The Proportionality of the Gaza Action

I'd be interested in seeing the Israeli point of view on this issue.  Thank you for this post.

No, it can not, the Geneva convention dates not from 1948 but from 1863 big difference. It is not even binding any longer since it is a guide line rather then a law. And no Israel can not be tried under the Geneva Convention since it did not ever sign it. It can be tried under International law set by the UNO though. You are mixing things up here and causing misinformation or Propaganda.

The text is given the title Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26–29 October 1863. 

I wish I could agree with you, but sorry.

This is the bottom line. The world should give reparations to the descendents of the palestinians whose land was taken in 1948 because the world, the UN, sanctioned Israel.

Then if Hamas doesn't lay down their arms there would be a greater moral acceptance of Israel's actions. Nevertheless, Hamas cannot win, and it is hard to know what they want. They will never be able to destroy Israel so what is the point? They should work toward significant reparations.

But it is clear that Hamas broke the cease fire for whatever reason, and they will have trouble if Israel decides to neutralize them. Right or wrong, Israel will probably neutralize Hamas or severly weaken them. The world says Israel has the right to exist and if she has the right to exist she has the right of self defense. I don't see the UN taking back Israel's existence.

The Israelis were also killing during the "ceasefire". The rockets are a response to 60 years of occupation and being treated as dirt. The destruction of Gaza and the Palestinian people is simply racism, revenge and spite.

 If Israel is the occupier of Gaza   how come it has no troops or military posts in Gaza and has not had since 2005? How come Israel spent the summer and early fall of 2005 forcibly evicting 7,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip if it is an occupier? Israeli society – including the army – was deeply divided over the removal of the settlers.

From reprimands of “disproportionate response” to condemnations of civilian casualties, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has drawn de rigueur denunciations from the international community. Less noticed is that while Israel has taken great pains to avoid innocent deaths in Operation Cast Lead, at great peril to its fighting men and women, Hamas vigilantes have spent recent days deliberately assaulting and killing their fellow Palestinians, just as they have done for years.

According to the Jerusalem Post, since the beginning of the Israeli offensive, more than 75 Gaza Palestinians have been shot in the legs or have had their hands broken; more than 35 have been executed by Hamas operatives who accuse them of being Israeli “collaborators.” Of course, Gaza is not teeming with Israeli spies and most of Hamas’s victims are not only not traitors but likely helped vote the terrorist group into power in the January 2006 legislative elections. Instead, Hamas’s campaign of homegrown terror is the latest example of the terrorists turning on their Palestinian compatriots – a brutal but seldom-discussed cycle of violence in which Palestinians emerge as their own worst enemy.

Though murdered on the accusation of aiding Israel, most were not collaborators at all. “Rather,” as Judith Miller noted, “they were women who wore slacks and other ‘prostitutes,’ as Hamas called unveiled women; they were alcoholics, drug users, teachers with whom Hamas disagreed, Marxists, atheists, a Darwinist, Freudians, members of the Rotary and Lions Clubs – which Hamas’s charter called Jewish spy organizations – and, in particular, supporters of the PLO, Hamas’s main rival for power among Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories.”

Hamas, of course, has no monopoly on killing fellow Palestinians. The death toll amassed by the rival Palestinian Authority (PA) more than matches that of its Islamist counterparts, as demonstrated by the second Palestinian intifada that broke out in 2000. Obscured by the popular preoccupation with alleged Israeli abuses was that the greatest threat to Palestinian life was once again internal. In a single week in March 2002, for example, PA gunmen killed seven Palestinians accused of being Israeli agents. The corpse of one murdered “collaborator” was dragged through the streets of Bethlehem, after which the killers tried to hang the remains from a rooftop above Manger Square. The body of another unlucky victim was strung up by its heels at a Ramallah traffic circle. Still others were abducted from a West Bank road and executed in a deserted slaughterhouse.

Still another source of internal strife is the deadly rivalry between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. As recently as 2007, the two sides were engaged in a bloody civil war that saw both commit daily atrocities. In one particularly sadistic incident in June 2007, Hamas militants kidnapped one Mohammed Sweirki, a 25-year-old officer in a PA-allied security force, and then threw him off the roof of a 15-story apartment building to his death. Fatah responded in kind with its own terror campaign, raiding Hamas-linked mosques and abducting Hamas members in the West Bank. The cost in Palestinian lives was high but of little interest to most media, which chose instead to dwell on those subjects – such as the impact of Israel’s economic blockade on Gaza’s “strawberry farmers” – that accorded with their conception of the Jewish state as the true aggressor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

 Israel’s military actions in Gaza are entirely justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its act of self-defense against international terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality. Israel’s actions certainly satisfy that principles.
 Over the last four years, Palestinian terrorists—in particular, Hamas and Islamic Jihad—have fired more than two thousand rockets at this civilian area, which is home to mostly poor and working-class people. The rockets are designed exclusively to maximize civilian deaths, and some have barely missed schoolyards, kindergartens, hospitals, and school buses. But others hit their targets, killing more than a dozen civilians since 2001, including in February 2008 a father of four who had been studying at the local university. These anticivilian rockets have also injured and traumatized countless children.
 Barack Obama reacted to what he had seen in Sderot by saying that if his two daughters were exposed to rocket attacks in their own homes, he would do everything in his power to stop such attacks. I hope and believe that President Obama will take the same position he did as candidate Obama.

Making good on its promise to try and "kill Jewish children anywhere." "Grad Rocket Strikes Ashdod Kindergarten Schoolyard," by Hana Levi Julian for Israel National News, January 5 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

IsraelNN.com) A long-range Grad-type Katyusha rocket landed in the schoolyard of a kindergarten in a northern Ashdod neighborhood at approximately 3:20 Monday afternoon -- but miraculously, only two people were lightly wounded, one by flying shrapnel.

Thirty children are normally in the classroom during the day, when the missile struck, but due to Home Front Command instructions, the building was empty at the time.

Magen David Adom medics who raced to the scene said they treated a number of people who suffered from severe emotional trauma. Eyewitnesses described the explosion as "unusually loud."

At about 3:00 p.m., a short-range Kassam rocket exploded in the Eshkol region as well. No one was injured and no damage was reported.

Hamas and allied terrorist attacked southern Israel with close to 30 rockets since 7:00 a.m. Monday, appearing to focus primarily on the coastal cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod...

I am a little confused.  During the cease fire, the Palestinians were launching rockets against the Israelis the  whole time and also during the last 8 years.  If Canada was launching rockets into the U.S., I think we would probably use every resource we could, including nukes.

Since when do we need proportionality in war?  It just seems like there are a lot of anti semites writing this stuff.  Am I wrong?

This story appears verybiased.

The Israeli point of view is simple, "It never signed the Geneva Convention." 

Is bombing a UN school humane and considerate of civilian casualties ? The Quran does not advocate killing civilians and certainly does not ask for the killing of the jewish people. If the UK had done this in northern Ireland the world would have condemned them and so would most of the British people. Is this really not a religious issue ? Israel breached the treaty first by not lowering the blockade as they promised. Some say the palestinian people are descended from those that people would have once regarded as jewish and that those people accepted Gods last two messengers and became muslim. At the very least the palestinian people are descended from Jacob

Yeah.  Well based upon what I have read in this site so far, you won't hear the Israeli side of things here. 

Didnt those innocent people in Lebanon murder a bunch of U.S. Marines in the 80's? Where are the people who are writing these things getting their information?

I mean, yeah Israel looks to be defending its borders. Even Buddha would support that i am sure of it.

It is some what useless to talk about this since neither ever signed the convention. There for will not have to honour it either nor can they be tried under that convention. Further the Geneva convention is very out dated and having to clean once Bayonets before pocking once enemies is some what out of date.

Following your logic the US should be tried for using two Nuclear bomb on Japan, since the disproportionally of casualties was similar. Same for the Carpet bombing of Germany in WWII that caused 80% of the Countries to be destroyed and a far more civilian causalities the the western allied forces could ever account for. The German SS and Gestapo as well as the NAZI high command where tried not for crimes of war but for genocide. 

Same for Serbia and other cases. Japanese War criminal of WWII where never tried for what they did in China since it was agreed on in the act of surrender not to prosecute them. Germany's Wehr Macht or WM the regular Armed Forces did agree to prosecute the NAZI in their act of surrender on the 08s of May 1945. Israel is technically not committing Genocide even if it is disproportional and morally unethical, unfair and unnecessary since they could have agreed to let UN peace keeper in some year ago already.

Question: "Since when do we need proportionality in war?"

Answer:  We have employed these standards or 'conventions' since 1948.  Formally they are referred to as the Geneva Conventions  and they consist of four treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, that set the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns.  Any violation of them can be used to try people for war crimes.

Question: "It just seems like there are a lot of anti semites writing this stuff.  Am I wrong?"

Answer:  Yes, you are utterly wrong.  This article has nothing to do with religion.

Israel is the most loyal customer of US-made satellite-guided bombs and other latest weapons. Besides, the country itself produces other weapons. It appears to be demonstrating its military strength to starving Palestinian children. Fight terrorism by becoming a greater terrorist! Is this the solution? USA must take responsibility for what is happening in Gaza now. Who is provoking, nourishing and supporting with everything Israel needs? Jews need their place to live and the best place for them is USA and England. No other place can better suit them.But America and Europe have deliberately converted Palestinians into the homeless refugees. Is this just? Human rights thinkers must seek an answer?

Although there is no possibility of the immediate end of the vicious cycle of violence in the Middle East, it is a universal truth that neither Israel nor Palestine can achieve anything by indulging in blind bloodbath. Instead, they should seek solutions on their own.

By the UN's definition the continuing, now since the last 18 months, economic blockade by Israel defines this as an occupation, hence the decription remains the occupied territories.

I am amazed that the supporters of a terrorist organization which respects no law are quick to cite "international law" when a country seeks to defend itself from those terrorists.

Proportionality is measured by the level of risk.  If Hamas is targeting an Israeli school then the proportional Israeli response is to prevent that rocket from going off, not to wait for it to hit the school and kill the kids.

Also, Israel cares about its citizens and builds warning systems and shelters.  Does Hamas do that for its citizens?  No Hamas builds shelters for its leadership and then uses women and children as human shields. Come on Hamas whiners, let's hear more commentary on "international law".

Israel deliberately avoids targeting civilians while Hamas deliberatly targets civilian areas.  Why don't you go to Gaza and lecture Hamas on "international law"?  One can only imagine how they would show their appreciation,

Does  "international law" require Israel to supply electricity to Gaza, which Hamas uses to build rockets to attack the power plant. And none of this crap about Israel occuping Gaza, they left years ago.

But I like the proportional argument.  For every Hamas rocket or mortar round shot into Israel, Israel should respond proportionally and lob a rocket into Gaza.  Perhaps after a couple land in Gazan markets and schools the people will rise up against Hamas.

PEOPLE WAKE UP!! Israel is just now taking action against barbarians that have been attacking them for a score of years! Its unreal that all of these news outlets show pictures of the Palestinian children! WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE ISRAELI KIDS KILLED IN THE PAST YEARS? ITS AN UNFORTUNATE PART OF WAR....CIVILIAN CASUALTIES!

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"PEOPLE WAKE UP!! Israel is just now taking action against barbarians that have been attacking them for a score of years! Its unreal that all of these news outlets show pictures of the Palestinian children! WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE ISRAELI KIDS KILLED IN THE PAST YEARS? ITS AN UNFORTUNATE PART OF WAR....CIVILIAN CASUALTIES!"

If you look at the figures for civilians killed and injured over the course of what is know as the Second (Palestinian) Intifada from 200 to 2006 and then continue with the figures up to 2008 (but not counting the current invasion of Gaza - which would increase the imbalance even more) and that are the direct result of conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, they consistently run at anywhere between 1:6 and 1:12. That is, every year over that period, there have been between 6 to 12 Palestinian civilians killed or injured for every Israeli civilian killed or injured (the proportions remain roughly the same for civilians under 18 if they are extracted from those figures).

(figures drawn from both UN and Israeli sources)

Israel is making a havoc for its neighbors. Early they demolished the innocent people of Lebanon and now it is Gaza. Where is the so called Human rights groups who always willing to shout. This is a trade and only the weaker will always have to pay the price.

The Israeli point of view, and the one according to international law, is that Israel is not acting in a disproportionate manner. Read Dr. Dore Gold's analysis of the situation from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.  http://tiny.cc/P5ipd

Or watch him discuss this: http://tiny.cc/ZaXhQ

If you are going to quote international law you should understand what the term proportionality means according to international law. Maybe you should brush up: http://tiny.cc/8iVIN

Hakim Bey, when I saw him speak recently, said that genocide always occurs when the state establishes itself. It seems to me that attacks from Gaza side are a misguided attempt to establish a recognized society and are related to something like a wound that wont heal (like the wounds of identity and pride Germany faced after Russian invasion that allowed Hitler to come to power) and that Israels mini genocide here is an equally misdirected attempt at a solution. Israel should better itself and the world community should help Gaza and Palestinians to feel like a valid nation that has rights and soviergnty and assistance. This refusal to give the OK for a UN cease fire should be president Bush's last act of destruction before that wannabe dictator who sits on his ass advocating war, gets the hell out of our capitol and back to the red neck hell hole he came from.

Great debate from yesterday on Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/5/a_debate_on_israels_invasion_of

I think it's worth pointing out for those unaware, that the only governments calling for a cease fire in gaza are external governments. Hamas isn't asking for a ceasefire, and neither is Israel. Isn't it rather ridiculous for parties not involved in the conflict to expect a cease fire when neither of the combatant sides wants to stop shooting?

"mini- genocide"  Are you out of your mind? Israel deliberately avoids targeting civilians,  Hamas does not respect such niceties.  Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel.  They won't hesitate to kill all the Israelis if they could.

It is not up to Israel to "help Gaza and Palestinians to feel like a valid nation." It is up to the Palestinians to create their own institutions and government.  Instead their so-called leaders are either corrupt or have an agenda that has noting to do with helping their people. 

By the way, Egypt controlled Gaza pre-1967.  What did they do to help their "Arab brothers"?

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Yes The Conventions were developed many years earlier but  they were modified after the Second World War.  All Conventions were revised and expanded in 1948.

• First Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field" (first adopted in 1864, last revision in 1949).
• Second Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea" (first adopted in 1906).
• Third Geneva Convention "relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War" (first adopted in 1929, last revision in 1949).
• Fourth Geneva Convention "relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War" (first adopted in 1949, based on parts of the 1907 Hague Convention IV).

But this is not a legal question.  It is a moral and therefore a political question.  (Assuming political legitimacy is based at least partly on moral credibility). It seems to me that one mark of a humane nation is adherence (or at least not indifference) to The Conventions.  Whether charges could be filed in this specific case is a secondary question.  With respect to trying Israel, you are correct as a non-signatory they cannot be tried but most other nations are bound by it.

Many Palestinians that I've met simply want a peaceful life, a safe home and good job, to get their children a qaulity education, and have access to good health care. Yet Arafat and the various thug gangs who followed him have stolen billions in foreign aid for themselves over the years, forsaken the building of any infrastructure except a terrorist one, and enslaved their own people in every possible manner, and murdered those who object.

The Israelis simply don't have to put up with Hamas' barbaric beliefs and actions.

Hamas wants to drive Israeli Jews into the sea? Hamas first.

Great debate from yesterday on Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/5/a_debate_on_israels_invasion_of

A Debate on Israel’s Invasion of Gaza: UNRWA’s Christopher Gunness v. Israel Project’s Meagan Buren

Listened to this broadcast today on London's resonancefm.com. Christopher Gunness put over the on the ground situation very well I thought, repeatedly condemning Hamas's rocket attacks throughout, as well as the humanitarian crisis worsened by the Isareli onslaught.