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Targeted Killings
Sample Letter on Israel's Targeted Killings
Dear Editor,
Sub: Challenging Your article "Israel's Assassination Tactics"
According to an old Hebrew saying 'He who is forgiving to cruel ones
becomes
cruel to the victims'
Your criticism of Israel's policy of targeted killings misses a vital
point. Israel is fighting terrorism and terrorists do not adhere to the
rules of war. Terrorists do not identify themselves as combatants, they
hide their weapons and they deliberately target civilians. To demand
adherence to the Geneva conventions from Israel towards Hamas and Islamic
Jihad terrorists who are disguising themselves as civilians and
deliberately blow up Israelis praying or women and babies on buses, is the
height of hypocrisy, and, to put it mildly, is also impractical. Once a
terrorist has struck it is too late - the only option is to prevent the
attack before it happens.
Today the problem of fighting terrorism is not Israel's alone but truly
global, from New York to Bali, from Algeria to any other place. A new
international consensus is to be urgently formed recognizing the new
nature of a the terrorist war being waged worldwide, mostly by radical
Islam. Unless such consensus is built and vigorously applied, it is only a
matter
of time before Western democracies will have to cope with the same dilemma
as Israel: how to fight against a ruthless enemy whose aim is to kill as
many civilians as possible, without any compunction about transgressing
all the rules of war and also all accepted norms of civilized behavior?
Back to that old saying, Israel and all must be harsh on terrorist
murderers, if we don't want to abandon more and more victims to their
fate.
Territories
Letter to Ha'aretz newspaper
on the Territories and International Law:
The Editor
Ha'aretz
Letter for publication
Sub: Settlements and International Law (Moshe Gorali: "Legality is in the
Eye of the Beholder" - 7 October)
Moshe Gorali's article "Legality is in the Eye of the Beholder" (7
October) buries the straightforward international law relating to the
settlements in unnecessary complexity.
As Gorali notes, the current assertion that the settlements are illegal is
based on the paragraph (6) of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention
which provides that "The occupying Power shall not deport or transfer
parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies." However
under Article 2, the Convention applies only "to cases of . occupation of
the territory of a High Contracting Party, by another such Party". The
result is that, since the Territories do not belong to any other sovereign
state, Israel is not an occupying Power within the meaning of the
Convention, which simply does not apply.
It is also significant that the aim of the Fourth Geneva Convention is to
provide humanitarian protection in occupied territory. Article 49
contributes to this aim by outlawing the forceful deportation or transfer
of unwilling populations. This does not apply to the settlements, and no
other serious humanitarian consideration of the type contemplated by the
Convention arises.
It follows that charges of illegality, inflated to "war crimes", levied
against the settlements, are mere propaganda.
None of this implies any judgment about the advisability of the existing
settlements, the future of which is in any case reserved for the final
status negotiations under the Oslo Accords. Meanwhile future settlement
activity is arguably governed by the interim power-sharing agreements
under the Accords, which is another question altogether.
Yours sincerely
Ian Lacey
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