TORTURE: ASIAN AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | JUNE-AUG 2013
VOLUME 02 NUMBER 02 & 03
Norman Finkelstein is an American scholar, political activist, and author. He is an expert on the IsraelPalestine Conflict, the politics of the Holocaust, and the life and beliefs of Mahatma Gandhi. He earned his PhD in Political Science from Princeton University and has held teaching positions at a number of different universities. Since speaking out against the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Finkelstein has been a vocal critic of Israeli and American military policies, especially as they apply to Palestine. He spoke with Eric Bailey from Torture Magazine on August 2, 2013.
Bailey: As a human rights magazine, one of our common themes is the targeting of civilians in conflict zones, but there is some disagreement about what defines a civilian or what constitutes targeting them. International Humanitarian Law defines a civilian as anyone who is not a member of a nation’s armed forces, but, despite the name, this isn’t accepted everywhere. It’s also disputed how International Humanitarian Law treats non-government militant groups and this dispute has allowed some countries to deny captured militants of their rights as prisoners of war. Some countries also extend civilian status to military personnel who are not on active duty. As it applies to the Arab-Israeli Wars, about which you have considerable expertise, the last few decades have largely involved fighting between the Israeli military and various non-government militias in Palestine and Lebanon, and all parties seem to define civilians differently. Israelis sometimes treat children throwing rocks as if they were actual guerrillas and sentence them to life in prison, while Palestinian militants claimed that a nightclub, popular with off duty Israeli soldiers, was a legitimate military target for a suicide bombing during the Second Intifada. Both for conflicts involving Israel and for warfare in general, do you have any recommendation for how to address these differences in how civilians and legitimate military targets are defined?
Finkelstein: Well, I’m going to give a relatively simple answer to a long question. These become highly technical issues and you can read through the scholarly literature on the subject and you end up nearly losing your mind trying to figure out what is and what isn’t permissible and how one does and does not define civilians and combatants. So in that situation, what do you do? I’m going to answer you in a matter of practicality: When you look through the human rights supports, (and here I’ll speak in my own domain of expertise, namely the Israel-Palestine Conflict) in fact, notwithstanding the dizzying amount of space that is expended trying to work out these definitions, in fact there is very little disagreement even between Israel and its critics on these definitions. Where they disagree is on the facts. “Were there civilians in this mosque or were there also combatants?” “Were there or weren’t there arms being stored in this school?” These come down to factual questions in most instances. I have read through the human rights literature on both sides. I’ve heard what groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Al-Haq allege, and I have read Israel’s responses, which are always very extensive. If you look at the allegations versus the rejoinders, there is very little debate on the technical, definitional side. Where there is debate is on the factual side.
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