Right of reply: Woode-Smith misses the mark on Dr Soni, Israel-Palestine
Neil Horne responds to Nicholas Woode-Smith's article on Dr Aayesha Soni and Israel-Palestine.
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By Neil Horne
Fiction maestro Nicholas Woode-Smith has offered a lively rebuttal to "the pro-Palestine movement", by way of a takedown of Dr Aayesha Soni's opinion piece in IOL. It's underwhelming.
He starts with the quasi-compassionate observation that "innocent Gazans are suffering, but this does not mean that Israel intended for this to happen." Yes Nick, it does. Don't take my word for it. Addressing the press in October 2023, Isaac Herzog, President of Israel said of Gaza "it is an entire nation out there that is responsible". Défense Minister Yoav Gallant added "I have released all the restraints". (Note "all"). The International Court of Justice cited these and other quotations of senior Israeli leaders when it concluded that Gaza Palestinians plausibly have rights to be protected from genocide, and that these rights were (as at January this year) under threat.
We also read that "Soni's claim that Israel is deliberately targeting healthcare workers and civilians has no evidence." Yet a November 2023 report from Human Rights Watch provides exactly this evidence. Woode-Smith does not deny the obvious – that Israel has attacked and rendered inoperable all the hospitals in Gaza, and that it has killed medical personnel and patients. What he questions is whether it was deliberate. But this question is taken off the table by the methods employed – blockades, raids, assassinations, bombings. These are not carried out accidentally. You don't unintentionally ambush an ambulance and kill its staff when they're cornered.
Citing Article 51 of the Geneva Convention Woode-Smith holds that from the point of view of international law "what matters, according to the International Humanitarian Law Database (IHL) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is that an attack of a clear military target does not harm civilians disproportionately to the expected military advantage."
Here he seeks refuge in the apparent latitude of the proportionality clause, inviting the reader to share his view that the displacement of close to 2 million people, the infliction of famine on hundreds of thousands and the killing of an estimated 35,000, is an "acceptable amount" (sic) of damage to pursue Hamas, an organisation estimated (by Israel itself) to have around 30,000 fighters. What he conveniently omits are clauses 4 and 5 in the same Article. Clause 4 states without qualification that "indiscriminate attacks are prohibited". Proportionality is not an issue here.
In 4. b) indiscriminate attacks are defined to include "those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective". In this regard, December 2023 analysis commissioned by news network CNN detected evidence of more than 500 detonations of 2000-pound bombs over the civilian districts of Gaza. The weapons, the network reports, have a lethal fragmentation radius the size of 58 soccer fields. CNN quotes American lawyer John Chappell "The use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area as densely populated as Gaza means it will take decades for communities to recover." Unfazed by these statistics, Woode-Smith invites us to believe that Israel had no knowledge of the effect of these mega-bombs – even after over 400 sorties – and could not therefore have had the requisite intent to violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks.
With regard to Hamas's alleged use of human shields (for which the only evidence offered is Israel's assurance), Article 51 is clear. There is no exception on the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks. That your (ostensible) target is embedded in a civilian population does not give you leave to carry out an indiscriminate attack in its general direction.
To lubricate his argument, Woode-Smith helps himself to a logico-legal fallacy or two: "The IDF is not intending to kill those civilians. The target is Hamas. But due to the unfortunate reality of war, civilians are present near to the attack." We'll dispense with the ludicrous assertion that civilians "are near to" densely populated apartment complexes, universities, schools and hospitals that form the targets of Israel's attacks. Woode-Smith mangles the notion of intent. When you realise that your action – whatever it is – risks killing someone, and proceed to act nevertheless, legally you are held to intend the death that arises. This according to the principle of dolus eventualis, recognised by Article 30 of the Rome Statute.
The author then takes aim at a straw man "It is unreasonable to assert that the IDF cannot neutralise a military target if any civilians are present.". It is indeed. And consequently, nobody says so. Here the author struggles with the difference between 2 million people and any civilians. Having established the unreasonableness of "any" he then builds (actually, just claims) a defence for attacking millions. This sleight-of-cack-hand does little to convey sincerity. Or cognitive competence.
"The fact that the IDF waited for twenty days to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, giving civilians just under three weeks to evacuate, indicates an intent to minimise innocent loss of life." This statement would have been understandable if it were not publicly known that Israel has imposed an illegal blockade of Gaza, preventing the evacuation so generously offered. Or if, at the time that Woode-Smith wrote this impassioned apologia, it was not known that Israel had commenced an attack on Rafah, the final refuge of the cornered Gazans, to which they had been directed by the leaflet campaign that Woode-Smith praises.
By way of creating much-needed context, Woode-Smith advises that "… it is irresponsible to just presume that Israel is a coloniser." Of course the author is right. But facts of history, not mere presumption, establish Israel's status as a coloniser. It illegally occupies and controls Palestine, a country from which it seized territory in the wars of 1948 and 1967, and through the creeping settlement activity since. Capture of territory through war is a violation of international law.
He goes on "many Israelis can trace their lineage in Israel for centuries and millennia." How this relates to the supposed lies of Dr Soni is not clear. But while we're off point, it bears remarking that Israel is the only country where a claim of citizenship is based on a lineage dating back millennia; even while the 2 million Palestinians descended from the forced expulsion of 75 years ago are denied their right to return to their seized homes and razed villages. In this regard Woode-Smith offers the dreamy "solution" that you just rename Jordan – the refuge of the Palestinian exiles – "then a two-state solution would already exist." Note that this suggestion to sacrifice Jordan's sovereignty comes from a writer who baulks at the claim that Israel is a colonial project.
Citing Eswatini, Lesotho and other landlocked countries, Woode-Smith notes " these are not deemed prisons just because they share a controlled border." He's right. And nobody deems Gaza a prison just because it has a controlled border. The difference is that none of these other countries are subject to a blockade by an occupying country. Gaza is. Basotho and Mozambicans can leave and re-enter their countries at will. Gazans cannot, and the overwhelming majority of Gazans are denied the right to leave. They spend their entire lives in an area 25km long and 5km across at its widest. Basotho and Mozambicans are free to trade with the rest of the world. South Africa does nothing to restrict their imports and exports. In contrast Israel controls exactly what enters and leaves Gaza. It has imposed fuel blockades, denying all petroleum and diesel. Israeli military documents released after pressure from Israeli advocacy group Gisha showed that the Israeli army restricted not only the categories of food imported (banning instant coffee, fresh meat, potato chips, biscuits and sweets inter alia) but restricted the aggregate caloric import to just above what would avert starvation – the so-called "starvation-plus" policy.
While offering a glass-two-thirds-full interpretation of Israel's denial of medical permits ("63% of medical permits were accepted"), Woode-Smith elides the statistics of medical personnel killed and hospitals destroyed. This is the essence of Soni's piece, and Woode-Smith has little to say about the murders of patients and medical personnel. Or the systematic destruction of hospitals.
Dr Soni cited an extensive investigation by the Washington Post into Israeli claims that Al Shifa – a hospital devastated by Israeli bombing raids and armed invasions – was used as a base for Hamas. The findings, published in late December 2023, show that insufficient evidence exists to back up that claim. Yet Woode-Smith rejects these findings, on the basis of confirming statements issued over a month earlier – from the White House. Woode-Smith may not know that the White House has provided military cover in the form of frigate deployments, military hardware and political cover to assist the Israeli genocide. Either way, offering corroborating statements from a co-conspirator to rebut evidentiary findings is sloppy. At best.
Woode-Smith, quoting Soni's claim that Israel's use of white phosphorus constitutes a war crime in Gaza (a claim that appears nowhere in the article he links) goes on to assure us that "white phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention" and "for its use to constitute a war crime it has to be used to intentionally harm civilians." Of course, not only registered chemical weapons are capable of being instrumental in the commission of war crimes. Secondly, the author's ill-conceived understanding of intent is again at play. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have released reports detailing the harmful effects of white phosphorus on civilians. The Israeli Défense Force must know, and therefore does know, of these often-lethal effects, and has a history of using the gas regardless. That's intent.
Woode-Smith correctly quotes Human Rights Watch on the Al Ahli Hospital explosion. Their report echoes his misgivings about the casualty numbers reported. Again, a reference to this explosion is not found in the Soni article to which his piece links. This might be due to a lapse in the editing but makes the remarks difficult to appreciate in the context of a reply to Soni.
The glaring scope of omissions in areas that Woode-Smith chose to delve into, his selective quoting of the law, and lapses in logic are disappointing in an article that billed itself as the rational antidote to an "emotive" piece by Dr Aayesha Soni. Perhaps the biggest disappointment in the article was that despite its promising headline and intro, we've not been served a single example of a Soni lie.
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