Continuum of Civilianality

There is no question in my mind that Alan Dershowitz is one really smart guy. He's a professor of law at Harvard who managed to get Claus von Bulow's two convictions overturned on appeal. He's smart.

The fact that a guy as brilliant as Dershowitz has to sink to such depths of amorality and to use logic so twisted as to make a contortionist blush in order to justify U.S. actions in the Middle East proves how morally bankrupt such behavior is.

His piece in Saturday's L.A. Times which concludes that "Every civilian death is a tragedy, but some are more tragic than others" is pretty despicable on its face. The way he gets to such a conclusion is even more disturbing.

Dershowitz argues that there are differing degrees of "Civilianality" - that some civilians are more civilian than others.  He posits that because Israel has warned the people in Southern Lebanon to leave their homes, their crops and their farms, "civilians" who remain behind are complicit.  If instructing civilians to leave their homes and their failure to do so makes a civilian complicit, then by definition there are no Jewish civilians in Jerusalem, nor in any of the occupied territories.  Certainly they have been warned repeatedly that they might be subject to attack at any time.

Today's Haaretz reports :

In one known case, a bomb struck a basement and killed those inside. Later, it turned out that of the 32 casualties, mostly dead, 11 were armed Hezbollah militants. The basement served Hezbollah and civilians that sought cover. In the current fighting there is no alternative but to convince the citizens of the city to leave, and make it easy to do so. But it is unclear whether Hezbollah will allow the evacuation of civilians from Tyre. (emphasis added.)

These four sentences demonstrate two more problems with Dershowitz's "continuum of civilianity."

Assuming you agree that failure to flee when instructed by a foreign power legitimizes your being reclassified from farmer to target, what happens when you are prevented from fleeing?  Dershowitz gives you a pass and allows your corpse to be assigned innocent civilian status if you were too infirm to flee, but he does not admit to the possibility that other forces beyond one's control might prevent an immediate departure.

During WWII, while Hitler was bombing London almost nightly, British civilians had to seek cover in bomb shelters.  According to Dershowitz, the ones that ran into shelters where there were also soldiers looking for protection, were less civilian than ones who died in shelters without soldiers.

Dershowitz claims that while it may be difficult to identify who's a civilian and who isn't in Lebanon, in Israel it is really straightforward.  Leaving aside my point above as to Jewish residents in disputed lands, there are additional problems.

Almost all Israeli citizens are serving in the army or the reserve from the ages of 18-51. Their system, as the IDF explains it

In preparing for defense, the IDF deploys a small standing army (made up of conscripts and career personnel) with early warning capability, and a regular air force and navy. The majority of its forces are reservists, who are called up regularly for training and service and who, in time of war or crisis, are quickly mobilized into their units from all parts of the country.

Is it then fair to call Jewish citizen between 18 and 11 soldiers? This would mean that bombing Discos, and other gathering spots for adults was OK ?

I think Dershowitz would disagree. Like Attorney General Gonzalez, he thinks the wearing of a uniform is the critical piece in determing status. It looms much larger in their writings than it does in the original Geneva conventions. But with an army made up of reservists, and a pretty small country (a little smaller than New Jersey), these definitions get tricky. A 35 year old Israeli could be casually dressed, taking his mother to lunch on her birthday, receive a call on his cell phone, change into his uniform and be en route to battle; all before his mother has even picked up the check.

The point is that Dershowitz's position is not only monstrous, it is also absurd. It is embarrassing to see the waste of a great mind when it tries to come up with justifications for the unjustifiable.

I do agree with Dershowitz on one thing. The Professor hopes that the media adopt his "continuum of civilianity." I hope so too. It would be great fun hearing Katie Couric trying to pronounce it and keep a straight face.  And if the the Israeli Defense Force had to spend time determining the appropriate spot on the continuum for every dead civilian, it might not have enough time to kill so many.

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