War Crimes and Genocide in Gaza?
To recap:
Israel’s original intention for
counter attacking Hamas - its “jus ad bellum,” - i.e. the
conditions under which states resort to war - was to recue the hostages and also to
eliminate Hamas because of its ongoing threat to Israel. It was not revenge for
the horrors of October 7th, 2023, although that was the immediate
cause. It was about the damage that Hamas could do in the future given it
stated intent to annihilate Israel.
Is Israel aiming for a realistic,
achievable goals? Rescuing hostages is a clear and potentially achievable end.
But is eliminating Hamas possible? How do you reduce civilian casualties in the
face of Hamas tactics? Is her present strategy producing more chaos? Is her
approach encouraging future terrorist attacks on her. Is there an alternative
approach?
As the war goes on and civilian deaths rise, questions increasingly surface about Israel’s conduct of the war - her “jus in bello,” i.e. the conditions that must be met or avoided while fighting for the war to be just. The connection between her wider goal of eliminating Hamas within the bounds of moral and international law, is becoming increasingly strained, if not broken.
At the time, it seemed that Israel in setting over ambitious war aims risked losing the information war and their long term aim of peace in Israel:
The entire point of the attack on
October was to provoke a massive Israeli response. The goal being to
create a visceral response from Israel that would be seen as so
disproportionate that the violence Hamas carried out would be pushed to the
side and Israel would be seen as the irrational actor.
In the long run, making Israel look like the depraved side serves two strategic goals for Hamas. First, it puts the Palestinian issue back at the top of the Arab and international political agenda. Second, it convinces Palestinians that Israel must be fought with arms, and that Hamas, rather than the more peace-oriented Fatah, should be leading their struggle.
Israel is playing right into Hamas’s hands. The current
Israeli approach is less likely to destroy the militant group than to
strengthen it.
International Criminal Court Arrest Warrants
Predictably, the International Criminal Court has now issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. The court claims there are “reasonable grounds” for suspecting they have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
If arrested, Netanyahu would go through a trial, and, if convicted, he would join
the ranks of leaders considered perpetrators of crimes against humanity,
such as Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler.
With regard to the crimes, the
Chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu, born on 21
October 1949, Prime Minister of Israel at the time of the relevant conduct, and
Mr Gallant, born on 8 November 1958, Minister of Defence of Israel at the time
of the alleged conduct, each bear criminal responsibility for the following
crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the
war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against
humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
The Chamber also found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.
Israel and Hamas React
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that “Israel rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions leveled against it by ICC,” adding that Israel won’t “give in to pressure” in the defence of its citizens.
Hamas welcomed the ICC’s issuing of these arrest warrants, describing these as, "an important step towards justice and can lead to redress for the victims in general, but it remains limited and symbolic if it is not supported by all means by all countries around the world,"
World Reaction
The warrants mean that all member states of the ICC, including all EU member states, Norway, and the United Kingdom, are obliged to arrest the individuals concerned if they enter their territory. Ireland and the Netherlands have said they will abide by this. The United Kingdom has yet to give a clear answer.
The EU could but is unlikely to use its global human rights’ sanctions against Netanyahu. This would allow targeted sanctions against foreign nationals responsible for gross violations of human rights. Unanimity across the bloc is necessary for this and Austria, Czechia, Hungary, and Germany will be reluctant to agree to this.
More significantly, the ICC’s move is likely to generate strong criticism and possibly measures against the court from incoming US president Donald Trump. The Biden administration has already rejected the decision calling it "outrageous," adding, "whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security." Trump’s nominee for national security advisor, Mike Waltz, said after the arrest warrants were issued that there will be “a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and UN come January.”
Pope Francis
Separately, Pope Francis has called for an investigation into whether Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the criteria for genocide. This is revealed in excerpts from an upcoming book set to be released ahead of the 2025 Jubilee Year. The book, authored by Hernán Reyes Alcaide, and based on interviews with the Pope, is titled “Hope Never Disappoints: Pilgrims Towards a Better World."
In this, Pope Francis states:
According to some experts, what
is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. We should
investigate carefully to determine whether it fits into the technical
definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.
Back in November 2023, Jewish groups criticised Pope Francis after
he appeared to accuse both Israel and Hamas of “terrorism” in the war
that started after Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7.
This is what wars do. But here we
have gone beyond wars. This is not war. This is terrorism.
In September 2023, the Pope had decried the deaths of
children in Israeli military strikes in Gaza while expressing doubt that Israel
and Hamas are seeking an end to the war between them. The Pope said:
Sometimes I think it's a war that
is too much, too much.
I think of the Middle East. So
many innocent victims. I think of the mothers who have lost sons to war. How
many young lives cut short.
Let the conflict in Palestine and
Israel cease. Let the violence cease. Let the hatred cease. Let the hostages be
released. Let negotiations continue. And may solutions for peace be found.
Predictably, the Conference of European Rabbis (CER)
responded to Pope Francis’ comments about genocide:
We are deeply disturbed by Pope
Francis’s assertion that the Israel Defence Forces’ actions in Gaza 'should be
carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical
definition of genocide as formulated by jurists and international bodies.
In the wake of the Holocaust, the
definition of genocide was defined by the International Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as 'acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group.'
Whilst the effectiveness of
Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas can be debated, it remains a military
response to the Hamas attack of October 7th 2023 and its explicit threat to
repeat those indiscriminate murderous rampages whenever they can, and Israel is
committed to international humanitarian law, while Hamas is violating every
norm of that law.
Israel is fighting a defensive
war against an unprovoked, barbaric enemy, unrestrained by any Western code of
law or warfare. It is also fighting for the return of 101 hostages that are
still being held by Hamas and its co-conspirators under most inhumane
conditions. Despite the singularly difficult challenge of fighting a terrorist
army that purposefully operates from within civilian population centres,
Israel, in its military measures to defend itself, can still not be said to be
engaging in genocide. The Pope’s support for this dangerous proposition lends
credibility to the insidious narrative propagated by Iran and its proxies
through international organizations. In our present time, when the free world
and Western civilization are under attack from dictatorships, the pope’s
leadership is called for to defend freedom and democracy.
The term Genocide is now thrown around as a surreptitious propaganda device, shifting the responsibility from perpetrator to victim, from terrorist organizations unto the State of Israel. The mass murder by Hamas and their collaborators, and as intently expressed in their Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, 1988, demonstrates that unlike Israel, the aggressors absolutely do intend, have attempted and continue to attempt Genocide," it added.
I think this whole issue is extraordinarily difficult to comment on because Jews are a kind of Brahmin caste and cannot be criticised. The same does not hold true for Muslims (and certainly not for Christians.) In the west, the underlying foundational and civilisational assumptions are Christian, and that remains the case for the most part, notwithstanding the maniacal frenzy with which socialist governments have been trying to undo this for the past quarter century, ever since Blair. The problem, with regard to this issue, is that those assumptions tend to be PROTESTANT Christian assumptions, and amazingly, this is today even the case among many Catholics.
ReplyDeleteThe issue goes back to Martin Luther. Luther used Jewish scripture to justify removing seven books from the Bible because Jews didn't use them. Like most backstreet messiahs, he assumed he would be justified by history. In this specific case, he assumed the Jews would convert en masse once they grasped what he was doing. Curiously, they didn't, and he turned on them with a ferocity which was shocking even to the sensibilities of the sixteenth century. You could make a good argument that the reason German anti-Semitism was so much more deadly than the casual anti-Semitism of the rest of western Europe is grounded in Luther's hatred of the Jews, but that's another story.
What matters for our purposes is that, by conceding that special touchstone status to the rabbis, Luther essentially accepted Judaism as co-equal to Christianity, notwithstanding his later attacks on the Jews, and ever since, regardless of formal theology, protestants have basically been dual covenanters. In essence, they have a "separate but theologically equal" attitude to Jews -- which is in no way reciprocated -- and which, in turn, means that Jews get judged by a much softer rule than Muslims and other religions.
It is, for instance, absolutely unthinkable that anyone would defend Putin if he were doing to Kyiv what Netanyahu is doing to Gaza. I certainly don't remember anybody complaining when the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Putin, notwithstanding that nothing he has done is comparable to what the Israelis are doing to Gaza. It is, quite frankly, an outright murderous assault on men, women and children. I'm prepared to concede that it doesn't amount to genocide in the strict sense, since there probably is no formal intent in Jerusalem to actually liquidate the people of Gaza. What I AM saying, however, is that people in the west -- and especially Christians -- need to seriously reassess how they morally judge the actions of Jews and remember that there is no special frame of judgement for them. They don't get a free pass. It's only because too many Christians and Christianity-influence secular people subliminally proceed on the assumption that they do that this issue seems so confusing.
One's Protestant pastor was telling one only the day before yesterday that he doesn't consider the old and new covenents to be equal.
DeleteHowever, Mr Bell has now inspired one to investigate the matter of different canons further, and has discovered why this book at least was left out of Luther's:
Maccabees 12:46 (DRA):
"It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins."
Netanyahu first lost me when he forced his people to be guinea pigs for an experimental medical treatment..
I remember having this 'conversation' at Cranmer's - it is odd that a faith would allow people of another faith to determine which scriptures to use, particularly as there is no scholarly consensus over when the Hebrew canon was closed, with estimates ranging from 100 BC to 100 AD. The Masoretic texts, compared to the LXX, shows evidence of editing to remove messianic references that point to Jesus in particular as the Christ.
DeleteIt comes down to a question of authority. As the Bible itself is silent about its own contents, and Luther had cut himself off from the institutional Church as an authority, he had to find some source of authority to appeal to and chose the Jews (which has led to a bizarre kind of Hebraic purity fetishisation among some).
In the Orthodox Church, partly due to the lack of an administrative centre and partly because it avoided the arguments of the Reformation, the canon isn't entirely consistent across all the churches, with a few minor variations. But this is because the scriptures derive their authority from the Church, not the other way around, thus the canon is that which the Church feels to be true to the teaching it received from Christ and the Apostles (for similar reasons, the variations in canons recorded in early writings is no concern).
particularly as there is no scholarly consensus over when the Hebrew canon was closed, with estimates ranging from 100 BC to 100 AD.
ReplyDeleteReally, @Lain, no later than AD 100? I once read somewhere (don't remember where, unfortunately) that the Catholic OT canon is the older of the two. If that's true, I suppose it must mean that the Hebrew canon was not settled until after the Council of Rome in 382. Have you ever come across anything of this kind?
It's actually pretty complex, looking into it. There was no agreement on the Hebrew canon at the time of Christ, outside of the Pentateuch, so the Hebrew Bible and the Christian OT developed along different paths. In the 2nd century, Rabbi Akiva (d.135) was threatening Jewish believers with hell if they read the non-canonical books and debates other rabbis about the status of Esther and Song of Songs. 2 Edras (or 4 Edras, depending on your canon) records Eliza writing out 24 books under the inspiration of the Holy Spirt, which seems to be the first reference to a 24 book OT canon and dates from c.100 AD. The Babylonian Talmud provides the first itemised list of canonical books, but its dating is difficult and estimates range from the early 200s to late 700s. Timothy Lim from Edinburgh University's School of Divinity wrote a book in 2013 that analysed new information from the Dead Sea scrolls and other secondary writings and 'argues that throughout the post-exilic period up to around 100 [AD] there was not one official “canon” accepted by all Jews; rather, there existed a plurality of collections of scriptures that were authoritative for different communities'.
DeleteThe first Christian canon was the Muratorian canon of c.180, which is fragmentary and contains only some of the NT books. There seems to be some dispute over the historicity of the Council of Rome and its sparse serving documentation, but the Third Council of Carthage in 397 listed all the OT and NT books 'for the purpose of confirming that Canon, because we have received from our fathers that those books must be read in the Church.'
The Council of Trullo (692) recorded a list of canonical books, similar to Carthage but with slight variations (although it also ratified Carthage) for the eastern sees. At this point, schisms with the non-Chalcedonian churches were occurring, and Trullo wasn't accepted by Rome, although it was by Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It was, however, later ratified at the Second Council of Nicaea (787), the final ecumenical council of the undivided Church.
Following the Reformation, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the canon as stipulate by the Council of Carthage in the decree De Canonicis Scripturis.
'Eliza' should read 'Ezra'.
DeleteThe Council of Rome's 'serving documentation' should read 'surviving documentation'.
My computer has a mind of its own.
Thank you, Lain. It's very late now but tomorrow morning I'll sift through your mine of names and dates!
DeleteYes, it's about time the host upgraded to a weblog site with editing. This one is so early 2010s. 😈
DeleteIndeed, particularly as I hear that the host is sitting on a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool of money.
DeleteAlthough it's probably all Scottish notes, so he can't spend them anywhere...😊
Y'know I do feel slightly well-off at the moment and, I admit, somewhat guilty.
DeleteWhen Labour withdrew the 'Winter Fuel Allowance' of £300, I decided to apply for 'Attendance Allowance'. I'd been deferring this for years because its not money I need. Anyway, submitted the claim and .... £108 per week awarded with £750 back-payment to date of claim!!! And, to top it off, Mrs Jack gets £89 per week as my carer - not that she does much - with 8 weeks back-payment!!!
Should I feel guilty?
I suspect I'm not alone in claiming benefits. Labour clearly didn't consider the unintended consequences of their stupid cut.
Guilty for what? You're not making a fraudulent claim, you're only claiming what you're entitled to and you paid into the system for long enough. £108pw is nothing in the great scheme of things. In context, the Covid enquiry is costing £208 mil., the most expensive inquiry in British history, and that money would keep the NHS funded for ... 9 and a half hours. If it makes life even slightly easier, then take it - that's what it for (especially given how the government have screwed people on WFA).
DeleteUnpaid (usually family) carers save the NHS an absolute fortune. £89pw is, what, £12.70 per day: that's ~50p more than an hour at minimum wage. If the NHS provided someone to do what Mrs. Jack does, even if that's not that much (except have the patience of saint, I suspect), it would cost far more. I wouldn't have the slightest twinge of conscience in taking anything back from this scrounging government.
Maybe you could donate some of your Christmas payment to a good Christian charity if it helps you feel less guilty about it. The Iwakura Foundation for the Alleviation of Chocolate Poverty is a good one, I heard.
Ah, HJ is already a regular donor to the (non) registered charity: "The Happy Jack Children and Grandchildren In Need Trust."
DeleteMrs Jack does no more than any dutiful wife in catering to the simple needs of her spouse.
I agree with Lain and btw I been receiving these payments for a while now and I don't feel guilty 😁
DeleteThanks, Clive. Must be "Catholic guilt syndrome."
DeleteI agree with Lain
DeleteThis man gets it ❤️
He's still young .... he'll learn!
Delete@Lain
DeleteRabbi Akiva was actually a pretty interesting character. His name is not much known outside Judaism, but it's arguable that he, more than anyone else, was responsible for the final sundering between Jews and Christians. It's often overlooked that during the first century of Christianity -- in the Holy Land, at least -- before doctrine was definitively set down, Christians would often worship alongside Jews at synagogues.
This changed with the Bar Kochba revolt. Akiva himself was known to believe Bar Kochba to be the Messiah, and attempted to unite all Jews behind this credo in order to present a united front to the Romans. For Christians, of course, this was unthinkable. The Messiah had been and gone, and His name was not Bar Kochba. It is from this period that the first "true" Christians (in the sense of stand-alone Christianity, as opposed to a sect of Judaism) dates.
@Bell
DeleteYes, he was. I've been reading a bit more about him since I came across his name. I think it's a shame that this history isn't more widely know; we tend to get presented with a very sterilised version that overlooks the theological controversies and practices of the first century of the Church, as if until Christ there was one homogenous Jewish faith, out of which walked the Christians with the KJV tucked under their arm.
Or, in the case of the CofE church history I was bought up with, there was the Resurrection, Acts and then the Reformation.
We have enough legitimate reasons to feel guilty, so wasting a good dose of guilt where you have no reason to feel like that is a waste!🤣
ReplyDelete@Lain, in a parallel online conversation about the history of the Jewish biblical canon, a friend has recommended Roger Beckwith’s book, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church. It’s now quite an old book, published in 1985, but it’s highly regarded for its breadth and depth of scholarship, even by critics who don’t share Beckwith’s Evangelical Anglican theology.
ReplyDeleteI have had Beckwith’s book on my reading list for a long time, but it’s one of the many titles that I have never got round to actually buying, and I never found it online. From what I’ve read about it, Beckwith makes the challenging claim that the Jewish canon was definitively settled in the early Hasmonean period, which would mean a date no later than the mid-first century BC.
As I understand it, one of the difficulties in discussing the Jewish canon is the question of who would have had the authority, in this or that period, to proclaim an official canon and for that ruling to gain general acceptance. From what I’ve read about the history of the Hasmonean period, each king also held the post of high priest, beginning with Jonathan in 152 and down to the death of Jannaeus in 76, when he was succeeded by his widow Salome. Conceivably that might be Beckwith’s answer to the authority question, but I’d have to read his book to find out.
@Ray - there's a site called annas-archive.org which has a pdf of Beckwith's book uploaded. A, ahem, friend of mine, has downloaded hard-to-find out-of-print books from there before with no issues (you have to become a member for fast downloads, but slow ones are free and it's a small file). Its worth keeping in mind, though, that there have been substantial leaps forward in archeology and textual analysis since the 80s - as recently as 2021, authorities found new biblical fragments at Qumran, dating from the Bar Kochba revolt that Bell mentioned (130s AD).
DeleteI've seen scholars argue for the Hasmonean date. It's possible, but what troubles me about that date is the fact that there was clear controversy among rabbis about what was canonical into the first century. This could possibly be, as you point out, due to the lack of a universal authority that could make such a decision. Possibly, one or more schools had settled on what we now regard as the canon that early, and it took some time for that view to win out. We know something similar happened in the Church: St. Irenaeus of Lyon, St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen all regarded the Shepherd of Hermas as canonical, for example. I've seen other scholars argue that the Jewish canon was settled incrementally: the Torah around 400 BC, the Prophets around 200 BC, and the Writings around 100 AD. We'll probably never know for sure.
I think, for Christians, it comes back to authority again. If you believe that Christ vested his authority in the Church, then it doesn't really matter (beyond a matter of historical interest), what the Hebrew canon is or when it was established. The early Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, could have complied what we now call the Old Testament entirely from books that their Jewish contemporaries regarded as non-canonical. On the other hand, if you believe, as Luther did, that the Bible is the sole and highest source of Christian authority, then it becomes very important to establish its credentials and find an authority by which to justify the inclusion of the books it contains.