Soccer Dad

What's the Score?

Israeli officials said the military has agreed to halt so-called targeted killings of militants as long as they refrain from violence. Dozens of fugitives and scores of bystanders have been killed in such attacks — usually missiles fired from helicopters — since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000.

The above paragraph comes from "Israelis, Palestinians Progress in Talks." The reporter here is suggesting that more bystanders have been killed by Israeli attacks than those who were targets of Israel. (And the problem wasn't that they were fugitives, but that they were terrorists.) But a score is 20 and a dozen is twelve. At the worst the language here is imprecise; at worst it is misleading. The paragraph comes accross as one more argument that Israel has used disproportionate force in fighting its war on terror. This is an argument that has found its way into the news since Arafat started the "Aqsa Intifadah" in September 2000. While I haven't seen breakdowns of casualties based on Israel's targeted killings; however there have been a number of studies and observations that put the deaths into context. The earliest of these articles (that I recall anyway) is from a Press Briefing by Col. Daniel Reisner from Nov 15, 2000, or about 1 1/2 months into the war:

The claim that the IDF is using excessive force is totally without foundation. There have been 1,351 armed attacks against Israeli targets, and 3,734 attacks without live weapons, constituting a total of almost 5,100 attacks instigated by the Palestinians (figures correct up until November 13). If we take the number of people who have been injured (3-4,000 according to most international organizations) we find that on average, less than one person is injured per incident. This is hardly an excessive use of force.

The Palestinians are engaging in a campaign of violence and terrorism against Israel. Unfortunately, the Palestinians must understand that there is a price to pay for instigating this violence. Israel has no intention whatsoever of attacking innocent civilians, and will do its utmost to ensure that it hits only those who are firing at us, although we cannot promise that we will always succeed in this regard.

A rock can be a lethal weapon, so Reisner's assessment holds. Still this was early on in the conflict. The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism did studies more recently examining the number of non-combatant deaths on each side. Not surprisingly, a majority of Palestinians killed were combatants (or almost certain combatants) and a majority of Israelis killed were non-combatants. And a table compiled in May 2004 shows an even higher percentage of combatants on the Palestinian side among the fatatlities. Clearly as time went on Israel got more careful (or was able to be more careful.)
Still it's disturbing to see that Israel killed 80 children under the age of 12. There is however a reason for that. In November 2000 both Gerald Steinberg and Justus Reid Weiner wrote articles describing how the Palestinians situated their terrorists near civilians - often children - leading to increased civilian casualties. Though these articles were written over 4 years ago, it's worth noting that Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs regularly posts pictures of terrorist engaging in dangerous activities near civilians. So the practice continued in the hope enough children would die in order to bring international action upon Israel.
Just because the Palesitnian regularly make it difficult to distinguish between combatant and non-combatant, doesn't mean that Israel's military doctrine doesn't try to. Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin wrote "Ethical Dilemmas in Fighting Terrorism". The key issue he illustrates so well is:

The case of Salah Shehada, the head of the military arm of Hamas, is a prime example of ethical concerns in decision-making. Shehada planned terror attacks in Israel, including the attack on the Dolphinarium discotheque where twenty-one teenagers were killed, and he was in the process of planning a "mega-attack." We knew that if we hit him, the mega-terror process would stop because he was the mind behind it, the planner, the one who was really pushing the button. Shehada was always surrounded by innocent people until one night in July 2002 we found him almost alone, and we delivered a 2,000-pound bomb on his apartment and he was killed. Unfortunately, the intelligence about those in the surrounding buildings was wrong, and innocent people were killed. Yet when the decision was made, it was the right decision from an ethical point of view because the scale included a mega-attack threatening the lives of hundreds of Israelis, balanced against a terrorist with some collateral damage. But in this case the collateral damage was too high.

A month later, in August 2002, we had all the leadership of Hamas - Sheikh Yassin and all his military commanders, all his engineers, all the minds of terror - in one room in a three-story house and we knew we needed a 2,000-pound bomb to eliminate all of them - the whole leadership, 16 people, all the worst terrorists in the world. Think about having Osama bin Laden and all the top leadership of al-Qaeda in one house. However, due to the criticism in Israeli society and in the media, and due to the consequences of innocent Palestinians being killed, a 2,000-pound bomb was not approved and we hit the building with a much smaller bomb. There was a lot of dust, a lot of noise, but they all got up and ran away and we missed the opportunity. So the ethical dilemmas are always there.

Unlike the impression that the AP reporter tries to give Israel does its utmost to try to minimize civilian casualties. When writing about this conflict it's unfortunate that he sought to mislead rather than enlighten.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 27, 2005 09:14 PM | TrackBack