DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Pakistani Scientist Convicted of Trying to Kill Americans - Tom Hays (AP/ABC News)
    Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist, was convicted Wednesday of charges that she tried to kill Americans while detained in Afghanistan in 2008.
    As the jurors left the courtroom, she shouted: "This is a verdict coming from Israel, not America."
    During the trial, FBI agents and U.S. soldiers testified that Siddiqui shot at them while yelling, "Death to Americans."

Australia Blocks Suspicious Shipments to Iran (AP/Washington Post)
    Australia recently blocked several export shipments to Iran because of concern the cargo may have been destined for Tehran's nuclear weapons programs, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Thursday.
    One of the blocked shipments was understood to include pumps that could have been used to cool nuclear power plants.

Could Iran Satellite Launcher Deliver Atomic Warhead? - Philippe Naughton (Times-UK)
    Iran successfully launched a can of worms, a rat and two turtles into space Wednesday, prompting a jubilant President Ahmadinejad to brag that the Islamic Republic would soon be sending its own astronauts to orbit Earth.
    The ambitious Iranian space program worries Western experts who fear the same technology could be used to deliver atomic warheads.

Russian Army to Learn from IDF Military Police - Yaakov Katz (Jerusalem Post)
    The Russian military will dispatch a delegation to Israel in the coming weeks to learn from the IDF how to establish and operate a military police.

Egyptian Journalist Suspended for Visiting Israel - Roee Nahmias (Ynet News)
    Egypt's journalists union suspended Hussain Serag, the editor of the magazine October, for three months after he said he had visited Israel more than 25 times, thus violating a union ban on visits to the Jewish state.
    Separately, Hala Mustafa, editor-in-chief of Al-Demoqratiya magazine, was warned for meeting in her home with Israel's ambassador to Cairo Shalom Cohen.
    In 1979, Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but there continues to be a generally hostile popular attitude towards anything implying normal relations between the two neighbors.

Anti-Semitic Acts Soar in France (AP/Washington Post)
    France's Jewish Community Protection Service tallied 832 anti-Semitic acts in 2009, up from 474 a year earlier - an increase of 75%.
    The group said Wednesday that 354 incidents took place in January 2009 alone, at the time of Israel's response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

A Moral Evaluation of the Gaza War - Operation Cast Lead - Asa Kasher (Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)

• In Israel, a combatant is a citizen in uniform; quite often, he is a conscript or on reserve duty. His state ought to have a compelling reason for jeopardizing his life. The fact that persons involved in terrorism are depicted as non-combatants and that they reside and act in the vicinity of persons not involved in terrorism is not a reason for jeopardizing the combatant's life more than is required under combat conditions.
• The ethical doctrine which follows from the IDF Ethics Code mandates that, whenever possible, you must warn non-combatants that they are residents of a neighborhood where it is dangerous to stay. In Gaza, the IDF employed a variety of unprecedented efforts meant to minimize injury to non-combatants, including warning leaflets, phone calls, and non-lethal warning fire.
• There is no army in the world that will endanger its soldiers in order to avoid hitting the warned neighbors of an enemy or terrorist. Israel should favor the lives of its own soldiers over the lives of the well-warned neighbors of a terrorist when it is operating in a territory that it does not effectively control, because in such territories it does not bear the moral responsibility for properly separating between dangerous individuals and harmless ones.
• Proportionality is not a numerical comparison, but an assessment of existing threats and the measures that must be taken in order to avert them. Proportionality is justifiability of the collateral damage on grounds of the military advantage gained.
• Compare the Gaza operation to the U.S. Marine operation in Fallujah, Iraq, in late 2004. During the operation, about 6,000 Iraqis including 1,200-2,000 insurgents were killed. Of the city's 50,000 buildings, some 10,000 were destroyed, including 60 mosques. Thus, the U.S. left a trail of destruction in Fallujah far greater than anything Israel inflicted on Gaza. Comparing IDF activities to those of military forces of Western democracies is an essential part of any present attempt to use international law.
• We in Israel are in a key position in the development of customary international law in this field because we are on the front lines in the fight against terrorism. The more often Western states apply principles that originated in Israel to their own non-traditional conflicts in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, then the greater the chance these principles have of becoming a valuable part of international law.

  Prof. Asa Kasher, a recipient of the Israel Prize, is co-author of the Israel Defense Forces Code of Ethics.