Doug Henwood Talks

Los Angeles Times - July 22, 2006

‘Civilian Casualty’? It Depends Those who supports terrorists are not entirely innocent. By Alan Dershowitz ALAN DERSHOWITZ is a professor of law at Harvard. He is the author,
most recently, of “Preemption: A Knife that Cuts Both Ways.”

THE NEWS IS filled these days with reports of civilian casualties,
comparative civilian body counts and criticism of Israel, along with
Hezbollah, for causing the deaths, injuries and “collective
punishment” of civilians. But just who is a “civilian” in the age of
terrorism, when militants don’t wear uniforms, don’t belong to
regular armies and easily blend into civilian populations?

We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare.
A new phrase should be introduced into the reporting and analysis of
current events in the Middle East: “the continuum of civilianality.”
Though cumbersome, this concept aptly captures the reality and nuance
of warfare today and provides a more fair way to describe those who
are killed, wounded and punished.

There is a vast difference — both moral and legal — between a 2-year- old who is killed by an enemy rocket and a 30-year-old civilian who
has allowed his house to be used to store Katyusha rockets. Both are
technically civilians, but the former is far more innocent than the
latter. There is also a difference between a civilian who merely
favors or even votes for a terrorist group and one who provides
financial or other material support for terrorism.

Finally, there is a difference between civilians who are held hostage
against their will by terrorists who use them as involuntary human
shields, and civilians who voluntarily place themselves in harm’s way
in order to protect terrorists from enemy fire.

These differences and others are conflated within the increasingly
meaningless word “civilian” — a word that carried great significance
when uniformed armies fought other uniformed armies on battlefields
far from civilian population centers. Today this same word equates
the truly innocent with guilty accessories to terrorism.

The domestic law of crime, in virtually every nation, reflects this
continuum of culpability. For example, in the infamous Fall River
rape case (fictionalized in the film “The Accused”), there were
several categories of morally and legally complicit individuals:
those who actually raped the woman; those who held her down; those
who blocked her escape route; those who cheered and encouraged the
rapists; and those who could have called the police but did not.

No rational person would suggest that any of these people were
entirely free of moral guilt, although reasonable people might
disagree about the legal guilt of those in the last two categories.
Their accountability for rape is surely a matter of degree, as is the
accountability for terrorism of those who work with the terrorists.

It will, of course, be difficult for international law — and for the
media — to draw the lines of subtle distinction routinely drawn by
domestic criminal law. This is because domestic law operates on a
retail basis — one person and one case at a time. International law
and media reporting about terrorism tend to operate on more of a
wholesale basis — with body counts, civilian neighborhoods and claims
of collective punishment.

But the recognition that “civilianality” is often a matter of degree,
rather than a bright line, should still inform the assessment of
casualty figures in wars involving terrorists, paramilitary groups
and others who fight without uniforms — or help those who fight
without uniforms.

Turning specifically to the current fighting between Israel and
Hezbollah and Hamas, the line between Israeli soldiers and civilians
is relatively clear. Hezbollah missiles and Hamas rockets target and
hit Israeli restaurants, apartment buildings and schools. They are
loaded with anti-personnel ball-bearings designed specifically to
maximize civilian casualties.

Hezbollah and Hamas militants, on the other hand, are difficult to
distinguish from those “civilians” who recruit, finance, harbor and
facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be
counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists
increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their
attacks.

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to
leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war
zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit.
Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among
the innocent victims.

If the media were to adopt this “continuum,” it would be informative
to learn how many of the “civilian casualties” fall closer to the
line of complicity and how many fall closer to the line of innocence.

Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 23rd, 2006 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.