The Financial Times and the Satanization of Israel

"But I have--actually, just by chance--discovered one explanation. Marjorie Scardino, an American .... has a weird association with a weirder charity which also is preoccupied with the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center, on whose credit card the former president travels. It has been supported by so many Arab governments and Arab zillionaires..."

One common piece of anti-Semitic craziness is the Zionist Occupation Government, ZOG, which is supposed to hide in the background and twirl its puppet fronts in different countries. Trust Peretz to discover its Arab equivalent. There's probably a simpler explanation for his distaste for the _Economist_ and the _Financial Times_, though - quite often they treat Arabs as if they are fully human.

an insane comment by a defender of Arab antisemitism:

SMacEachern2 "Trust Peretz to discover its Arab equivalent."

The idea of the ZOG is published on Nazi and pro Islamic websites. Arab Muslim antisemitism like its Christian equivalent goes back centuries. At least many Christian Churches gave it up while Arab and Muslims seem to relish their Jew hatred.

"There's probably a simpler explanation for his distaste for the _Economist_ and the _Financial Times_, though - quite often they treat Arabs as if they are fully human."

Maybe so, but to them Israelis are not human at all and Jews only marginally so.

The Financial Times and The Economist are both rather haughty about Israel and Jews. Facts don't matter. They're made of such fine stuff. I now question everything they write. And like SMacEachern2, they think that the Arabs can do no wrong vis-a-vis Israel.

Well, I hope dhurtado reads smac's vile comment. He thought smac was being unjustly slandered as an antisemite.

I never thought I would get to encounter the "ZOG" abomination from any reader of this enlightened magazine.

To better understand British antisemitism I suggest people read:

"Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England" By Anthony Julius

http://www.amazon.com/Trials-Diaspora-History-Anti-Semitism-England/dp/0...

"Trials of the Diaspora is a ground-breaking book that reveals the full history of anti-Semitism in England. Anthony Julius focuses on four distinct versions of English anti-Semitism. He begins with the medieval persecution of Jews, which included defamation, expropriation, and murder, and which culminated in 1290 when King Edward I expelled all the Jews from England. Turning to literary anti-Semitism, Julius shows that negative portrayals of Jews have been continuously present in English literature from the anonymous medieval ballad "Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter," through Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, to T. S. Eliot and beyond. The book then moves to a depiction of modern anti-Semitism--a pervasive but contained prejudice of insult and exclusion that was experienced by Jews during their "readmission" to England in the mid-17th century through the late 20th century. The final chapters detail the contemporary anti-Semitism that emerged in the late 1960s and the 1970s and continues to be present today. It treats Zionism and the State of Israel as illegitimate Jewish enterprises, and, in Julius's opinion, now constitutes the greatest threat to Anglo-Jewish security and morale. A penetrating and original work, Trials of the Diaspora is sure to provoke much comment and debate. "

noga1: ? I'm an anti-semite because I mentioned ZOG (and called it 'anti-semitic craziness') in the same sentence as I did Martin Peretz, and his loopy conspiracy theory about the behind-the-scenes manipulations of those dirty Arabushim? Can you parse that, please?

Incidentally, you can get a flavour of my opinion of the 'ZOG' concept - and (real) anti-Semitism more generally - in posts at places like http://tinyurl.com/ygejqlg. (In that cases, I was the 'PC Academic whore' '....making money sticking to and promoting the jewish-leftist line...'.)

The most depressing thing about The Spine is to watch the extension of attitudes that 10 or 15 years ago you could unambiguously dismiss as associated with stupid bloody anti-Semites, but now pointed at Arabs and Muslims more generally.

I don't understand at all the knocks on SMacEachern2 mentioning ZOG as an instance of anti Semitic craziness and then going on to make a different point.

Disagree all you want with his point but to say his reference to ZOG given the context of his post is an answer to Dhurtado's argument is wrong, and weird. It wouldn't persuade Dhiurtado of anything and he'd be absolutely right.

To better understand the British variant on "progressive" antisemitism / anti-Zionism, read Michael Gove's "Celsius 7/7" (here). Gove is a Conservative Party MP and a member of Cameron's shadow cabinet. A very concise, succinct book that covers a lot of ground. Orthodox (small 'o') lefties will not like it.

In case you were wondering about the title, 7/7 refers to the day of the suicide bombing in London's bus & tubes. I assume you can infer what the "Celsius" refers to. Gove sees Israel as the battleground between the west and the unholy alliance of the Islamists & "progressive" lefties that particularly characterizes the British left & intelligentsia.

Sort of reminds one of what George Orwell had to say about intellectuals.

Hershel Ginsburg

Jerusalem / Efrata

You are right basman. I think smac deserves an apology from me. It's what comes when you read with a certain expectation in mind. I seemed to EXPECT smac to be an easy consumer of these nutteries.

Sorry, Smac.

"arabushim"* is a vile derogation, about as vile as "vuzvuzim" and "tchah-tchahim" or worst, "ashkeNazim". Israelis used to be equal-opportunity offenders. Not one ethnicity, not even one, was given any quarter in that regard.

You choose to tar Marty with the "Arabushim" charge and you then make him the equivalent of those who believe in ZOG. Marty has not referred to Arabs or Muslims by any derogatory names. You did. And then, based on what you did, you go on to compare him to those human abominations that appeal to their readers' basest instincts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionist_Occupation_Government#History

To borrow from you, can you parse that, please?

* If anyone here does not understand what it means, here is one explanation:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3309226,00.html

The author is exaggerating and perhaps he should have. You cannot educate the ignorant by flattering them or pretending that the way they comport themselves somehow excuses their transgressions.

On the other hand, you cannot educate by demonizing people, as smac did. If he wants to criticize Marty, let him criticize him for the substance and errors he can find in his post, not for something he imagines must lurk in Marty's heart of hearts.

"pretending that the way they comport themselves somehow excuses their transgressions."

This does not make sense. Here is what I intended to say:

pretending that the way they comport themselves is somehow excused by their grievances.

Noga: "I never thought I would get to encounter the "ZOG" abomination from any reader of this enlightened magazine."

Take a Valium; in fact, take a whole bottle. What, now to even mention the historical fact of the conspiracy theory it is to be tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism?

Basman: This is par for the course for Noga. Take something out of context, accuse the writer of having said the exact opposite of what he or she has said, feign outrage, fall into a moral swoon ... next, s/he will plaster the site with twelve links referring to ZOG and its proponents and, Oh GOD, why does everyone blame Israel all the time ...

It's actually quite amusing, if it were not so sad.

What? No Frenchisisms to punctuate your bilious rage, icarusr?

How can I take you seriously, then? Franchement là...

noga1: I used the term 'Arabushim' because, in his writings on The Spine, Martin Peretz does not treat Arabs (and Muslims more generally) as fully human: they are inherently inept, violent, treacherous and unstable, they are unfit for dangerous work, none of their countries are 'real countries' with 'real cultures', and so on. If you can come up with another epithet that encapsulates that attitude, I will happily consider it.

And, to restate - I have some background knowledge of the racist and anti-semitic fools who actually believe that 'ZOG' exists. (I even had the T-shirt at one point: "I betrayed my race to ZOG, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!") To the National Alliance, I was a 'PC Academic whore' '....making money sticking to and promoting the jewish-leftist line...'; on The Spine and according to jacksondyer et al., all you'd have to do is change 'jewish' to 'Muslim'. Funny, eh?

Anti-semites and neo-Nazis believe in ZOG because of a vile hatred of Jewish people, who they see as 'racial enemies', and an all-encompassing paranoia... and they formulate all kinds of bizarre connections between different people and different institutions to try and justify that paranoia. When Peretz tries to claim that the FT and the Economist treats Palestinians too well because of some bizarre connection between the head of the Pearson Group and the Carter Center, which is in turn supposed to be a front for some anonymous Ay-rab moneybags -- well, that is _exactly_ the sort of nuttiness that was supposed to prove the existence of 'ZOG'. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but it is the case.

I may demonize Martin Peretz, but if so it's because I dislike his position: on the Spine, he's got a bought-and-paid-for megaphone for claims that Arabs and Muslims are not fully human, he's immune from criticism because no one at TNR would ever cross the boss, he's a chronic name-dropper and pathologically self-important, and he simultaneously has this whole little macho thing going about how tough and world-wise he is. (There is nothing more off-putting than an academic or ex-academic who thinks he's macho.)

"(There is nothing more off-putting than an academic or ex-academic who thinks he's macho.)"

I'll have to agree with you. It is exactly as I have been defining one or two Spine commenters myself.

"that Arabs and Muslims are not fully human,"

I have not seen such evidence with regards to Marty. Marty is not a suave and velvet-tongued presenter. He is very angry with the balance of power in the world which seems to be more fueled by Arab oil and fear of Arab anger than by any considerations of what is just and ethical. If you consider that Arabs are 400 millions, supported by 1.2 billion Muslims, and in possession of 99.9% of the Middle East,
while whining about Palestinian misery, Israel's imperialism and Jewish world domination, you might begin to understand his frustration.

Or probably not.

One thing I've learned from my years of activity on the Internet is that no one is going to change their opinions, which are usually based on personal preference, when presented with facts and bona fide arguments.

noga1: "I have not seen such evidence with regards to Marty"

Well, I guess we will have to disagree on that.

Ms. Scardino's relationship with the Carter Foundation is not "weird." She is a trustee of the foundation, as noted below:

http://www.muckety.com/Query?SearchResult=745&SearchResult=25586&graph=M...

Muckety.com is a great website for conspiracy theorists, by the way.

basman I don't understand at all the knocks on SMacEachern2 mentioning ZOG as an instance of anti Semitic craziness and then going on to make a different point.”

Here is the comment from McEachern:

"One common piece of anti-Semitic craziness is the Zionist Occupation Government, ZOG, which is supposed to hide in the background and twirl its puppet fronts in different countries. Trust Peretz to discover its Arab equivalent."

Mc was actually accusing Marty of being an anti-Arab bigot for mentioning that many of them are antisemitic.

That was the point of his post. This is what I (and I suppose Noga) was reacting to.

Noga1 has already apologized on this thread for calling SMacEachern2 a Jew hater.

To wit:

...u are right basman. I think smac deserves an apology from me. It's what comes when you read with a certain expectation in mind. I seemed to EXPECT smac to be an easy consumer of these nutteries.

Sorry, Smac. ..

I made no other point but said hos other point was fair game for criticism.

I think you need to be a little more careful in throwing around terms like "Satanization,"
to say nothing of "anti-semitism." After a while, these words lose their intended meaning.

In this case, I would say your feelings are half-justified or less. Even leaving aside the
Carter Center conspiracy, which sounds crazy to me, many parts of the Executive Summary
at the end of this article do not support the argument:

1. Placing the role of settlement building in the West Bank above any other single
factor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may or may not be justified over the long view
of history, but it is certainly accurate, or at least fair comment, as to what is going on now
and as to what is inflaming Israel's friends as well as foes all over the world. Referring to
settlement-building as "colonization," in my opinion, is entirely justified. "Provocation"
and "obstructionism" would be even more so.

2. A gradual shift away from viewing Iran's nuclear intentions as peaceful (or at least as
a bargaining chip), toward the conclusion now that they are worse than that, is little
different from the gradual realization undergone by President Obama over roughly the
same period. Oops, I just remembered--he's anti-semitic, too.

3. Neither the Financial Times nor anyone else doubts that Iran's nuclear development
is a danger to Israel even though specific threatening rhetoric is lacking because of
Iran's posture that it contemplates peaceful nuclear uses. (There has also been a felt
necessity in the West not to treat Iranian aggression as though it were imminent or
unavoidable, which it was thought would only help to make it so.) My reading of the
Financial Times' recent editorials is that the paper is equally apprehensive about
Iranian and Israeli nuclear intentions, for obvious reasons including the fate of the
region and possibly the world.

4. I doubt that any of us is in any position to judge the accuracy of the Goldstone
report, but he is no anti-semite and there is no reason to think his conclusions are less than honest. Disproportionality of response to military sttack must necessarily involve
a subjective judgment, but it is hard to ignore the difference in deaths and casualties.
From what little I know, I would not disagree that Israel's response has been dispro-
portionate in force and cruelty.

5. While I do not agree with the stated description of Palestinian leaders, I do think
the Palestinians and the Israelis have legitimate grievances. On the other hand, I
think the terms "irredentist," "hawkish," and "ultra-nationalist" perfectly describe the
recent actions and attitudes of Netanyahu and his ilk.

6. The Executive Summary's last two points are right on target as to the free pass
that Saudi Arabia is almost invariably given in discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian
situation and related problems (e.g., 9/11 and its progeny). This pussyfooting has
little or nothing to do with anti-semitism and everything to do with oil and money.

In any event, I don't think what the Financial Times writes is going to matter one
fraction of a damn in terms of whatever happens in the Middle East. Too many people
are interested in proving who has the biggest you-know-what even if it gets blown off
in the process.

thanks basman, I missed Noga's reply.

This is only tangentially relevant to this thread but I wanted to bring it to the attention of some of the commenters here who were interested in the issue in the past:

http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TM...

Thanks very much for the link Noga.

I just read Kasher's essay with interest and on a first read I agree with everything he said, Walzer and Margalit to the contrary notwithstanding.

I am interested in any dissenters from his reasoning and why.

Mind you, anyone, this can use some unpacking though I think I agree with what I understand to be the thrust of the statement:

....Generally speaking, a government is not to blame for the behavior of soldiers, and soldiers should not be blamed for the decisions made by the political class...

basman: In part, because of sections like this (which is an important section):

"When Israel does not have effective control over a territory, the moral responsibility for distinguishing between terrorists and non-combatants is not placed upon its shoulders. Gaza was not under our effective control. Therefore, one does not have to jeopardize the lives of the troops in such circumstances just for that sake. If you look at non-combatants in a territory where one does not have effective control and have already made a series of warnings that are known to have been effective, then the lives of the troops come first."

Look at the number of self-contradictions in that paragraph, starting with the ending. How does one judge if a warning has been 'effective'? Presumably, if all non-combatants have left an area, it has been effective, but the issue here is precisely about cases where non-combatants have been killed in Israeli attacks - ie, the warnings have _not_ been effective. As Walzer and Margalit say, there are a whole variety of reasons for not leaving a particular place, especially when (as was the case in Gaza) such warnings are often widely dispersed: one may not get the warning, one may not be able to move, fighting in surrounding areas may make it too dangerous to move (where was the refuge zone in that case?), one may unknowingly move into another area under threat, and so on. He can shrug and say that the "...person who does not know where to go is a myth...", but in fact there were numerous such cases from Gaza. If you and your family must step out into an exterior environment where you may well be killed by a tank round or a drone because you are mistaken for combatants, what good does a warning do?

Kasher's claim is that warning non-combatants substantially removes the necessity for further distinguishing combatants and non-combatants, which will certainly lead to innocent deaths. Earlier in the paragraph, he takes that to an even more extreme level, claiming that "...When Israel does not have effective control over a territory, the moral responsibility for distinguishing between terrorists and non-combatants is not placed upon its shoulders." This means that Israel would simply give up on trying to avoid civilian deaths in any extra-territorial military action. Furthermore, the majority of cases of civilian deaths in Gaza were not inflicted with troops in contact or in danger: they were inflicted with artillery, long-range tank fire and air-strikes of various sorts. He appears to be arguing, however, that citizenship trumps non-combatant status: that a country's duties to its own soldiers as citizens trumps its duty to non-combatants in a war zone, such that it is permissible _without taking any other criteria into account_ (the distinction is important) to kill civilians in order to protect one's own soldiers lives. He is also inconsistent: if 'reservist' status for policemen in Gaza (and this has been disputed) opens one up for attack while not engaging in military activity, does participation as a reservist in IDF duties open one up to similar attack?

It is a policy of moral bankruptcy to argue that Israel's conduct in Gaza was defensible _because there were not even more civilian casualties_: if 10,000 Palestiian civilians had died, Kasher could as logically have argued that Israel's conduct was defensible because 100,000 were not killed. Similarly, American operations in Fallujah (or, say, Russian operations in Grozny) do not serve to excuse any shortcomings of Israeli operations in Gaza.

As for a 'policy of trigger-happiness', the issue is not in my mind anyway that Israel in Gaza operated like Russia in Grozny: the question is, where there specific policies that tended to lead to unneeded civilian casualties? Articles like this (http://tinyurl.com/ydon299) suggest that there were.

As for Kasher's article in general... it's a post hoc justification of what happened in Gaza. Doesn't really matter what actually happened - he still would have found a way to justify it.

SMacEachern2

No doubt we start from radically different premises that inexorably will lead us to irreconcilable conclusions on these issues, but let me deal with your arguments regardless.

Firstly, different from you I found the section you quoted consistent, without contradiction and straightforwardly sensible.

Secondly I don’t grant your test for judging effective warnings. One can think of practical ways warnings might be dispensed—leaflets, radio warnings, time lags between such dissemination and the start of military activities, and so on—but we’d need to separate those warnings from the population’s response to them. If for any number of reasons—including, I don’t know, countermand and pressures fro Hamas—then I say Israel in its dissemination acquitted itself. If the test was as you suggest, then Hamas could prevail of the regular population to stay put and then malign Israel’s failure to warn. Also the logical absurd conclusion of your test is Israeli military impotence in the face of a population that won’t heed the warnings it gets.

Thirdly, let’s unpack some the realities on the ground. Israel does not control Gaza. Hamas refuses to heed the visible distinguishing between combatant and non combatant. Worse, it insinuates itself amidst the civilian population to take advantage of enlightened Israeli sensitivity about wanting to minimize civilian wounding and death. And still worse, it then launches its rocket attacks under the hoped for protection of a civilian shield. Assuming after some point and some number of rockets, Israel has to act in own self defense, what is it to do and what harm is it supposed to expose its soldiers to in response to Hamas’s tactics?

Once effective warning is given—something, I argue, to be tested empirically by the actuality of the warnings, not the actual dispersal the warnings lead to, I agree with Kasher and Yadlin and Halbertal, over Walzer and Margalit, that Israel, no state in fact, need to expose its soldiers to the danger of boots on the ground assurance that no civilians are afoot before military action begins. And on this basis, I agree with the assessment of and assignment of moral blame for Palestinian casualty on Hamas.

Fourthly, you are way too binary when you say “This means that Israel would simply give up on trying to avoid civilian deaths in any extra-territorial military action.” Respectfully, that comes nowhere near to following and elides measures taken to minimize civilian casualty. Those measures include pre action intelligence meant to ensure isolating militarily necessary targets, effective warnings, and tailored strikes. (Both Halbertal and Kasher note the fact of lower civilian to military death ratios in Lead Cast compared to any recent asymmetric campaign and the dearth of outcry against other warring nations than Israel.)

If the above, and Kasher’s analysis be moral bankruptcy, I had better book an appointment with my moral trustee. But really I don’t think so.

Finally, for myself, I would not, in wanting to criticize Kasher, impugn his motives. Rather I’d try to deal with his arguments on the merits, which I have read you in the main to do, though by my lights, unpersuasively.

“It is a policy of moral bankruptcy to argue that Israel's conduct in Gaza was defensible _because there were not even more civilian casualties_: if 10,000 Palestiian civilians had died, Kasher could as logically have argued that Israel's conduct was defensible because 100,000 were not killed. Similarly, American operations in Fallujah (or, say, Russian operations in Grozny) do not serve to excuse any shortcomings of Israeli operations in Gaza.”

What is one to say about the fact that a war which caused which relatively few causalities Less than five thousands people, taking the higher estimates, is subject to international moral condemnation while the Russian Chechen war (over a hundred thousand dead) did not yield a comparable outrage.

“As for Kasher's article in general... it's a post hoc justification of what happened in Gaza. Doesn't really matter what actually happened - he still would have found a way to justify it.”

This is rich coming from SMacEachern2 who spends most of his time exonerating Muslim atrocities and ignoring those committed by other powers such as Russia but never misses an opportunity to slam the Jewish State for comparable minor offenses.

I can hear Mac screaming “racism” and hypocritically yelling that “even the life of one Gazan is precious.” Apparently the lives of a hundred thousand Chechens means nothing to him.

He apparently is the ideal reader of the antisemitic Economist and the Financial Times.

hey basman, (apologies to all for interrupting the flow with a personal aside) Thanks to you, I've been hearing a lot from early Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and the incomparable Magic Sam. I'm glad that I can enjoy wonders such as Magic's West Side Soul and Wells' Hoodoo Man Blues while my cognition and cochleas are still functioning. Muchas gracias, mi amigo.

Your buddy in the blues,

The poster formerly known as bl462

For some reason, whenever I read another one of the smug and facile opinions of The Economist and The Financial Times in respect of major world political issues, I can't help but think of the Monty Python sketch, How To Do It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM

PS - when I previewed this post, a graphic for the Financial Times with the headline "Equities Suffer As Lehman Falls 45%" mysteriously popped up under the comment window. Hmmmmmm....

Malahat, your pleasures are a pleasure for me.

...while my...cochleas are still functioning...

Even when they stop there's always Viagra.

Do you--Malahat--have some connection with British Columbia?

Do you--Malahat--have some connection with British Columbia?

I do indeed, although Vancouver Island apparently has never really gotten over its connection with British Columbia.

Re: cochleas and Viagra, that would give a whole new meaning to the expression "prick up one's ears".

Malahat check this out: my wife is from Victoria; her mother lives there as does my wife's sister; my son in law is from there and his parents live there; and my wife gets out there 2-3 times a year to visit her mother and her sister (and her brother who lives in Seattle.) She'll be there this summer for about 2 weeks with my 2 daughters, my son in law and my 2 grandchildren. I lived in Vancouver for about 20 years and got my B.A. and MA from U.B.C. before I left for Ontario to go to law school and never came back. I still keep in contact--some frequent--with my Vancouver friends from the old days. I used to head out West every year but haven't been back in about 2-3 years.

What can I tell you!

P.S. If you want to wind down some from the intensity of the West Side blues, check out the soulful Z Z Hill and Pops Staples and for something different and wonderful the understated Philadelphia Jerry Ricks and the challenging but brilliant Kelly Joe Phelps.

basman, It'd be a real pleasure to see you out this way. Re: the PS - thanks for the tips- I'm on 'em!

basman: "One can think of practical ways warnings might be dispensed...but we’d need to separate those warnings from the population’s response to them."

Exactly. But that implies a continuing attention to means and attentions. As far as I can see, Kasher is arguing that as long as warnings are dispensed, Israel need not afterward expend energy trying to distinguish combatants from non-combatants. 'The lives of the troops come first' which, given pieces like that Haaretz story, means shoot first, ask questions later. From that article, "Instead of using intelligence to identify a terrorist," he told the British daily, "here you do the opposite: first you take him down, then you look into it."

The problem with that is that effectiveness is judged a priori: "Yeah, leaflets are effective" or "Yeah, phone calls are effective." But you are going to find civilians that are unable/afraid to move, for various reasons. Kasher's argument is that basically you don't have to worry about distinguishing combatants from non-combatants after that initial warning. And yes, that to me is morally bankrupt. I am not making the claim that the presence of civilians need render the IDF impotent - just that the laws of war (which Kasher is dramatically reformulating) need to be followed.

Israel is supposed to put its soldiers in harm's way for the benefit of Gazan non-combatants just in the same way that other countries do. My brother is now a major in the Canadian Forces. While he was in Afghanistan, there was a tightening up of RoEs there, requiring more efforts to distinguish between civilians and Taliban and to minimise civilian casualties. Did this increase the danger to my brother and other troops? In the short term, quite possibly yes, because they had to be more discriminating about how and when to use heavier weapons and call in fire support. However (a) this probably lowers risks to them over the longer term and (b) it was the right thing to do - there were too many non-combatants being killed in fighting in Afghanistan.

No one is demanding that the IDF assure themselves that no non-combatants are on the ground before an operation commences. But Kasher is arguing that it is not necessary to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants after 'effective warning' (whatever that is) goes out.

You're quite right that the IDF takes measures to reduce civilian casualties. But as I said, _Kasher's_ distinction between 'trigger-happiness' and 'non-trigger-happiness' is also too binary: the question is, what are the effects of specific policies, and specific decisions by commanders? You folks may hate the Goldstone Report, but there is evidence from Gaza (and earlier from southern Lebanon) of policies put in place that are at odds with measures to reduce civilian casualties. Recognising that doesn't make the IDF in Gaza Russia in Grozny, but it does have to be addressed. And I have a pretty good memory of substantial criticism of American conduct in Fallujah, and for that matter of Russian conduct in Grozny.

smac, "...You folks may hate the Goldstone Report, but there is evidence from Gaza (and earlier from southern Lebanon) of policies put in place that are at odds with measures to reduce civilian casualties. Recognising that doesn't make the IDF in Gaza Russia in Grozny, but it does have to be addressed. And I have a pretty good memory of substantial criticism of American conduct in Fallujah, and for that matter of Russian conduct in Grozny."

I'm not sure who you mean by "you folks", but, could you please remind me what was the Goldstone analog over "American conduct in Fallujah or for that matter of Russian conduct in Grozny"?

SMacEachern2:

Firstly, I don’t think there is any warrant for concluding “” Kasher is arguing hat as long as warnings are dispensed, Israel need not afterward expend energy trying to distinguish combatants from non-combatants.” Such a position is mechanical and isn’t a fair reading of the argument and in fact, respectfully, misconceives the issue. Nothing crowds out doing things after giving effective warnings—to be judged as I say from the earnings themselves. But the issue precisely what is the extent of what Israel needs to do; this is the issue Halbertal, Margalit, Walzer, Kasher and Yadlin— others— have been agonizing over. It admits of no easy answer.

The problem with the argument you mount, as I see it , is that you are starting with a conclusion and reasoning back to to the propositions you want to argue. You start with Palestinian civilian casualty and civilian infrastructure damage to your indictment, setting up an impossible test along the way, and ignoring, as I noted, how favorably Israeli civilian to military kill ratios stack up against other recent asymmetric campaigns.

Secondly it’s a thin reading of Kasher and it’s thin polemics to wave around the slogan “the troops come first” as dispositive of anything. Wars involve troops; troops will get killed and wounded; I have no doubt—no doubt, though admittedly I’m presuming—that compared to other warring nations Israel’s measures at the expense of its troops to keep down civilian casualty in the context of asymmetric war stands well. If you can cite me warring countries who put Israel to shame in this regard, I’d be open of course, to considering that.

But to return to a theme in my first paragraph: the issue isn’t either or—warn first and then we don’t worry anymore; or “the troops come first” and then we don’t worry anymore.” My understanding that is that just as Israel is an enlightened liberal nation, imperfect to be sure, and beleaguered to be sure as well, grapples in good faith with balancing how much danger should she expose her soldiers to in the effort to minimize casualty against an enemy which is indifferent to civilian casualty and in fact gets political mileage out of it. Different from you, I don’t see these efforts, which Kasher and Yadlin exemplify, as after ( or pre) thought rationalization but rather as good faith efforts to deal with these troubled issues.

Thirdly, I would offer you this challenge, assuming we could agree on a few predicates, applying just war theory to asymmetric war to Israel in Lead Cast: my position is that Israel acquits itself. I’d like to see the case for the other side of that not based not on rhetoric or middle excluding or circular arguments, but rather a good faith case that takes into account other nations and compares Israel’s record to them and in doing that ensure apples are metting apples.

For example, is it really apt to compare Israeli efforts in Lead Cast with COIN in Afghanistan where the strategy necessarily involves a bottoms up combination of soft power on an outward expanding base of “clear and hold” and changing winning hearts and minds of locals against hard core Taliban.

Fifthly,and forgive the repetition, this is what in Kasher and others you must deal with:

1 (Kasher)…His state ought to have a compelling reason for jeopardizing his life. The fact that persons involved in terrorism are depicted as non-combatants and that they reside and act in the vicinity of persons not involved in terrorism is not a reason for jeopardizing the combatant's life more than is required under combat conditions…

2. (Kasher)…There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the warned neighbors of an enemy or terrorist…

3. (Kasher)…. Israel should favor the lives of its own soldiers over the lives of the well-warned neighbors of a terrorist when it is operating in a territory that it does not effectively control, because in such territories it does not bear the moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones….

4. (Kasher)… Compare the Gaza operation to the U.S. Marine operation in Fallujah, Iraq, in late 2004. During the operation, about 6,000 Iraqis including 1,200-2,000 insurgents were killed. Of the city's 50,000 buildings, some 10,000 were destroyed, including 60 mosques. Thus, the U.S. left a trail of destruction in Fallujah far greater than anything Israel inflicted on Gaza. Comparing IDF activities to those of military forces of Western democracies is an essential part of any present attempt to use international law…

5. (Halbertal)… In line with such principles, the Israeli Air Force developed the following tactic. Since Hamas hides its headquarters and ammunition storage facilities inside civilian residential areas, the Israeli army calls the residents’ telephones or cell phones, asking them to move immediately out of the house because an attack is imminent. But Hamas, in reaction to such calls, brings the innocent residents up to the roof, so as to protect the target from an attack, knowing that, as a rule, the Israeli army films the target with an unmanned drone and will avoid attacking the civilians on the roof. In response to this tactic, Israel developed a missile that hits the roof without causing any actual harm in order to show the seriousness of its intention. The procedure, called “roof-knocking,” causes the civilians to move away before the deadly attack…

and one more:

6. (Halbertal) … There are different accounts of the numbers of civilian deaths in Gaza, and of the ratio between civilian and militant deaths. B’Tselem, the reliable Israeli human rights organization, carefully examined names and lists of people who were killed and came up with the following ratio: Out of the 1,387 people killed in Gaza, for every militant that was killed, three civilians were killed. This ratio--1:3--holds if you include the police force among the civilians; but if you consider the police force as combatants, the ratio comes out to 2:3. There are 1.5 million people in Gaza and around 10,000 Hamas militants, so the ratio of militants to civilians is 1:150. If Israel targeted civilians intentionally, how on earth did it reduce such a ratio to 1:3 or 2:3?

The commission never asks that question, or an even more obvious one. In operating under such conditions--Gaza is an extremely densely populated area--is such a ratio a sign of reckless shooting and targeting? One way to think about this is to compare it with what other civilized armies achieve in the same sort of warfare. I do not have the exact numbers of the ratio of civilian to militant deaths in NATO’s war in Afghanistan, but I doubt that it has achieved such a ratio. Is it ten civilians to one combatant, or maybe 20 civilians to one combatant? From various accounts in the press, it certainly seems worse. The number of collateral deaths that are reported concerning the campaign to kill Baitullah Mehsud, one of the main Pakistani militant operatives, is also alarming: In 16 missile strikes in the various failed attempts at killing him, and in the one that eventually killed him (at his father-in-law’s house, in the company of his family), between 207 and 321 people were killed. If such were the numbers in Israel in a case of targeted killing, its press and even its public opinion would have been in an uproar.

Besides the 500 civilians who were killed in the bombing of Serbia, how many militants were killed? The inaccurate high-altitude bombings in Serbia, carried out in a manner so as to protect NATO pilots, caused mainly civilian deaths. What would have been the ratio of deaths if NATO forces were fighting not in faraway Afghanistan, but while protecting European citizens from ongoing shelling next to its borders? And there are still more chilling comparisons. If accurate numbers were available from the wars by Russia in Chechnya, the ratio would have been far more devastating to the civilian population. Needless to say, the behavior of the Russian army in Chechnya should hardly serve as a standard for moral scrupulousness--but I cannot avoid adducing this example after reading that Russia voted in the United Nations for the adoption of the U.N. report on Gaza. (The other human rights luminaries who voted for the Goldstone Report include China and Pakistan.) So what would be a justified proportionality? The Goldstone Report never says. But we may safely conclude that, if the legal and moral standard is current European and American behavior in war, then Israel has done pretty well…

basman, Great post.

Thanks Malahat.

SMacEachern2: some of the above reads, on a rereading, illiterately in parts, I sheepily admit: a function of a small computer with a small screen in a crowded coffee bar--a relative island of respite from screaming wife, kids, and grandkids-- filled itself with students yelling at each other without end about this and that.

You, I'm sure, get my drift.

noga1: I don't see that my reading of Kalsher is 'thin' in any way: I am merely reading what the man said. The question is not whether nothing else _can_ be done after warnings are given, but Kalsher's contention that nothing else _must_ be done: after a warning, there is no need to check for the continuing proximity of non-combatants to targeted combatants, nor does such proximity change the calculations necessary for engagement of such targets.Read his words:'In sum, Israel should favor the lives of its own soldiers over the lives of the well-warned neighbors of a terrorist when it is operating in a territory that it does not effectively control, because in such territories it does not bear moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones, beyond warning them in an effective way."

Just read that. According to Kalsher, one warns non-combatants - with the 'effectiveness' of such warnings determined a priori ('leaflets are effective, phone calls are effective') - and after that Israel bears no responsibility for distinguishing combatants and non-combatants. How is my reading of that sentence 'thin'? You might well argue that in practise Israel does more than this, but that hardly relates to Kalsher's minimalistic claim about what Israel is required to do.

What Kalsher does here is upend a fundamental distinction in the laws of war, between combatant and non-combatant, where non-combatant status is to be honoured irrespective of citizenship. He substitutes citizenship as the determinative characteristic for the states behaviour in circumstances of deadly peril: this is the only way to actually explain his bizarre contention that the state can require police-citizens to put themselves in harms way to distinguish combatants from non-combatants (because both will probably be fellow-citizens), but cannot ask soldier-citizens to do the same for non-citizens. Note that there is actually international law relevant to these issues, especially Protocols I and II Additional to the Geneva Conventions: the fact that they are not ratified by Israel does not mean that they do not exist. It's interesting that Kalsher never addresses those Protocols directly, although most countries in the world have ratified them.

I would agree with you that Israel in many cases has acted to reduce the number of civilian casualties in its military operations in Gaza. However, there are two things to note here. First is from Kalsher directly: "Values are abstract, doctrines are more concrete, while rules of engagement are quite concrete." The IDF can have the greatest set of published ethical values (The Most Moral Army In The World (tm)), but what actually determines whether people live or die are rules of engagement, and the calculations that go along with them. When the IDF dropped a 2000-lb bomb on a crowded Gaza neighbourhood to assassinate Salah Shehadeh, they knew that they were going to kill innocent bystanders, Moshe Yaalon's crocodile tears notwithstanding. When in 2006 the IDF arbitrarily reduced the danger zone for 155mm artillery fired into Gaza residential neighbourhoods from 300m to 100m, it made inevitable the deaths of more civilians at places like Beit Hanoun. That may not be reflected in the IDFs published values, but those people are just as dead. The question is not the IDFs ethical guidelines, but how those guidelines are actually reflected in actions on the ground - and it is there that there is significant evidence for decisions being made that illegitimately endangered the lives of civilians.

You might also note that - contra Halbertal, who makes a number of other misstatements in that article - 'roof-knocking' is done with the same weapons that Israel uses in its remote assassinations of individuals in Gaza. Those are more focused in their lethality than the Mk84 bomb used to kill Salah Shehadeh, but they certainly are not harmless, and in fact a number of civilians have indeed been killed in the course of 'roof-knocking'. The idea of a 'missile that hits the roof without causing any actual harm' is ludicrous - what would that look like?

Second thing is that, as in the lives of civilians, Israel (or the USA, or whatever other country) may get credit for generally following the laws of war - but can still be condemned if and when it breaks those laws. This isn't an accounting ledger, where good deeds make up for bad ones. Nor does a wrong by one country make up for a wrong by another. If the USA conducted war crimes in Fallujah - 'shake and bake' with white phosphorous as an obvious analogy to Gaza, for example - then it deserves to be condemned. Same with any other country. (I would strongly doubt that in practise Israel in general or Kalsher in particular would support any investigation of America's actions in Fallujah, just as America will not support any investigation of Israel's actions in Gaza. Tit for tat.)

As to specific cases you mention ... if you'll allow Human Rights Watch as a source, it calculated between 489 and 528 civilian deaths during the NATO bombing of Serbia (http://tinyurl.com/yztc8zj). NATO estimates were that approximately 5000 members of the Serbian military were killed during the conflict - a rather different ratio than you give. According to Marc Herold, about 3200 civilians were killed by US/NATO forces in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2008 (http://tinyurl.com/3bu9af) with between 11,000 and 14,000 Taliban fighters killed in the same period - and those are the ratios that sparked the change in RoEs that my brother works with. All estimates are of course very approximate, and in both the Kosovo and Afghanistan cases, troops were not fighting primarily in urban areas - but this hardly bears out your contention that these campaigns were more indiscriminate than Cast Lead. Gaza may sit somewhere between Kosovo and Fallujah, but that's about it.

malahat: I'm not sure what _you_ mean: 'what was the Goldstone analog over "American conduct in Fallujah or for that matter of Russian conduct in Grozny"?

One direct analogue would be the use of white phosphorous in urban areas in both Fallujah and Gaza (and in Grozny, for that matter). Is that the sort of thing you're referring to?

basman: Not illiterate at all, from what I could see.

basman: Apologies: I didn't credit your name in that last long post.

I think malahat meant that there was no "Goldstone Report" commissioned or redacted for American conduct in Fallujah or for Russian conduct in Grozny.

Why is Israel such a special case meriting such scrutiny from the UNHR comnission?

noga, That was indeed my point.

Fair enough - there should've been, in both cases. Perhaps the nearest equivalents were the Human Rights Watch reports on Fallujah and Grozny... and I will note that Israel has accepted the HRW reports on Gaza in exactly the same good spirit that America accepted the HRW reports on Fallujah and Russia on Grozny, that is, with insult and denial.

But so what? Evaluation of Israel's conduct in Gaza does not depend on the conduct of any other country, otherwise you have a race to the bottom in protection of civilians in such cases. Any argument that we might have about how Israel is treated internationally is pretty much irrelevant to the evaluation of how Israel actually conducts itself in war. I can understand substantive criticism of the Goldstone report, but claims that the report should be disregarded simply because the UNHRC is nasty to Israel are just meaningless.

smac, The point I was responding to was the parallel you seemed to making above between "substantial criticism of American conduct in Fallujah, and for that matter of Russian conduct in Grozny" and a UN/Goldstone process for Israel.

I disagree that "how Israel is treated internationally is pretty much irrelevant to the evaluation of how Israel actually conducts itself in war". How can it be? It is the only state held to such a process or standard. A more recent example of such strikingly dissimilar international treatment is the end of the Sri Lankan civil war - no UN/Goldstone process there, no calls for economic or judicial sanction, etc.

smac cannot find a good reason why his blood boils with such pity for Palestinians killed by Israelis in a just war but remains pretty much at room temperature when it comes to the Muslim victims in Grozny or Falluja. He cannot find even one good enough reason to explain why he would find 1,300 dead Palestinians so much more outrageous than the 100,000+ Chechens or the 6,000 Iraqis in Falluja.

I'd like to help him by quoting something Mahmoud Darwish once said:

“Do you know why we Palestinians are famous? Because you are our enemy. The interest in us stems from the interest in the Jewish issue. The interest is in you, not in me. So we have the misfortune of having Israel as an enemy, because it enjoys unlimited support. And we have the good fortune of having Israel as our enemy, because the Jews are the center of attention. You’ve brought us defeat and renown.”

http://blog.z-word.com/2008/08/the-candour-of-mahmoud-darwish/

noga1: "smac cannot find a good reason why his blood boils with such pity for Palestinians killed by Israelis in a just war but remains pretty much at room temperature when it comes to the Muslim victims in Grozny or Falluja."

Of course, what I said was just the opposite, that there should be the same attention paid to the latter deaths as to the former - but that such attention does not make any of these people less dead. I suppose, however, that rhetoric is more important to you than accuracy of quotation in such cases.

malahat: "I disagree that "how Israel is treated internationally is pretty much irrelevant to the evaluation of how Israel actually conducts itself in war". How can it be? It is the only state held to such a process or standard"

That's not the case. If we look at the _Western_ cases here, we see countries being criticised stringently for the ways they conduct war, and sometimes (often without acknowledgment) changing their behaviour because of it. Criticism of the relatively limited number of civilian deaths in the Kosovo campaign, and from UXBs afterward, was central to the decision taken by European countries to ban cluster bomb use in the early 2000s. The change in RoEs I mentioned in Afghanistan was a direct response to criticisms of the number of civilian deaths in operations in that country. The development of various kinds of focused-lethality weapons by the USA, European states _and_ Israel is a result of criticism of the deaths of non-combatants in military campaigns.

None of these actions would have happened without external criticism - and in every case, the critics are denounced by supporters of the different militaries as deluded and subversive.

If readers of the Spine would prefer to have Israel compared with Russia or Sri Lanka - or perhaps Syria or Saddam Hussein's Iraq - when evaluating conduct in war, rather than with Western countries, then fair enough. But make that preference explicit, please.

smac, I believe that you're the one who made the comparisons between Israel and Fallujah/Grozny in the first place. All I was pointing out was, first that "how Israel is treated internationally"is relevant to the "evaluation of how Israel actually conducts itself in war" (it's part of the evaluation process) and second, that no other state is subject to UN/Goldstone processes or standards.