(1) it seems to me that, morally, the distinction you are questioning between military and civilians is not questionable only in civil wars, which i think are mistakenly seen as somehow "different" . . .
(2) it seems to me the real point is not the issue of war crimes, but rather that this kind of behavior on the part of the state of israel would have to constitute terrorism as terrorism has been (more or less? hm) defined by The Good Guys, namely, deliberate attacks on (defenseless) non-combatants outside the grounds of any ostensible battlefield. even if we want to forget the hotel bombing etc. etc. etc. in israel's pre/history, this is right here and now and can't be dodged with some sort of historically relativizing moral gymnastics.
let's not get distracted by the semantics of war crimes legalese and so weasel our way out of addressing the main points.
anyway, my two cents.
jeff
On Wednesday, March 6, 2002, at 03:07 PM, Nathan Newman wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "joanna bujes" <joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com>
>
> -Killing (or otherwise physically harming) the innocent families of
> those
> -who commit hostile
> -acts is a mark of the most barbaric regimes in history, including the
> most
> -barbaric of all. It
> -is, of course, a war crime, and those who order, execute or recommend
> it
> -may find
> -themselves one day before the International Criminal Court at The
> Hague.
>
> So is Hamas committing war crimes? The term war crimes is being thrown
> around with a bit of abandon. Civil wars are actually largely outside
> UN
> conventions on war crimes, except for the singular exception of
> genocide,
> and until Palestine is recognized as an independent state, all the
> legalese
> around "war crimes" is kind of misguided -- remember, they were going
> after
> Sharon only for his acts in Lebanon back in 1982 because of this basic
> international rule over war crimes.
>
> One reason that civil wars have problems fitting into easy
> civilian/military
> target definitions is that such internal wars have a tendency to involve
> whole populations in the war, with no simple division between civilian
> and
> military actors. That is the basic logic of Hamas's terrorism and
> Schiff's
> response.
>
> I happen to oppose both approaches, but not for the simplistic argument
> that
> civilians on each side have no responsibility for the murders of each
> respective population,which is demonstrably false, but because such
> terror
> just perpetuates a cycle of endless violence without exit for either
> side in
> the present Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>