International Law and the Rules of Warfare

Last Monday Barack Obama commented, any Israeli military strategy that ignores human costs could ultimately backfire and, “that the choices Israel is making could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations.  So, even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters.  As President Biden has repeatedly emphasized – Israel’s military strategy must abide by international law, including those laws that seek to avoid, to every extent possible, the death or suffering of civilian populations,”   Obviously the former president was suggesting restraint on Israel’s part; but then isn’t that what former British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain suggested when he cautioned the British nation and the rest of Europe about being too forceful in confronting the Nazis in 1930s Europe?

~ Reason, Compassion and Humanity Don’t Apply ~

Fighting Islamic terrorism is akin to an encounter with a rabid dog – there is no reasoning, there is no common ground, there is no negotiation; you either exterminate the dog or the dog will mercilessly exterminate you.  So, whenever I hear the term International Law coming from a left wing and progressive politicians who then try to apply it to the current situation in the Middle East all I can do is shake my head.

The left will tell us International law is a set of rules and principles governing the relations and conduct of sovereign states with each other.  But even the term ‘International Law’ is a non sequitur because there is no governing body to enforce whatever those laws are.  In effect, international law is no more than a noble sounding name for what is actually “a generally accepted convention,” which in the case of the current conflict is not dissimilar to applying the Marquis of Queensbury rules in a gang fight.  In spite of all we’ve seen with our own eyes, the left will not accept the fact that when dealing with Iranian sponsored Muslim terrorists, anything approaching civilized behavior is impossible.

And while we’ve all heard the term International Law, there’s yet another arbitrary convention known as ‘international humanitarian law’ (IHL) that most are unfamiliar with.  It’s also known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict and is a subset set of the non-existent international law that in theory establishes what can and can’t be done when armies or states clash.  Its primary advocacy is to protect medical personnel, aid workers, those who are no longer able to fight, i.e., injured soldiers or prisoners and absolutely prohibits the targeting of civilians.

But Muslim jihadists could not care less about international conventions because they are trained to specifically target young children and babies, which is a war crime by any sane person’s definition.  And while they flout civilized behavior themselves, they want to deny Israel the right of self-defense by claiming any incidental civilian casualties caused by Israeli retaliation are war crimes.  But there is a larger context here, one that’s predicated on the two bedrock principles of war that civilized nations have developed over centuries.

• Civilians are not to be targeted and secondly,
• There must be a full acknowledgment that during wartime a certain number of innocents will be killed.

And it’s this second bedrock principle that we need to be clear about, i.e., any loss of innocent lives must be related to the goals of self-defense.  In other words, the notion of zero casualties is akin to asking the Israelis to create a square, circle; it’s an impossibility, whereas a more honest & realistic approach is the goal of inflicting as few Palestinian civilian casualties as possible so long as its consistent with the complete destruction of Hamas.

Those who’ve thrown their support for Hamas are as varied as Greta Thunberg, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, and Black Lives Matter, whose collective standard is that even one civilian Palestinian casualty in this conflict is one too many.  As a practical matter, what these ultra-progressives are saying is, Israel has no right to self-defense if it includes destroying a venomous enemy that embeds itself in schools, mosques, and dense urban neighborhoods.  Those aren’t guidelines for combat, much less a matter of following the “laws of war;” what the far left is really demanding is unilateral Israeli disarmament.

Quote of the day – “If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more ‎violence. If the Jews put ‎down their weapons ‎today, there would be no ‎more Israel.”  – Benjamin Netanyahu