ISRAEL/GAZA: Israel Should Make Amends to Civilians

Posted by Scott Paul, CIVIC Fellow based in New York City

It’s hard not to be inspired by the story of Izzeldin Aboul Aish.

A doctor who received his Master’s of Public Health from Harvard, Aboul Aish returned to Gaza to raise his daughters and help his people. He is widely known from his television appearances and practice in Israel.

Aboul Aish had always preached peace and bridge building. So it was a special outrage and injustice that Israeli tanks fired on his home as part of an operation to demolish buildings suspected of housing Hamas fighters. Three of his five daughters and his niece were killed.

A summary of his heartbreaking story:

During last summer’s siege of Gaza, tanks approached Aboul Aish’s house. He quickly drew up a list of high-level contacts in the IDF and called a few. The tanks shortly withdrew from his home.

The following day, though, Aboul Aish wasn’t so lucky. Israeli tanks shelled his home and killed three of his daughters and his niece before he had a chance to call his friends in the IDF.

He placed this call to his friend, a TV news host, immediately after the attack.
(warning: this is deeply emotional and jarring).

Chilling.

Aboul Aish’s story of suffering is sadly not uncommon in Gaza. What is uncommon is Israel’s response to his tale of woe.

First, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he wept for Aboul Aish, a public show of sympathy we’re unaccustomed to seeing from policymakers in war. This week, Aboul Aish revealed that Israel has offered him compensation for his loss.

To my knowledge, and the knowledge of my colleagues at CIVIC, Israel has never before made such amends to a civilian victim of its military operations. Aboul Aish says he will use the funds to start a foundation to help Gazan women and girls. Amazingly, he refuses to lay blame or impugn the motives of either Israel or Hamas. Instead, he soldiers on, preaching peace and reconciliation to Jews, Christians, Muslims, and anyone else who will listen.

It’s clear that the decision to compensate Aboul Aish was driven partly by emotion and partly to satisfy public outrage and guilt in Israel. It shouldn’t end there. There’s a powerful case for Israel to make amends to all civilians they admit to harming by mistake. First, it’s clearly the right thing to do. Combat operations in war, even if conducted with the greatest possible degree of care, harm civilians. While no amount of compensation can ever make up for the loss of life, the Israelis should not leave civilians to pick up the pieces without help. They should internalize the human cost of their military operations.

Second, making amends to civilians is the smart thing to do. To this point, Palestinians have little reason to believe that Israelis aren’t simply indifferent to their suffering (Aboul Aish, whose faith compels him to assume everyone’s best intentions, is an exception). Indeed, Israelis have given them little reason to believe otherwise, prohibiting even the most basic supplies, such as building materials, from being brought into Gaza. Helping civilians sends the opposite message. It quells resentment, increases the potential for cooperation, and decreases the risk of retaliation. The United States, which maintains both compensation and humanitarian aid programs for war victims in Afghanistan and Iraq, is recognizing the benefits of this policy of compassion. Israel should follow suit.

At the moment, when states engage in operations that have disproportionate impacts on civilians or deliberately target them, these civilians may receive reparations for the state’s breach of International Humanitarian Law. But if warring parties engage in lawful military acts that result in “collateral damage,” the international community says, “tough luck.” I’m currently working on a new campaign to change that, to create a global expectation that all warring parties must help where they have harmed, whether or not they’ve broken the laws of war (to get in touch on this, my contact these days is my first name at civicworldwide.org). Israel, which claims that the vast majority of its civilian victims are regrettable but legal casualties, should take the lead here.

Let’s be clear: making amends to unintentional victims would only solve a small part of the problem. Israel claims many of the injured civilians are actually shielding Hamas fighters; as such, these civilians would not be eligible for compensation. Nor would amends be offered by Hamas to the Israeli civilians it intentionally targets. Making amends would, however, bridge a small part of the gap between the parties and ease some of the suffering that everyone wants to avoid. In other words, it’s a start.

It took the compelling story of Aboul Aish for Israel to compensate a civilian victim. Making amends to all civilians would be one way to honor his courage, not to mention an act of intelligence, decency and compassion.

AFGHANISTAN: U.S. Too Quick To Justify Afghan Deaths (The Huffington Post)

By Sarah Holewinski, Executive Director of CIVIC

Conclusions from the US investigation into the May 4th airstrikes in Afghanistan are leaking out. It appears that US personnel made mistakes–resulting in civilian deaths–by not sticking to their own stringent guidelines on the use of force. After eight years in Afghanistan, American forces finally have good rules in place to minimize civilian deaths, but didn’t stick to them when they counted the most, in the heat of battle.

So why are US officials still blaming the Taliban? Lt. Commander Christine Sidenstricker said in Kabul today, “The fact remains that civilians were killed because the Taliban deliberately caused it to happen. They forced civilians to remain in places they were attacking from.”

Let’s break this down to the nuts and bolts: Taliban tactics are egregious. They put civilians in harm’s way. They are violating international laws and everyone knows it. This makes the US military’s job a whole lot harder.

But regardless of what the other side does in war, the US military has responsibilities to avoid civilians and obey its targeting restrictions.

If you want to talk strategy instead of international law, avoiding civilian deaths is smart. Everyone knows that too. That’s why the US military put in place rigorous rules of engagement that ushered in several months of far fewer airstrike casualties. In Farah Province on May 4th, those rules could have saved lives. In one case, a plane given the OK to attack the Taliban didn’t confirm its target before dropping bombs. That might have given the Taliban time to flee and civilians time to enter the target zone. In another, buildings housing militants were struck, but the “imminent threat” required to green light for bombing wasn’t there.

The new US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, told the Senate this week: “In addition to the tragic loss of life, I am acutely aware of the negative repercussions resulting from civilian casualties.” He’s got it right: civilian deaths breed anger. But so do immediate denials of civilian harm in incidents like Farah. US Commanders need to understand this quickly. President Obama and Secretary Clinton appropriately expressed their regret for the Afghans burying their dead, but other US officials accused villagers and the Afghan Government of exaggerating the numbers killed.

And now to continue to downplay the US role even after the results of this investigation are made public, they’re literally adding insult to injury.

AFGHANISTAN: Senators listen to victims stories

Posted by Erica G from Kabul

This past week in Afghanistan, three US Senators — Patrick Leahy (VT),  Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Mark Warner (VA) – used one afternoon of a packed Congressional assessment visit to sit down with a Afghan family affected by the conflict.  They heard about the family’s experiences and help received through the Afghan Civilian Assistance Program (ACAP), a USAID-sponsored program that provides livelihood support, home reconstruction, job training, or other in-kind assistance to unintended victims of international forces. The Senators invited me along, as the former CIVIC fellow, to discuss broader victim assistance and compensation efforts in Afghanistan. We visited the survivors of a family who were targeted in a nighttime raid by Afghan and international forces in September 2008. During the raid, a grenade had been lobbed into one of the rooms of the home, killing all but the elderly grandfather and one 6-year-old son.

As many of you know from past CIVIC blogs, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down with many of the ACAP beneficiaries in my year as a CIVIC fellow in Afghanistan. Each experience is unique and memorable in its own way, but I have to say that there was something special about this Congressional visit. The ACAP program was originally championed by Senator Leahy and his staff. Without his continual support, it might not still be in existence. Watching Senator Leahy himself greeting the family, I remembered the many families who told me to pass their gratitude and their thanks to the people who created and supported the ACAP program. And here was the man himself talking to one of the beneficiaries. I remembered the many war victims who asked me to share what had happened to them with those who had the power to make changes. Even if for only an hour, here were three Senators who listened and took their stories and their message to heart.

SRI LANKA: ‘This is too much to take. Why is the world not helping?’

Originally printed in The Guardian

May 12, 2009

VIDEO BY THE ORGANIZATION WAR WITHOUT WITNESS:  Click here

Yesterday a shell was reported to have hit a temporary hospital in the so-called no-fire zone in north-east Sri Lanka, killing 47 people. Vany Kumar, 25, works at the temporary medical facility in Mullaivaikal East primary school, which is caught between government troops and the last remnants of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). Here, in a telephone interview with the Guardian, she describes life on the front line.

This is really a disaster. I don’t know really how to explain it. At the moment, it is like hell.

Most of the time we live in the shelter. There is not enough medical equipment, so it is really difficult to treat people. Food is a problem as well. There is no food at all here, there are no vegetables and no rice, they just eat whatever they can find, that’s all. The hospital is located in a primary school so there is only one room. We just try our best to achieve what we can.

I was in the office working [when the shell hit]. It was definitely a shell, there is no doubt about that. I was about 20 metres away, and I was sure that it landed inside the hospital, so I went to the shelter. I got the news from the doctors that there were people injured and dead. There was constant shelling so I couldn’t leave the shelter.

For us, shell bombing is just a normal thing now. It is like an everyday routine. We have reached a point where it’s like death is not a problem at all. No one has any feeling here now, it’s like everyone says, “Whatever happens, it happens.” That’s it, that’s the mentality every single person has here.

The most terrible thing that I have seen was when a mother had a bullet go through her breast and she was dead and the baby was still on the other side of the breast and the baby was drinking her milk, and that really affected me. I was at that place where it happened.

There is just too much to take. Children have lost parents, parents have lost children, it’s just a common thing now.

[The shelling] is definitely coming from the government side, that can be sure, because it is only a small area on the LTTE side and from the sound and from the distance I can surely say it is from the government side.

I don’t care about the government, I don’t care about the LTTE, my concern is the civilians because through all these problems they are the people affected.

The government or the LTTE, they have got to do something, and if not, I can’t imagine what will happen next. Both parties have got to have a ceasefire. I think the international [community] has to either come into the country or get both parties to stop the fighting and start thinking about the civilians living here. Every single person living here asks why the international [community] is not doing anything.

I really want to come to the UK but I don’t know. I’m talking to you now, but maybe tomorrow I’ll be dead.

ISRAEL/GAZA: Will Israel Help Gaza’s Victims? (The Huffington Post)

By Sarah Holewinski, Executive Director of CIVIC

Ask any civilian who has lost a loved one, a limb, or a home in war and they’re likely to tell you they never received anything for their suffering. I’ve always found it shocking that international law doesn’t generally require warring parties to help the people they’ve harmed.

Take for example the family of 60-year old Fayiz Ad-Daya. He was killed along with twenty of his relatives on January 6, 2009, when an Israeli warplane roared over Gaza attempting to bomb a house nearby that allegedly contained a weapons cache. Fayiz’s family was killed instead, with victims ranging in age from four (granddaughter Kawkab) to sixty (Fayiz himself). An Israeli military official admitted it made a mistake in hitting the wrong house and said this “is bound to happen during intensive fighting.”

The Al-Daya family thus joins a long list of millions of civilians destroyed in war. Like so many before them, the surviving members will likely never receive a formal apology or compensation for their losses.

When a similar mistake was made by the US military in Afghanistan back in 2001, they didn’t pay any compensation either to a woman widowed by a missile intended for three miles east. Eight graves are lined up near her home, representing her husband and children. I’ve heard so many stories like this. And then a few years later, the US learned it had to do things differently: a compensation system now exists for “mistakes” and unintended casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The system doesn’t work perfectly, but making amends to these civilians is the decent thing to do. It is befitting a nation like the US that prides itself on abiding by international laws that obligate respect for civilians (as Israel has claimed it does too).

Plenty of people have a bone to pick with Israel over this winter’s war with Hamas. And by bone I mean serious allegations linking Israeli Defense Forces to war crimes and violations of international laws governing armed conflict. All of the details have to be sorted out — the investigations, witness accounts, military records, photos and media reports. In the meantime, the UN estimates that three-quarters of the population still needs some form of aid. They’re talking about the basic stuff like food, water, shelter and healthcare.

So while the investigators press on and the applicable laws are figured out, here’s an idea: help these people.

Billions have been pledged from donor countries to help Gazans, but Israel has blocked all but a trickle from reaching across the closed borders. Hamas has played a role in the devastation too and Gazans are now being punished broadly (if not intentionally by Israel than certainly by default) for the acts of a few. Israel’s reticence comes from not wanting aid to go to people who will turn around and support Hamas; but who do they think they’re turning Gaza’s children toward by blocking life-saving aid?

If all that seems too daunting, start with the Al-Daya family.