In the wake of Judge Goldstone's op-ed in the Washington Post that, in the minds of some, 'retracts' Goldstone's judgment that Israel committed war crimes in Operation Cast Lead, a video conversation featuring, among other, Col. Desmond Travers, one of Judge Goldstone's co-authors on the report, has become revitalized.
In it, Col. Travers talked about the stated doctrine upon which IDF is said to have relied in Cast Lead. Travers quoted from an essay by Tel Aviv U. Prof. of Ethics Asa Kasher and IDF Maj. Gen. Amos Yatlin of the Military Intelligence Directorate of the IDF Headquarters.
Their 2005 essay, “Assassination and Preventative Killing,” which was endorsed as of “not merely academic interest but of policy,” by Michael Waltzer in NYRB, poses the question, “What priority should be given to the duty to minimize casualties among the combatants of the state when they are engaged in combat against terror?”
To answer that question, Kasher & Yatlin argue:
“In the war on terror the Geneva Conventions are outmoded and no longer suit a state’s efforts in combatting terror. . . .A state has a moral duty to respect its citizen’s rights more than it respects the human rights of those who are not its citizens. . . .Further, a state does not shoulder responsibility for regular effective protection of persons who are neither its citizens nor under its effective control. . . .In the case of the combatants of the state engaged in confronting terror, placing a low priority on their safety is immoral. . . .A combatant is a citizen in uniform; in Israel, he is quite often a conscript or on reserve duty. “
“The state ought to have a compelling reason for jeopardizing his life. The fact that persons involved in terror are depicted as noncombatants, and that they reside and act in the vicinity of persons not involved in terror is not a reason for jeopardizing the combatant’s life in their pursuit. Where the state does not have effective control of the vicinity, it does not have to shoulder resonsibility for the fact that persons who are involved in terror operate in the vicinity of persons who are not.”
It is stunning that Israel unilaterally dismissed the Geneva Conventions. If that is the case, then Israel can claim no protection from the Geneva Conventions. Surely Israelis understand the concept of ‘covenant.’
Presumably, Israel also disregards Just War theory. That’s unfortunate. Just War theory requires that all other means be exhausted before a state resorts to use of violence. One would think that protecting SDerot against missiles — for which the US gave Israel several hundred millions of dollars — should be a first line of defense and would most effectively protect both Israel’s citizens and Israel’s “citizen combatants in uniform” against any harm, while also avoiding subjecting Israel to international opprobrium for killing innocent Palestinian civilians.
The unilateral “right to kill” doctrine of Kasher and Yitlin seems more like reversion to law of the jungle than the policy of the “most vibrant democracy in the Middle East.”