Q&A: Treatment of Gaza Detainees
Treatment of Gaza Detainees
Question
When soldiers detain a Gazan in Gaza based on some suspicion, what treatment do you think they should give him while he is with them—from giving him water and food in reasonable amounts to humiliating treatment or beatings?
B. And if it is known that the detainee is a terrorist, what treatment is it appropriate for the soldiers to give him?
Answer
Why is there any need to beat and humiliate him? The fact that you have some suspicion about him means you need to check whether there is anything to it.
From my perspective, morally, a terrorist should be shot in the head, and that's it. Not only a terrorist, but anyone affiliated with Hamas as well (including their clerks). But the orders prohibit this, unfortunately. Still, humiliation and torture should be weighed in terms of utility, and also in terms of law and orders, and not only in moral terms.
Discussion on Answer
As far as I'm concerned, it is their role. Just as in war, whose purpose is to kill as many terrorists as possible, I don't see why if we captured someone like that his status changes. Shoot him in the head after you've captured him. There is concern about mistakes, and one should try to prevent them, but that is also true in the fighting itself. Were it not for that, even entering Rafah or Khan Younis would not be an existential necessity and would not justify such massive killing without a trial.
In short, this is not about replacing the justice system, because terrorists do not deserve a trial. It is the soldiers' job to shoot them in the head, not to judge them. Even in cases that require clarification, I have no principled problem with field trials under a shortened procedure and then a bullet to the head.
So yes, it really is only the orders.
In the fighting itself, there is no choice but to shoot someone who is apparently a terrorist, otherwise he will shoot you. If it were possible (without harming our forces or the goals of the war) to detain everyone suspected of being a terrorist and put him on trial, don't you think there would be a moral obligation to do that?
Yes, but there is no such possibility.
Executing a bound person can brutalize the army, even if killing terrorists can be justified. Such brutalization will most likely bring other improper phenomena along with it.
I wouldn't want my son to take part in the spectacle of an execution, and I hope the IDF's rules of engagement do not change.
That's a different argument, and I definitely understand it.
I also see no moral obstacle to executing terrorists and their helpers, but that is neither the role nor the authority of soldiers. They are not supposed to replace the justice system, so this is not a matter of orders forbidding it.