Thinking about the G Word

Maybe not genocide, almost
certainly a war crime.

 I have been reluctant to call what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide.  I am not an international lawyer so my hesitance is less about the fine points of international law and more about how fraught the word is--that it is a very inflammatory accusation, that it turns people's minds off, that it ends conversations.  It is pretty much the worst thing you can accuse someone of doing, especially an Israeli given the history of the Jews.  It also raises in some people's minds a false equivalency between this event or that event and the Holocaust.  For the legal beagles, the question is of intent--is the aim to kill in part (the in part thing is important) or entirely a group of people because of their race, religion, language, or some other ethnic marker.*  For an excellent discussion of much of this, see Page Fortna's op-ed.

And then I got into a conversation with a family member about ethnic cleansing versus genocide.  I am far more confident that what is happening in Gaza is ethnic cleansing.  We have had a variety of statements from Israeli officials referring to this as a/the nabka--a repeat of something that had long been denied--that the new Israelis expelled the Palestinians from contested territories in 1948.  Reports that Netanyahu has been looking for other places to settle the Palestinians are very disturbing. The level of violence and its targeting, as this WP analysis illustrates only too clearly, is suggestive.  Israel has more done more damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure in a couple of months than other contemporary campaigns and it is not close. Remember, the 21k civilian casualties in Gaza is almost certainly an undercount that will get worse as the destruction of the health care system and the shortages of food and water kick in.

Israel and its fans will claim that they need to eradicate Hamas because it has genocidal intent.  I sympathize with that, but genocide is partly about power.  One cannot engage in mass killing unless one has the powers of a state or something close to it.  So, in the genocide conversation, one can argue that one side might have intent, but it is the other side that has the ability to engage in large scale destruction and is doing so.  Hamas may present a threat to engage in genocide, but it is Israel that is actually killing large numbers of people, mostly civilians including many, many children.

I need to mention one dynamic here: conflating all Palestinians with Hamas and arguing Hamas needs to be eradicated leads to the conclusion, intentionally or not, implicit or explicit, that to destroy Hamas, one needs to eliminate the Palestinians.  Which leads to the biq question:

Is the intent of Israeli leaders to eliminate all Palestinians?  Just those living in Gaza? Not so clear, so one could argue it is not genocide.  But that is really a quibble.  Israel is forcing Gazans to move south, and so-called safe zones are not so safe (which reminds me of Bosnia).  Israels and its supporters can argue about genocide/not genocide, and maybe that is a conversation that could be more comfortable than addressing the contemporary situation--Israel is killing large numbers of innocents out of revenge, rage, and/or a misconception that hitting much, much harder will ultimately lead to deterrence.  I included the bluesky post because it illustrates something very, very powerful--that Israel is engaged in a variety of horrific tactics and no strategy (if Israel had one) could justify it.  Attacking hospitals and refugee camps is simply wrong--it is immoral and it is also bad strategy.  Netanyahu recently said he was seeking to destroy Hamas,** demilitarize Gaza, and deradicalize the Palestinians.  This campaign may be temporarily successful at the second, but it will not destroy Hamas, and it will do the opposite of deradicalizing the Palestinians.  

I remarked that when Israel had hit the 20,000 casualty figure, was that disproportionate enough, given that something less than 2,000 Israelis died on or after October 7th? It is quite clear that Israel has violated international humanitarian law repeatedly and intentionally.  I get that Israelis think international relations is gamed against them--all the UN votes by countries that have deplorable human rights records, etc.  That international law is less important than survival, but some of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy--that Israel burned whatever goodwill it received in the aftermath of October 7th by engaging in a campaign of revenge and collective punishment.

One of thing that has been so disturbing is the realization that there are two meanings to Never Again--never again will Jews be victims or never again will we let mass killings take place.  It is clear now that Israeli leaders and their supporters believe that Never Again means that Jews will never be victims again, even if it means victimizing others.  The lesson I thought I had learned growing up was that Never Again meant fighting against oppression, persecution, victimization, regardless of the targeted group.  I can't help but think that all of this is a betrayal of what we were supposed to learn from the Holocaust.

All of this is awful.  Hamas is awful, Netanyahu is awful, terrorism is awful, collective punishment is awful.  Whether one wants to call it genocide or not, what Israel is doing is awful--it is counterproductive and it is immoral.  So, from a strategic perspective, Israel's campaign is bad.  From a moral perspective, it is wrong.  Hamas's gross violations of human rights do not justify violating international humanitarian law, even if it were producing a successful outcome, and it is certainly not doing that.

Thus, I avoid using genocide as a label for all of this because it is largely superfluous--one can condemn what Israel has been doing without it.

 

* The term politicide was invented to cover the attempt to kill many/all people of the same party or movement that is ethnically heterogeneous.

** None of this justifies Hamas or legitimates what Hamas has done.  The recent story about the systemic gender violence committed by Hamas makes abundantly clear that Hamas is an awful, awful organization.  That they deliberately use their own people as shield not to protect the organization but to raise the hypocrisy costs for Israel--that is, they are deliberately getting Palestinians killed--makes them utterly deplorable.  They should be defeated and destroyed.  But Israel is actually empowering Hamas by walking into the traps it has set.

When Militaries Are More Careful Than Cvilians

Sometimes civilians do heaps of PR harm to the military.  In today's exemplar, journalists and legislators are both making the Canadian Forces and Canada by extension appear as deviants from international law.  The piece takes Canada to task for the legislation that ratifies and implements the international treaty on Cluster Bombs. 

The legislation apparently has loopholes written to facilitate Canadian interoperability with those who still use cluster bombs (the US).  The two key holes* are: Canadian commanders ordering personnel from non-signatory countries to use them and secondment issues.

* The other exceptions reflect other issues.  Investment in companies that make cluster bombs is almost certainly not an issue raised by DND but by other folks in the government.  Transit through Canadian territory is probably something that DND does care about--that American planes overfly Canada all the time, and Canada is not interesting in telling the Americans to fly around Canada when CBs are on board.

Regarding the former: when Canadian commanders go into the field, they take with them a letter of intent from above them in the chain of command (CEFCOM until the new institution kicks into gear, Deputy Chief of Defence before CEFCOM existed).  This letter tells the commander going into the field what he/she can and cannot do.  I gained via Access of Information request (akin to Freedom of Information request) several of these letters.  The earlier ones made it clear that Canadians could not use landmines or ask contingents from other countries working under them to deploy landmines.  The more recent ones use very similar language about cluster bombs--that Canadian officers could not ask other countries to use cluster bombs for them.  So, the reality is that the CF is already abiding by the treaty even before it becomes ratified. While these letters can be revised or changed by another order, this is unlikely given that these letters are vetted/written in part by the military's lawyers. 
It is not clear why the Conservative government is providing a loophole that the military is unlikely to ever use.  The disgruntled Foreign Affairs personnel blames a split between Foreign Affairs and DND, but I am confused as to whether and why the CF would want an exception about condoning the use by others given past behavior. 

Regarding the latter: when Canada sends its personnel to work in another country's military, it is hard but not impossible to impose upon them restrictions such as no cluster bomb use.  The idea of these "secondments" is for the officers to be treated as one of the receiving country's personnel so that they can learn how that country operates and can fulfill the functions of the billet (the position) they serve.  Canada lost heaps of cred when it pulled its personnel out of British ships during the Falklands War as the Brits then had to find personnel from elsewhere to staff these positions.  The seconded officers are not just sitting around watching but filling real jobs.  So, putting limitations on them that would make them not as useful as the regular officers cuts into the program of military exchanges.
However, it is not impossible.  When I was at the fighter base in Bagotville in June of 2011, I bumped into a British fighter pilot who had served with the Canadians in the skies over Libya. In our short conversation, it became clear that his rules were not identical to the Canadian ones and that British officers were keeping an eye on him to help him finesse the differences.
Still, I do understand why the CF and DND would want a secondment exception.  In my humble opinion, I do not think this is such a travesty.  


What all this demonstrates really are two things: the intent of the CF to respect international law; and the ignorance that the civilians seem to have about the Canadian military.  It is not clear why the Conservatives felt a need to carve out such exceptions especially since the US works with plenty of countries that have restrictions inspired by the cluster bomb treaty and that are pretty similar if not identical to those produced by the landmine treaty.

Oh, and a third thing: it would have been nice if the author of this article had talked to someone familiar with the CF, rather than just human rights advocates and one government spokesman.  How about interviewing a Judge Advocate General type (a military lawyer)?  Why not take a look at the orders given to the commanders in the field?  The way Access of Information requests work is once they give documents to the person requesting them, the docs are made public.  So, my asking for letters of intent given to Canadian commanders over the past ten years (I have several but not all, and they are at work, not at home) means that any journalist could find these docs if they looked for them.

Of course, I am not an expert on international law, but then again, it would have been swell if the writer had consulted one.