“Rights Watchdog, Lost in the Mideast”
By ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN

“AS the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide….”

Read the rest here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Thank you for you response and I am pleased to see we are all friends again.

Regarding the comment about turning on a light switch on the Sabbath, I used that example on purpose. The point I was trying to make was that if someone is religious they will try and follow religious law and morals irrespective and I see nothing really wrong with that, or at least not from the Jewish and Christian traditions. You state, in comparison to Maimonides opinion:

I see no harm being done to anyone if someone refrains from turning on a light switch.

The implication of your point is that there is harm being done if someone follows Maimonides. Let us recall Maimonides point that I quoted earlier: “Let the whole Jewish community perish but do not surrender one Jew to the murderers.” This is an extreme thing that he is saying but put simply it could be interpreted as an argument that there are no circumstances when someone should hand over an innocent Jew to a murderer. Now, you do not have to agree with this, but the point is, if someone was religious and they were told to hand over an innocent person to be murdered they simply may not do it irrespective of the consequences. One does not need to be religious to know that killing of innocents is wrong. I pass absolutely no moral judgement on them one way or the other since I have no idea what it must have actually been like to have been a Judenrat leader, but we know that some committed suicide rather than hand over innocents to be murdered, that is how strongly they felt about the point.

Michael Walzer took the trouble to think about this prohibition of killing innocents and he wondered whether there could be exceptions where it is morally acceptable. As a base, he used a phrase from Winston Churchill, there could be a “supreme emergency” where the killing of innocents (or more precisely non-combatants) is allowed. A supreme emergency would exist if you have risk to your own life. He takes the example of British cities being bombed by the German air force early in WWII. At that point, if Churchill felt there was a fear that Britain would have been overrun by Nazis and the only way to stop it was to bomb German cities which would involve innocent civilians being deliberately targeted, this is an example of a Supreme Emergency where such an action would be morally acceptable. Contrary to this, and somehow I do not think you will like his argument, he considers the bombing of Dresden by the British air force in 1945. He argues that by this point in time, Britain was not at risk of being overrun by Nazis, therefore there was no Supreme Emergency and thus the bombing of Dresden was not morally acceptable.

You ask the following:

did just war theory lead to instituting of these courts, and are these courts totally divorced from politics?

I actually do not know the answer, but I think it is fair to say that whoever drew up the Geneva Convention had some grounding in the morals and ethics in war that Just War Theorists and other moral ethicists discuss. Law does not tend to come out of nowhere. As I commented earlier, the Israeli army have used philosophers to assist in drafting their army code and I would be surprised if the US or British army were any different.

I wish to comment on your point:

I have my doubts that teaching morality to soldiers on the battle field will significantly change behavior since it seems to me that most soldiers act according to moral principles they grew up with and learned at home, school, and their community.

I am not sure your logic follows here. I doubt that many people who are taught morals at home, (unless they come from a military family) get a lecture from mummy and daddy about how to treat enemy captured soldiers and whether enemy spies can be treated differently to enemy soldiers in uniform. If however the 17 year old who joined the army can learn morals from school at the age of say 16 why can they not also learn from someone who teaches them in the army at 17? Moreover, if they are learning morals from “their community” and if they are, for example in a Jewish community, then maybe it is things like Maimonides opinions that they have learnt! We can also note that there are a number of cases, as I am sure you are aware, where people who sign up for the army do so in part to get away from their family and environment as they have not been fortunate in that regard. The army can do a great job with some young men who come from families where the father is in jail, the mother is addicted to drugs and many of their friends are in gangs. For these people,the morals they learn in the army maybe the best morals they ever learn.

McMahan discusses the killing of Israeli settlers in the West Bank on pages 222-224 of Killing in War. If you click on the link below, and then click on the further link “page” you should be at p.222 and you will be able to read the full discussion:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HJzzX-cMJr4C&pg=PP1&dq=mcmahan+killing+in+war#v=onepage&q=entirely%20counterintuitive&f=false

I bring to your attention his concluding sentence on the matter:

Thus the instances in which Palestinians have infiltrated a settlement at night and killed children sleeping in their beds are instances of murder for terrorist purposes and nothing more.

@Petra,

Thanks for your response and for bringing to my attention the earlier debate on this blog on Kasher & Yadlin. It is a shame I missed that debate - although, in case you had not noticed - it is still continuing in the New York Review of Books. There have been a number of subsequent exchanges in that journal since that post and I detail them below in the event that you (or anyone else) is interested and missed them:

June 11, 2009
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22761
August 13, 2009
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22979
September 24, 2009
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23091
October 8, 2009
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23143

In my opinion, the really interesting paper by Kasher & Yadlin is not the one in SAIS Review referred to in the the blog entry that you linked to but the following one:

Asa Kasher and Amos Yadlin, “Military Ethics of Fighting Terror: An Israeli Perspective,” Journal of Military Ethics, Vol 4 No.1, 2005 pp.3-32

In fact, much of that journal issue is devoted to discussing that paper. As they say in response to the comments on the article, their own idea may be the major elements of something that could be called, “The Doctrine of Just War of Fighting Terror.”

I would say that the writings of Walzer and McMahan should not simply be dismissed as “ivory-tower musings.” In the acknowledgements to Killing in War, McMahan says:

I have also learned a great deal from discussions with former and present officers in the Philosophy faculty at the United States Military Academy.

He names a number of these people and credits them:

For both their philosophical insights and their guidance in helping me to achieve a better understanding of the soldier’s perspective.

I think the importance is that whether it is in Israel, the United States or the United Kingdom, philosophers are doing their bit to assist soldiers in moral dilemmas they may come up across in the course of their duty. By upholding a moral standard, soldiers may not just fight well, but also set an example to others. It would be a terrible shame if an army had no morals and actions such as those notoriously committed by Second Lieutenant William Calley became common place.

Since I don’t intend to get involved in any more far reaching discussions about just war theory I will only answer a couple of points you made here:

First, your comment about the way Maimonides’ views were used during the Holocaust is new to me and I thank you for the information.

Second, comparing discussions about turning on a light switch on Saturday to discussions about surrendering Jews to an enemy is illogical and is guilty of the logical fallacy of faulty comparison. (I am not frum (religious) but I see no harm being done to anyone if someone refrains from turning on a light switch.)

“Whilst you have been attacking Just War Theorists, you have already come up with a moral opinion yourself (incidentally, one that is in line with Just War Theory and the law of war) that soldiers should “avoid civilian casualties whenever and wherever possible; to never target them deliberately.” But you have not elaborated further than that. If the intentional killing of civilians may make a soldier liable to tried and found guilty of war crimes, then in what circumstances can he kill civilians? If soldiers know this in advance then it may make decisions on a battle field much easier.”

I deliberately refrained from “elaborating further” because as a former GI (Vietnam War era) I do know that soldiers are told not to follow illegal orders. This was before international courts charged with examining war crimes. We didn’t need these courts to tell us that it is wrong to kill civilians.

Btw: did just war theory lead to instituting of these courts, and are these courts totally divorced from politics? These are genuine questions as I don’t know the answer.

“Soldiers are taught to obey orders but what if they are given an illegal order? They must be taught what is right and what is wrong and it does not just involve “killing civilians” since, for example, prisoners of war,captured enemy soldiers and their treatment must also be considered. They are not civilians but the Geneva Convention has numerous clauses about prisoners of war. What is known as the Nuremberg Defence: “I was only obeying orders,” is not recognised as a defence to war crimes.”

True enough, but ironically, the Nuremberg defense was pretty hypocritical as Goldhagen has shown in his book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.” Many Germans officers and soldiers exceeded orders when it came to killing Jews. They didn’t just follow orders and when they were at a certain point told not to kill they kept on killing anyway. The notion that most German Nazi soldiers killed Jews because they were “following orders” seems not to have been the case.

Anyway, I have my doubts that teaching morality to soldiers on the battle field will significantly change behavior since it seems to me that most soldiers act according to moral principles they grew up with and learned at home, school, and their community.

DavidS: “Did anyone notice that McMahan thinks that there is at least a good argument to be made for the morality of killing Israeli settlers?”

He also said that Gazan civilians who support Hamas had no case for complaining about “civilian casualties” I took his comment as an attempt to balance his views and not to seem too pro Israeli.

He also stated that killing of settlers might be allowed but not their children and I assume women and old people.

Still, like David I found his comments a bit too much off the cuff. It didn’t seem to me that he really thought about it very closely.

What I also find strange was that one of the questioners assumed that killing Israeli civilians may be ok because all Israelis serve in the military.

Professor McMahan disagreed but I had the feeling that the audience was pro Palestinian and that the Professor was trying to placate them by including Israeli settlers who carry guns in his list of allowable targets.

The speech showed me how difficult it is to divorce moral war theory from politics.

– with some interesting exchanges.
It won’t surprise you if I say that in this debate, it was the Kasher/Yadlin arguments that I found convincing, not least perhaps because from an Israeli perspective, it’s easy to see that they are trying to solve real dilemmas and address real situations, as opposed to ivory-tower musings which e.g. Walzer’s writings on the subject often seem to be from my pov.

He did say that, however, since he also said that Gazan civilians who support Hamas had no case for complaining about “civilian casualties” I took his comment as an attempt to balance his views and not to seem too pro Isralei.

He also stated that not killing of settlers might be allowed but their children and I assume women and old people.

Still, like David I found his comments a bit too much off the cuff. It didn’t seem to me that he really thought about it too closely.

What I also find strange was that one of the questioners assumed that killing Israeli civilians may be ok because all Israelis serve in the military.

Professor McMahan disagreed but I had the feeling that the audience was pro Palestinian and that the Professor was trying to placate them by including Israeli settlers who carry guns in his list of allowable targets.

The speech showed me how difficult it is to divorce moral war theory from politics.

Thank you for your response. I do not have any problem with the fact that you are no fan of the Just War theory. In fact, I think there are some good reasons to be critical of it, not least the idea of equal morality of combatants that Jeff McMahan has demonstrably shown.

I would say that blaming moral philosophers in the Just War field for being responsible for the taking of Nicholson Baker’s “Human Smoke” seriously, is perhaps taking things a little too far!

I am not saying that Maimonides cannot be criticised; in my earlier contribution, I specifically stated, “I am not saying that you have to agree with Maimonides…” All I am saying is that it is Maimonides view is an important one that people do take seriously. The idea of not surrendering a single Jew to murderers and Maimonides opinion, in their dire situation, became something that was discussed by Judenrat leaders in the Holocaust when they were being forced to hand over lists of names of Jews for “deportation.” Indeed, this opinion of Maimonides was even quoted by Judge Benjamin Halevey in the Kasztner Trial, one of the most famous court cases in the history of the State of Israel.

As a side note, this opinion of Maimonides does not mean one cannot fight back, the opinion is purely about surrendering Jews. You may think that the opinion is “fantastical” but when it comes to opinions or facts on Jewish morals or law, some people think that rules about not turning on a light switch on Sabbath is ridiculous, but for those who take such matters seriously, it is important.

Whilst you have been attacking Just War Theorists, you have already come up with a moral opinion yourself (incidentally, one that is in line with Just War Theory and the law of war) that soldiers should “avoid civilian casualties whenever and wherever possible; to never target them deliberately.” But you have not elaborated further than that. If the intentional killing of civilians may make a soldier liable to tried and found guilty of war crimes, then in what circumstances can he kill civilians? If soldiers know this in advance then it may make decisions on a battle field much easier.

Soldiers are taught to obey orders but what if they are given an illegal order? They must be taught what is right and what is wrong and it does not just involve “killing civilians” since, for example, prisoners of war,captured enemy soldiers and their treatment must also be considered. They are not civilians but the Geneva Convention has numerous clauses about prisoners of war. What is known as the Nuremberg Defence: “I was only obeying orders,” is not recognised as a defence to war crimes.

Whilst I am not disputing that mistakes get made on the battlefield and under no circumstances do I think that a lecture room is where soldiers can learn all they need to know about war, soldiers still need some guidance and moral values.

As I have said earlier, Just War Theorists try and consider possibilities that may come up, for example nuclear war. So far, these discussions have remained in books, lecture rooms and discussed my military strategic leaders and others. I hope we can agree that it stays that way.

I thank you for this exchange.

Now, in both these cases, my disagreement with him may be based on different assessments of the facts rather than a matter of principle. With respect to the bombings, he seems to think that it would have been possible to force Japan to some kind of acceptable surrender without either an invasion or the atomic bombings and that the decision makers in this case knew or should have known this. I think that this position is ridiculous, based both on the general character of Japanese fascism and militarism and on the specific situation that the US faced at the time. With respect to settlers, McMahan’s claim that “most of them carry arms”, a claim that I find highly unlikely, suggests to me that he has no real acquaintance with the complexities of the situation and is subscribing to a stereotype of the settlers that is common in left-wing and academic circles.

In either case, McMahan’s failure to make a reasonable assessment of the actual situation suggests that he really is living in an ivory tower and that makes me much less inclined to take him serioursly.