The Experts’ Verdict
Every Israeli Missile Strike is a War Crime
by JONATHAN COOK

*Nazareth.*

Today’s Guardian
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/01/every-israeli-missile-strike-is-a-war-crime/[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/gaza-civilian-death-toll-military-training-experts>
includes
an article that appears to be excusing Israel of responsibility for the
massive death tolll it has inflicted on Palestinian civilians. But, more
significantly, it includes a lot of useful – and damning – information
about just how “indiscriminate” Israel’s weapons really are.

This interests me a great deal because I have been warning about problems
with the interpretation of international law used by leading human rights
groups on this very point since the 2006 Lebanon War.

At that time I got into a dispute with Human Rights Watch’s Middle East
policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson. Her organisation argued that Hizbullah
was committing war crimes by definition whenever it fired rockets at
Israel, even if it hit military targets, because those rockets were
primitive and inherently inaccurate.

By contrast, HRW claimed, Israel’s missiles were precise and therefore
their use was not inherently inadmissible. Its view was that Israel did not
commit war crimes by firing its missiles; the obligation was on observers
to show that they had not been used within the rules of war – which is a
much harder standard of proof. For more on this debate, see my articles here
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/07/the-israel-lobby-works-its-magic-again>
  and here
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/09/25/human-rights-watch-still-missing-the-point/>
.

In practice, HRW’s argument was nonsense, as was clear even in 2006. During
that war, Israel dropped millions of cluster munitions – little bomblets
that serve effectively as land mines – all over southern Lebanon,
endangering the whole civilian population of the area.

But Norman Finkelstein recently pointed out the more general problem with
HRW’s argument:

“By this standard, only rich countries, or countries rich enough to
purchase high-tech weapons, have a right to defend themselves against
high-tech aerial assaults. It is a curious law that would negate the *raison
d’être* of law: the substitution of might by right.”

It may not be entirely surprising that HRW and others interpret
international law in a way that serves rich and powerful western states,
however many civilians they kill, and criminalises developing states,
however few civilians they kill.

The current fighting in Gaza illustrates this point in dramatic fashion.
Some 95% of the 64 Israelis who have been killed during the current
fighting are soldiers; some 75% of the nearly 1,500 Palestinians who have
been killed are civilian.

But comments from experts in the Guardian article add another layer of
insight into HRW’s dubious distinctions.

One should ignore the irritating framing used in the article, which seems
to suggest that the high Palestinian death toll may be down to human or
systems errors. Experts discount this theory in the article and also point
out that Israel is often not checking whether its shooting is accurate. In
other words, it gives every indication of not taking any precautions
to ensure it is hitting only military targets (or rather targets
it claims are military in nature). That recklessness makes it fully
culpable.

But we also have experts cited here who make the point that much of
Israel’s precise weaponry is not accurate at all.

Andrew Exum, a former US army officer and defence department special
adviser on the Middle East, who has studied Israel’s military operations,
says this:

“There are good strategic reasons to avoid using air power and artillery in
these conflicts: they tend to be pretty indiscriminate in their effects and
make it difficult for the population under fire to figure out what they’re
supposed to do to be safe.”

*“Pretty indiscriminate”!* So doesn’t that mean Israel was committing war
crimes by definition every time it made one of those thousands of air
strikes that marked the start of Operation Protective Edge, and that
continue to this day?

But it is not just strikes from the air that are the problem. There is more:

“However, military analysts and human rights observers say the IDF is still
using unguided, indirect fire with high-explosive shells, which they argue
is inappropriate for a densely populated area like Gaza …

“[Israel's 155m howitzer] shells have a lethal radius of 50 to 150 metres
and causes injury up to 300 metres from its point of impact. Furthermore,
such indirect-fire artillery (meaning it is fired out of direct sight of
the target) has a margin of error of 200 to 300 metres.”

Read that again: a margin of error of up to 300 metres, plus a lethal
radius of up to 150 metres and an injury radius of 300 metres. So that’s a
killing and injury zone of close to half a kilometre from the intended
“precise” site of impact – in a territory that is only a few kilometres
wide and long. In short, one of the main shells Israel is using in Gaza is
completely imprecise.

Set aside what Israel is trying to do in Gaza. Let us assume it is actually
trying to hit military targets rather than being either reckless about
hitting civilian targets or deliberately trying to hit civilians, as much
of the evidence might suggest.

Even if we assume total good faith on Israel’s part that it is trying to
hit only Hamas and other military sites, it is clear it cannot do so even
with the advanced weaponry it has. The inherent imprecision of its arsenal
is compounded many fold by the fact that it is using these weapons in
densely built-up areas.

So when are going to hear HRW or the United Nation’s Navi Pillay stop
talking about proportionality or Israel’s potential war crimes, and admit
Israel is committing war crimes by definition – right now, as you read this.

*Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His
latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine:
Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).  His website
is www.jonathan-cook.net <http://www.jonathan-cook.net/>.*


¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤