I was very intrigued by the arguments put forward by one Frank J. Menetrez in a letter published on normanfinkelstein.com. Norman Finkelstein is one the foremost scholars of the Israel-Palestine conflict, who has previously presented one of the most convincing challenges to the moral logic of Israeli state terrorism. In a debate with Josh Block of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee on Democracy Now!, Finkelstein punctured the idea that Israeli attacks are morally distinct from Hamas' bus bombings:
So if Hamas blows up a bus, as it used to do in Tel Aviv, that's terrorism. If Hamas were to say, “We didn't intend to kill the civilians. We intended to blow up the bus,” people would laugh. But if Israel drops ... a one-ton bomb on a densely populated neighborhood in Gaza, as it did in July 2002, and it said, “Oh, we didn't intend to kill the civilians. We can just intended to kill a Palestinian terrorist ... It would be considered as preposterous as if Hamas said “We only intended to blow up the bus.”
Menetrez's letter to Finkelstein seeks to further analyse the morality of Israeli attacks on Palestinians, in which he distinguishes between "foreseen but unintended" consequences, and "direct, intentional" consequences - in order to refute the claim of Israeli human rights group Btselem that "the lack of intent [to kill civilians on Israel's part] makes no difference. Israel remains responsible.". His logic is somewhat spurious on this point, as I argue below; but it also raises an important question - is it true that Israel does not deliberately target civilians? Credible evidence says otherwise.
I wrote to Finkelstein on this subject:
Dear Norman,
I read the letter from Frank J. Menetrez’s published on your website with interest, particularly his observations on the moral status of Israeli attacks on civilian targets.
First of all, however, I have some doubts over whether his strict distinction between “double effect” and “direct, intentional” consequences is tenable. He posits two hypothetical examples, one an attack on a military base situated next to a school, resulting in “foreseen but unintended” consequences, the other an attack on a school at which an individual soldier is known to be collecting his child.
Some obvious objections spring to mind immediately: does the morality of the bombing of the school change if it is a case of more than one soldier collecting his or her children? What about 5? 10? 20? 100? According to Menetrez’s paradigm, the morality of the attack would seem to be unchanging.
This sort of absolute approach is hard to square with anyone’s general moral instincts. Imagine, for instance, that 10 soldiers were visiting the school to pick up their children; the school is bombed, killing them and, say, another 30 civilians. Compare this with a base manned, for the purposes of this example, by a small skeleton staff of 10. The base is bombed, causing 30 civilian casualties at the neighbouring base – a consequence predicted by the military commanders overseeing the bombing. Is there really much of a moral distinction? I would argue that, quibbling aside, there is none. Indeed, how can there be? In both cases the commanders are attacking (or claiming to be attacking) military personnel with the anticipated consequence of exacting a heavy civilian death toll. The exact spatial position of the soldiers and civilians is incidental, and therefore surely irrelevant.
The question is surely one of the seriousness with which one takes civilian loss of life – one which Menetrez of course deals with in his hypothetical example putting Israeli civilians in the place of Palestinians, correctly concluding that “to the IDF, Israeli civilians count, and Palestinian civilians don’t.”
A different objection, of course, might be raised on purely factual grounds: namely, is it true that the IDF does not deliberately target civilians? Some concrete examples certainly spring to mind. In 2004, for instance, a Christian Aid delegation was fired on by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza strip. Sarah Malian, Christian Aid’s communications officer for the Middle East, was cited as saying, “I can’t believe they fired at us. We were clearly civilians. We were surrounded by children at the time.” The news item also reports that “a group of British MPs and peers also came under fire in the same place” two days later.
http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/news/stories/040625.htm
The context of this event, and others like it, was revealed by IDF soldiers in September 2005, part of the pressure group Breaking The Silence, who told the Guardian of orders to “fire at anything that moved”. They also spoke of “pressure to get kills”, and reported that “The commanders said kill as many people as possible”. One noted that “Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters.” Another summarised his orders thus: ““Every person you see on the street, kill him.” And we would just do it”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1563255,00.html
In the face of evidence like this, the objection that Israeli soldiers do not deliberately target civilians is simply not credible.
Regards,
Tim Holmes
P.S. Please feel free to publish any of this email.
UPDATE: On a related point, John Hilary notes that, as of today, the House of Commons International Development Committee is calling for sanctions on Israel. This is encouraging news, and deserves our support. Go to the Enough! coalition website, or that of the Stop Arming Israel campaign, to take action.
