Nope. Making human shields a tactic that always works is a really, really shitty idea.
The way it is actually examined in “just war” theory is rather more sensible: a military tactic is “justified” if the risks to civilians are ‘proportinate’ to a legitimate military objective. If it were not that way, one side could freely strap babies on its cannons and win every battle against a “moral” enemy.
This way, the guy who uses human shields is always bad, and the guy who shoots at him may or may not be bad, depending on the usual just war approach.
I for one am against the use of babies as reactive armour …
You can put the start date in a lot of places, and which you choose says a lot about your perception of the conflict (or what media you follow).
The rocket attacks were in response to the Israeli government arresting nearly all of Hamas’s West Bank political leaders along with hundreds of others, and barring thousands from going to work. Israel did so in retaliation for an act which at least one spokesman for the Israeli government now concedes that Hamas did not commit: the heinous kidnapping and execution of three teenage Israeli settlers, apparently the work of some other Palestinian militants. (Moreover, at least one Palestinian was apparently killed in retaliation for that kidnapping by Israeli extremists.) Those militants presumably targeted these teenagers in response to Israel’s illegal expansion of settlements into the West Bank.
Which side are you more positively inclined towards:
() Palestinians
() the guys that kidnapped a random Palestinian teenager and executed him as revenge for the kidnap and execution of three Israeli teenagers?
Phrasing the poll this way seems to equate Palestinians with Hamas.
I doubt that any national government, in any war, has ever considered putting its own civilans at the exact same same risk as enemy civilians. Nor is such a position usually demanded by just war theorists, for the obvious reason that it is nuts. National governments exist to protect citizens of a particular nation. While there are rules dealing with civilized conflict between nations, stating that one cannot deliberately target the civilian populations of an enemy, they do not demand that national governments protect citizens of an enemy with the same rigour that they protect their own.
Every country places a higher priority on the lives of its own people.
If the British government had to choose between saving the lives of 40 Britons or 50 Ethiopians, the choice would probably be the 40 Britons each time.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, right? The Palestinian people as a whole have legitimate rights that Israel tramples all over, but Hamas is a thug organization bent on violence… as far as I was aware.
The charge has been made in the current conflict that this is one of the problems with Hamas: they are willing to sacrifice their own people for the sake of publicity. They hide their weapons in schools and hospitals, and are delighted at the high body counts of Palestinians which gives them better press and wins people over to their side. It’s appalling. (This is not just an Israeli charge, I heard a Hamas big-wig this morning on the radio, asked about this, saying “All of our people are soldiers.” He didn’t deny it.)
So if Israel killed or injured anyone while arresting hundreds of people not involved in the kidnapping of the teenage settlers, then you’d say Israel started it and was in the wrong?
Once again, and with emphasis: when you arrest people, the goal is to arrest them. Not to injure or kill them. Any injuries or deaths are not intentional.
On the other hand, when you send unguided rockets into cities, your goal is to injure and kill. Period. Full stop. No other argument possible.
It takes exceptional lack of moral compass not to understand this distinction.
Then Ethiopia would have a valid cause for going to war with the UK.
However, that would not change the fact that, in the event of such a war, the UK would rightly act to protect its civilians first, and treat Etheopian civilians as required by the rules of war.
Nothing “requires” one nation at war place civilians of an enemy nation at par with its own. Maybe in world without nations, or wars.
I do not know for a certainty whether anyone is in the right in Gaza. I do, however, know that Hamas is in the wrong. I refrain from passing judgement on Israel because I do not have all of the information: It may well be that there is some less destructive course of action available to Israel, and that they are choosing not to take it. But if there is such a course, I have never seen anyone suggest what it is.
That is exactly why in the simplistic poll I voted Israel. The goals of Hamas are met by making their people into human sacrifices. They learned from Arafat who became a billionaire while crying poverty and letting his people starve in camps. I wish that Israel could come up with better strategy that lowered the risk to civilians. But I can’t come up with one. And I know how I would feel if Canada started lobbing rockets at upstate NY.