However, there is an issue discussed in this article in a particularly effective and artistic way. How much risk must a soldier take to protect non-combatants? With the perpetual war in Israel-Palestine, there comes a time where every culture is tempted to make moral adjustments to prevent casualties in their soldiers. Is this wise? Is this moral. Watzman makes a point from a perspective of having been there.
New York Times
Sometime during the years that followed, the pointer and roadblock clearers evolved into something even more questionable: the human shield. Soldiers who had to raid a house or patrol a dangerous stretch of road would grab a nearby civilian and place him in front of them. Unlike the pointer, this civilian had no function other than to protect Israeli soldiers.
According to Btselem, the Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, the practice was not a grassroots initiative. It was an army policy, handed down to soldiers by their superior officers. The routine became much more widespread in April 2002, when Israel reoccupied the West Bank in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and other acts of violence against Israeli civilians.
In August of that year, a Palestinian man, Nidal Abu Mohsen, was killed while serving as a human shield. Israeli human rights organizations filed suit to halt the practice, and last October, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling banning its use.
Many in the army were upset. They felt they had been robbed of a tool that made their jobs safer, and which helped the commanders protect the lives of their soldiers.
But morality in combat is not just an abstract principle. It is an element of an army's strength. It is also essential to the society that sends the army into battle. If the safety of soldiers becomes the standard according to which an army designs its missions, the army will not have the courage to take risks. An army that does not take risks will be easily beaten by an opponent that does.
So it's not unreasonable — in fact, it's essential — for a society to demand that its army observe moral standards, even if the price to be paid is that more soldiers will be killed.
But sometimes eliminating one morally questionable practice opens the door to others. Once the Israeli Army banned the use of human shields, it had to come up with another way of extracting the Palestinian guerrillas from their hideouts. Hence the bulldozer. Of course, this method is much more dangerous for the family inside.
Israel can't stop hunting down its enemies. As long as there is no peace agreement with the Palestinians, the Jewish state must protect itself and its civilians. Can it do so without bulldozing houses that harbor terrorists?
Certainly it can. Raiding a house is a dangerous operation, but good intelligence, proper planning and careful execution can, in most cases, reduce the risk to a reasonable level. Commanders must be prepared to adapt their tactics to a range of constraints: terrain, weather, the training and equipment of their troops, and the enemy's positions, to name a few.
In some cases, the risk may be too great and the operation may be canceled or postponed until the next opportunity comes around. Good commanders don't give the enemy quarter, but they also don't send the Light Brigade charging unprotected at the enemy's guns.
Laws and moral rules are another set of constraints. Soldiers sometimes chafe at them because, unlike hills and bullets, they seem like artificial and unnecessary barriers. In a purely military sense, armies could better do their jobs if they could ignore the civilians on the battlefield. But we don't allow them to ignore civilians. And truth be told, I've never met a soldier who thinks armies ought to be able to maim and kill civilians with impunity.
When the Supreme Court banned the use of human shields, army commanders looked for another way to succeed with minimum risk. They decided on the bulldozer. Getting rid of the bulldozer may well mean that some terrorists will get away, and sadly, that more soldiers will die.
But in the final analysis, Israel and its soldiers will not be less secure. They will occupy the high ground, and that is the most secure place to be. MORE
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