Thus the modern laws of war are not only moral and humane, they are also sensible. All civilized nations recognize them. Breaking them is a crime.
At the beginning, the law forbidding the killing of the captured and the wounded applied only to uniformed soldiers. But in recent generations, the dividing line between uniformed soldiers and fighting civilians has become more and more blurred. Guerrillas, partisans, underground fighters, terrorists have become a part of recognized warfare. International law was widened to include them, too.
(What is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? I am proud of having discovered long ago the only scientific formula: "Freedom fighters are on my side, terrorists are on the other side.")
Thus we come back to Elor Azaria. Killing a wounded, neutralized enemy "terrorist" is a war crime, pure and simple. Wounded "terrorists" have to be treated. They are not enemies anymore, they are just injured human beings. Like the dying German in the movie.
SARAH NETANYAHU, the widely unpopular wife of our Prime Minister, recently said in an interview: "I believe that the Israeli Army is the most moral army in the world!"
She was only quoting an Israeli article of faith, repeated endlessly in all Israeli media, schools and political speeches.
Some might think that a "moral army" is an oxymoron. Armies are immoral by their very nature. Armies are there to make war, and war is basically immoral.
One might wonder how war has survived all these millennia. Humanity has made enormous progress in all fields of endeavor, yet war has endured. It seems that it is too deeply entrenched in human nature and human society.
When two citizens quarrel, they are no longer allowed to kill each other. They have to go to court and accept the verdict, based on a law accepted by all. Common sense would say that the same should apply to nations. When two states have a quarrel, they should go to an international court and accept its judgment peacefully.
How far are we from such a reality? Centuries? Millennia? An eternity?
In the 17th century, war was conducted by mercenaries, who fought for gain. Regiments sometimes changed sides on the battlefield. Soldiers were out for loot. The "Sack of Magdeburg" during the Thirty Years' War lives in German history to this very day. It was an orgy of looting, killing and rape in that town, west of Berlin.
A century later, war was conducted by professional national armies, and became a bit more civilized. The wars of Louis the 16th and Friedrich the Great left the civilian population largely unmolested.
With the French revolution, the modern mass armies came into being. General conscription became the rule, and is still in force in Israel and some other countries.
Conscription means that almost everybody serves side by side -- the good and the bad, the normal and the depraved. I have seen well-educated sons of "good families" commit terrible war crimes. When I met them again a few years later, they were law-abiding citizens, proud fathers of families.
My own observation was that if, in an ordinary squad, a couple of stable, moral soldiers face a few bad apples, with the majority of the soldiers in between, there is a chance that the better ones would set the tone.
But there is also the possibility that the better ones assimilate to the others, and in the end the whole lot become dehumanized. That is one good argument for conscientious objection.
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