Now, can you explain to me, preferably in words of less than 4 syllables
since I may be foggy when I get to reading e-mail later, why I read that
while there was no massacre, there were war crimes, and if so, what sort
of things could they have done that would have been considered war
crimes without it being a massacre? Or point out a good article (NOT an
opinion piece, interesting as one might be) that would explain that to
me? Thanks in advance.
Or will someone tell me to read the front section of *today's* paper?
:)
Julia
Me:
Massacre is just a word that people throw around, while war crimes have to
meet specific legal definitions. That's the short form. Israeli soldiers
who, hypothetically, used civilians as human shields but didn't kill anyone
would have committed a war crime, but not engaged in a massacre.
The problem with war crimes, of course, is that the way war crimes law is
written it's often very hard to fight people willing to commit them without
committing them yourself. A classic example is the Church of the Nativity
in Bethlehem. Here we have a no question, no doubt, war crime being
committed. By the Palestinians. It is against all the laws of war to take
over a religious building, to use it for cover and protection, to ransack
it, and, obviously, to hold hostage the people inside it. All of which the
terrorists inside are doing. Have there been any protests about this? No,
of course not. Only when Israel can get blamed does the UN get upset. Now,
if the Israelis storm the building then, depending on how you interpret the
law, you could maybe make a plausible case that they are committing a war
crime. It's questionable, but given the extent to which Israel is never
given the benefit of the doubt, you might win it in court. But would they
be wrong to do it? If the police stormed a building in which the people
inside had taken hostages, we wouldn't consider the cops the same as the
criminals inside. So what's the problem here? Essentially war crimes law
was written by people who assumed that the war would be fought between
lawful combatants. When one side has given over completely to barbarism,
then applying war crimes law becomes very difficult, particularly if you
only hold the other side accountable and just accept every atrocity
committed by the terrorists as somehow justified given whatever grievances
they may have or feel that they have.
War crimes law has other problems as well. One example comes up in Army
Ranger training. Rangers who ambush enemy forces are taught, after winning
the engagement, to march in skirmish line through the enemy force and fire
one round into the head of every body on the ground _in front of them_.
Note the specificity - not behind them, just in front of them. Why? It's
not barbarism - it's actually the considered solution to how Rangers can
operate and still maintain the laws of war. Rangers operate behind enemy
lines, so they can't take prisoners. Any wounded soldier on the battlefield
must be given medical attention by the victorious side, however, as soon as
he passes behind their formation. The only solution is for the Rangers to
make sure that every enemy soldier behind their formation who was involved
in that engagement is dead - thus the skirmish line. Now, I've never spoken
to a Ranger who is happy about this. But if they _don't_ do this, they
could be prosecuted for war crimes, while if they _do_, then legally they're
perfectly safe. This does not make sense. It just happens to be what war
crimes law requires. The solution, of course, is to acknowledge that the
world has changed, and such law needs to change with it.
Gautam
