Israel’s Immoral War
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ISRAEL’S IMMORAL WAR |
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This editorial is the view of Contributing DW Correspondend, Leonard Carrier, and it absolutely and totally represents the position of the DW’s Foreign-Policy Editor, Dusty Schoch.
Former intelligence official Yossi Alpher recently claimed that Israel’s ferocious assault on Lebanon was “disproportionate to the incident, but proportionate to the threat.” This is the argument most commonly used by Israel’s apologists, including our own Bob Shieffer on national TV (“Face the Nation,” July 16), who vigorously supported Israel’s right to “defend itself” against a senseless “provocation” by Hamas and Hezbollah. This tactic is reminiscent of Israel’s claim in 1967 that their attack on Egypt “pre-empted” an imminent Egyptian attack on them. Whether or not Egypt really planned such an attack is still murky. But the consensus is that pre-emption can be considered a legitimate species of self-defense. But the key to any claim of pre-emption is imminence. This was the element that perhaps justified Israel’s attack on Egypt in 1967, but was missing in the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003. This made the invasion of Iraq a preventive war, not one of pre-emption. Since Hezbollah was not about to invade Israel, this also makes Israel’s war a preventive war. The difference between pre-emption and prevention is often glossed over, but it is important. With pre-emption, one has to be reasonably certain that another nation, or group, is on the verge of mounting its own attack. With prevention, an attack is made because of the possibility that, some day down the road, a nation or group will destroy you.
Perhaps not all preventive wars are immoral. But some certainly are. In 1941 the Japanese initiated a preventive war on the United States. They did it to neutralize the U.S. navy so that they could preserve military and economic hegemony in the Pacific and the Far East. The United States was building B-17 bombers that could someday threaten that hegemony by bombing Japanese cities. So the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. If you think, as I do, that launching this preventive war was immoral, then you must universalize and think that all such wars conducted for economic and political reasons are immoral. Hitler claimed self-defense when he launched his attack on Poland in 1939. He claimed he did it to gain lebensraum and to prevent the possibility of France and England taking military action against Germany and destroying the German economy. But this was also an immoral, preventive attack, initiated purely for economic purposes and for the gaining of land.
I believe that the U.S. attack on Iraq was an immoral preventive war. It was initiated to control Iraq’s oil and to leave a “footprint” in the Middle East. It was waged on the possibility that Middle East oil would some day be used as a strategic weapon against us. It was waged for economic reasons. Apologists for the American attack on Iraq would resist generalization from other cases. They would make an exception for a nation whose intent is to promote democracy, free markets, economic development, and human rights; whereas, other nations are bound by rules that rightly bind non-superpowers. The problems with this exceptionalist defense of America’s right to might are several. First, it’s dubious whether free markets promote democracy and human rights. Second, genuine democracies might be hostile to free markets and prefer nationalization to global trade. Finally, it is unclear how waging a destructive war will bring any of the good things intended to fruition. In Iraq, all we’ve seen from our preventive war is a widening of the violence.
How does this pertain to Israel’s preventive war on Hezbollah and Hamas? Clearly, neither of these organizations offers any physical threat to Israel—certainly not of the same magnitude as the threat Israel offers to them. If Hezbollah or Hamas felt threatened by the possible extinction of their Lebanese or Palestinian citizens, either by death or subjugation, would we sanction an attack by them on Israel (say, with nuclear weapons that they had obtained from Iran)? My answer would be, no, and that such an attack on Israel would be immoral. If we generalize on this, then Israel’s attack on Southern Lebanon is also immoral. If the Israelis say, as they have, that they must clear Southern Lebanon of Hezbollah militants, then their war is being fought for the same reasons that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Germans invaded Poland. They need the extra land for their own protection. If we think that the Japanese and Germans waged immoral wars, then the same must be said for Israel.
The only way I see for Israeli defenders to respond is to make an exceptionalist claim, in the manner that the United States government attempts to do for Iraq. They actually do this by pointing out that they are the only democratic state in the Middle East (save for Lebanon, whose democracy is now in tatters), and that the Arabs surrounding them are uncultured fanatics who are stuck in the middle ages. Bernard Lewis has been making this claim for 50 years, and has been deflecting all criticism of Israel’s policies as being “anti-Semitic,” forgetting to mention that Arabs are Semites, too. Even if we ignore the implicit racism involved, I don’t see any moral force in this exceptionalist claim. Israel is not a superpower, despite possessing nuclear weapons, and it clearly does not want the same democracy enjoyed by Israelis to be enjoyed by Palestinians, as we have witnessed with its treatment of Hamas. Despite the fiery rhetoric, there is no solid evidence that any Arab leader ever threatened to eliminate the state of Israel. All the Arabs and Palestinians have been asking for, through several peace initiatives up to the Oslo accords, has been a fair distribution of land—land that Israel apparently does not want to relinquish. In fact, the land that Israel is now clearing in Southern Lebanon, up to the Litani River, has been sought by Israel for some time. It was Ben-Gurion’s dream to have that as Israel’s northern border, but up until now it could not be done. My conclusion is that Israel’s preventive war is being fought for economic and political reasons and for more land, not really for self-defense; and therefore, like the U.S.war in Iraq, it is an immoral war.
*(Dr. Leonard Carrier received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Miami in ’56 and ’58, respectively, and his Ph.D from Stanford in 1967. He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the University of South Florida (Tampa) before spending the rest of his teaching and research career (29 years until 2000) at the University of Miami. )
