Soccer Dad

The heroic kamm and blau

Last week the New York Times reported about the Anat Kamm/ Uri Blau case:

The article by Mr. Blau at the center of the storm was published in November 2008. It focused on an episode in June 2007 in which two Palestinian militants belonging to the Islamic Jihad group were killed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. The military said at the time that the two were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces.

Mr. Blau noted that months before, one of the militants, Ziad Subhi Muhammad Malaisha, had been marked as a target for assassination by the Israeli Army's Central Command, which is responsible for the West Bank.

Mr. Blau's article suggested that Mr. Malaisha's killing contravened an Israeli Supreme Court ruling from December 2006 that strictly limited the circumstances in which the military can to carry out pre-emptive strikes. Haaretz printed copies of Central Command documents stating that Mr. Malaisha and two other Islamic Jihad leaders were eligible targets alongside the report.

Yaacov Lozowick observed:

Haaretz republished most of Blau's story over the weekend, to remind us that the real culprits are the generals who are not behaving correctly. In brief, the High Court of Justice ordered that Palestinian terrorists not be assassinated in cases where they can be arrested; Kamm's documents seemed to be saying the generals were disregarding this order. Since Haaretz was so helpful as to re-publish the story, I feel confident in saying it isn't convincing. The documents they cite seem to be saying that the terrorists must be arrested, but if the choice is between letting them get away or killing them, they should be killed. In other words, precisely what the High Court said. There was also mention of the fact that should there be a need to fire at the terrorists, this would be permissible even if there was one single unidentified individual with them - but not two, say, or four. We know that in the invasion of Iraq the Americans were allowed to assassinate identified enemies along with up to 29 civilians - so the documents Kamm stole seem to prove the opposite of what Uri Blau said they proved.

So Kamm wasn't a whistle-blower, and Blau wasn't uncovering an uncomfortable truth the IDF needed to hide.

I trust Yaacov. So will the Times (and other publications covering the story) now acknowledge that the documents show that the army was following the (restrictive) law?

In semi-related news an Israeli academic team won an international competition about the laws of war.

An Israeli team from the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, recently beat out 44 universities to take first place in the 2010 edition of the Jean-Pictet Competition on international humanitarian law.

The week-long international competition, held between March 20-27 in Quebec, Canada, matched up teams from universities around the world to test their knowledge in the field of international humanitarian law (IHL) - commonly referred to as the laws of war.

"For an Israeli team to win a competition in the field in which Israel is so often criticized is significant," said the team's academic supervisor, Daphné Richemond-Barak. "The Jean-Pictet is the most prestigious competition in the field worldwide."

I guess being on the front lines of a terror war, Israelis know better what their obligations are than their critics acknowledge.

UPDATE: For more please see Simply Jews and his updates.