Israel Abides by Rules of War Its Enemies Would Never Dream Of

It seems to strange to talk about laws of war. As William T. Sherman declared, war is hell. On the other hand, the story of the misuse of law reaches into antiquity as well. And as we see today, distorted...

The post Israel Abides by Rules of War Its Enemies Would Never Dream Of appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It seems to strange to talk about laws of war. As William T. Sherman declared, war is hell. On the other hand, the story of the misuse of law reaches into antiquity as well. And as we see today, distorted ideas of law are used in the prosecution and support of a war that is as hellish and ugly as any in history — Hamas’ orgy of rape, torture, kidnap and murder against every Jew they could find, and which they fully intend to continue whenever they are able.

In war, two opposing governments employ organized armed forces to establish their will. Neither side recognizes the law of the other side.

In modern times, we have evolved laws of war. These laws are understood to bind anyone who is warring. Breaking them can expose the violator to reactions ranging from nothing at all to censure, sanctions, and, as in the aftermath of World War II, trial for war crimes resulting in penalties of imprisonment or death.

The enforcement is spotty and inconsistent, largely because the laws of war are not the result of a single government’s legal processes and are not tried by a judiciary that commands constitutional respect. Countries are leery of ceding their sovereignty to an international organization that may not reflect their own commitments to law and liberty. One only need think of the spectacle in the past of a United Nations commission on human rights being chaired by Iran and a majority of whose members were other anti-democratic states. (READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin: Welcome to Venezuela, America)

One could say much the same about the United Nations as a whole as well as the ICJ and the ICC. Their corruption and posturing reflect a degree of decadence with which we are not yet comfortable, despite all the hard work put in by the Squad and like-minded poseurs in academia, the legacy media, and the current State Department.

Nonetheless, the idea of limiting war’s barbarity seems necessary, and laws encoded in such places as the Geneva Conventions commend most people’s assent. Among its many aims is the protection of civilian life from being targeted for terror and death as part of a war strategy.

For law to work, it must command wide respect. In democratic countries, the rule of the majority and the protection of minority rights under any policy are the keystones. They hold up the structure that command the assent and respect, and sometimes the affection, of the vast majority of its citizens.

In war, where there are no bonds of citizenship but rather, violent hostility, the laws depend on a wary mutuality. War has long respected the truce flag to allow people to approach to parley without fear. It was usually observed even in as violent a conflict as World War II. 

Another such agreement has been, after World War I, the refraining from the use of poison gas. Churchill had commanded large stocks of it to be acquired in 1940, expecting that the Germans would use it freely as they had the time before. But the Germans used it only to exterminate Jews and other civilian prisoners, and by mutual consent, it stayed off the battlefield.

World War II featured indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations. This grisly practice was begun on a large scale by Japan in China, then used in the Spanish Civil War, then on a massive scale by the Germans in Poland and Holland and in the Blitz in England. 

Once one side in a war employs such an illegal weapon, the other side, as long as it does not wish to lose, will not grant its enemy an unfair advantage. When the Kaiser’s armies began gas warfare in Belgium in 1915, the Allies soon followed suit. The Nazi bombings of Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, and Coventry were matched and exceeded by the fire-bombings of Hamburg and Dresden and the leveling of other German cities. The Japanese bombings of Wuhan and Manila were matched and doubled by the bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

No country that does not wish defeat can allow the other side to break the laws of war while itself remaining bound. 

The war in Gaza has proven a remarkable exception to this rule.

Hamas’ initial attack violated a remarkable number of the laws of war as encoded in the 1949 Geneva Convention. It deliberately attacked the civilian population. It used murderous force. It employed torture. It used rape. It took hostages. It took hostages into sexual slavery. It denied them food and safe shelter. 

Other abuses had been present already. It uses hospitals, mosques, schools, and UN institutions to shelter its military personnel, equipment, and structures from legal attack. It has for years randomly attacked Israel’s civilian population with rockets that cannot be directed with accuracy, and whose only reliable use is to create terror. It used its civilians to spy and map out the Israeli villages across its border in order to know how to be able to take over its civilians and murder, rape, or kidnap them. (READ MORE: Tyrants Don’t Get Humor)

In the face of all this, Israel has bound itself to observing the same laws Hamas regularly violates. The model seems to be that of Rush Limbaugh, using, as he used to say, only half his brain just to make it fair.

What has it done? 

By any objective standard, there has never been a lower ratio of civilian to military deaths in any urban war in history. Ignoring the pure fantasy of Hamas’ casualty figures, as anyone not naïve or malevolent must do, West Point urban warfare expert John Spencer says the ratio for the war in Gaza is either 1.5 civilian deaths per military death, or perhaps an even one-to one. Spencer compared that to others in a Newsweek article:

The UN, EU and other sources estimate that civilians usually account for 80 percent to 90 percent of casualties, or a 1:9 ratio, in modern war (though this does mix all types of wars). In the 2016-2017 Battle of Mosul, a battle supervised by the U.S. that used the world’s most powerful airpower resources, some 10,000 civilians were killed compared to roughly 4,000 ISIS terrorists.

Israel has accomplished 90 percent evacuations of military targets, having made more than 100,000 phone calls, dropped leaflets, incredibly giving out maps that their enemy would certainly benefit from. It has done more to protect civilians than any nation in the history of urban warfare, even with all the evidence of popular enthusiasm for Hamas’ war and the participation of hundreds and perhaps thousands in the rape, murder, pillage, and hiding and abusing of hostages.

Strangely — but it shouldn’t be strange knowing the hostility of Obama to Israel and his enduring influence in the Biden Administration — the U.S. government does not tout this but joins in the malicious and only rarely merely ignorant carping of those seeking to toady to Iran and its various proxies in Western countries and throughout the world.

It is a nihilistic enterprise which our government only opposes fitfully and incoherently. Its aim is to have us see ourselves as the mullahs see us — utterly bereft of any morality or purpose, sitting ducks for their militant and exclusive version of religion, which now quite openly embraces genocide. (READ MORE: All Are Bound by the Law)

That is not the truth of who we are. America knows it and is ready to ditch the incoherence. It’s time to get back on the path of peace. First step — end the possibility of the orgiastic butchers of Hamas ever holding power again.

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