The U.N. Goldstone Report and Just War — VOICES for REASON

In its endorsement of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war, the U.N.’s Human Rights Council described Israel’s retaliation as a “deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population….” The idea that only a “proportionate” response would be appropriate has its roots in Just War Theory, the mainstream view of morality in war. So does the related injunction to avoid injuring civilians — even to the point of risking a mission to do so. It is a measure of the deep entrenchment of Just War Theory, that not only do the accusers accept it unquestioningly, but so does the accused.

Observe that Israel refused to participate in the Goldstone investigation and has vehemently criticized the report, yet its ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told PBS’s NewsHour:

There is a clear record established by Israel of the way the campaign was conducted and the immense efforts that were taken to avoid civilian casualties, including leaf-letting civilian areas, making hundreds of thousands of phone calls, sending SMS messages to areas that were about to be attacked to civilians, sort of sacrificing the element of surprise, risking our own soldiers’ lives in order to minimize those civilian casualties. All that is a matter of record.

Now listen to the eloquent statement delivered before the Human Rights Council by Col. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. He volunteered the following on behalf of an NGO:

During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare….

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

[Watch the whole thing.]

All of which raises the broader question of whether the injunctions of Just War Theory — which America’s military has thoroughly internalized — are compatible with fighting a war in self-defense. That’s a point that my colleagues, Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein, explore in Chapter 5 of Winning the Unwinnable War, in connection with Washington’s response to 9/11. Part of their unconventional perspective is that compliance with the provisions of Just War Theory is actually inimical to a free nation’s efforts to defend itself.

In the case of the Gaza war, it seems Hamas is busy smuggling in more weapons via tunnels and occasionally firing rockets, while to the north in Lebanon, Hezbollah (which Israel confronted in 2006) is likewise stockpiling for the next round. Would they be in business, let alone re-arming, if it were not for Israel’s institutionalized commitment to the provisions of Just War Theory?  Probably not.

image: Agência Brasil via WikiCommons