Acceptable Collateral Damage?

It is always easy to watch hostilities from afar and make one's judgments based on some ethical or moral code that is removed from the daily threat of violence and death. However, as I sit back and watch another round of Israeli and Palestinian violence, I wonder what is acceptable collateral damage in this time of sophisticated weapons and "surgical strikes".

I find myself wondering how Israel justifies killing women and children in order to kill a self-proclaimed terrorist. Is this as simple as killing them before they kill you. Is it a case of these children would have grown up to be terrorists and they would have been encouraged by their mothers to be so, therefore the best solution is to wipe them out before such a reality can eventuate?

I also find myself questioning the wisdom of firing rockets, homemade or otherwise, by Hamas into Israel.

The issue here is not one of whether Israel has a right to protect itself, it is not even a question in my mind of proportionality. Ask yourself this question, when are wars ever about proportionality? Your answer should highlight the silliness of the idea of proportional responses. To the victors go the spoils, and the victors are those that are left standing. Simply, the idea of proportional response will lead only to a series of ceasefires and temporary truces that never address the fundamental problems that lead to the hostilities in the first place.

The issue for me is what constitutes acceptable collateral damage. The recent Israeli attack that killed Nizar Rayan is an example of why this is a question that must be answered. There is little doubt that Nizar Rayan is a senior leader of Hamas. There is also little doubt that he advocates violence. It has been reported that he even sent one of his own sons on a suicide mission to kill Israelis. There is also little doubt that Israel classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization.

However, in order to kill Rayan, the Israelis decided the best method was to drop a rather large bomb on his house. This bomb was obviously large as it destroyed 12 surrounding house as well as the targeted house. The collateral damage issue here that I want to look at is not the property but the 18 people killed in addition to Rayan. Among the dead were his four wives, two daughters, and a son. This is what I wonder when I am wondering how to answer the question of acceptable collateral damage.

I wonder whether Israel could have put together covert Mossad teams and assassinate Rayan. This would have averted any unnecessary collateral damage. Perhaps questionable in international law however I would assert that killing innocent men, women, and children is also questionable under international law.

I am neither pro-Israel not pro-Hamas or Palestine. I am pro-peace and I am pro-humanity. I am against the killing of innocent men, women, and children in the furtherance of any cause.

So, I pose this question, "what is acceptable collateral damage in a time of conflict?"

The Israel -- Hezbollah Prisoner Swap is Underway

Hezbollah really needs to spend some money and recruit some good public relations people, as they simple have absolutely no idea on how to handle a significant event! In an earlier post I alluded to the cruelty of playing up the possibility that the two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, that Hezbollah was required to hand over under the deal, were alive. The reality, as most people expected, was finally confirmed today.

Hezbollah handed over two black coffins today to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC then drove the coffins into Israel. The remains were confirmed to be those of Goldwasser and Regev (photo by Issam Kobeisy / Reuters).

The second reason Hezbollah needs some PR people is this statement by one Mr. Safa who was operating as the spokesperson for Hezbollah, "We are now handing over the two imprisoned Israeli soldiers, who were captured by the Islamic resistance on July 12, 2006, to the ICRC." He then went on with this, "The Israeli side will now hand over the great Arab mujahid (holy warrior) ... Samir Qantar and his companions to the ICRC." I am using PR people here in the manner that most organizations would use them for crisis or message management.

There is nothing holy about Samir Qantar. Qantar is a cold-blooded child killer, plain and simple. His release is sure to leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many Israelis. To rub salt into this wound Hezbollah has a wide range of festivities planned to celebrate the release. There should be little doubting why some countries want to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization when you celebrate child killers as holy warriors or mujahideen. Any legitimacy that an organization might have had is lost when it glorifies child killers.

I wonder who is getting the best deal in all this prisoner swapping and the returning of remains?

Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Middle East

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the problems of the Middle East are complex.

It also does not take a rocket scientist to know that rhetoric like this means that the problems of the Middle East are not going to be resolved any time soon.

With this post I am not stating a position in favor of one or the other. For me the holocaust perpetrated against the Jews is a historical fact that cannot be disputed. Whether it was six million or five or four is irrelevant in the big scheme of things because they are numbers that many of us just cannot comprehend. The numbers are obviously relevant to those who lost loved ones during the course of the perpetration of this evil. My point though is that for most of us the numbers are so huge that it makes comprehension difficult.

If it was four million then this is the same number of people who live in Sydney. Try imagining a here one day gone the next scenario. One day Sydney is a bustling city the next day it is devoid of citizens, trucked and trained to camps. Scary thought.

Is what is happening in Gaza a holocaust? Not on the scale of the holocaust perpetrated against the Jews during the Second World War. However, serious questions must be asked as to whether the consistent and widespread targeting of Palestinians constitutes a genocide? This post does not lend itself to a detailed debate of the legal issues, but it is worth thinking about.

The Middle East issues are not going to be resolved with dialogue alone. These issues are going to require us to look deep within ourselves to our core humanity and make some hard decisions about the sort of world in which we want to live.

Should we be scared by rhetoric such as this? The simple answer is, Yes! If enough people start believing in it then perhaps this will metamorphose into the next clash of civilizations. Simply, two diametrically opposed views such as these can only mean bloodshed, and lots of it.

The screen capture is of Dr. Walid Al-Rashudi, Head of the Department of Islamic Studies at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, and are from an interview which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on 29 February 2008. Al-Aqsa TV is a satellite news channel run by Hamas. This is old news but I only just found it and I find it to be interesting and important at the same time as it characterizes for me the intractable nature of the problem.

Some of what was said includes the following:

"we will not be satisfied even if all the Jews are killed. So what are we supposed to say in the face of the Gaza holocaust? What compensation will satisfy us? By Allah, we will not be satisfied even if all the Jews are killed."

"One of the important things that we must tell people is that what is going on in Palestine today is a real holocaust. This is the real holocaust. A holocaust is not the burning of 50-60 Jews in Germany or Switzerland, but the Jews continue to call it the Holocaust."

The interview was recorded in Arabic and I must confess I cannot read, write, or speak Arabic and have relied on translations provided by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). I hope they are accurate. The links I have included will direct anyone interested to the original Arabic language versions.

Israel and Hamas

It is interesting that when the focus or spotlight is on you in a bad way the easiest way to shift the spotlight is to demonize someone or something else. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, has been doing it tough of late with corruption scandals swirling all around him and with allegations surfacing of his direct involvement. Hence, the warning issued by Olmert that this cease fire or truce that is scheduled to come into force on Thursday is Hamas' last chance. It seems that if Hamas does not play ball and behave then Israel is prepared to strike deep into the heart of the Gaza Strip.

In the Israeli PM's own words, the people of Gaza are "pissed off with Hamas".

Now I am not pro-Hamas. In fact I have no problem with it being labeled an extreme and fundamentalist organization. The problem as I see it is that Hamas is now a democratically elected entity. The "West", and primarily the US, severely misunderstood the social and political dynamics when there was agreement to the idea of Hamas participating in Palestinian elections.

There seems little doubt that Hamas is anti-Israel and this means, in my mind at least, that any kind of truce will be short-lived. I just do not believe that Hamas has the sort of governance control it needs to reign in the militants and stop the rocket attacks. I hope I am wrong. I would love to see genuine peace in that part of the world in my life time. Yep, the eternal optimist!

The Israeli PM has close links to Australia and has family members living in Australia. In fact his cousin is married to the Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Defence and an aunt in Sydney.

The PM has grand plans of making peace with Lebanon and Syria. The plan even includes opening an Israeli Embassy in Damascus. Now this kind of peace would significantly change the geo-political dynamic of the region for the better. However, before any of these grand plans are likely to come to fruition the PM needs to survive the corruption allegations that by all accounts have two possible outcomes; resignation or new elections.

In any event there seems to be an open invitation to the Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, to visit Israel. This comes on the heals of the Australian Federal Parliament passing a resolution that commemorated Israel's first 60 years of existence in March of 2008.

Maybe I will write more on this Middle East stuff in the future because I am an opinionated bugger on this issue!

Jimmy Carter and Hamas

The former US President is intending to meet up with Hamas leaders as well as leaders from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. He will also be meeting up with representatives of Fatah which is Hamas' main rival in the Palestinian territory.

Hamas is listed on a US list of terrorist organizations. So, in some ways it is an interesting turn of events that a former President of the US is going to pay a courtesy call to a group that the country he formerly led characterizes as a bunch of terrorists. Nevertheless, perhaps his point is valid; that if there is to be true peace with justice in the region then the views of Hamas need to be known and worked into the equation with all the other divergent views raging within the Palestinian debate, including those of Israel.

Despite Ahmadinejad's warnings of wiping Israel of the face of the map the likelihood of that happening is about as likely as Israel wiping Iran of the face of the map! They might go to war and kill most of each others citizens but the land will not disappear and neither will the idea that Israel exists. The arguments about nation building, success or failure, as it relates to Israel is not this argument and not for this blog entry.

However, the current US position is that Hamas is an impediment to peace and that nothing constructive can come from any meeting between Carter and Khalid Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas.

We need a world at peace to focus on those matters that we must address in order to sustain us!

On a side note the presumptive nominee from the Democratic Party in the US, Barack Obama, has come out and said that he would not meet with Hamas which is kind of strange considering he has previously said that his foreign policy would be based on active engagement of rogue leaders and States (at least as the US sees them) such as Raul Castro (Fidel before him) in Cuba and Ahmadinejad in Iran. So, why not Hamas? A different blog entry I suppose!