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A group, calling itself Academics against Israeli Aggression on Lebanon and Gaza, has put up an on-line petition. You can read the text of and/or sign it at the link. Among the more than 1600 signatures so far: Joel Beinin of Stanford, Judith Butler of UC-Berkeley, Noam Chomsky of MIT, Norman Finkelstein of DePaul, Evelyn Fox Keller of MIT, Eric Lott of Virginia, Michael McIntyre of DePaul, Bernard Porter of Newcastle, Jo Ann O. Robinson of Morgan State, David Roediger of Illinois, and Andrew Ross of NYU. Thanks to Manan Ahmed for the tip.
As a matter of fact, if you had bothered yourself to read the prior threads on this post, you would have noticed that I indicated, on the day that this post appeared, that I would not be signing the petition. You seem so intent on accusation that you didn't bother and still haven't bothered to inform yourself. If you want to make accusations, why not direct them at the people who designed the petition or those who signed it? Your attack is wholly misdirected. On the other hand, I have told you where you can legitimately direct your grievances.
Salé Braun -
7/29/2006
You should have made this kind of disclaimer right away and not just sit on the sidelines for almost a week!
Ralph E. Luker -
7/29/2006
Since you continue to be less than forthright, exactly what is your accusation? That I posted a link to the petition? There's nothing wrong with having done so, unless you have something against the free exchange of information. I didn't create, sign or recommend that anyone else sign the petition. It is useful both for those who support and for those who oppose its reasoning to know of it and have some sense of who in academic life supports it. What could be a reasonable objection to that?
Salé Braun -
7/29/2006
Answer to Ralph Luker.
Your reaction is disingenuous at best and reveals abysmally low moral criteria for someone sheltering such a kind of "petition".The use of profanities as a means to address well-founded objections is further proof of the paucity of your intellectual bagage and its initiators' one!
Ralph E. Luker -
7/28/2006
Ben, The second comment in the top thread indicates that I have no intention of signing the petition. At no point did I urge other people to sign it. I assume that people can read a document and make an intelligent decision about whether they agree with it or not. For what it's worth, I think that Alan Allport's comment is a telling one about the petition. I don't take responsibility for it simply by posting a reference to its availability. Another commenter here, someone who is disposed to misread everything I say, figured out that responsibility for the text of the petition probably belongs to someone at NYU. That is highly unlikely to be me.
Ben W. Brumfield -
7/28/2006
Ralph, I also found the wording of your original post ambiguous as to whether you were a signatory. The petition software doesn't make searching or scanning the list easy, either, for whatever it's worth.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/28/2006
A) If you have a grievance about any of the signatures or apparent signatures that appear on the petition, you should take it up with those who sponsor it. An e-mail address that will reach them is available to you at the site.
B) If you mean to insinuate that I have some responsibility for the petition or for any of the names that appear on it, please have the guts to say that in a forthright manner. Your innuendo is, otherwise, chicken shit.
Salé Braun -
7/28/2006
Perusing at random signatories' names I stumbled upon a patronym that makes shudder any person remotely familiar with events of WWII.#1158:Darquier de Pellepoix Pierre.(Institut des Questions Juives Paris.)
For anyone interested in the topic:
Louis Darquier de Pellepoix,was Commissionar of Jewish Affairs under the Vichy regime and responsible for the deportation and subsequent death of thousands of Jews.Pétain himself would call him M.the Tortioner!After WWII he disappeared and was sentenced to death in absentia in 1947.If Pierre Darquier de Pellepoix responsible of the Institute des Questions Juives in Paris(a revisionist obscure institution negating the Holocaust)appears on that list it can only cast further discredit on this alleged petition whose purpose is to lecture others on morals and ethics!
A piquant detail that elicited my attention is the patronym of the editor of this little masterpiece:
George Sand.Actually this was the pen name of a 19th century lady born Aurore Dupin Baroness Dudevant, quite famous in her time as a novelist,mainly remembered at present for her affair with the Polish pianist-composer Frederic Chopin!Very interesting Mr Ralph Luker!Do you often take such courageous initiatives?
William Redfern -
7/28/2006
As the petition abuses the legal concept of proportionality, there is a very detailed examination of the concept linked through Instapundit. It is Kenneth Anderson's law of war website, and goes deeply into the concepts of proportionality ad bellum and in bello. I recommend it, particularly as it discusses the concepts without special reference to the current situation, and shows how hard it is to apply them.
Grant W Jones -
7/27/2006
This bunch is using the same e-mail address as NYU Students for Justice in Palistine. NYU Students has a petition for the divestment of Israel by the university with 43 faculty signatures.
In practice war crimes are nasty things that losers do. Victors rarely describe their behavior as war crimes. Maybe as mistakes or excesses.
Israel often is chastised for having a better military than its opponents which seems a bit unfair.
Israel has such reputation for a high level of competence that when its military makes a terrible mistake (for instance, in 1967 attack on the USS Liberty) it doesn't get the benefit of the fog of war defense. The reality is that the Israelis are mostly smart but not always. Whether they are being smart in Lebanon or simply desperate is something we won't know for ten or twenty years.
William Redfern -
7/26/2006
You may take it that I believe the armed forces of Hezbollah, and any forces within Lebanon that militarily support them are the enemy. If the Lebanese people were the enemy, I can ssure you that Israel is capable of killing many more Lebanese than it has.
I'm reluctant to say, without more evidence, that ambulances and UN positions were targets in the sense of being targeted as ambulances and UN positions. The devil is in the details.
From what I've gathered, the ambulances were targeted at night, and on the move, a time in which I suggest little is clearly marked. Of course, there is no justification for indiscriminate targeting of traffic. Was it mixed in with identified traffic carrying rockets to "safety" in Beirut? We don't know one way or the other. Again, details make for a determination of intent or negligence, not the simple fact that two ambulances were destroyed. In any case, two done in at night are hardly sufficient for determining a policy, or intent, or negligence.
The UN positions deserve similar caveats. It has been reported that Israel has been complaining for months that UNIFIL has allowed Hezbollah to set up defensive positions cheek-by-jowl with UNIFIL positions. The use of human shields is a war crime. If the reports are true, then UNIFIL has been complicit.
On the other hand, Israeli forces have been accused of using human shields in Gaza.
Now advance warning may do less to help the aged, infirm, the poor, and children, but it doesn't do nothing, as many did evacuate. And again, the requirement of law is not to accede to the use of human shields, but to minimize civilian casualties in relation to the military worth of the target and the weapon used. The line is not black and white.
Little reported has been Jan Egeland's denunciation of Hezbollah mixing its troops and weapons within the civilian population. That is a war crime.
In fact, many things the casual observer would not think a war crime are indeed war crimes.
For instance, Hezbollah declared months ago that it intended to take hostages. The attack on the Israeli military in northern Israel did not further a military objective, and was undertaken solely for the purpose of taking hostages. That too is a war crime.
This should come as no surprise, inasmuch as Hezbollah is, among other things, an organization that endorses terrorism, and used such tactics to destroy a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires. Hezbollah declares, and nearly everything it does exemplifies the fact, that it believes civilians are legitimate targets. I say nearly everything, because occupying a deserted village and forcing the Israelis to take casualties in rooting them out is not necessarily a war crime. The use of unguided rockets against urban centers is, indisputably, a war crime.
On the other side of the balance sheet, the Israeli destruction of electrical and water plants is a war crime, but nearly everything else they stand accused of rests squarely on an assessment of the individual facts of the case.
I would add that Israel shares a large portion of blame for this. It has traded POWs and criminals for civilian hostages, and offered to trade the criminal Samir Kuntar for an Israeli POW. This only encourages war criminals and terrorists, and dissolves the distinction between terrorists and soldiers, POWs and civilians. Israel has done the world a great disservice in these exchanges.
My hope is that Israel kills as many Hezbollah guerrillas, war criminals, and terrorists as it can, and destroys their tools of death, with as few civilian casualties as is possible, consistent with the laws of war.
Until then, Lebanon will never have true democracy, will never be free of Israeli military operations and death, and Israeli civilians will never be able to sleep in peace. I think Lebanon's future would be better off with that result. So no, I don't think the Lebanese people are the enemy. Apparently, they don't think they are either, as last night showed reports of an active night life in other sections of Beirut.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/26/2006
Well, the academics' "attack" on Israel has been, at most, petitional. It has been tendentious, but it hasn't killed anyone. Lebanese casualties have been in the range of 10 times those that Israel has suffered. In the long internal struggle, Israelis have taken triple the toll on Palestinians that the Palestinians have inflicted on Israel.
Robert KC Johnson -
7/26/2006
This conflict is an extraordinarily difficult one strategically, because Hezbollah is effectively a parasite on the Lebanese state. There is, in effect, no way to attack it without simulnateously attacking Lebanon. This is clearly not the fault of the Lebanese government. But it's not Israel's fault either.
It might be, in the end, that Israel would have been better off strategically by doing nothing, allowing an intractable foe to remain in place on its northern border, rather than to face the international condemnation associated with a military activity in which innocent Lebanese civilians were certain to be killed. But that is by no means an easy calculation--and, given Hezbollah's well-demonstrated strength, I'm uncertain what a "proportional" military response would have looked like.
As for the academics, I'm curious as to what policy they would recommend for Israel. As we've seen from the Gaza withdrawal (which I supported) and the election of Hamas, a Palestinian entity seems to have no problem with firing rockets into Israel proper. Withdrawal from the West Bank means that such rockets would start reigning down on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, just as they're now pouring down on Haifa. Apparently the academics feel that Israel can meet such attacks with a . . . petition?
Oscar Chamberlain -
7/26/2006
William
May I take it that you believe that the Lebanese people are the enemy?
Alan Allport -
7/26/2006
This history of the recent crisis never once so much as mentions the word 'Hezbollah.'
One doesn't have to be an uncritical supporter of Israel to find such a summary wholly misleading and dishonest.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/26/2006
I appreciate having your well-informed response. Of course, we will all be better informed about what, in fact, Israel has destroyed in its bombing raids once they have ceased and we'll then be in a better position to know what facilities might have been legitimate targets and what were not. We know already that some targets, including the UN site and clearly marked Red Cross ambulances, clearly have not been legitimate targets. It is also obvious that leafletting advance warning to targetted areas does nothing materially to assist children or elderly, infirmed, or impoverished people to get out of the way of the bombings.
William Redfern -
7/26/2006
Actually, it's a response not to the kidnapping of two soldiers, but to the killing of eight soldiers, AND the kidnapping of two soldiers by a group that declares its intent to destroy Israel, and has been stockpiling terror weapons (the rockets can't be reasonably expected to hit a military target).
The kidnapping was carried out in order to gain the release of Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist who invaded Israel, took two civilian hostages, and then killed them right before his capture. One of those was a four year-old girl, whose skull he crushed with a rifle-butt against a rock. He is a hero in Lebanon.
Proportionality in law is not a mathematical concept. When your territory is invaded and citizens killed, there is no legal requirement to kill only a comparable number of the enemy. In fact, such proportionality (killing for the sake not of a military goal, but a mathematical one) is a war crime. Nor does proportionality in law demand that, once attacked, you leave the enemy the means to attack again. Proportionality has to do with the choice and use of weapons, and the importance of the military objective relative to civilian casualties.
You don't get to drop an atom bomb on a city in order to take out a military comander. Nor do you get to launch thousands of rockets at towns with no reasonable expectation of hitting a military target. Nor do you get to bomb buildings in South Beirut indiscriminately. You must have a military objective and have used methods to limit civilian casualties.
The Israelis dropped leaflets detailing what areas it would hit in South Beirut, and urged civilians to evacuate. The Israelis also used PGMs, rather than artillery there. In fact, reporters have written that just a block away from their guided tours of bombed out buildings in Beirut, Hezbollah guerillas kept them from entering the destroyed area. At least one report has uncut counterfeit US money sheets lying about, suggesting that the Israelis did get their target after all.
Interestingly, the UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egelund has made a very good charge. He claims that the attack on the power plant in Gaza was disproportionate because it conferred little or no military advantage, while in effect targeting civilian life. He is correct. It may turn out, upon inspection, that Israel's attacks in South Beirut were disprportionate in the legal sense, in that there were no military targets there. Such a conclusion would follow from a consideration of all the facts, not the reporting of Lebanese sources, and other sources who haven't been allowed into the area to assess the targets, and who have quite incredibly yet to report a single Hezbollah death.
Those who decry the attack on infrastructure should familiarize themselves with the law. Infrastructure whose use confers a military advantage is a legitimate target. You can attack bridges and roads and ports that can be used for resupply. You don't get to attack a National Library, as was done in Bosnia, as it confers no military advantage.
What is clear from the statements of Lebanese politicians and Hezbollah leaders is that they simply miscalculated. They thought there was some sort of understanding whereby they could attack with impunity, and take hostages, and all Israel could do was lob a few shells back, or take hostages of their own. This is a psychological expectation, not one grounded in law.
I don't see this as a sorry chapter in Israel's history. It is certainly true that Israel escalated the confrontation. But Israel was under no legal requirement not to, and had a moral duty to defend its citizens against future attack. Considerations of proportionality do not mean that Hezbollah gets to dictate the time and manner of Israel's destruction, particularly after it initiated military action.
Ralph E. Luker -
7/26/2006
I hadn't thought that you would be and I'll not be signing the petition, either. Undoubtedly, it is important to condemn the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. But it's also true that proportionality of response to those acts has been thrown to the winds. I suppose if Hezbollah had not responded in any way to Israel's early retaliatory bombings of Lebanon, the bombings might have been less damaging and Israel might have thought it had no reason to invade Lebanon. But any question of proportional response to the kidnapping of two soldiers has long since been forgotten. The massive escalation of this crisis, primarily by Israel, is a sorry chapter in its history.
Robert KC Johnson -
7/26/2006
I notice that the statement elects not to condemn either Hezbollah or Hamas for crossing into Israeli territory and kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Regardless of what one thinks about the origins of the tensions, there's no denying that these specific acts triggered this crisis.
