OPINION:
As a recent op-ed from the Jewish Policy Center reads, “The main lesson for Israel from the hideous Hamas attacks suffered over the weekend is a simple one: Terrorists can’t be managed.”
At the end of World War II, the issue of terrorists was considered. The Geneva Conventions decided these feral psychopaths never met the criteria for requiring protection. Nor did they meet the definitions of militia, armed forces or volunteer corps. Instead, they were so dissociated from country and culture, so committed to butchery that they best matched the dictionary definition of virus.
Terrorists were not considered “insurgents” or “freedom fighters,” and when captured, they were certainly not considered prisoners of war. These killers were not members of organized resistance movements and they had no distinctive identifier. The Geneva Conventions found no category for defining terrorists and left them in outer darkness and beyond the pale.
Today, there is much misplaced anxiety for the loss of civilian lives in Gaza. The obvious reading of Articles 28 and 29 of the Fourth Geneva Convention would hold that Hamas is responsible for any civilian deaths in the areas it occupies.
Those civilians qualify as protected persons within the terrorists’ physical control and cannot be used to render certain points and areas immune from military operations.
NOLAN NELSON
Redmond, Oregon
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