The morality of ’collateral damage’

They are doing everything they can do avoid this "collateral damage," they say, including warning civilians to run away from their homes before launching an onslaught of bombing. And, based on that, pro-Israeli commentators, such as Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, coldly tell us that Israel is absolutely the "moral side" in his conflict.

Really?

Some Westerners who know the region well say that this is not true. Robert Fisk, for example, the veteran British Middle East correspondent, argues, "It is an old lie that Israelis take such great care to avoid civilian casualties." But I can’t claim to have a first-hand knowledge about these matters. I will just think out loud on what seems fairly obvious.

Enter collateral damage
Now, let's start with the term "collateral damage." U.S. sources define it as "unintentional or incidental damage" on civilians during combat. And in a sense, I can understand and accept it. Imagine that American troops are driving around in Afghanistan, for example, and they are suddenly fired at from a building. They fire back. And, accidentally, they kill not just the attackers, but also some civilians who happen to be in the vicinity. Or, imagine that the CIA thinks that a certain building is an al-Qaeda headquarters, and U.S. planes bomb it. But it turns out that the "intel" was wrong, and it was a civilian home.

In all such cases, I can understand collateral damage. The civilian deaths are still tragic, still horrible, but they are clearly accidental. I get it.

However, it is a very different thing if you plan to bomb dozens of buildings in a densely populated area. Here, it is absolutely certain that civilians will also die. Their death is not an accident. It is something that you knew that would happen, but that you did not care enough to avoid. The current operation in Gaza is of the second sort. When the Israeli politicians and commanders were preparing for this war, they must have known that hundreds of civilians would die and thousands of them would be injured. That's why they are morally, not just technically, responsible for every single child, baby and mother who die on the streets and alleys of Gaza.

But what about their effort to warn civilians to leave their homes? Well, where in the world can they go? Gaza, the world's most densely populated area, is blocked from all sides and there are no safe havens. Some civilians found shelter in a U.N. school, but, alas, Israel bombed that building, too, and killed 40 people. In another incident, about 30 Palestinians died as Israeli forces shelled a house in Gaza City into which Israeli soldiers had previously moved about 100 people, half of them children.

And when Israelis say, "Hamas is using civilians as shields," they are distorting facts. Hamas members may be ideological extremists, but they are also an integral part of that society Ñ they are fathers living with their wives and children, sons living with their families. And if they have arms in their homes, it is probably because they don't have military facilities. Unlike that of Israel, theirs is an amateur army.

When I look at all this, I see really no reason for not suspecting that all the alleged Israeli effort to avoid civilian casualties is just part of a cynical public relations campaign. Indeed, there are actually good reasons for not expecting such genuine humane considerations from the Israeli leadership. One person who enlightened us about that was Gen. Dan Halutz, the head of the Israeli military during the bloody campaign on Lebanon in 2006. When asked by the Israeli press, "Isn't it legitimate to ask a pilot what he feels after he releases the bomb," which kills "those he planned not to kill" (such as women and children), he responded:

"No. That is not a legitimate question and it is not asked. But if you nevertheless want to know what I feel when I release a bomb, I will tell you: I feel a light bump to the plane as a result of the bomb's release. A second later it's gone, and that's all. That is what I feel."

Please note that this cold-blooded attitude is not necessarily specific to Dan Halutz but is arguably the norm in the Israeli military, in which he said mercy for civilian losses "is not a legitimate question." Notably, that there have been Israeli soldiers who refused this immoral militarism. Those "Refuseniks" indeed show that there is something fundamentally wrong with the culture of that army.

Kingdom without prophecy
This is a pity. Israel was supposed to be a "light unto nations" according to its Scriptures. But like the fanatic Muslims who disregard the Koran's moral commandments for the sake of "revenge," the Jewish State has apparently abandoned morality for the sake of "survival."

Israeli peace advocate Avrum Burg underlines this very point. "In the Jewish story over so many centuries, there has always been a higher cause," he reminds, "not just for the Jews, but for all of humanity." But now the higher cause is gone Ñ the only cause is a Social Darwinistic urge for survival. "Israel became a very efficient kingdom," Burg adds, "but with no prophecy." What is worse is that, instead of advising restraint and sanity to this unprophetic kingdom, the world's single superpower is silently supporting whatever it does. By doing so, America is losing the chance to be trusted by the other side of the conflict. It urgently needs to change its policy from unilateral pro-Israelism to multilateral diplomacy. Only then can peace be possible. And that is some real change that the world needs now from Barack Obama.