, 2008.” No evidential support was provided to back up the claim though it was repeatedly broadcast in the Israeli media, on al Jazeera television and abroad. Further, UNICEF has a stellar reputation.

  18. Ha’aretz, editorial, “Investigate Now,” 1 February 2009. http://middleeast.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=middleeast&cdn=newsissues&tm=876&gps=27_769_1102_640&f=00&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml%3FitemNo%3D1057672

  19. James A. Graff, a pro-Palestinian philosopher at the University of Toronto, had accused Israel previously of targeting children over 11 years old in a study comparing child death tolls under Yitzhak Rabin when he was Defence Minister and his successor, Arens (1997). Daniel Statman drew a different conclusion in his chapter, “Jus in Bello and the Intifadah,” “There is simply no way of fighting nowadays without hurting children, even when the war is totally just and conducted by the most moral of nations.” (p. 144) Since about the same numbers were killed in the 22 intensive fighting in the Gaza War as in the last six months of 2006, the numbers do not seem significantly exaggerated and the source of differences seem to be found in the age bracket and whether the “children” were killed in self-defence, given that the IDF can shoot and kill enemy combatants who are underage. Cf. Defence for Children International, “Gaza Under Attack: Child deaths as a result of Israeli military actions in Gaza,” from 25 June 2006 to 31 December 2006, 15 July 2006. www.dci-pal.org/english/Display.cfm?DocId=505&CategoryId=11

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  20. This was one of the incidents that launched a new wave of lawfare initiatives. Ibrahim Barzak and Steve Weizman, “Israel shells near UN school, killing at least 30,” “Despite pressure and outrage from the international community, Zionist authorities in Israel are refusing to cooperate with prosecutors in the case of war crimes by refusing the public release of names and photographs of Israeli soldiers and commanders guilty of committing atrocities in the field, according to a wire from the Fars News Agency. The Zionist-Israeli government has, however, tried to mitigate responsibility for the heinous crimes against the Palestinian people to a few high-ranking military officials who have already been exposed. Iranian Press TV reported the ban applies to officers of the rank of battalion commander and down, and also prohibits the publication of information linking particular commanders to certain areas in Gaza that suffered heavy losses. Reports from Israeli and Dutch press indicate proceedings against one Zionist-Israeli brigade commander are underway in a Dutch court, a likely development responsible for the Zionist government in censoring those culpable for the war in Gaza.” 6 January 2009, AP News.

    http://freemediaproductions.newsvine.com/_news/2009/01/27/2359861-israel-tries-to-cover-tracks-amid-war-crimes-allegations?threadId=482714

  21. Macintyre and Sengupta 2009. See also Hider and Sugden 2009

  22. Security Council Report, 21.01.09. Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour, said he was satisfied with Ban’s comments because in his view “determining the next step...includes many things, including legal proceedings in (the) international legal system.” Cf. Shamir 2009.

  23. Erlanger, ibid. Note that Hamas even sheltering beside a school to fire a rocket and thereby risk the lives of civilians could potentially be a war crime.

  24. The UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in “its more comprehensive weekly report, published three days later, stated that “Israeli shelling directly hit two UNRWA schools ...”, Martin 2009. Cf. Un OCHA, “Situation report on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip No.18 ... 27–28 January 2009. The document contains no correction of its earlier claims. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MYAI-7NR5GD?OpenDocument

  25. Col. Itzik Turgeman, IDF Investigation Report 22 April 2009. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/IDFrelease042209.html

  26. Human Rights Tribune, “Richard Goldstone to lead Human Rights Council fact-finding mission on Haza conflict,” 3 April 2009. http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/Richard-Goldstone-to-lead-Human,4309

  27. The 120mm shells, a recent acquisition, have a computerized targeting system attached to a GPS. Brigade commanders say they were very effective, but they were also responsible for two very serious mishaps: a strike adjacent to a UNRWA school that killed 42 Palestinians and a friendly fire incident that seriously wounded two officers.

  28. ICRC, http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/weapons-interview-170109; see Gerald Steinberg claimed in a column (“Human Rights Watch: White (Phosphorous) Lies,” The Jerusalem Post, 17 January 2009: http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=4957)

  29. Op. cit.

  30. This popular view is widely shared by the media. Cf. Darnstädt and Schult 2009. They stated that “the immense (my italics) number of civilian casualties suggest that it did.” But they neither checked their numbers nor the applicable laws and ethical norm—whether, in their own words, the number of deaths was “blatantly disproportionate to the military value of the operation.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,603508,00.html

  31. This figure seems odd since after the first week of the war, the IDF claimed it had killed approximately 300 Hamas out of almost 800 casualties so that civilians would have represented 62.5% not 33% of the casualties. Cf. Harel 2009a. See also the claim by an Italian journalist that a Gaza doctor insisted that there were at most 600 casualties, mostly Hamas youth. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3660423,00.html. Certainly CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has questioned the Palestinian Committee on Human Rights (PCHR’s) figures (16 January 2009). On the other hand, “CAMERA identified a number of Hamas fighters and members of other Palestinian terrorist groups who were either misclassified by PCHR as civilians, not identified as combatants, or omitted entirely from their tabulations.” Further, “An analysis of the fatalities by age and gender shows that the majority of civilian fatalities recorded by PCHR are males between 15 and 40 years old, the same age profile as the combatants.” http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1603) One complicating factor in the counting is that Hamas fighters wore civilian clothing, so the figures of women and children killed are very relevant. So is the independence of the compiler of the figures and PCHR has been explicitly partisan. Further, PCHR allegedly omitted from its casualty figures Hamas members who were widely reported as killed, possibly because Hamas ordered such information to be repressed:

    • •Jihad Abu Medif (Medyiff)—identified as member of Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade

    • •Haitham Abu al-Qumsan—identified as member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades

    • •Hamdi Fareed Abu Hamada—identified as member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades

    • •Eyad al-Maqqousi—identified as member of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades

    • •Mohammed ‘Abed Hassan Brbakh—identified as DFLP commander

    • •Tariq Nimer Abu Amsha—identified as member of Islamic Jihad al-Quds Brigades

    • •Shams Omar—Al-Quds (Islamic Jihad) commander in Gaza

    CAMERA’s examination of PCHR’s reports found no mention of several senior commanders from Hamas whose deaths were widely reported in the media:

    • •Mahmoud Shalpokh on Jan. 4

    • •Ayman Siam on Jan. 6

    • •Amir Mansi on Jan. 10

    • •Muhammad Hilou on Jan. 4 (a man with a similar name was listed but with no indication that he was a member of Hamas or a combatant)

    • •Abu Zakaria al-Jamal on Jan.3

  32. Erlanger 2009b. Cf. Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, posting, 22 January 2009. http://www.pchrgaza.org/ Note the discrepancy that CAMERA pointed out that of the PCHR child fatalities 23% are 15–17 years of age even though this age group constitutes only 8% of the Palestinian Gaza population. The Palestinian National health Authority figures were even higher reporting 410 “children” dead compared to a figure of 281 for PCHR and only 81 women compared to the PCHR figure of 111. in any case, why were four times as many “children” killed as women when some of the women were fighters?

  33. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y

  34. Cf. Conetta 2002. The comparison in the title is to the 1999 Balkans campaign, Operation Allied Force (OAF) aerial bombing campaign in which approximately half the number of civilians died. The differential death toll was traced to different mission objectives (OEF aimed at removing the Taliban regime and killing or capturing as many Taliban and Al Qaeda cadre as possible whereas there was no effort to overthrow the regime in Serbia or kill civilian leaders), differences in operational and tactical features of each of the bombing campaigns so that even though more accurately targeted explosives—smart GPS directed bombs—were used but against far fewer fixed targets but in much less populated region, there were still more unintended civilian casualties, and the mix and technical characteristics of the weapons employed, namely a much higher proportion of naval aircraft and use of B1 and B52 bombers flying at higher altitudes for much longer sorties even though the ethical norms were probably applied more rigorously in Afghanistan compared to Kosovo. Human Rights Watch and Reuters provided similar estimates. http://www.comw.org/pda/0201oef.html#appendix1

  35. “Bibi vows to topple Hamas if elected,” Jerusalem Post, 3 February 2009.

  36. http://thereport.amnesty.org/en/

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    Howard Adelman

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Adelman, H. Research on the Ethics of War in the Context of Violence in Gaza. J Acad Ethics 7, 93–113 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-009-9094-z

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