The Pointlesness of It All (The IDF and Goldstone)

Yaacov Lozowick has a nice discussion of the IDF's thorough response to the Goldstone Report. The army clearly made a concerted effort to adress the specific accusations made therein. I salute Avichai Mendeblit, the Army JAG (and an Orthodox Jew, BTW), for his work. Nevertheless, I am not rejoicing, important a step though this may be.

The first reason is that thorough studies like this should have been made (even if only for internal purposes) from the outset of the 2nd intifada. Instead the army stuck its head in the sand, only beginning to conduct systematic investigations and explanations many years later (e.g. the Gaza beach incident). As things stand now, only the "prosecutor's version of events" (i.e. the various NGO reports) for the IDF's conduct during Intifada II is publicly and easily available. Journalists and future historians will only have this version of events when evaluating the army's conduct. The (military) losers have written almost the entire first draft of this part of history, a fact that was completely avoidable if the government had taken serious steps to counter them.

The second reason I am not happy is because a substantial portion of the intellectual elite in Israel dealing directly with war and warfare have become what George Wegel calls "functional pacifists". This is not an insignificant fringe group; it consists of most Israeli international law professors, some philosophy professors and even one ex-general. As "functional pacifists" they give lip service to the right of Israel to defend itself and no more. As far as they are concerned, any military attack on cities or areas which are thiock with civilians is immoral a priori, irrespective of the steps taken to minimize civilian deaths. Since terrorists almost always meld with the population, this is an effective granting of complete immunity to one side, who may now do what they want to the enemy with impunity.

Some say this outright (as Gordon did), others so restrict the rules of engagement and increase the degree to which soldiers must endanger themselves to avoid civilian deaths so as to make military efforts costly, ineffective and ultimately pointless (which raises the question of whether it renders the attack itself immoral). Indeed, every time we've had intense engagements in a civilian-heavy - in 2006 and 2009 - said functional pacifists have merely tightened the screws and make it even more impossible to actually wage war against terrorists (The following article is a good example of such).

As far as this group is concerned, the moral onus is completely, and always, on Israel, no matter what. Hizbullah and Hamas either bear no responsibility for creating this morally horrible situation, or they are condemned with a few mealy-mouthed words meant to conceal the critique of Israel. In short, as far as this group is concerned, Israel may not conduct war unless it is completely surgical; anything less is off limits.

As long as there are not more people like Asa Kasher who calls for a more balanced approach, as long as the discourse is dominated by "functional pacifists", all the efforts in the world to fight morally will not make one bit of difference - not to this group, and certainly not to people abroad. Until then, Mendeblit's heroic efforts will accomplish little.