There Is The Law--And Then There Are The Rules Applied To Israel

If you followed the Goldstone investigation and report into Israel's Operation Cast Lead, this article in The New York Times about US soldiers may come as a shock:

It can be difficult to win a conviction, specialists in military law said, when defendants can make a plausible claim that they believed, in the confusion of the “fog of war,” that their lives were in danger and they needed to defend themselves.

“You often see cases of kids who just make dumb decisions,” said Gary Solis, who teaches the laws of war at Georgetown University. “But killings in the heat of the moment, they don’t usually try those guys. The guys you try are the ones who have an opportunity to consider what they are doing.”

Among the examples is a case from 2008. Charges were brought against two Marines who commanded a unit that was accused of indiscriminately firing on both vehicles and pedestrians in Afghanistan--after a suicide bomber had attacked the unit's convoy:

An Army investigation later concluded that 19 people were killed and 50 were injured. But the Marines said they had taken hostile gunfire after the explosion and had fired to defend themselves from perceived threats. The case was closed without any prosecution.

Even Sarah Holewinksi, the executive director of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict admits:

The large majority of civilian harm in both Iraq and Afghanistan takes place during legitimate military operations.

Yet somehow, the cases of possible war crimes committed by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan do not get much media coverage and scrutiny that Israel does. This in spite of the fact that unlike US soldiers fighting half a world away, Israel is at war against a terrorist group that targets it directly--and firing rockets at civilian targets. And the issue goes beyond just coverage--the issue is the application of the law itself.

Commenting on the article, Evelyn Gordon writes that The Laws of War Evidently Don’t Apply to Israel

Clearly, all the above considerations also apply to Israel’s military operations in Lebanon and Gaza. Civilian deaths occurred in the heat of combat, when soldiers could plausibly have thought themselves endangered. Few witnesses will talk to Israeli investigators, yet testimony given to nongovernmental organizations is problematic as courtroom evidence, because attorneys and judges cannot question the witnesses themselves or form an impression of their credibility. And most victims are Muslims, who have religious objections to autopsies.

Read the whole thing.

Gordon concludes that failing to apply the law equally to all is a threat to Western civilization.
I'm not convince that is an issue with today's self-proclaimed human rights activists.

Technorati Tag: International Humanitarian Law and War In Iraq and War In Afghanistan.