Editor's Note: Shalom Schwartz, an esteemed Professor of Psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, is the author of numerous cross-cultural research studies and an active member of numerous international professional organizations. 
This article is the continuation of part I, printed in the July issue of psst! magazine.

Certainly our government's policies, especially its obstinacy about removing settlements, contributed to the circumstances that led to this war. The growing evidence is that the Palestinian Authority, with Arafat at its center, fanned the flames that made a counter-attack inevitable. It is now clear that many suicide bombers and other killers of civilians were sent by his own organization and that he signed-off  on payments to them and to those who prepared these human bombs. All the while he denied any involvement and claimed he did not control the suicide bombers. Without these acts, the devastation would never have occurred.

Before empathizing with the weak in this war and condemning the strong, we should ask whether each side made an effort to fight it in ways that would minimize killing of innocent bystanders. Israel claims that officers repeatedly issued clear orders to soldiers to minimize civilian casualties and that this goal played a critical role in the planning and carrying out of actions. Many Israeli soldiers report that they received such orders. Does the evidence support or contradict this claim? Reports from both Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations describe incidents in which Israeli soldiers preferred to protect their own lives rather than to risk them in order to protect Palestinians. For example, in some areas where Palestinian snipers hid in civilian homes, Israeli soldiers marched civilians ahead of them as they moved from house to house to search for armed Palestinians, caches of weapons, and chemical laboratories to produce bombs. There are also reliable reports that Israeli snipers shot and sometimes killed curfew breakers who later turned out to  be innocent. I deplore such actions. An Israeli army sniper also killed an Israeli soldier who threw something out of the window of a Palestinian hour he was searching and then put his head out of the window, mistaking him for a potentially dangerous Palestinian fighter who was preparing to attack.

Did Israeli soldiers generally try to avoid civilian casualties? The strongest evidence is the general battle plan of the army. Israel has planes that could have flattened the areas of cities in which resistance was heavy by bombing from the air, as the Americans did in Afghanistan and as modern armies around the world have done. This would, of course, have killed many civilians. It was not done. Instead slower and much more dangerous house to house searches were carried out, civilians were warned to leave areas of active combat, and soldiers moved through the streets on foot. Tanks were indeed used, and they did more property damage than I can justify. But their appearance also led to the quick surrender of armed Palestinians in most cities and towns, reducing the amount of combat in which people on all sides, including civilians would have been injured or killed.

Next page in this article
1 | 2 | 3

ONLINE MESSENGER  
Discount Books Up to 90% off!
LiveChat
Online Business Cards  
Proxy Server Safer Browsing
Taliban-Date
Weather Forecast by email
Clamp’IT UBE Members
More…

John Lennon AI Project
saucy Jacky™ As seen on TV!
About…