Who is a terrorist? Is it a Hamas fighter taking Israelis hostage on a kibbutz or ramming a vehicle into a group of Israelis? Or is it an Israeli pilot dropping a 2,000 lb bunker buster bomb on a building housing scores of civilians? Is the Palestinian the terrorist? The Israeli? Or both? If so, what are the criteria to determine it?
There is a saying: one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. For the Palestinians, the Hamas fighter who attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz on 10/7 is a hero. For the Israelis, he is a terrorist. While the IAF pilots who dropped 80 JDAM bombs assassinating Hassan Nasrallah, are heroes Israelis; despite murdering 33 civilians living in six destroyed apartment buildings above his underground bunker.
Global media has accepted the Israeli narrative. Palestinians are always terrorists. Always engaged in savage, unprovoked attacks against Israel. While the IDF only acts in self-defense. Any killing of Palestinian civilians is tangential (i.e. collateral damage) to its operations. And Hamas is to blame even for these deaths, because it uses civilians as “human shields.” Eliminating “terrorists” is the army’s only goal. Palestinians who attack Israel, even those defending their own homes in Gaza, are all terrorists. Indeed, Israeli leaders and generals have declared all Gazans–including women and children–terrorists.
Palestinian armed resistance is not terrorism. It is a legitimate struggle against foreign occupation and denial of human rights. These are the criteria under international humanitarian law–including UN General Assembly resolutions and the Geneva Convention–which justify it (see below).
Pre-state Zionist militias killed civilians
All the pre-state Israeli militias engaged in what the British Mandatory officials considered acts of terrorism. The most infamous being the King David Hotel bombing by Menachem Begin’s Irgun; and the massacre at Deir Yassin (also conducted by the Irgun). Many Palestinian Jews viewed these attacks as legitimate acts of resistance in pursuit of the Zionist goal of statehood.
Yet, when Palestinian militant groups employ the same tactics, they become terrorists. In this case, the Israelis play the same role as the British did during the Mandatory period. Just as the latter were colonial masters, Israel is now the colonial occupier of the Palestinians. Just as the British violently resisted the Zionist goal of statehood, so Israel resists Palestinian nationhood.
UN General Assembly endorses right of armed struggle
The UN General Assembly first ratified the right of armed resistance in a 1982 resolution, which it has reaffirmed several times since then. It asserts:
“the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
In 1977, the revised Geneva Convention (Protocol I, Part 1, Article 1-4, 1977) expanded the scope of the laws of war, explicitly affirming that it applies to:
…Armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist régimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination, as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
In a concurring opinion, ICJ vice-president, Judge Fouad Ammoun found that Namibia had a right to resort to armed struggle to gain its freedom He affirmed that the international community deems it legitimate to defend human rights by force of arms; and that such rights are an inherent element of “positive international law.” UNSC members, France and (non-permanent member) Pakistan have also, in different contexts, affirmed a Palestinian right to armed resistance.
Defining armed combatants
It is more difficult to ascertain who are legitimate targets of such armed conflict. It is generally assumed by experts in international humanitarian law that civilians may be targeted. However, this has become problematic regarding Israel’s flagrant disregard for such protocols.
Defining “armed combatant” is a key element in determining the legitimacy of acts of armed resistance. Plausibly, soldiers and police are armed combatants and therefore legitimate targets, since they serve the state engaged in foreign occupation. But there are many other categories of Israelis and Palestinians who fall into what is at best a grey zone. Israeli settlers are a quasi-military force. They live on colonized (i.e. stolen) land and are defended by the IDF. They are often armed and engage in mass violence against indigenous Palestinians. Therefore they should be lawful targets. Yet they have no official status as state actors.
Similarly, Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters are at best part-time fighters. Much of the time they are civilians. According to the conventional definition, someone affiliated with these groups who is engaged in civilian activities should not be a target. However, Israel willfully murders and maims them regardless of their activities.
In the case of Israelis, it is doubly problematic. The IDF encompasses 650,000 troops on active duty or in military reserves: 7% of the Israeli population (.04% of US citizens serve in the military). This does not include Israeli colonists, many of whom serve as a semi-official militia in close collaboration with the army. Many Israelis, though engaged in civilian activities, are armed as they walk the streets. If they are present during a Palestinian attack, they engage perpetrators and often kill them. In such cases, their role is clearly that of an armed combatant. In one particular case, such an Israeli “civilian” opened fire on a Palestinian attacker and was mistakenly killed by an IDF soldier. Thus, in Israel it is sometimes impossible to distinguish between civilian and combatant.
The Geneva Convention confirms when armed individuals cannot be distinguished as armed combatants, they must be considered as combatants, rather than civilians.
…There are situations in armed conflicts where, owing to the nature of the hostilities an armed combatant cannot so distinguish himself, he shall retain his status as a combatant, provided that, in such situations, he carries his arms openly…”
Israel: nation as armed combatant
Israel is, by extension an armed combatant nation. It is on perpetual war footing and has fought five major wars with neighboring states in 75 years. The state itself is militarized. There is compulsory military service (though a number of conscript categories receive exemptions). Military expenditures constitute nearly 30% of GDP. Revenue of Israel’s top three weapons makers in 2024 was $13.6-billion.
To extend the argument, the vast majority of Israelis support the Gaza genocide (73% according to a May 2024 Pew poll), annexation of the West Bank (52%), and its apartheid system. All of these constitute acts of genocide. The nation’s leadership routinely labels Palestinians as “human animals.” It justifies mass murder by invoking the the Biblical tribe of Amalek, who God commanded the Israelite king to exterminate. Other leaders justify genocide by claiming that all Palestinians, including civilians are terrorists, either because they support Hamas or–as Israel’s President Herzog stated— because they refuse to overthrow it:
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said…“It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
Even Israel’s medical profession, sworn to the Hippocratic Oath of “do no harm,” demanded the destruction of Gaza’s main hospital. Israeli civilians loot humanitarian aid convoys to prevent food from reaching starving Gazans.
There is no domestic political opposition to any of these crimes except from Israeli Palestinians. Even within civil society, few humanitarian NGOs dare raise their heads. Those that do are excoriated as traitors. There is only a single newspaper which offers any criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza. Can there be an innocent civilian in Israel? Can there be an Israeli who can be held innocent of this mass carnage?
Former Israeli Knesset member and director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Azmi Bishara recognizes how problematic this distinction is:
It is meaningless to condemn this type of action [targeted killing of civilians] within the framework of a political discourse that does not recognize the right of people under occupation to resistance.
Particularly problematic is Israel’s approach to the issue. It not only ignores the laws of war, it deliberately defies them. One of the criteria to define legitimate resistance is “proportionality”: that resistance should be proportional to the violence of the foreign occupier. Israel’s genocide ignores the concept; destroying virtually all of inhabited Gaza, murdering 60,000 identified Palestinian victims without regard to their civilian-military status, starving the entire population, and forcing them into what were essentially concentration camps, falsely designated as “humanitarian zones.”
If Israel has abandoned proportionality in its genocidal assault on Gaza’s civilian population, why must Palestinians limit their own self-defense to Israeli military targets? In normal circumstances, if a colonial power respected proportionality and limited attacks on civilians, it would be justified to expect reciprocal treatment from the colonized. But what is a “proportional” response to genocide for the victim? It is, I would maintain using “any means necessary” against any targets of the criminal party. This is truly proportional to Israel’s mass violence which denies any distinction between men, women, children, combatants and civilians.
When the occupying power not only ignores these limits, but boasts of its defiance, the international community should either forcibly prevent such genocide; or grant the victims an expanded right to defend themselves from annihilation.
Failure of international legal institutions
Additionally, the institutions of the international humanitarian justice system have failed to hold Israel accountable. Or more precisely, when they have sought to do so, they have no enforcement mechanism. They rely on the good will of signatories of the Rome Statute, who are required to arrest suspects who enter their territory. However, many states refuse to enforce International Criminal Court (ICC) or International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings. They permit national interests to usurp international justice. As such, they make a mockery of the “rules-based order” established post-WWII with the founding of the United Nations and its judicial affiliates.
Donald Trump recently mounted a full-frontal attack on the ICC with an Executive Order sanctioning it:
…Because of…“illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and of abusing its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants” against Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.”
The order says the U.S. will impose “tangible and significant consequences” on those responsible for the ICC’s “transgressions.” Actions may include blocking property and assets and not allowing ICC officials, employees and relatives to enter the United States.
When justice fails, the status of the armed conflict must change to reflect such circumstances. The law doesn’t always correspond to moral considerations. But when law deviates too far from morality or justice, it makes a mockery of itself. The case of the Palestine-Israel conflict requires a radical shift in the definitions I outlined above. Can the world concede to Israel the right to murder civilians in multiple countries (Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon) with impunity, while holding Palestinians to a different standard? Can you prohibit them from using the same tactics as their oppressor, when the latter scorns international law? Such a demand punishes the primary victims, in this case the Palestinians.
Why should the weaker party, the one overwhelmingly suffering the highest death toll, the most savage destruction, the most devastating famine–fight with less than one hand tied behind its back? As it is, the victimized party is overwhelmingly outgunned in weaponry. They have rocket-propelled grenades and IEDs at most, while the IDF has killer drones, artillery, F-35s armed with US-made 2,000 lb bunker buster bombs. This is David with a pebble rather than a slingshot vs. Goliath fully-armed.
A review of casualty counts in Israel-Palestinian conflict over the past 100 years (until 10/7) finds that approximately 6,000 Israelis were killed. While 40,000 Palestinians were killed. Israel has killed more Palestinians in the past 18 months than in the preceding 100 years. Prof. Devi Sridhar, chair of the Edinburgh University public heath program, projects that over 300,000 Gazans have died of unnatural causes since 10/7–9% of the overall population. 70% of the dead are women and children. Few nations have condemned this slaughter, though genocide scholars, humanitarian NGOs and some politicians as genocide have done so.
Zionist civilian attacks
In pre-1948 Palestine, Zionist militias routinely murdered Palestinian, British and even anti-Zionist Jewish civilians. In one of the most shocking such attacks, future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir ordered the assassination of the Swedish diplomat, Count von Bernadotte, who sought to arrange a ceasefire between Jewish and Palestinian forces. The Lehi terrorist who planned the murder lived unscathed to the ripe old age of 91. The hands dripped in the blood of civilian murders were never held accountable. Some even rose to high official positions in the State. For the Zionists, these men were heroes.
Yet Israelis rejoice at a video showing Yahya Sinwar flailing helplessly as an Israeli drone circles around him before his murder. Other Israelis revel in mass murder, justifying the killing of children who will grow up to become terrorists, call Palestinians “lice” which must be exterminated. Many of them are serving in the IDF in Gaza, where their sick mentality is inflicted on Gazans. If anything, it is they who are terrorists fighting on behalf of state engaged in a campaign of terrorism. Palestinians who engage in armed resistance against such crimes as defined under international law, are not “terrorists.”
In the face of genocide, the Palestinians are expected to respect the conventional (and outdated) definition of the laws of war and pay the consequences if they don’t. While Israel may never do so. Experts in humanitarian law may argue that relaxing standards for the Palestinians would destroy the entire structure of international jurisprudence; there cannot be two conflicting standards for the rules of war.
However, if the law cannot account for the suffering of the victims and denies them the right to defend themselves by any means necessary (including attacking a militarized citizenry), then it has also made a mockery of its own system.
Genocides of western states
Historically, the Allies murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians in the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No Allied leader was ever held accountable for these acts of genocide. Even if we acknowledge these crimes were committed during a declared war, the enormous loss of civilian life grossly violates the principal of proportionality.
If the Japanese or Germans had been able to retaliate and similarly attack US and British cities with similarly destructive weapons, would Axis leaders have enjoyed the impunity US and UK leaders and generals did? Of course not. Conversely, would there have been a Nuremberg tribunal for the Allies? There is a troubling hypocrisy in the rules based order. The rules apply to the losers, while the victors suffer no consequences–barely even a guilty conscience. Thus, then-IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz described the weight on his conscience as he dropped bombs on Palestinians, as a slight shudder of the wing as the bomb was released.
There is a means of rectifying this imbalance: holding Israeli leaders accountable; arresting them and trying them (along with Palestinians) in the Hague; convicting and imprisoning them for their crimes. But that requires will on the part of the ICC parties. It demands that they honor the Statute they signed to do so. It requires holding those states which refuse, accountable. The chances of any of this happening are slim. As long as international law is dismissed by offenders without consequence, the world has only itself to blame for the slaughter.
The ICJ and ICC are like doctors aimlessly wandering the halls of a hospital because administrators have prohibited them from administering vaccines to their patients. Then when the sick storm the hospital pharmacy and assault the security guards blocking their path, in order to obtain life-saving drugs, the world excoriates them for breaking the rules.
Azmi Beshara articulates the ambivalence inherent in an international order based on norms members don’t honor:
Yet, how can we use these [norms] to expose hypocrisy while they are simultaneously being contravened? The task is not to deny universal values or expose their falsity, but to expose lip service to them, their disavowal, the lack of commitment to these values and international law, and the way international law has been hollowed out of any substance in an international order where values articulated in conventions and their interpretations are subordinated to interests and power relations.
His analysis is sound as far as it goes. But what follows from this hollowing out of the substance of moral norms as expressed in international law? What are we left with? And how do we proceed once we understand that it is impossible to restore this rules based order? Will we be left with the lives of Palestinian victims which, to quote Hobbes, are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?” Can we retrieve their humanity by permitting them to fight for their lives?
Those who refuse to carry out the decisions of the ICC and ICJ believe there will no negative consequences for them. The victims of their indifference are far away and out of sight. Their suffering filters through images and news stories. Few see or feel such suffering. Nor do the member states understand that while one people suffers now, they might be next. Then their fellow nations may ignore their trauma as well.
Either the Rome signatories must reform the ICC and provide it a robust enforcement method, or they should dismantle it. As it currently stands, it only prosecutes Third World countries with little standing or power to oppose the Court. As Azmi Bishara wrote:
…Since the court’s founding, it has proved unable to punish those who are officials or officers from the great powers, or individuals from states that emerged victorious from the war. Once states are involved, other considerations wholly unrelated to morals are brought to bear. For all practical purposes, the ICC is dedicated to punishing the defeated.
The predecessor to today’s UN judicial institutions, the League of Nations, was formed in the aftermath of WWI. Though it proved to be an ineffectual institution. Many of its failures are echoed today:
The League lacked strong enforcement mechanisms to compel member states to adhere to its decisions…The most significant tool at its disposal was economic sanctions, but these were often ineffective as member states had their own economic interests to consider. Without the ability to enforce its decisions, the League struggled to maintain its credibility and authority.
…Member states frequently prioritized their own national interests over collective action. When faced with potential conflicts, many nations chose to pursue their own policies rather than following the League’s recommendations. This undermined the League’s ability to effectively resolve disputes and prevent conflicts.
Many historians believe that the failure of the League and its members to heed its rulings contributed to the outbreak of WWII. It was eventually by the United Nations, whose judicial bodies have also proven unequal to the task at hand. It is long past time to retire or reform the current system of international justice. If not, history could repeat itself.
No one should fool themselves that it will not have consequences. The next time there is a genocide in Europe, North or South America or Asia, there will be nothing to stop it. Especially if one of the global superpowers is the perpetrator. The next time a nuclear power prepares to annihilate an enemy with nuclear weapons, there will be no one to stop it. All because we were smug and satisfied that in creating the ICC, we have fulfilled our responsibility to keep the world safe.
Janina Dill, the co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, offered this example:
“Trump is just casually making major international crimes into policy proposals,” she said. “He just normalizes violating…the absolute bedrock principles of international law.” By…disregard[ing] the value of those rules, Mr. Trump could send a message that he is not strongly committed to defending them in other contexts, such as a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan…
If the world does not recognize the imperative for an effective legal system that transcends individual nation states, then it is gradually and eventually doomed; especially in the era of weapons of mass destruction. Multiple genocides in Ukraine, Congo, Gaza, and the rise of sociopaths like Donald Trump, show that democratic or constitutional restraints once considered inviolable, are far too easily overthrown. Human civilization, thought by many to be based on firm immutable principles, is a frail reed, easily broken. While the damage of insurrection and mass violence is often confined within a society; it can easily target an foreign enemy with disastrous consequences.
A Jewish response to genocide
Israel’s recent Nation State law declares it is the nation-state of the Jewish people. It’s more accurate to call it a nation-state for Israeli Jews. In 1948, its founding document espoused the values of liberal western democracy, including non-Jews within its scope. But today’s Israel has abandoned any pretense of liberalism or genuine democracy. Muslim and Christian Palestinians, though citizens, are no longer members of the nation. They’ve been cast out of the flock as black sheep.
Diaspora Jews are increasingly alienated by Israeli apartheid. They refuse to be implicated in Israel’s crimes. Israel is not their state. Nor do they need a state of their own, when their native lands are their home. The ensuing alienation, especially among young Jews, leads inexorably to a sympathy for the Palestinian struggle. Unlike our Israeli brethren, Jews outside it have a broader historical vision that isn’t confined to Zionist parochialism or Holocaust trauma.
Such Jews learn lessons different from those who were raised on Zionist “teachings of the fathers.” They discover the Holocaust was not a unique historical event; or that the Jewish people possess a singular victim status. Genocide is a crime that occurs repeatedly throughout history. Today, it is a horror even the former victims and their descendants are capable of committing.
Many Jews have rallied to the Palestinian cause. Not in spite of their religious allegiance, but because of it. This is a battle between a tribal definition of religious identity; and a universal definition which embraces human diversity. “Never again” must not be confined to never again for Jews; but for Palestinians as well. As long as the latter are victims of Israeli genocide, many Jews feel a special obligation to support Palestine, including armed resistance against its oppressors:
…Demonstrators in Europe, the United States and elsewhere demanding a ceasefire may be motivated by universal morals resulting from a sense of common belonging to a single identity. This is neither a national nor a religious identity, but rather a human identity, which enables them to imagine themselves in the place of the victims. This is the highest level of shared belonging; humanity as a larger reference group ought to be governed by human values.
Young American Jews have done a great work through their solidarity with the people in Gaza and their rejection of Israeli practices, whether acting based on universal values, on their understanding of Jewish values together with human values…
…It is an identity-based starting point; however, it is diametrically opposed to identity-based chauvinism, since it invokes identity not to boast about it, but rather to refuse support for anyone who claims to represent that identity…
Finally, the Talmud suggests that if someone is coming to kill you, you must “rise and kill him first.” The Palestinians know that not just the Israeli army, but the entire Israeli nation has arisen to kill them-man, woman and child, without distinction. Therefore, they are entitled to rise up and kill those who would murder them.
As you say Menachim Begin was a terrorist in the 1940’s. He was responsible for the death of some 90 people, British and Jewish in the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. He was also responsible for the killings of Lord Moine, Churchills personal representative, in Cairo and Count Folke Bernadotte , the UN representative, in Jerusalem. He wrote a book , The Revolt, praising his terrorist activities in 1951. He became PM of Israel in 1977. Yitzak Shamir , another terrorist became a PM of Israel. The two murderers of Lord Moine were hanged, and in 1975 their bodies were returned to Israel and given state funerals.
Martin McGuinness, an Irishman, was seen by many in Britain as a terrorist in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and it is believed he was responsible for the murder of Lord Mountbatten, yet he later entered government with Ian Paisley, his previously sworn enemy, and shook hands with the Queen in 2012.
Some members of the the milk bar bombers in Algiers during the 1950’s eventually entered government in Algeria. I am sure there are many other terrorists in Africa who later on entered government.
There is life after terrorism.
Many a terrorist’s bodies are moldering in their graves, but their souls keep marching on
Thanks for alerting me to your post, Richard.
You make some important points about Israelis’ combatant status and the right of colonised people to resist, although the UN General Assembly doesn’t really establish International Law™, as you seem to suggest. I think we agree that Israel regards a Hamas commander as a legitimate military target even when hors de combat at home with their family, and that if that principle were reciprocal, Israeli soldiers and the Minister of ‘Defence’ would similarly be legitimate military targets in their own homes, and their families regrettable collateral damage. Israeli reservists would also be fair game. I would also point out that the kibbutzim and other settlements of The Gaza Envelope (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_envelope) serve effectively as military outposts, or at best, ‘human shields’, or bait. They, too, therefore, must constitute legitimate targets, if Israeli principles of combat were reciprocal.
You are also right to point out that in Israeli discourse, ‘Palestinians are always terrorists’, even when their targets are strictly military in the conventional sense, i.e. armed, uniformed, military personnel on duty. Indeed, I suspect that for many Israeli Jews, Palestinian, Arab, and terrorist are synonyms, even when they are not involved in violence at all.
But the definition of terrorism is contentious (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism), so to assert that ‘Palestinian armed resistance is not terrorism’ is just your opinion. It may, indeed, as we agree, be ‘a legitimate struggle against foreign occupation’ and terrorism, too, depending on the definition one adopts.
When you write, ‘resistance should be proportional to the violence of the foreign occupier’, you seem to misunderstand the concept of proportionality, which in the context of the ‘laws of war’ relates not to the level of violence responded to, but to ‘the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)#International_Humanitarian_Law_(jus_in_bello). That’s why Israeli rules of engagement stipulate the projected number of allowable civilian casualties in terms of the seniority of the targeted ‘militant’. Specifically, ‘for every junior Hamas operative…it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians…the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander’. (https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/) I might just mention that you probably intended to write, ‘It is generally assumed by experts in international humanitarian law that civilians may not be targeted’ and to substantiate your statement with citations of such experts.
To get to the point, Bishara is wrong to think ‘international law has been hollowed out’ – it is hollow by design, as he appears to acknowledge in your second quote, where he writes, ‘Once states are involved, other considerations wholly unrelated to morals are brought to bear’. In other words, it is fundamentally impossible to enforce international law against a powerful culprit, as Thucydides recognised two and half millennia ago, ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos). And even if it weren’t out of the question in principle, the only mechanism for enforcement of an ICJ ruling is a Security Council resolution, and guess who exercises a veto there.
Furthermore, I argue that it is inadvisable to couch arguments in terms of international law. Even if your interpretation is ‘correct’ in some abstract sense, it is the ruling of the court, that is, 15-17 judges appointed by states with vested interests of their own, that will ultimately determine whether an infringement has occurred or not. To aver that some action violates international law, especially when the implication is that it is wrong *because* it does so, is effectively to abdicate your own ethical responsibility and leave it to the court to decide. And if they should happen to disagree with your interpretation, you are left bleating that those who international law empowers to interpret it got it wrong, which is not really different from rejecting international law outright.
@ Harry: I assume you are correct regarding the definition of “proportionality” under international law. But I maintain that any people suffering genocide are entitled to a proportional response to their executioners. I don’t care whether you call this moral, pragmatic or any other form of proportionality, even if this is not a legal definition.
Another interesting question is: under internatonal law one party may not intentionally kill civilians of the opposing party. In Israel’s case, it kills its own citizens, intentionally. How would international law understand this? It couldn’t even imagine this as a prospect I imagine.
The only reason I focused on international law was to show how impotent it is in the face of such crimes. At least those committed by western states with powerful allies (like the US). IL does hold Third World dictators and genociders accountable (sometimes). But hardlly ever European or other western states (with the exception of Serbia).
As
It looks like your comment was truncated. Did you have more to say?
Please don’t assume I’m correct. Follow my links; consult your own sources; evaluate my reasoning. I’m not looking for any free passes. On the contrary, I like to think I’m encouraging the kind of rigour that the hasbaristas can’t poke holes in.
In the context of a discussion framed in terms of International Law™, I don’t think it’s viable to adopt the Humpty Dumpty approach to semantics, ‘“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”’ The principle that in a discussion of law, relevant legal definitions apply – in the case of proportionality no less than in the case of genocide or apartheid. IL, for all its legion faults, has defined these terms, and if you want to use them in other senses, I think you need to be clear that that’s what you’re doing.
My principal point is that the differential impotence of IL that you mention is a feature, not a bug, and for that and other reasons, appeals to IL inevitably embroil you in contradictions, quite apart from issues regarding what counts as IL in the first place, etc. A point I often make is that The Rule Of Law™ is that what matters is not the act but the actor. I think you’ll find that that explains a lot that might otherwise seem puzzling.
I don’t know whether the Geneva Conventions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions), if that’s what you’re referring to, distinguish which noncombatants it’s impermissible to attack. I’d speculate that the most obvious interpretation is that all civilians are off limits to the extent that they don’t stand in the way of some military objective, which is where proportionality,as defined, comes into it.
You’re doubtless conscious that the world’s greatest democracy has itself massacred its own civilian citizens, for instance in Waco in 1993 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege), and Philadelphia in 1985 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing), and tested chemical and biological weapons on them in San Francisco in 1950 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray), quite apart from nuclear and other tests on US ‘possessions’ in the Pacific, etc. I’m not aware that any consequences emanated from such activities in either domestic or international law.
A well-thought-out article that only a Jews could write and get away with in today’s pro-genocide climate. Can you just imagine a Muslim writing your words? I plan to post your link on my FB page in a few minutes.
One point of difference though, while there are certainly many diaspora Jews who are actively against the genocide, it appears that the largest number of them are in blind support of the genocide. I have spoken with Jews who feel it impossible to speak out against the genocide because their fellow congregants would ostracize them. The larger Synagogues that I am aware of, are all goose-stepping right behind “Israel’s right to exist”.
There is also a groupthink among many diaspora Jews and perhaps almost all Israeli Jews that all Palestinians are “Terrorists” and that “Hamas must be exterminated” and then they go on to embrace the notion that everybody is “HAMAS!!”. Therefore of course, all Palestinians must be exterminated.
Who knows? with US and Western weapons and bombs, Israel may yet be able to accomplish its bloody goal.
Jeff Siddiqui, Regarding what you said here “One point of difference though, while there are certainly many diaspora Jews who are actively against the genocide, it appears that the largest number of them are in blind support of the genocide. I have spoken with Jews who feel it impossible to speak out against the genocide because their fellow congregants would ostracize them. The larger Synagogues that I am aware of, are all goose-stepping right behind “Israel’s right to exist,” this is a major reason I don’t go to any synagogue. I am an Atheist Jew. While I’m not religious I am culturally and ethnically Jewish. I might go to a synagogue if I knew it was one where I wouldn’t be ostracized for my opinion and if in fact more of the congregants are progressive and want peace and if this issue would be discussed.
Now for Richard and everybody here, while I understand that “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter,” I don’t see what good the Hamas attack on October 7th did. I understand that many of the people attacked, killed or taken hostage lived on kibutz’s who opposed Israel’s settlements and occupation of the West Bank and treatment of the Palestinians.
Jeff Siddiqui, Also I saw a poll showing that the majority of American Jews while condemning the October 7th Hamas attacks, oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the settlements and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and want the U.S. to put more pressure on Israel. They are more concerned about addressing important issues in our country. Many of those Jews don’t attend the synagogues.
You are right. Many condemn the occupation, and I wish just as many would also condemn the genocide that is happening right now which is a larger scale continuation of a hundred-year genocide.
Walter Ballin. The October attack got many people talking about the horrors and criminality of Zionism – peaceful protests in 2018 were met by silence from the world community. Those people in the kibutzim near the Gaza border may opposed Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, but their parents/grandparents participated in that treatment by kicking Palestinians out of their villages in 1948, and then built kibutzim on top of the stone remains.
Jeffrey Frankel. While your first point is true, I don’t see that this changed policy and I have no expectation that it will under Trump. As for your second point, I don’t believe in holding the children for wrongs that their parents/grandparents committed. Is it right to kill, rape(some people say rape didn’t happen but that’s been said about the cases of other rape victims), and kidnap people? By doing what Hamas did, if anything that turns people who agreed with the Palestinians(not just Hamas) cause against them.
Jeffrey Frankel. Just to clarify about what I said above, of course that doesn’t excuse atrocities committed by Netanyahu, Israeli forces and also Jewish settlers in the West Bank. That includes the over 50,000 Palestinians killed and those maimed in Gaza and all the destruction.
Walter Ballin, “, I don’t believe in holding the children for wrongs that their parents/grandparents committed.” Maybe not, but if they are living on stolen land they have to return it without recompense. Nazis stole paintings and art works from Jews during the 1930’s and 1940’s and the Jewish descendants have a right to its’ return, no matter how many years have passed or how many “innocent” hands the art works have passed through,
Attacks such as Oct 7 or others launched by Israel, never solve a problem, they just kick it down the road because one side has been “defeated”.
So, what good did the Oct 7 attack do? Not being in on the decision making, I can only guess. Firstly, I doubt if they or anyone in his right mind, expected such a genocidal response. Secondly, when a people have been ground down into the dirt, displaced several times, oppressed and murdered, they no longer care about consequences of their actions, they just want to attack. This is also what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Jews knew they would lose and get killed and that did happen, but they no longer cared.
Jeff Siddiqui, So why go after the kibutzim, many who opposed what Israel was doing and are not responsible for what their parents or grandparents did? Since they “no longer care about consequences of their actions,” why not figure out a way to get Netanyahu and/or high people around him? Certainly I’m not minimizing what happened to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the holocaust overall, but at least the Nazis were ultimately defeated. This conflict goes on-and-on. I’m 79-years old. I’m healthy but I don’t think this will ever be over in the remainder of my lifetime. While horrifying, I’m not the least bit surprised about Israel’s response to October 7th.
These are questions that can only be posed by people who are sitting comfortably in their chairs and having academic and perhaps partisan thoughts, why attack non-combatants?
Imagine you are a Palestinian living a life at the will and disposal of the occupying forces, not allowed to travel and if you do, you must return within a short time, or you won’t be able to return.; You have watched people die at the hands of the military of the occupying civilians.
Imagine you must go through barriers that can take an entire day, just to get to a hospital that your child or parent desperately needs. Imagine your family has been uprooted from your original homes, then again from the homes you settled in and then again, kicked into Gaza.
Are you really going to conduct interviews and roll calls to see who is friend and who is foe when you and your party launch an attack where you just know you are going to die?
As far as Palestinians are concerned, everybody is an occupier and everybody is an oppressor.
The Nazis were only defeated because of the empires that united to fight them (US, Soviet, UK etc.,), Palestinians have no such support in fact, “Palestinians” are commonly held to be synonymous to “Terrorists” when the actual facts are the other way around.
Israeli Jews and their supporters have shown themselves to be psychopathic genocidaires and that is a shame because they were once the weak people who were the targets of a genocide but now, they are the same as their erstwhile oppressors.
Nothing will change until Israel’s partners in genocide, the West, stop supporting Israel. Then we can look forward to a peaceful future for that land.
There is no such thing as a diaspora jew, that would assume that all jews were from Israel and they are not.
@ Marilyn:
Please do not Jewsplain. Do not tell us who is a Jew or where we came from. There is a Jewish Diaspora whether you like it or not.
If you’re asserting that all modern Jews are genetic descendants of ancient Hebrews, that would be contentious. There are other aspects of definitions of ‘diaspora’ that you would probably want to reject, as well.
@ Harry: It’s important that we define terms precisely. First, I can’t say that ALL modern Jews are genetically descended from ancient Hebrews. Also, I’m not sure the term “descendant” is relevant. If 1% or less of my DNA is derived from ancient Hebrews, does that make me a descendant? And if so, how much of one? If I have more central or eastern European DNA am I a descendant of both or the one with the largest DNA component? Also, the genetic composition of modern Jews goes back even farther than the Hebrews to tribes who preceded them. So perhaps we are also descendants of the Canaanites etc.?
You can see that things can get quite murky, which is why genetic arguments concerning Jewish identity & Zionism can be problematic.
one correction Richard to an otherwise well written article
Yahya did not merely flail helplessly in his final moments, he defiantly threw a stick at the zionist drone
October the 7th and it’s courageous leader will be celebrated as a major holiday when zionism is eventually defeated and dismantled
I’m actually replying to Jeff Siddiqui but the Reply icon isn’t showing up under his last reply to me.
Jeff, I agree with what you said.
The video of the death of Sinwar shows a damaged building and NO WEAPONS in the rooms. The soldiers did not know who he was at that moment, he was simply a Palestinian man, who was probably injured or ill. They then killed him. Only later did they find out who he was. So we have further proof that the Israeli military kill unarmed civilians as a matter of course.
Is this video, which the Israelis are proud to show, not further evidence of a war crime, the killing of unarmed civilians?
You hit this one out of the park Richard. Yashar Ko’ach!
@ Moishe: Thanks!
Calamity “Jane” on her latest genocide …
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/samantha-power-gaza-2670499374/