Gaza and Morals

I understand the debate about whether Israel followed or broke Geneva Conventions in its fight in Gaza. I do not understand the moral indignation as I do not understand the moral logic of these conventions.

Killing innocent women and children is bad; but why is it worse than killing innocent soldiers? A soldier carries no stronger individual moral responsibility for the evils perpetrated by his country than a civilian. After all, nobody checks what crimes a soldier has committed before  killing him. Noncombatant immunity is one of the accepted principles of a just war, but I do not understand it -- even more so in an environment where the distinction between combatant and non-combatant is fuzzy. Neither the rocket attacks of Hamas on civilian targets in Israel nor the Israel attack on Gaza strike me as immoral -- just terribly wasteful and useless.

Destroying civilian buildings is bad. But, quite often, the target of a war is not the army of the enemy, but the civilian government of the enemy; The goal of the war is to force a government to change its policies. US bombed civilian targets in Serbia, such as bridges or power plants; it bombed civilian targets in Iraq. Russia bombed civilian targets in Georgia.

The target of a war is not the enemy army, but the enemy country. The same holds true of sanctions that are short of an all-out war. Sanctions on Iraq hurt the Iraqi people, not its army of leadership; the sanctions killed many Iraqis. Sanctions on South Africa at the time of the Apartheid did not discriminate between good South Africans and bad South Africans. Sanctions that are proposed on occasion against Israeli organizations do not distinguish between good Israelis and bad Israelis. If such sanctions can be moral than strikes against civilian targets can be moral. It is not a black and white issue, but a debate about the legitimacy of the cause and the proportionality of the means.

Hamas is an organization that wants to destroy the state of Israel. I think is is legitimate for Israel to try to destroy Hamas. With this goal in mind, the Israeli slaughter and destruction is proportional -- indeed it has been too moderate to destroy Hamas.

Closing the circle: Why are soldiers or civilians of a country at war "innocent"? The logic of a war is that it targets a country. a collective, not individuals. Soldiers or citizens suffer in a war because they are part of this collective. The logic is one of collective responsibility, collective guilt and collective punishment. A person that is part of a community bears responsibility for the actions of that community and can suffer consequences. As an American, I can be the target of acts of terrorism against America. I can be killed because I am American, irrespective of my own political opinions. A Gazan can be killed because he is a citizen of a Hamas state, even if he does support Hamas. If we support collective action and solidarity, than we should accept collective responsibility. Targeting civilian targets in Gaza is moral precisely because Hamas won elections and truly represent the population of Gaza.