Is “resistance” bound by any rules at all?
Even if no Israeli can be considered a civilian, Hamas has committed a string of war crimes. Assuming there are any limits beyond Israel bad, Hamas good.
After a few days lurking on Xwitter and sending my blood pressure into the stratosphere, I’ve decided to disengage for my own mental health. So here’s how I suspect the anti-anti-Hamas discourse is going:
“Hamas didn’t take any Israeli children hostage! That’s a Zionist lie!”
[Hamas publishes video of Israeli children they’re holding hostage in Gaza]
“These toddlers will have to serve in the IDF someday so they’re combatants.”
Or, if you’re The Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick, about whom I had forgotten until Hansard reminded me that she is and always will be the fucking worst, you just say they can fake any kind of video with CGI these days.
Mallick, a legend in her own mind, surely considers herself a critical thinker. And like many people who consider themselves as such, she's engaged in precisely the opposite of critical thinking.
Back in the oughts, at least two regular Toronto Star columnists wrote 9/11 troofer columns. (One of them had to backtrack after she promoted an actual Holocaust-denial website as one of her sources.) Maybe being a paranoid conspiracist is one of the Atkinson Principles.
Moving on to the “no Israeli civilians” argument: obviously, we’re never going to agree on a thorny issue, tinged with shades of gray, like whether Israelis living in Israel proper are legitimate military targets as soon as they emerge from the womb.
I mean, it’s not one of these points where the answer is obvious, like culturally insensitive Halloween costumes constituting a crime against humanity.
But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that anti-anti-Hamas academics are legally correct and that all Israelis are, by definition, combatants.
If they are indeed combatants by virtue of being Israeli citizens - sorry, “settlers” - presumably they’re still protected by the Geneva Convention and other statutes and treaties regarding the laws of combat and treatment of prisoners of war.
And this list, from the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, includes several offences carried out by Hamas against Israelis - even if they are not to be considered civilians by nature - and the Palestinians they supposedly represent:
Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;
Taking of hostages;
Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;
Killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;
Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives;
Declaring that no quarter will be given;
Declaring abolished, suspended or inadmissible in a court of law the rights and actions of the nationals of the hostile party;
Pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault;
Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions;
Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
Taking of hostages;
The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all judicial guarantees which are generally recognized as indispensable.
I support Israel but I am under no illusion of either side in this conflict having completely clean hands. The IDF and other Israeli security forces are almost certainly responsible for several war crimes - never in history has there been a conflict where one of the armies never carried out any war crimes, even the Ukrainians - with more to come.
This bothers me greatly, and like many I’ve been asking how Israel can respond to the perpetrators of the worst single-day pogrom since the Holocaust without harming innocent Palestinians.
I have not seen many answers.
What I want to know is, does it bother any of the commentators - law professors, no less - who’ve implied if not explicitly stated that Hamas legally has a free hand against “settlers” in Israel.
Osgoode’s Heidi Marshall, who by leaving Newfoundland for Ontario raised the average I.Q. in both provinces, is at least trying to walk back the implication that she said Hamas can do what it wants to Israelis, just because she tweeted that Hamas can do what it wants to Israelis. From what I’ve seen, U of T Law’s Mohammed Fadel is still all-in:
If Israelis are combatants, Hamas - which, we’re repeatedly told, is the legally elected ruler of Gaza, now in year 18 of its five-year term - has its own obligations under international law. That is clear.
At least, that should be clear, if you really believe any of this legal crap.
If you believe in liberal principles like the rule of law, you grudgingly accept that it binds your own side. On the other hand, if you believe in an “oppressed/oppressor” dynamic uber alles, you only concern is what your chosen side can get away with.
You might do some play-acting as a lawyer or legal academic and use the academy and the court system and the policy-making apparatus while you hold less institutional power, biding your time and patiently climbing the ladder, but when the Long March is complete and you have made it to the top, it’s time to reset the calendar to Year Zero and treat persons and unpersons accordingly.
As I’ve written repeatedly, I believe the most pressing and immediate threat to liberal democracy comes from the extreme right. That’s the side which stormed the Capitol Building and continues gaining traction across Western Europe. (Lost amidst last weekend’s horrifying news from Israel: the Alternative für Deutschland doing very well in German regional elections and becoming too big to ignore in a proportional-representation system.
But which side, far-right or far-left, poses the greater long-term threat? Well, a gun is a powerful weapon - but it pales in comparison to being entrusted with educating the young.
I'm curious as to whether or not the "critical thinkers" you speak of would think the same way had they had the experience of finding *themselves* in the midst of the indiscriminate slaughter at the Re'im music festival and then had been lucky enough to survive it.
But witnessing first-hand the indiscriminate murder of people trying to promote peace and hearing the angry buzz of a few high-velocity rounds passing by one's head and being spared only by luck wouldn't really give any of them cause to not stand in solidarity with the killers, now, would it? Because when you're capable of critical thinking on the level of these people, none of that should cause one to question their own conclusions in the least. Right?
Right??