Recent days have seen both U.S. and Russian air strikes carried out in Afghanistan and Syria respectively. Can we draw any comparisons between these and Israeli actions in Gaza in 2014 and before?
One of the most serious allegations leveled against Israel appeared in the Goldstone Report that accused Israel of deliberately targeting Gazan civilians during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09. Judge Richard Goldstone later recanted but the false accusation continues to be thrown at Israel to account for any civilian casualties in military operations.
RUSSIA LAUNCHES AIR STRIKES ON SYRIA
Israel does not intentionally target civilians. But what about Russia? The commencement of air strikes against targets in Syria have led to accusations that President Putin’s air force is bombing indiscriminately.
A Washington Post analysis of Russian video footage says:
that the first two frames appear to only partially capture the actual strikes. The white puffs on the ground are fragmentation impacts from the bombs exploding off-screen.
While the third strike appears to have hit its target, the other two seem to be missing their intended targets, suggesting that the Russians are using “dumb” ordnance, not precision guided munitions.
And according to the UK’s minister of defense, Michael Fallon:
Our evidence indicates they are dropping unguided munitions in civilian areas, killing civilians, and they are dropping them against the Free Syrian forces fighting Assad.
Indeed, Reuters reports:
At least 39 civilians, including eight children and eight women, have been killed in Russian air strikes in Syria in the past four days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday.
It said 14 fighters had been killed – 12 from the Islamic State militant group around the eastern city of Raqqa, and two from the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman said the figures only included those which had been verified.
Out of the 53 confirmed dead, it appears that almost 74%, nearly three quarters of those, are civilians and only some 26% were actual combatants.
Compare this with Israel’s figures from Operation Protective Edge. The IDF’s own investigations, which differed from the UN’s figures, found that 44% of Palestinian casualties were terrorists. In other words, the rate of civilian casualties to combatants caused by Russia is currently running at nearly 1.7 times, almost double that of Israel’s military operation.
Admittedly, it is difficult to compare statistics in a like for like manner given that the Russian figures are only from four days of air strikes. Yet, if one considers that Russia is evidently making little effort to avoid civilian casualties, it is safe to assume that these figures will only increase.
THE U.S. HITS AN AFGHAN HOSPITAL
Unlike Russia, it is expected that the armed forces of the United States adhere to far higher standards when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties.
Yet the U.S. finds itself accused of a potential “war crime” following an air strike on a hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
Medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres denied that Taliban fighters were firing from its hospital or using the facility as a form of “human shield.”
Under international law, a hospital is an illegitimate target unless it is being used for military purposes. And even then the issue of proportionality arises. If Taliban terrorists were indeed firing from within the hospital, would bombing the building with the inherent risk of causing multiple civilian casualties be proportional?
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor, International Criminal Court says:
Under international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute, the death of civilians during an armed conflict, no matter how grave and regrettable does not constitute a war crime…. even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur. A crime occurs if there is an intentional attack directed against civilians (principle of distinction) or an attack is launched on a military objective in the knowledge that the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage (principle of proportionality).
Clearly, it is too early to assess exactly how the U.S. managed to make what appears to be a tragic error either of judgment or on the battlefield. Nonetheless, we can still use this incident to put Israeli actions into context.
The use of human shields in Gaza by Hamas, which operates within densely populated civilian areas is an issue that Israel is forced to confront. That Hamas considers human shields to be an effective policy is testament to the fact that the terror organization knows full well that the IDF values Palestinian civilian lives even if Hamas doesn’t.
Hence we see aborted air strikes if civilians are in the immediate vicinity. We also see Israel leafleting or sending SMS messages giving Palestinian civilians advanced warning to evacuate areas that are to be targeted. There is also the “knock on the roof” in which IDF forces fire a small mortar at the target to indicate the imminent attack and signal those inside to flee before hitting it with full force.
It may turn out that the Afghan hospital was not the intended target and was hit simply due to an error. It is worth reminding ourselves that Israel may well have been justified under the laws of proportionality in attacking Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, which was Hamas’s de facto military headquarters during the 2014 war.
Yet Israel did not target Shifa precisely because it was not prepared to countenance the significant civilian casualties that such an attack would inevitably result in.
MEDIA COVERAGE
It will certainly be interesting to compare the media coverage of Russian and U.S. air strikes to the reports that Israel had to contend with. All too often, the media attributes a level of malevolence when it comes to Israeli military actions.
So, while, for example, the New York Times’s headline from July 2014 actively attributes responsibility to Israel for the alleged shelling of a UN school, its headline covering the Afghan hospital incident passively attributes the air strike rather than those who carried it out.
Ultimately, both Israel and the U.S. have shared values when it comes to the ethics of war. It is hard to believe that the U.S. has intentionally targeted civilians in a hospital. It does, however, comparatively demonstrate the lengths that Israel goes to in order to avoid just such a scenario as the Afghan hospital.
It is a tragic inevitability that civilians will die in war. Russia does not appear to be influenced by morals or ethics. Meanwhile the U.S. may be realizing that it has something to learn from Israel when it comes to ethics on the battlefield.
Featured image: CC0 H. Michael Miley via Flickr with additions by HonestReporting
