Rabbis: Israel Too Worried Over Civilian Deaths
By Rebecca Spence
The Jewish Daily Forward, Fri. Aug 25, 2006
As international human rights organizations decry the high toll
of civilian deaths suffered in the Lebanon war, America’s main
organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis is calling on the Israeli
military to be less concerned with avoiding civilian casualties on
the opposing side when carrying out future operations.
Following a solidarity mission to Israel last week, leaders of
the Rabbinical Council of America issued a statement prodding the
Israeli military to review its policy of taking pains to spare the
lives of innocent civilians, in light of Hezbollah’s tactic of
hiding its fighters and weaponry among Lebanese civilians. Because
Hezbollah “puts Israeli men and women at extraordinary risk of life
and limb through unconscionably using their own civilians,
hospitals, ambulances, mosques… as human shields, cannon fodder, and
weapons of asymmetric warfare,” the rabbinical council said in a
statement, “we believe that Judaism would neither require nor permit
a Jewish soldier to sacrifice himself in order to save deliberately
endangered enemy civilians.”
The directive from the Orthodox rabbi comes at a time when both
Israel and Hezbollah have been subjected to intense scrutiny from
the media and from international human rights organizations about
the Lebanon war’s grueling impact on civilians. Israel has taken the
brunt of the criticism, with the number of Lebanese civilians killed
in the month-long conflict put at about 1,000.
Civilian deaths on the Israeli side, which totaled 43, were
markedly lighter despite Hezbollah’s steady rain of rockets over
heavily populated towns and cities in Israel’s northern region.
Defenders of the Jewish state say that Israel has been unfairly
blamed for Lebanese civilian deaths, which, they contend, are
largely unavoidable given Hezbollah’s practice of hiding in innocent
people’s homes.
Condemnation of Israel by international groups for inadvertently
killing civilians when targeting terrorists “has happened in all of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, but this has brought it front and
center in very clear ways that everybody now sees,” said Marc Stern,
general counsel of the American Jewish Congress.
“You can’t conduct a war in Lebanon without killing civilians,”
he said. Stern added that Hezbollah is part of a cadre of groups,
including Hamas and the Sri Lankan rebel group Tamil Tigers, which
live within the general population, making it impossible to wage war
on them without attacking civilians.
At the United Nations, the Lebanon war has sparked renewed debate
over the enforcement and usefulness of international humanitarian
law, which governs wartime conduct. The newly assembled United
Nations Human Rights Council, which replaced the U.N. High
Commission on Human Rights after years of allegations that the body
was ineffective and anti-Israel, recently authorized an
investigation of alleged Israeli war crimes in Lebanon. The
47-member council opted not to look into war crimes on the part of
Hezbollah — a decision that has prompted accusations that the
council is dominated by its Islamic member states.
Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general, has condemned civilian
deaths on both sides of the conflict, and is considering opening a
“commission of inquiry” under the auspices of his office that would
investigate possible war crimes by both parties.
Some Jewish organizations have criticized the U.N., saying that
the 192-nation group and the cohort of charities that carry out
humanitarian work on a global scale place too much emphasis on laws
protecting civilians. Among the aid groups criticized has been the
International Committee of the Red Cross, which is charged with
promoting adherence to international law.
The AJCongress sent a letter August 7 to the president of the Red
Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, assailing the international organization
for its “selective reading” of international law. According to
Stern, both the U.N. and the Red Cross have failed to address
Hezbollah’s commingling with civilians as a violation of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, while both international bodies continue to
castigate Israel for a disproportionate military response.
At the same time, the AJCongress is waging a campaign to amend
international law, which it views as out of step with fighting
terrorism. In a letter sent in mid-August to the Senate Armed
Service’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, Stern
wrote that “international law, as it is currently applied by the
United Nations, the Red Cross and unofficial international human
rights groups, enhances the military capability of irregular forces
at the direct expense of states and thus exacerbates the
difficulties of nations engaged in asymmetrical warfare.” In an
interview with the Forward, Stern said that given the stipulations
of Additional Protocol 1 — a 1977 amendment to the Fourth Geneva
Convention that, among other caveats, excuses “irregular” fighters
from wearing military attire — Western nations are at a distinct
disadvantage in waging wars.
As Jewish groups rush to defend Israel’s conduct in Lebanon, a
feud has erupted in recent weeks between Human Rights Watch, an
international organization that monitors human rights abuses, and a
handful of Jewish leaders who have countered the international
watchdog group’s assessment of Israel’s behavior throughout the
conflict. That debate was sparked by the release in early August of
“Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in
Lebanon,” a report by Human Rights Watch detailing more than 20
instances of Israel’s killing of civilians — including an attack on
Qana, which claimed the lives of at least 28 Lebanese, among them 16
children — as the war raged during the last two weeks of July.
Despite Israel’s insistence that it limited its targets to areas
where Hezbollah fighters were known to be operating, the rights
organization says that in the cases of civilian deaths that it
investigated, no evidence emerged to suggest a Hezbollah presence.
The controversy over the Human Rights Watch report has largely
played out in the editorial pages of The New York Sun, a
neoconservative daily established by Seth Lipsky, the Forward’s
founding editor. Abraham Foxman, national director of the
Anti-Defamation League, published an opinion article in the Sun
chiding the human rights group for failing to consider the
existential threat that Hezbollah, as an agent of Iran and Syria,
poses to the Jewish state. A heated back-and-forth ensued between
Kenneth Roth, the rights group’s executive director, and the
newspaper, which published its own series of editorials accusing
Roth of anti-Israel bias. Roth and the Sun’s managing editor, Ira
Stoll, debated the issue on an episode of the television program
“The O’Reilly Factor.”
Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author
of “The Case for Israel,” issued harsh rebukes to Human Rights Watch
in opinion pieces that appeared in the Sun and on the left-leaning
blog the Huffington Post. Dershowitz, who along with many Jewish
communal leaders has long maintained that Human Rights Watch
disproportionately singles out Israel for human rights abuses, cited
examples of reporting that illustrated Hezbollah’s hiding behind
civilian targets. In an interview with the Forward, Dershowitz said
that Human Rights Watch has lost all credibility as a neutral
organization. “Human Rights Watch has become part of the problem,
not part of the solution,” he said.
Roth shot back that his critics, including Dershowitz, have
mischaracterized the report. “There is a shocking lack of factual
engagement by the reflexive defenders of Israel. They will focus on
irrelevancies, they will twist what we said, but nobody takes on
what we actually said.” According to Roth, his organization has
never denied that Hezbollah places its weapons in civilian areas.
“What we found was that the Israeli government’s cover story was to
blame all civilian deaths on Hezbollah hiding between civilians, but
it didn’t explain these deaths,” he said. Meanwhile, Roth may find
support for his stance among some college and high school students
affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism, American Jewry’s
largest synagogue movement. A loose coalition of 48 Reform Jews,
culled from universities across the nation, earlier this month sent
a letter to the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, Rabbi
Eric Yoffie, calling on the movement to condemn the Israeli
military’s “killing of unarmed Lebanese and Palestinian civilians,
as well as its premeditated targeting of civilian infrastructures,
which has put additional lives at risk and hampered relief efforts.”
Matt Adler, the Washington University in St. Louis liaison for
Kesher, the college branch of the Reform movement, said that he
circulated the letter because he felt that his views were not being
voiced in his movement’s policies and public statements on the
Lebanon war. “While we certainly agree with condemning Hamas and
Hezbollah’s attacks, we didn’t see more of a pro-peace statement
reflected,” Adler said. Adler, 20, also said that he was “thrilled”
by the Reform union’s swift response. The same day that Yoffie
received the students’ plea via email, he wrote a letter, saying:
“No side is completely blameless in a war, but I am confident that
the government of Israel has taken all reasonable precautions to
avoid civilian casualties.”
In an effort to continue the dialogue, Adler said, the Union for
Reform Judaism has scheduled an August 28 conference call between
the signatories to his letter and the leadership of Arza, the Reform
movement’s Zionist arm. “I think we’re going to see what comes out
of that call for what our next steps are going to be,” he said.
