The moralist

When your enemies do not follow the rules of war... An eye-opening interview with the man who helps set the IDF’s ethical parameters

Tel Aviv University philosophy professor Asa Kasher co-authored the first IDF Code of Ethics and continues to work on the moral doctrines that shape the parameters of our army’s actions.

He has taught at the IDF colleges since the late 1970s and for a long time was the only professor talking to officers about military ethics. When the IDF decided to try writing a Code of Ethics, he was approached and appointed head of a team of generals that wrote a draft and then the final version of the 1994 code, which was approved by chief of staff Ehud Barak and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

In the wake of Richard Goldstone’s belated withdrawal of the accusation that Israel deliberately targeted civilians in Operation Cast Lead, and the fresh round of moral argument the judge’s climbdown has provoked, I contacted Kasher to discuss the IDF’s ethics. I wanted to understand the thinking that underpins IDF dos and don’ts, the problematics of grappling with enemies that do not follow any such rules, and the gaping discrepancy, Goldstone’s reversal notwithstanding, between most Israelis’ certainty of the IDF’s morality and the international diplomatic, media and legal community’s relentless opprobrium.

This is an issue that frequently comes up in any discussion of the Just War Doctrine (JWD). How do you deal with an enemy that doesn't "follow the rules?" An enemy who refuses to abide by the JWD? Do you accept defeat because will fight more viciously? Or do you abandon the JWD yourself?

It gets even more complicated when the enemy is not a conventional army, which can be identified, but instead is a terrorist group that refuses to identify itself, and hides among non-combatants. Can you abide by JWD and still win?

I know of no good answer to this situation. I think the interviewee in this case has laid out the case as well as it can be done, but not everyone will agree with it.

This is an issue that frequently comes up in any discussion of the Just War Doctrine (JWD). How do you deal with an enemy that doesn't "follow the rules?" ... Can you abide by JWD and still win? I know of no good answer to this situation.

The answer lies not in your enemy, but how you define war for yourself - and the conditions under which you wage it.

Because of the desire for presidents and congresses and prime ministers and parliaments to keep getting re-elected, a common misperception has arison between a police action and a war.

A war is not a police action.

Here's the difference:

What we are actually doing in the middle east, our extremely limited rules of engagement, our open defamation of our own culture in the face of the enemy to appease Muslims, our policy of being seriously harmed or even killed before we respond with any lethal force, defines a police action - in fact.

What the police are doing to the citizens of this country, in no-knock raids involving stormtrooper tactics complete with grenades, empty-magazine policies, absolute officer indemnification under any circumstances for unauthorized beatings and killings, and seizures of all property upon unwarranted suspicion, seizure of personal data, as well as mandatory sexual molestation and psychoemotional trauma programming at airports, define a war - in fact.

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