|
Trending Topics
|
Source: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-special-law-reserved-for-the-jews/
The Special Law Reserved for the Jews
(Times of Israel) Rabbi Benjy Morgan - Is there now a legal principle under which the leader of a democracy becomes a war criminal for fighting a war against an enemy that deliberately hides beneath civilians? If a terrorist organization massacres your civilians, kidnaps your children and then embeds itself beneath apartment blocks and hospitals, your obligation is what exactly? The modern debate has become remarkably good at describing Israel's alleged crimes and remarkably reluctant to describe Israel's alternatives. Every interview, every demonstration, every statement seems to begin from the assumption that there was an obvious course of action available to Israel which only malice prevented it from taking. Oddly, nobody ever quite tells us what it was. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair led Britain into Iraq on the basis of intelligence that proved to be profoundly mistaken. Hundreds of thousands died. Millions were displaced. Yet it scarcely occurs to anyone - even Mr. Blair's most determined critics - to describe him as a war criminal, let alone the architect of genocide. We instinctively understand that democratic leaders make decisions in war that can be catastrophic without being criminal. A tragic outcome is not the same as genocide. Law is not a collection of principles reserved for one's political opponents. It is a universal standard. If a democratic leader becomes a war criminal whenever he wages a war in which large numbers of civilians are killed, then the 20th and 21st centuries suddenly look rather different. Tony Blair belongs in the dock, as does George W. Bush and Harry Truman. Yet somehow nobody seriously argues that they do. We instinctively understand that military action that produces terrible consequences is not the same thing as criminal intent. That distinction seems mysteriously to disappear the moment the country concerned is Israel.