An Open Letter on Operation Cast Lead

To: Professor Daniel Statman, Haifa University

Dear Sir,

I read with much interest your response to Prof. Asa Kasher's article on the IDF's conduct in Operation Cast Lead from a 'moral warfare' point of view. You claim to be among the 'moderate voices' who voice reasonable doubts about the IDF's conduct, as opposed to the "functional pacifists" both here and abroad by whom Israel can do no right. Nevertheless, you claim, your doubts remain as is. I will address your critique in its two main aspects: the evidentiary and the theoretical.

Evidentiary Arguments

As far as evidence goes, your excessive, almost wholesale reliance on the report of "Breaking the Silence" on Cast Lead is curious, to say the least. Breaking the Silence is an "issue NGO"; its purpose is to prove its predetermined positions as much as possible (in this case, that the IDF is a ruthless, inhumane monster of an army). As Prof. Kenneth Anderson, a former human rights activist and current international law scholar has pointed out, NGO reports are very much like one-sided prosecutor's briefs, filled to the gills with supporting evidence, but completely lacking when it comes to contradictory evidence or even taking arguments for the other side into account.

It is because of this that I find the fact that the picture emerging from the testimonies to be "almost uniform" to be highly suspect. It sounds like (again, this is my instinctive feeling) that "Shovrim Shtika" looked for corroborating testimony to its own prejudices rather than a genuine cross-section. I am not, God forbid, saying these testimonies are false, just that they are not "smoking guns". Thousands of soldiers participated in this operation; only a professional investigation can determine whether "Shovrim Shtika" is representative or not.

Theoretical

In your letter, you rail about the position according to which soldiers should take no risks to avoid hurting enemy civilians. You argue (as do your colleagues, Profs. Avi Sagi, Noam Zohar and others) that soldiers should take "some risk" (A very vague and undefined term) to avoid harming enemy non-combatants. You claim that there is sufficient room between occasionally letting terrorists go to avoid harming civilians (your position) to letting everyone go to avoid harming any civilians (the European position). No offense, Prof. Statman, but I consider this to be a cheap cop-out. It may make you and your colleagues feel better, but it is useless as a guide for commanders on the ground.

Let's say that I could somehow wave a magic wand and make every commander, junior and senior, agree with your "some risk" position. What exactly is to prevent them from being ridiculously over-cautious and rarely ordering an attack for fear of possibly harming civilians, to the detriment of the whole operation? After all, they all know that both international law scholars and philosophy professors such as yourself are busy second-guessing their every move. Why take the risk of condemnation and possible criminal prosecution? Why do so, when even by us there are professors who believe that sometimes "defeat is the desirable moral outcome [sic!]"? If fear of malpractice suits paralyze doctors, all the more so should not such fears paralyze commanders?

[This is not unprecedented; similar command dithering has happened when commanders feared high soldier casualties - at the first assault on Petersburg in the Civil War, for instance.]

Also, I don't understand why you make no effort to differentiate between intentional harm to civilians and unintentional (inevitable or not) harm to civilians (the so-called "double effect"). This refusal to see a distinction between the two is the lot of the self-same ultra-hostile voices abroad you yourself condemn. If you share their positions and place the entire moral responsibility for harm to civilians on Israel and none on Hamas/Hizbullah, then I frankly fail to see a difference between you and Goldstone.

Conclusion

All this is as nothing to the most serious problem, and that is how the IDF is supposed to effectively wage war (i.e. achieve victory) under the increasing constraints which you place on them. After all, without the possibility of accomplishing something – a cease-fire, a victory, the saving of lives – one could plausibly argue that ANY offensive is immoral since it serves no real purpose. While you claim to not be a "functional pacifist", I believe that you and your colleagues are coming dangerously close to that definition.

I'd like to hope that I am wrong about you, even totally wrong. I would like nothing better than to know that people such as yourself know the difference between abstract ideals and harsh reality; that you know not to be utopian and one-sided in your moral demands. This country needs moral consciences that can give constructive and realistic moral criticism as opposed to the self-declared Jermiahs who pine for "peace on earth".

Unfortunately, your letter has not eased my doubts on the subject. Like your own qualms about the IDF during Cast Lead, they remain in force.

Sadly yours,

aiwac