Civilians in the Gaza war–and beyond

January 5, 2009 by Elan Journo

Expressing the views of many people, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon implored Israel to “ensure the protection of civilians and that humanitarian assistance is able to reach those in need” in Gaza. The Bush administration for its part has similarly urged that Israel “be mindful of the potential consequences to civilians.”

This widely shared concern for civilian casualties has been weirdly one-sided. After all, the point of Israel’s incursion is to stop the barrages of rockets fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza onto Israeli population centers. In just the last two years more than 2,500 rockets whistled across from Gaza into nearby towns in southern Israel, yet few people expressed a correspondingly intense concern for the Israeli civilians imperiled by the Palestinian rockets.

I see two questions here. (1) why is there an outcry about Palestinian casualties, but nothing like the same response to the long-running attacks on Israeli civilians? The basic reason, I think, has to do with the common mis-perception of Palestinians. In their own propaganda and that of their surrogates, Palestinians are portrayed as the perennial victims. They are the supposed “little guy”–getting beaten up by a stronger bully. The facts, however, belie that notion (note for instance the money and weapons and ammunition, much of it from Iran, that has flowed into Gaza–enough for all those rocket attacks and, so far, two weeks of fighting in the face of Israeli forces). 

(2) The second issue: why do so many in the West condemn Israeli retaliation as “disproportionate” and implore Jerusalem to go out of its way to avoid civilian casualties (and here too, notice that the Palestinians are held to a different standard). The answer lies with an influential view of morality in war, called Just War Theory, that enjoins going out of one’s way to show compassion to civilians. This is also the source for the idea that a “disproportionate” use of force is wrong. But is the Just-War doctrine right? The situation in Gaza raises this broader moral question: if Israel (or another nation) launches a retaliatory military campaign, what’s the proper attitude to take regarding civilians residing in the hostile regime? 

In an article from a few years ago, critiquing Just War doctrine, Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein convincingly present a strikingly unconventional view on that issue: They argue, in part, that the prevailing injunction to avoid civilian casualties is improper and destructive of a free nation’s efforts to defend itself. There is a lot more to their viewpoint, which has broad application to today. Read the whole thing.

Post Script: Notice that the Israeli military long ago internalized these supposedly moral constraints. Take, for instance, this story about how the Israelis drop leaflets warning (hostile) Palestinians of upcoming bombing raids, so that they may flee. It is in no small part due to this “just war” prosecution of the wars that Israel has weakened itself. But that’s a topic for another post.