Moral Questions in Israel's Struggle with Hezbollah

As might be intuited from a recent post, The Pan-Islamist Threat, oldstyleliberal tends to side with Israel when it is attacked from within or without by those who loudly say they oppose its very existence. Hezbollah, now attacking Israel from Lebanon, would seem to qualify in that regard. So it is with a great deal of reluctance that oldstyleliberal concludes that the way Israel is presently conducting its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon leaves way too much to be desired, in terms of moral propriety.

The reasoning oldstyleliberal employs to arrive at this sad conclusion is aptly and succinctly presented in this August 4 article by Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. The title of the article summarizes its basic perspective: "Fog of War Is No Cover for Causing Civilian Deaths." Though "an honest reckoning of the conduct of Israeli forces in Lebanon is difficult" because "the awful bloodshed and intense emotions of war are not conducive to careful moral reasoning," Roth writes, he takes Israel to task nonetheless for several of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's potentially misleading claims in recent speeches.

First of all, Olmert's statement that "the Israeli military exercises great care to avoid harming Lebanese civilians" is called severely into question, in view of the fact that "Human Rights Watch investigators in Lebanon have recorded an appalling number of incidents in which civilians and civilian objects were hit with no apparent military justification." Roth lists the high civilian death tolls and massive amounts of destruction at Dweir, Marwahin, Beflay, Srifa, "nine square blocks of southern Beirut," and Qana as examples of Israel's insufficient care in safeguarding Lebanese civilians and their living conditions.

Does Hezbollah's "abusive" and "aggressive" intent to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth," or the fact that Hezbollah started these hostilities, justify Israel in sometimes harming civilians, as Olmert seems to claim when he suggests that Israel ought to be "given more latitude"? No, says Roth:

The obligations to respect international humanitarian law, including to refrain from deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and to take all feasible precautions against civilian casualties, persist regardless of the conduct of one's opponent.

Can Israel's less-than-fully-successful attempts to warn civilians to flee the areas that are about to be attacked excuse the subsequent unfortunate deaths of those who have stayed? No, says Roth,

... the failure to heed [a warning] does not create a free-fire zone. If it did, Palestinian militant groups might "warn" all settlers to leave Israeli settlements and then be justified in treating as legitimate targets those who remained.

Does Hezbollah bear the true blame for civilian deaths because it is using the Lebanese civilians as "human shields"? Roth says that Hezbollah has been guilty of violations of "international humanitarian law [that] does prohibit the deliberate use of civilians to shield fighters and military assets, and [that] requires all parties to do everything feasible to station their forces away from civilians." Yet the scale of the civilian carnage in Lebanon well exceeds any level commensurate with Hezbollah's "human shield" violations. When, as has been too often well-documented, Hezbollah troops are nowhere near Israel's chosen strike locations, the "human shield" argument doesn't work.

Nor, says Roth, do the putative misdeeds of the Lebanese government in allowing Hezbollah to continue to operate in south Lebanon prior to this war's outbreak justify the civilian carnage: "A government's misdeeds never justify attacks on its people."

What about the targeting by Israel of Lebanon's infrastructure — is it permissible? No, says Roth,

... international humanitarian law permits attacks on infrastructure only if it is making an effective military contribution, and the military benefits of its destruction outweigh the civilian costs. That case is difficult, if not impossible, to make for the extensive attacks on electrical facilities, bridges and roadways throughout the country.

oldstyleliberal is not sure he agrees here. It is his understanding that Lebanese bridges and roads are being devastated to keep Hebollah from rearming: restocking the rockets it is raining down daily on northern Israel, killing civilians there. Of course, it is an open question whether the strategy is actually succeeding. If it isn't, then the infrastructure attacks are indeed morally suspect.

On the whole, oldstyleliberal thinks Israel needs to clean up its act, if it wants to be seen as taking the moral high road – which it ought to do, to avoid paying for having pursued the opposite course of action somewhere down the road when its chickens come home to roost.