Begging questions
Post categories: World Tonight
| 10:55 UK time, Monday, 31 July 2006
Since the Israeli assault on Lebanon began there have been accusations and counter-accusations about breaking international humanitarian law. On The World Tonight last week the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator, Jan Egeland, accused the Israelis of breaking international law in its assault on Gaza and Lebanon and accused Hezbollah and Palestinian militants of breaking the same laws for firing missiles at civilian targets in Israel.
In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Mark Regev, who has become a familiar voice on ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio over the past few weeks, quoted the Geneva Conventions and the International Red Cross in Israel's defence. For good measure, he argued that Israel is doing no worse than Nato did in Serbia during the Kosovo conflct seven years ago.
So who's right? If you look at lawyers arguments about international law at sites such as https://www.crimesofwar.org you'll see there are differing views on what actually does breach these laws. Some might say that this is not unusual where law and lawyers are concerned, but it certainly begs a lot of questions.
What exactly does international humanitarian law say about the legality of military action in areas populated by civilians which - let's face it - is pretty much anywhere people think is worth fighting over? How can international law be enforced? When we asked Jan Egeland what the UN could do about these alleged crimes, he said they could draw the world's attention to it and hope the parties themselves come to their senses, which highlights that unless there is consensus in the international community about enforcing these laws, nothing much happens.
Serbia is a recent example where the international community decided to enforce these laws and there is an interesting debate going in that country about why the parties to the present Middle East violence are not being held to account in the way the Serbs have - and that's before they go on to ask why Nato has never been called to account for its bombardment of their country.
All of which keeps our airwaves busy trying to explain why there is so much confusion over international humanitarian law.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
Comments
Ask yourself this: What are the penalties for breaking the laws of war? Well, the penalties are usually inflicted by the major nations leaning in on a country when they don't like what it's doing – go back to the Balkans crises of the 1990's. However, what happens when you have a country breaking these laws (and I'm not saying that Israel is or isn't, I'm giving you an example to think about) but the major nations do not want to lean in and stop the infractions? Well then you get nothing done.
The UN, International Law and other such institutions of peace are toothless organisations which only work when it suits the agendas of the power brokers. When they do not, these institutions are all too easy to cast aside – heck, it took the UN security council two days just to decide on the wording of a condemnation of the killing of four of its own peacekeepers! A worthless debating club with rules not worth the paper they're written on, unless it suits somebody with some real power to wield and a hankering for that UN Security Council seal of approval to help in the PR war.
The difference between Serbia and Lebanon is:-
1) NATO had a far greater regard for civilians when destroying targets (you never saw reports of 30+ children being killed by NATO in attack on a domestic home).
2) NATO attacked DIRECT supply chain and resource points that were allowing Serbia to continue its massacre and ethnic clensing operations - not towns and cities miles away when we all know Hezbollah are actualy being supplied from entirely different countries (Syria, Iran).
3)When NATO achived peace in Serbia they they spent the next few years (and still are) repairing the infastruture they destroyed - I know I served out there myself. When Israel last left Lebanon they left it a wreak of a country which has spent the last decade getting back on its feet. Only to have Israel smash it and it's people's apart again.
Mark Regev may think he can put a good argument together by 'comparing apples to oranges', but I think most of us are clever enough for us to see trough it.
Sorry to be the first of many pedants to point this out but to "beg the question" is to assert a premise which contains a direct or indirect assumption that the conclusion is true. It does not, except in popular (mis)usage, mean "raise the question".
In the larger context of the events going on in the Middle East this is an insignificant speck of a quibble. But would it kill you to get it right?
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the only war criminals who end up being prosecuted in the Hague are those on the "losing" side.
From Churchill to Clinton and Bush, no major Western leaders have been prosecuted for outrageous crimes against humanity.
International law is something people trot out when they want to make a political point to bash someone they don't like. Had Britain obeyed what we now call international law during World War II, it would have lost its independence and the people yammering about international law right now would be dragged off to a prison and summarily shot. Britain participated in bombing the entire nation of Germany burning its cities to the ground, killing and badly injuring millions of people, and destroying art and artifacts priceless to the German national identity. The firebombing of Dresden was comparable to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but at the time, nobody in Britain thought twice about it because that was part of the struggle for their own survival. The only difference today is the hypocricy of those selectively spouting "international war crime" when it suits them.
HEZBOLLAH PREPARES FOR MANY YEARS, STOCKPILES WEAPONS FROM IRAN AND SYRIA, ROCKETS ISRAEL CONSTANTLY, MIXES IN WITH THE POPULACE WITH THEIR WEAPONS, DIGS MANY LAYERED FORTIFICATIONS, STARTED THE SUICIDE BOMBINGS OF CIVILIAN PLACES AND BUSES, CAPTURES SOLDIERS AS BARGAINING CHIPS IN A KILLING OPERATION. ISRAEL STRIKES BACK AND IS CALLED BAD. THE PRESS IS VERY UNEVEN.
The very fact that we need such pontification on just what is illegal about blasting a bunch of families and friends and neighbors sky-high is about enough evidence to convince me that we're damned as a species.
Fact: UN declared Israel a new state in 1948
Fact: Arab countries have tried to destroy Israel for over 50 years
Fact: There are about 10 million Jews worldwide
Fact: There are about 1000 million Muslims worldwide (this explains the UN’s continual bias towards Muslim countries)
Fact: Israel has a thriving democracy, economy and scientific community
Fact: Without oil money, there is not one wealthy Arab state
Fact: Israel elects its leaders to withdraw from territories (captured whilst fighting in self defence) in order to promote peace and justice.
Fact: Irans leaders have declared that they want to destroy Israel (and the West later)
Fact: Hizbollah attacks Israel in an unprovoked attack
Fact: Israel is defending itself now in order that they will continue to exist.
Fact: Hizbollah is fighting on Irans behalf
Fact: Israel is not fighting for the USA-it is fighting for its survival
Fact: Iran wants to acquire Nuclear weapons (only a weak-willed delusional West can possibly think otherwise) – and they wish to destroy Israel
Fact: Although not admitted – Israel has nuclear weapons – but they have no wish to destroy any country.
If the West / Russia / China does not deal with Iran / Hezbollah now – firmly and militarily if necessary – Israel will have to do it alone.
Israel is justified, in my opinion, to undertake all actions in order to defend its right to exist.
All lives lost in this conflict (no matter how it occurs) should be firmly blamed on Iran / Hizbullah - see the truth!!!
No, "ISRAEL KILLS OVER 500 CIVVIES" is whats being called bad. Honestly, the more I read of public opinion in this country the more I want to become a hermit.
I'm pleased that on this blog you don't seem to be drawing conclusions about whether war crimes have or have not been committed in Lebanon/Israel. That far better than Jeremy Bowen, the uber-experienced Middle East editor, who seems to spend half his time implying that Israel, and only Israel, has violated international law.
QUOTE "ISRAEL STRIKES BACK AND IS CALLED BAD." /QUOTE
Yes bad. But by saying this does not make Hezbollah good. This conflict is between to sets of bad guy's. The only people really getting hurt is the Lebanese civilians caught up in this mess.
You could argue that the Lebanese support Hezbollah and they should be punished. Some do, but I bet the vast majority don't. Imagine you were an ordinary civilian of Lebanon. Where would you go to complain about Hezbollah when they virtually run your country? If you are a politician, how do you stand against an organisation that uses violence and intimidation to win votes?
But the real bad guys here are the nations that stand and do nothing instead of taking action. This could be sorted if the world’s nations had a political will. But the two countries have no resources worth fighting for, no spoils to divide up. So we will just stand by and watch...
The next time Regev comes on to one of your programmes spouting about UN resolution 1559, could you ask him about all the other resolutions that Israel is ignoring? Or alternatively, to misquote my mother, ask him if Nato jumped under a bus, would Israel do the same.
Harold: The Caps Lock key is above the shift key to the left of your keyboard. Try pressing it.
The so-called leaders of the white developed world have been so slow to understand the power of the information media that they continue to believe that they have the solutions to all the problems faced by other races. How can we, in the civilized world, continue to settle a score by bombing and killing those who wronged us? Is taking that kind of action any more civilized than that which we are trying to fix?
How then can we praise the non-violent stance taken by Martin Luther King during the early years of the struggle by Black Americans to gain their human rights, but condemn the strategies employed by Malcolm X? What was that about? Are there two type of justices, one for whites and another for coloreds?
We need to look at the bigger picture. Gone are the days when anything the white man tells people of color is taken as gospel. It's no longer that way folks! Many of us do not need to be told what to think anymore. Nowadays, some of us can actually think for ourselves.
The key that apopleptic Harold (comment 5) is desperately searching for in his rage lies between SHIFT and TAB.
Imagine him as a newsreader, SHOUTING like that!
After watching the horrific images of the young and elderly being pulled out of their destroyed homes by visiting journalists, I truly feel for the Lebanese in their anger and disappointment at why the UN, and indeed the world seem to not be helping stop this destruction. Have the UN lost their power in such situations, after the US ignored their stance to not invade Iraq for those elusive 'weapons of mass destruction'?
In response to Tim Jackson:
Though I think it clear that Israel's deliberate disregard for civillian lives (to state it diplomatically) far exceeds anything done by Nato in Serbia, our bombing campaign was not as clean as you would like to claim. The "direct supply and resource points" you speak of were very often located conveniently within ordinary neighbourhoods, next to hospitals, schools, etc with devastating consequences for the civillian population. The usage of cluster bombs (rightly condemned by almost all humanitarian organizations) ensured that these were not pin-point strikes but that the devastation was spread over wide, heavily populated (by civillians, not military) areas. At the time it was decided that these certain casualties were justified to avoid the risk of losing NATO pilots. And how did NATO "achieve peace in Serbia"? What Nato achieved was to turn Kosovo into an international protectorate, still haunted by the spectre of further ethnic cleansing and violence to this day. The ouster of Milosevic and the path towards turning Serbia into a normally functioning democracy was achieved by the Serbian people themselves, quite some time after the bombing campaign; arguably, the NATO strikes merely helped consolidate Milosevic's grip on power. None of this (as some would like to suggest) in any way reduces the horror of what Israel is doing, and the necessity of an international response to it. But the idea of Serbia as the model humanitarian war is as deluded as that of Iraq being a beacon of democracy.
How, exactly, do you hold Hezbollah to account? They don't exactly have a country, they don't wear uniforms, they hide in plain site but have nothing obvious to lose. This is partly why so-called war crimes can't be prosecuted in the Middle-East in contrast to Bosnia. There is nobody to hold to account in any traditional sense.
Sixteen comments made, five published. It almost seems pointless. The other eleven can't all be unpublishable unless more than two thirds of you audience finds your comments even more unsatisfactory than I do. And even if you were to publish them, more than three days have passed since this entry first appeared and therefore nobody would read them anyway because it's disappeared off the main blog page. Is this the result of a new form of censorship of views you don't like or just sheer laziness?
Hello
There is a problem with comments on this blog - we are looking to resolve it as soon as possible.
More details here.
Host
Alexandra,
I would agree completely that the NATO campaign in the Balkans was not perfect. What I would point out is that the region is now on the road to recovery (How much better and the reasons for this is up for debate). In short the NATO campaign succeeded - Things are generally better now than they were.
In the Middle East however it is a down hill slide. Lebanon is being torn apart; Israel will do nothing to help the Lebanese when the UN takes over the peace keeping operation. (Without massive American charity Israel can't even support itself).
What is Israel really trying to achieve? Despite throwing enough high explosive Lebanon’s way to rival a nuclear bomb, the rockets that are coming back the other way have not diminished – in fact they have increased. They must know world opinion is against them. It strikes me that they are just inflicting damage on Lebanon is sheer frustration. Like a man who kicks the dog when he gets stung by a bee.