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Alan Dershowitz has been working hard to put an end to the antiquated notion that civilians are necessarily non-combatants. This notion is absurd in an age when the combatants we fight wear no uniforms, and when civilians willingly serve the war effort. In the past week, Dershowitz has published three major articles on this subject. The first was in the Wall Street Journal, and has been commented on here in this previous post, which quoted from Dershowitz as follows:
This misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war. The distinction between combatants and civilians -- easy when combatants were uniformed members of armies that fought on battlefields distant from civilian centers -- is more difficult in the present context. Now, there is a continuum of "civilianality": Near the most civilian end of this continuum are the pure innocents -- babies, hostages and others completely uninvolved; at the more combatant end are civilians who willingly harbor terrorists, provide material resources and serve as human shields; in the middle are those who support the terrorists politically, or spiritually.
The laws of war and the rules of morality must adapt to these realities. An analogy to domestic criminal law is instructive: A bank robber who takes a teller hostage and fires at police from behind his human shield is guilty of murder if they, in an effort to stop the robber from shooting, accidentally kill the hostage. The same should be true of terrorists who use civilians as shields from behind whom they fire their rockets. The terrorists must be held legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the civilians, even if the direct physical cause was an Israeli rocket aimed at those targeting Israeli citizens.
The second appeared last Saturday in the LA Times:
'Civilian Casualty'? It Depends
We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare. A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of current events in the Middle East: "the continuum of civilianality." Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who are killed, wounded and punished.
There is a vast difference - both moral and legal - between a 2-year-old who is killed by an enemy rocket and a 30-year-old civilian who has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets. Both are technically civilians, but the former is far more innocent than the latter. There is also a difference between a civilian who merely favors or even votes for a terrorist group and one who provides financial or other material support for terrorism.
Finally, there is a difference between civilians who are held hostage against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human shields, and civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm's way in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire.
These differences and others are conflated within the increasingly meaningless word "civilian" - a word that carried great significance when uniformed armies fought other uniformed armies on battlefields far from civilian population centers. Today this same word equates the truly innocent with guilty accessories to terrorism.
The third appeared last Monday in the Boston Globe:
THE HEZBOLLAH and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists can exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies. By hiding behind their own civilians, the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians. This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option and terrorists with a win-win option.
There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a viable option that could make terrorism less attractive as a tactic: The international community, the anti-Israel segment of the media, and human rights organizations should stop falling for this gambit and acknowledge that they are being used to promote the terrorist agenda. Whenever a democracy is presented with the lose-lose option and chooses to defend its citizens by going after the terrorists who are hiding among civilians, this trio of predictable condemners can be counted on by the terrorists to accuse the democracy of ``overreaction," ``disproportionality," and ``violations of human rights." In doing so, they play into the hands of the terrorists and cause more terrorism and more civilian casualties on both sides.
If instead this trio could, for once, be counted on to blame the terrorists for the civilian deaths on both sides, this tactic would no longer be a win-win situation for the terrorists.
It should be obvious by now that Hezbollah and Hamas actually want the Israeli military to kill as many Lebanese and Palestinian civilians as possible. That is why they store their rockets underneath the beds of civilians. That is why they launch their missiles from crowded civilian neighborhoods and hide among civilians. They are seeking to induce Israel to defend its civilians by going after them among their civilian ``shields." They know that every civilian they induce Israel to kill hurts Israel in the media and the international and human rights communities. They regard these human shields as ``Shahids," or martyrs, even if they did not volunteer for the lethal jobs. Under the law, criminals who use human shields are responsible for the deaths of their shields, even if the bullets that kill them come from policemen's guns.
Dershowitz shows that it's time for us to update our notions on this subject.
#1
#2Oh my goodness, A.M. Israel's been having its civilians killed by terrorists -- as has the U.S. -- for decades. It's the fact that someone is standing up to them and kicking their ass that's eliciting all this new support.
#3Vik,
With all due respect to your reply, Alan Dershowitz did not side militarily and politically with Israel until, I believe, a visit in 2002. His views changed completely and I seem to recall that he was taken to task over that by Noam Chomsky, a boyhood friend and fellow anti-war/civil rights activist.
I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Queens, NY (and yes, I am Jewish) and although there was great pride concerning the Yom Kippur War, it became fashionable for many of my liberal, intellectual friends and their respective families to criticize Israel in an effort to be 'balanced'.
On the homefront, their views concerning our military personnel in Vietnam were deplorable, giving the impression that our soldiers, Marines, and Airmen, were slaughtering innocent civilians and describing them as,'baby killers'. (I remember the Moratorium Days and the protestors outside my school.)
They were part of the Leonard Bernstein crowd who were the backbone of the ACLU and would unequivocally champion the underdog - even the urban terrorists of the '60's and '70's, as exposed by Tom Wolfe.
They sent their children to help Fidel harvest the sugarcane in Cuba and raised money for the Black Panthers.
They applauded the spirit of the protestors (many of them, my classmates) at the 1968 Democratic convention.
They supported George McGovern who likened Ho Chi Minh to George Washington!
They naively believed that all struggles against the 'establishment' must be righteous and sometimes extreme measures (i.e.terrorism) is warranted.
It never occurred to these people that some of the civilians and leaders they were supporting were actually struggling to eliminate the very freedoms and core values they were trying to uphold and protect.
And what was the paradigm shift?
September 11th.
#4Well said as always, A.M.
Isn't it ironic that this is being 'discovered' by the left at this juncture when this is precisely what the right have been trying to convey since the Korean conflict - especially Vietnam?
I can well imagine that Alan Dershowitz and other left-leaners of his generation (like Jane Fonda) was in the forefront of the anti-war protests of the 1960's condemning defensive attacks against Viet Cong collaborators and sympathizers.
But Alan Dershowitz is Jewish and now this is more personally relevant.
I'm happy that he has come to his senses; but it would have been far more useful in shaping our foreign policy forty or fifty years ago.