Soccer Dad

Targeted killings, moral consideration

I've pointed a number of people to an article the Ethical Dilemmas of Fighting Terrorism by (current head of Israel's Military Intelligence) Gen Amos Yadlin. In the paper, Gen Yadlin writes

In August 2002 (actually Sept 2003) we had all the leadership of Hamas in one room and we knew we needed a 2,000-pound bomb to eliminate all of them. Think about having Osama bin Laden and all the top leadership of al-Qaeda in one house. However, use of a 2,000-pound bomb was not approved - we used a much smaller bomb - and they all got up and ran away.

Now the details of that decision have been reported by Laura Blumenfeld of the Washington Post, In Israel, a Divisive Struggle Over Targeted Killing . The article opens a window into the most difficult decision that Israel's political and military leadership have to make: how to protect their country even at the cost of the deaths of innocents.

The article is reported straight without the snideness that often accompanies reporting on Israel.

Surprisingly (from my perspective) the hardest liner when it comes to these decisions was apparently Avi Dichter and the most conflicted of the decision makers was Gen Moshe Yaalon who is widely portrayed as a hard liner. Apparently that hard line doesn't extend over all areas of his experience.

What's most important about the article though, is that it demolishes the idea that "targeted killings" are "extrajudicial" in the parlance of the enlightened. Israel has strict rules for these actions and the determining factor, legally, is always whether the target presents a threat in the future. Revenge is not a sufficient reason for the targeted assassinations.

There are, however, two weaknesses to the article.

One is that Blumenfeld doesn't present the relevant sections of international law that justify Israel's actions. As such the discussions she covers have the quality of discussing the number of angels dancing on a pinhead.

The Geneva Conventions Article 51 paragraph 7 reads:

7. The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.

It wouldn't have taken much to have given the article the proper legal background which constrain Israeli actions.

And while the straight reporting benefits the picture it paints of the Israeli decision, it gives undue credence to the host of the Hamas meeting that was targeted

For Abu Ras, the Hamas leader whose home had been bombed, "it felt like an earthquake. A big, black smoke," he said in an interview. His guests had sat down to lunch. "I was so happy to host them," Abu Ras said. "What was our crime? I'm an ordinary citizen, not a terrorist. We have no terrorists among the Palestinian people."

Of course mentioning the Geneva conventions would have helped here too. (via Elder of Ziyon)

Article 85.-Repression of breaches of this Protocol

3. In addition to the grave breaches defined in Article 11, the following acts shall be regarded as grave breaches of this Protocol, when committed wilfully, in violation of the relevant provisions of this Protocol, and causing death or serious injury to body or health:

(a) Making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack;

(b) Launching an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, as defined in Article 57, paragraph 2 (a) (iii);

According to Abu Ras, there are no Palestinian terrorists because all Israelis are legitimate targets. It is a sentiment often echoed in the West, that the Palestinians resort to terror because it is the only weapon in their hands against a much more powerful enemy.

That of course is an argument that has no legal standing. But that doesn't stop it from being made repeatedly. Those who make it though are not simply misguided. They have decided that killing Jews has legal protections; and that Jews defending themselves have none.

Despite its failings, Blumendfeld's article is a must read.

(When looking for the article before, I discovered that the NY Sun picked it up today.)

UPDATE: Biur Chametz makes an important observation about the implication of this article relevant to Gen Yaalon.

UPDATE II: Please see the dissenting comments on this post at IsraPundit. The Volokh Conspiracy.David Bernstein was also impressed with this article.

Technorati tags: Targeted Killings, Israel, Hamas, Moshe Yaalon, Avi Dichter, Washington Post.