Abstract
Transnational human rights networks span the globe, and have become more numerous and influential since the 1970s. Yet we still know relatively little about the strategic interaction between transnational advocates and their targeted state actors. Focusing on such a strategic interaction, we argue that transnational advocacy is less a diffusion of authority away from state actors than a change in the ways in which the politics of accountability is conducted between sophisticated state and non-state actors. In particular, we show that targeted actors (e.g. impugned states) can develop their own discursive capacities to challenge the facts and interpretations offered by transnational advocates and ‘turn the tables’ on them, expanding the scope of accountability to include the conduct of NGOs themselves. Empirically, we examine the efforts made by Human Rights Watch (HRW) to make the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accountable during the Second Lebanon War of 2006 and the Gaza war of 2008–9.
Keywords
Transnational advocacy and wars of words
Transnational human rights networks span the globe, and have become more numerous and influential since the 1970s. 1 In the name of humanitarian norms, these activists are involved in public advocacy campaigns of naming and shaming in order to pressure their targets into complying with human rights obligations. The efficacy of transnational activism is closely linked with the use of normative principles to transcend material power. As Keck and Sikkink explain, activists bring forward information and normative concerns which exert moral authority and consequently, it is hoped, influence decision-makers. 2 The initiatives of these networks are extended through the global media with emphasis on dramatic human events and human rights protection, which often coincide with the social values and identities emphasized by activists. 3 Whether through worldwide NGO campaigns against transgressing corporations or calls for war crimes accountability, the influence of transnational advocacy groups has been taken to indicate a general restructuring of international politics leading to a complex co-existence of state and non-state actors. 4
Yet we still know relatively little about the processes of strategic interaction between transnational advocates and their targeted state actors. 5 We argue that transnational activism is less a diffusion of authority away from state actors than a change in the way the politics of accountability is played between sophisticated state and non-state actors. Specifically, we focus on interaction between non-state and state actors vis-à-vis the legality of warfare, and claim political and legal stakes have the potential to steer the politics of transnational advocacy beyond a linear process of naming, shaming and compliance. Targeted actors (e.g. impugned states) can develop their own capacities and techniques which challenge ‘the facts’ and interpretations offered by transnational advocates. By so doing, they ‘turn the tables’ and expand the scope of accountability to include the conduct of transnational advocates themselves. Therefore, scrutiny by transnational advocates does not necessarily lead to an ideal sequence of naming, shaming and compliance. Rather, it can initiate a coercive language game where various non-state and state actors employ competing tactics of framing, rhetoric and legal argumentation to advance favourable characterizations of events on the ground.
The purpose of our paper, and our specific contribution to the literature on transnational advocacy, is to draw attention to a scenario we refer to as a ‘discursive quagmire’. By this we mean an evolution in the strategic interaction between state and non-state actors such that impugned states come to appreciate the power of discourse in the characterization of disputed happenings, such as wartime incidents. While the literature rightly credits transnational activists for having demonstrated the power of discourse in international politics, we should also appreciate that state actors can similarly employ advocacy to discursively ‘push back’ at the claims made by activist groups. Thus, advocacy and discursive influence are not means exclusive to non-state activists but are available to all actors engaged in strategic interaction. What is more, when both non-state and state actors prove adept at techniques of advocacy a kind of stalemate can ensue where no actor is able to command an outright characterization of events. In this way, by speaking of a ‘discursive quagmire’, we endeavour to take the analysis on NGO/state interaction beyond notions of ‘cheap talk’, ‘public relations’ or the ‘boomerang effect’, to focus upon the relational quality of discursive influence and the war of words which transnational advocacy can ultimately invite.
Empirically, we examine the efforts made by Human Rights Watch (HRW) to make the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) accountable under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) during the Second Lebanon War of 2006 (the Lebanon war) and Operation Cast Lead of 2008−9 (the Gaza war). We focus on public language, and the way discursive interventions become pivotal for actors to legitimize actions and claims in the context of warfare scrutiny. Our concern is less about proving actors’ true motives and more about tracing what actors say and do over time as constitutive of processual dynamics. We depart from the liberal take on transnational advocacy that views such action as ‘speaking truth to power’, to alternatively theorize advocacy in IR more broadly: as a discursive means of influence that actors may employ to define and/or justify the bounds of appropriate conduct.
We have selected the interaction between HRW and the IDF during the Lebanon and Gaza wars for four reasons. First, the IDF has been engaged in challenging military operations involving a high degree of civilian exposure, e.g. the Palestinian Intifada, the conflicts with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, and Palestinian suicide-bombers. 6 Second, international NGOs, such as HRW, have directed significant resources to monitor the IDF and publicize its alleged human rights violations, thus generating a rich public record of HRW/IDF claims and counterclaims. Third, examining the same state and non-state actors over two successive wars enables us to assess actor adjustments and adaptation over time. Fourth, relations between HRW and the IDF do not constitute a ‘success story’ of transnational pressure but a mixed case involving both genuine influence and efficacious resistance.
We proceed in the following three steps. First, we discuss the significance of discursive interventions in the study of international conduct, and how this has related to the rise of transnational advocacy studies in IR. Second, we trace the relationship between HRW and the IDF during the Lebanon and Gaza wars, in an effort to analyse the quality of discursive contestation. Third, and finally, we derive from our theoretical discussion and empirical findings broader implications regarding the complexity of transnational advocacy when applied to vested domains of high politics such as state warfare.
Antitheses to or assets of power? The politics of advocacy and discourse
Our approach belongs to the renewal of analytical and empirical efforts to capture the ways in which norms and arguments are used strategically in international power struggles. 7 Discursive interventions and mechanisms play a central role in transnational advocacy. How are international actors made to follow normative claims? The response within the international relations scholarship on argumentation and deliberation has been to elaborate so-called normative means of influence and establish the discursive mechanisms of oral and written argumentation which can impact policy and behaviour.
Four insights from this literature are of relevance to our analysis. First, the discursive act of ‘framing’ − the use of ‘metaphors, symbolic representations and cognitive cues to cast behaviour in an evaluative mode’ − is of vital importance for political actors to mobilize support and influence political conduct. 8 Second, the exercise of advocacy is discursively coercive. Actors compete to impose frames and engage in rhetorical manoeuvres which notably aim to deny targets ‘socially sustainable rebuttals’. 9 Third, the growth and effect of advocacy in international relations has generated the impetus for some actors to increasingly consider international law as ‘the highest standard against which action in world politics can be judged’. 10 The controversial notion of ‘lawfare’, defined as a strategy to use or misuse law in order to achieve military objectives, captures both the idea of a discursive struggle and the notion that conflicting actors include law in their warfighting instruments. 11 Fourth, and finally, the IR scholarship on argumentation and deliberation has served to demonstrate what Barnett and Duvall have termed ‘productive power’, where language and discourse are shown to structure meaning and objectify politics, and thus govern the substance of what is believed to be normatively appropriate conduct. 12
A less intentional outcome of research on transnational advocacy has been its association with allegedly ‘weak’ actors, such as NGOs with limited access to material, institutional and/or economic resources. This focus on comparatively ‘weak’ actors has distracted from the fact that advocacy, through language, norms and law, makes assumptions about who is and is not actually powerful. In fact, critical and poststructuralist interpretations commonly acknowledge that the omnipresence of material power and status permit the crafting of inter-subjective understandings to suit hegemonic imperatives rather than validity claims. 13
We argue that the adversarial and powering character of advocacy requires greater emphasis. This is because specific contexts of advocacy generate stubborn and evolving social contests where state and non-state actors skilfully deploy discursive interventions to shape public interpretations and ultimately influence the capacities of their rivals. The conduct of war is a key domain for this dynamic since Western military actors have grown increasingly concerned about how combat is portrayed to domestic and international audiences. 14 Consequently, once dismissive state actors are employing advocacy strategies and techniques to counteract accusatory transnational agents. Further, this has coincided with military actors increasingly invoking the laws of war to justify methods of combat as being in conformity with IHL. 15 This enables them to contest the advantage of rhetoric and legality previously used to punishing effect by critical activists. What is more, there are indications that potentially escalating advocacy and contestation over warfare expand the substance of discursive struggle. What is at stake is not only the legal repute of the targeted military actor but the moral authority of intervening transnational activists as well.
Therefore, we suggest, transnational advocacy in the domain of contemporary warfare can generate a coercive language game. Military actors assert the rectitude of their mode of warfare through a combination of material and discursive manoeuvres. On the one hand, they address normative validity standards, but at the same time they attempt to deny non-state actors the discursive means to leverage strategic preferences. Reciprocally, non-state (human rights) actors will assail the validity of employed military force and attempt to restrain the scope and depth of military action by articulating vivid and incriminatory accusations of combat ‘witnessed’. Most interesting is the fact that such contestation and manoeuvring can morph into a legalistic contest in which actors vicariously litigate over the character of combat actions through a public barrage of legal interpretations, propagated by potentially multiple and competing groups of legal ‘experts’.
It is important to emphasize that our focus is on the acknowledged and increasing significance of public discourse-based struggles, notably regarding whether the conduct of war conformed to IHL. Within the limits of this article, we do not explore other significant issues like the influence of HRW advocacy on UN officials or the organizational relationship between pro-Israel activists and Israeli state organs. While these important aspects are indeed partially related to our argument, we concentrate instead on public contestation between HRW, Israeli authorities and IDF sympathizers to show how discursive interventions become recognized by actors as vital to engendering whether there is an IHL violation to be acted upon. Thus, by following discursive interventions over time, valuable inferences can be made on the extent to which actors see political significance in ‘what they say’ vis-à-vis ‘what is allegedly happening’.
In sum, an examination of the processes of discursive interaction generates an appreciation of how the will of a state actor and its propensity to engage in discursive interventions can ultimately influence the impact of transnational activism. The case of HRW versus the IDF indicates that the conventional formula associated with transnational advocacy, of naming, shaming and compliance, is not determined in advance and can in fact develop into a discursive quagmire where no actor can definitively command public perception. Our analysis is based on speech acts. We draw on the numerous publicly available reports and press releases issued by HRW and Israeli government institutions and NGOs during and after the conflicts. In addition, English-language news articles dealing with the interaction between HRW and the Israeli government, together with journalists’ assessments were collected and reviewed (e.g. New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Independent and the Jerusalem Post).
Human Rights Watch and the Israel Defense Forces during the Lebanon and Gaza wars
We now turn to discuss HRW/IDF relations during and after the Lebanon and Gaza wars in order to assess the characteristics and results (if any) of HRW’s efforts to make the IDF accountable for alleged breaches of IHL. Our empirical objective is to bring advocacy practice into better focus by looking at a specific discursive contest between opposing state and non-state actors over time. This, in turn, feeds into our theoretical aim to underline the relational dynamic which can develop during the course of a transnational advocacy campaign.
Human Rights Watch and the Israel Defense Forces: a background
Since its creation, HRW has employed the now famous approach of ‘naming and shaming’ governments for human rights violations through media coverage and direct exchanges with policymakers. 16 It claims to gather information from ‘a broad range of sources, and with field-based research at its core’ in order to produce ‘regular’ and ‘systematic’ research. 17 HRW boasts thorough investigations, relying upon a network of local activists, noting various phases in its research, and emphasizing that its findings derive from interviews with victims and witnesses ‘directly involved’. The goal of its research missions is to ‘gain enough information about an incident, or about repeated rights violations, to create an accurate picture of what happened’. 18 HRW has a lengthy history of reporting on alleged human rights abuses in Israel, the Occupied Territories and Lebanon, and has dedicated significant resources to such oversight.
The IDF’s self-identity is that of a defence force ‘subordinate to the directions of the democratic civilian authorities and the law of the state’. 19 While civil/military relations in Israel are multifaceted and have evolved since the founding of the IDF, overall civilian control of the military is firmly grounded in law and practice. 20 Moreover, as early as 1948, the Israeli Supreme Court asserted its jurisdiction over the IDF, and since 1967 judicial supervision has increased, with the Court repeatedly criticizing and overruling the military. 21 Between 1990 and 2005, Supreme Court decisions showed a significant decrease in deference vis-à-vis the military commander. 22 During that period, the lawyers of the IDF International Law Department have been increasingly involved in operational matters, including at headquarters and divisional level during Operation Cast Lead. 23 The IDF’s military code of ethics entitled ‘The Spirit of the IDF’ is said to reflect ‘international law, Israeli law, Jewish heritage and the IDF’s own traditional ethical code’. In 2004, the IDF introduced a code of conduct for low-intensity warfare and counter-terrorism. 24
The 2006 Lebanon war: were civilians targets or shields?
On 12 July 2006, following the ambush of an IDF patrol and the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by militants from the Hezbollah movement, the Israeli government decided upon an ‘immediate and substantive’ military assault against Hezbollah elements in southern Lebanon. 25 The decision to react was further prompted by Hezbollah’s continued rocket attacks against towns in northern Israel. The IDF’s incursion into southern Lebanon lasted 34 days, ending on 14 August 2006. According to Lebanese authorities, the conflict between the IDF and Hezbollah resulted in 1194 deaths and 4409 injured, with more than 900,000 displaced persons. 26 The opening of military hostilities in southern Lebanon sparked the intervention of human rights groups concerned with the fate of civilian non-combatants. HRW took an immediate role, issuing warnings and condemnations against both parties in the conflict: the IDF and Hezbollah. However, HRW directed its most comprehensive and damning criticism against the IDF, and this came in the form of immediate press statements followed by a more wide-ranging report at the end of the war. HRW accused the IDF of war crimes committed during its intervention in Lebanon. How these allegations came to bear, and how the IDF responded to HRW, is now the subject of the analysis that follows.
Naming and shaming the IDF
Israel’s 2006 incursion into southern Lebanon was met with an immediate warning from HRW. On 12 July 2006, HRW reported that the IDF had ‘launched air and artillery attacks against targets in Lebanon, including Beirut’s international airport and bridges and highways south of the capital, and instituted an air, sea, and land blockade’. 27 Furthermore, HRW revealed that 55 civilians had been killed and 100 wounded. As a result, HRW cautioned that both ‘Hezbollah and Israel must not under any circumstances attack civilians in Israel and Lebanon … [and that] attacks on civilians, or acts to intimidate civilians, clearly violate international humanitarian law, and may constitute war crimes’. 28 The general warning was soon followed by specific accusations directed at the IDF. On 16 July 2006, HRW reported that a convoy of 16 people had been killed by an IDF air strike while attempting to flee a Lebanese village near Israel’s border. HRW demanded that ‘the IDF … investigate this attack on a civilian convoy and provide more details about the circumstances’. Further, it declared, ‘having warned civilians to evacuate their village, Israeli forces should have been aware that civilians would be using this road and should have taken great care to avoid harming them’. 29 This rebuke was followed by further demands on 19 and 20 July, in which the IDF was asked to ‘allow relief convoys safe entry into and passage inside Lebanon, and take all feasible precautions to avoid attacking them’ 30 as well as to ‘allow civilians safe passage out of Lebanon’s embattled south … [and] … avoid attacks likely to cause indiscriminate or disproportionate loss of civilian life’. 31 HRW accused the IDF of targeting ‘clearly marked’ relief convoys and continued air strikes that killed and injured fleeing civilians.
The assessments made by HRW were soon corroborated by UN officials and Western media reports. On 24 July, the UN emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, issued a public appeal that the IDF re-open Lebanese land, air and sea routes to aid. This was followed by media coverage on mounting civilian casualties caused by IDF aerial attacks. 32 Subsequent warnings were further issued by both UN coordinator Egeland and the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, on the risks IDF and Hezbollah fighters were running of being prosecuted for war crimes. 33
On 30 July, the Israeli air force struck a civilian household in the southern Lebanese village of Qana. 34 HRW quickly condemned the bombing, announcing that 54 civilians had been killed in the attack. 35 HRW attributed the deaths to ‘an indiscriminate bombing campaign that the IDF have waged in Lebanon over the past 18 days, leaving an estimated 750 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians’. 36 Hezbollah was similarly denounced for rocket attacks which had killed 18 civilians in northern Israel. 37 However, HRW was adamant in its criticism of the IDF on the basis that ‘war crimes by one party to a conflict never justify war crimes by another’. 38 Moreover, Israeli insistence that the IDF did conform to IHL was met with public outrage by HRW, who decried as ‘fantasy’ the IDF’s claim of legality. 39
On 4 August 2006, HRW unveiled its 50-page report which detailed alleged IDF wrongdoing in Lebanon. The investigation, entitled ‘Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon’, accused the IDF of ‘serious violations of international humanitarian law’ through a ‘systematic failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians’. 40 The report documented ‘war crimes’ committed by the IDF through an analysis of Israeli air and artillery attacks that had claimed 153 civilian lives. The findings of HRW served as a wholesale indictment against IDF actions in Lebanon. HRW’s allegations resonated with the actions of United Nations bodies. On 11 August 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) established a special ‘high-level commission of inquiry’, which criticized the IDF in its 23 November 2006 report. 41
Advocacy by HRW extended well past the formation and conclusions of the UNHRC inquiry: 42 in the months and years following the conflict HRW produced additional statements and reports which disclosed the findings of its own post-bellum investigation into the 2006 war. 43 Moreover, in response to allegations of bias made by pro-Israel advocates, in August 2007 HRW issued a report condemning Hezbollah for indiscriminate attacks against Israeli civilians. 44 In September 2007, HRW published a report which reviewed both IDF and Hezbollah infractions of IHL. In this report, HRW emphasized that the high civilian death toll in Lebanon was a product of the IDF’s failure to abide by the laws of war. 45
Pushing back: how the IDF and pro-Israel advocacy responded to HRW
Allegations made during the 2006 Lebanon war placed the IDF in a precarious position domestically as well as vis-à-vis Western, and notably American, public opinion. Charges expressed by HRW and other human rights groups that the IDF had committed war crimes in Lebanon were serious. The question was whether those allegations would prompt a response from Israeli authorities and/or sympathizers; and, if so, what form(s) would a response take?
Initially, Israeli and IDF statements focused on a ‘counter-terrorism’ frame, largely ignoring questions of human rights impropriety. Then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for example, characterized the start of the Lebanon war as a contest between Israel as a victim of terror attacks and Hezbollah as a terrorist group targeting civilians. In such a frame, the IDF was presented as acting legitimately in self-defence. 46 Yet after two weeks of repeated public criticism by HRW, Israeli messages began to change to address these mounting humanitarian allegations. The first evidence of this revised approach was manifest following a meeting between Olmert and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 25 July 2006. 47
More specific responses followed as the IDF faced escalating allegations of legal impropriety. For instance, on 28 July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) issued a communiqué on behalf of the IDF regarding an attack on a civilian convoy organized by the Australian embassy, in which the IDF disclosed its warnings to the Australian embassy and denied all responsibility for a mortar attack that had inflicted casualties upon the convoy. 48 On 30 July, the MFA issued a communiqué reporting on the IDF’s attack upon the village of Qana, justifying its strike against ‘missile launch sites’ on the basis that Hezbollah used the village to propel ‘hundreds of missiles’ into Israel. The IDF expressed regret for ‘any harm to uninvolved civilians’; however, it also emphasized Hezbollah’s ‘contemptible use of Lebanese civilians as human shields’. 49 Furthermore, the MFA noted that the IDF had given advanced evacuation warnings to all Lebanese villagers south of the Litani River. Nevertheless, in light of the Qana bombing the IDF announced temporary ‘self-imposed restrictions with regard to the targeting of structures in Lebanon’. 50
In short, responses issued by Israeli authorities were rarely addressed to HRW. Instead, allegations were challenged through the use of counterfactuals and counter-explanations delivered by senior Israeli officials, as exemplified by the interview given by Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman to the New York Times:
Hezbollah [has] used Lebanese civilians as human shields and [has] deliberately exposed them to danger in the hopes of stirring expressions of outrage against Israel … Lebanese civilians may have been killed by Israeli fire but they are the victims of Hezbollah, victims of terror.
51
Direct confrontation with HRW, and other human rights NGOs, was rather led by pro-IDF advocates such as the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, UN Watch and NGO-Monitor, the latter especially created to target the ‘accountability of Human Rights NGOs in the Arab Israeli Conflict’. 52 On 30 July 2006, NGO-Monitor director Gerald Steinberg called into question the unregulated conduct of human rights NGOs and the anti-Israeli bias of HRW. 53 Responding to HRW’s 50-page report released on 4 August, NGO-Monitor issued a rebuttal on 27 August in the Jerusalem Post. It not only took sharp aim at the substance of HRW allegations but launched a personal attack against HRW executive director, Kenneth Roth. 54 Kathleen Peratis, in her capacity as both a member of the HRW board and the Jewish community, then issued a public response in defence of HRW, and Kenneth Roth, noting the ‘ferocious’ criticism directed at both HRW and Roth by New York rabbis, the New York Sun, the Anti-Defamation League, and NGO-Monitor. 55
This back-and-forth exchange between pro-Israel advocates, HRW and other human rights groups became a dominant characteristic of Western English-language media coverage. 56 Third-party advocates supporting the IDF began to initiate their own discursive interventions. One example of this development was the release, in early December 2006, of a report by an Israeli research group, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, entitled ‘Hezbollah’s use of Lebanese civilians as human shields’. 57 The report, which relied upon declassified material provided by the IDF (e.g. photographs, video images and prisoner interrogation data), alleged that ‘Hezbollah stored weapons in mosques, battled Israelis from inside empty schools, flew white flags while transporting missiles and launched rockets near United Nations monitoring posts’. 58 The report received leading coverage in the 5 December 2006 issue of the New York Times. Additional examples of such initiatives include the 2008 reports published by NGO-Monitor which analyse bias and double standards allegedly applied towards Israel by HRW and other leading human rights NGOs. 59
Pro-IDF rebuttals extended beyond NGOs such as HRW, and also engaged international organizations critical of the IDF, such as the UNHRC inquiry discussed earlier. The findings of that UNHRC investigation, which held that the IDF was deliberately failing to discriminate between civilians and combatants, was subjected to public critique by another pro-Israeli watchdog, UN Watch. In a press release issued on 26 November 2006, entitled ‘The Ever-Predictable UN Human Rights Council’, UN Watch took aim at what it alleged was one-sided bias by the UNHRC inquiry because of its mandate to investigate only IDF wrongdoing. 60
Summary remarks: transnational advocacy and the Lebanon war
Our analysis of the interactions between HRW and the IDF during the Lebanon war provides a glimpse into a specific case of transnational advocacy in wartime, revealing the extent to which such interaction can be more contentious than conventional theory depicts. The contested character of relations between HRW and the IDF during the Lebanon war manifested not a linear trajectory of naming, shaming and compliance but rather a discursive struggle in which the IDF, Israeli authorities and third-party groups sought to expand the playing field of transnational accountability to include scrutiny of human rights NGOs as well. The IDF and its sympathizers attempted to question the label of neutral observer which human rights NGOs relied upon, by challenging the popular belief that such monitoring was beyond error, criticism or ideological commitments. ‘Successful’ or not, the fact that such efforts were visible gave insight into the potential resilience of a targeted state and the discursive contest that could emerge in the practice of transnational advocacy during wartime.
The 2009 Gaza war
The IDF’s subsequent incursion into the Gaza Strip in 2009, and the public controversy it has generated, provide a useful case that can be compared with the discursive experiences of the 2006 Lebanon war. While three years is arguably a limited time period to assess actor responses and discursive adaptation, we show empirically that significant changes in the intensity and dynamics of discursive exchanges were in evidence. The Gaza war launched by the IDF against the Hamas movement generated ample exchanges between human rights activists, Israeli authorities and IDF sympathizers; and while military operations lasted a mere three weeks, public controversy over the legalities of that war would remain ongoing and charged. This makes the Gaza incursion a convenient case to assess the interactions between HRW and the IDF relative to the Lebanon war.
The IDF, Gaza and the shadow of Lebanon
On 27 December 2008, IDF aerial attacks on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip marked the beginning of ‘Operation Cast Lead’. On 3 January 2009, the IDF began ground attacks stated to degrade the political and military capacity of Hamas in Gaza. One of the notable features of the Gaza war was the extent to which Israel had prepared the operation in advance, launching the assault at a time of its choosing. In contrast to the Lebanon war, the Israeli officials did not react but rather executed a campaign with lengthy preparations and detailed planning.
Most apparent was the extent to which the MFA had prepared a discursive campaign intended to thwart foreseeable human rights and war crimes allegations from HRW and other human rights groups. This was manifest in both the volume and quality of material Israeli officials issued during the Gaza conflict. For instance, at the very outset of the war, the MFA issued a five-page legal brief which addressed ‘Issues of Proportionality’ with respect to IDF warfare in Gaza. 61 Second, within the first 24 hours of air strikes, individual press briefings on the operation were given by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert (27 December), Israeli President Shimon Peres (28 December) and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (28 December). Livni’s address in particular, given to foreign diplomats in the border town of Sderot, used the firing of Hamas rockets into Israel as a backdrop. Livni explained how the IDF was concerned to avoid civilian casualties, while Hamas exploited civilians as human shields. 62 During the three-week conflict, the MFA issued over 40 communiqués − a number which dwarfed the amount of MFA communiqués issued during the Lebanon war.
Further, both the IDF and the MFA provided electronic slideshow presentations summarizing Israel’s position regarding the Gaza war: presenting extensive information on the number of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel, how Hamas allegedly used civilians as human shields in Gaza and on the concrete efforts the IDF made to supply tonnes of humanitarian relief to Gaza during the war. 63 On 6 January, the MFA publicized an 81-page study by the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, which alleged that Hamas was systematically exploiting Gaza civilians as human shields. 64 Finally, Israeli officials set out on a public diplomacy campaign, visiting Western capitals and leaders, speaking with foreign media outlets and holding press conferences on a frequent basis, as demonstrated again by Israeli Foreign Minister Livni on 31 December 2008. 65
However, the adaptations made by Israeli officials were not exclusive to public relations. The IDF publicized how it had modified field operations in anticipation of human rights monitoring and potential charges. For instance, the International Herald Tribune reported on 12 January that the IDF had tailored a new weapon to respond to:
the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb. The Israelis counter with missiles designed, paradoxically, not to explode. They aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called ‘a knock on the roof’.
66
Finally, the IDF and the MFA appeared to have augmented capacities to respond to real-time allegations and unforeseen events. This was most visible regarding the publicized Jebaliya school bombing and accusations of illegal white phosphorus use, which precipitated heated condemnations and calls for IDF officers to be charged with war crimes. 67 Regarding these allegations, Israeli authorities displayed a rapid ability to issue public responses which directly challenged media allegations of wrongdoing. 68 Finally, in addition to the MFA’s improved ability to discursively buttress the IDF, pro-Israel third-party advocates were also active. NGO-Monitor, for instance, published a memorandum entitled ‘The NGO Front in the Gaza War: Exploitation of International Law’. 69 Public opinion articles were also released which challenged allegations made by HRW, Amnesty International and Oxfam. 70
Turning the tables: HRW, war crimes allegations and the pro-Israel response
HRW took a bolder and more condemnatory approach toward the IDF during the Gaza war, and this may have reflected HRW’s sense of earned authority after its stinging rebukes against the IDF over Lebanon. HRW took the lead in calling for the creation of a UN commission of inquiry over war crimes in Gaza. Yet, as we will discuss below, this assertiveness seemed to provoke a determined response from Israeli authorities and pro-Israel activists to attack HRW’s ‘impartiality, professionalism and credibility’. 71 In fact this resolve produced a counter-campaign that ultimately led to an internal crisis at HRW, and even the UN, over investigative integrity.
The start of the 2009 Gaza incursion seemed a discursive replay of the Lebanon quagmire, in which HRW assumed a prosecutorial posture while Israeli authorities and sympathizers employed different tactics of rebuttal. There were few signs that pro-Israel advocates could reverse these roles in the way they did ultimately in the months and years that followed. At the outset of hostilities, HRW issued a press release on 30 December 2008 cautioning both the IDF and Hamas to avoid civilian casualties. 72 However, the warning also underlined how HRW was already investigating three IDF air strikes in Gaza. Specifically, HRW claimed that the impugned attacks ‘raised particular concern about Israel’s targeting decisions and require independent and impartial inquiries to determine whether the attacks violated the law of war’. HRW later condemned Hamas for firing more than 100 rockets into Israel between 27 and 28 December, noting that the deliberate firing of ‘indiscriminate weapons into civilian populated areas, as a matter of policy, constitutes a war crime’. 73 On 4 January 2009, HRW repeated warnings to ‘both sides’ to take ‘all feasible precautions’ to protect civilians in response to the IDF’s announced ground offensive in Gaza. 74 Yet again HRW focused on the IDF and underscored how previous HRW studies of IDF incursions into the West Bank and Gaza found evidence of ‘unlawful killings by Israeli forces’. What is more, HRW stressed that the IDF ‘[failed] to punish soldiers for serious abuses’ committed during those earlier raids. 75
As the days and weeks passed, and HRW denouncements of the Gaza war grew, the discursive contest between HRW and Israel became a war within a war. The escalation began on 10 January 2009, when HRW shifted focus from ‘indiscriminate’ civilian deaths to also condemning how the IDF used its weaponry illegally during the conflict. Specifically, HRW alleged that the IDF had made prohibited use of 55 mm ‘white phosphorous’ artillery shells in urban combat. 76 The rights group charged that the IDF was ‘using white phosphorus in military operations in densely populated areas of Gaza’, and while white phosphorus was not a prohibited weapon it was known to have an incendiary effect that inflicted severe burns and set civilian objects on fire. Thus, HRW alleged, the use of white phosphorus artillery shells in dense urban areas such as Gaza violated ‘the requirement under International Humanitarian Law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life’. 77
This accusation regarding white phosphorus became a focal point for public scrutiny. Western media outlets reported on the allegations made by HRW, and a public exchange developed between HRW, the IDF, the International Red Cross and third-party experts over whether white phosphorus had been used in accordance with international law. 78 The controversy also coincided with calls made by senior UN officials and human rights groups for an international war crimes investigation to be conducted in Gaza. 79 HRW increased the pressure further when, in a press release dated 16 January, it accused the IDF of firing heavy 155 mm artillery shells into crowded residential areas of Gaza city, in violation of the ‘prohibition under the laws of war against indiscriminate attacks’. 80 The criminal implications were highlighted by HRW’s military researcher in Gaza, Marc Garlasco, who explained that the ‘firing of 155 mm shells into the center of Gaza City … [would] likely cause horrific civilian casualties’.
Israel’s unilateral ceasefire on 18 January brought an end to physical hostilities in Gaza. However, that cessation did not stop the discursive clash between HRW and Israel in which each aimed to degrade the public image of the other. This punishing dynamic commenced with a HRW press release on 22 January 2009, written by HRW executive director Kenneth Roth, in which HRW asserted that ‘hundreds of Palestinian civilians’ were ‘not the only casualty’ of the IDF assault: so ‘was the credibility of the IDF’. 81 Roth supplied a list of issues which he alleged discredited Israeli assertions that the IDF took ‘extraordinary care to spare civilians’. In particular, he elaborated on the alleged ‘denial and obfuscation’ tactic of the IDF regarding white phosphorus shells in Gaza, listing the kinds of evidence obtained by HRW that proved the illegal use of white phosphorus in populated urban areas. Further, the executive director noted the evidence obtained by HRW regarding the IDF’s use of 155 mm shells in densely populated residential areas, emphasizing how these shells ‘ injure civilians from blast and fragmentation … [within] a radius of as much as 300 meters’. 82
The response of the Israeli authorities and pro-Israel advocates was vigorous. First, Israeli officials attempted to seize the accountability agenda by announcing internal inquiries into allegations over white phosphorus use and the wrongful deaths of civilians (e.g. the UN compound in Jebaliya). 83 This prompted HRW to demand, on 27 January 2009, ‘an impartial international investigation into allegations of serious violations of the laws of war by Israel and Hamas’. 84 The call was echoed by the United Nations Secretary-General, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and the Arab League Secretary-General (vis-à-vis Israel only); 85 and the Palestinian Authority sent a formal written request to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to assume jurisdiction over alleged war crimes. 86 On 23 April 2009, the IDF released the results of its own internal investigations, which determined that the army ‘operated in accordance with international law’ notwithstanding a number of civilian deaths acknowledged as ‘mistakes in intelligence and targeting’. 87 This IDF report was predictably attacked by counter-reports from both HRW (25 March and 30 June) 88 and Amnesty International (2 July), 89 emphasizing the ‘unprecedented’ scale and intensity of the Israeli onslaught and the ‘unlawful’ Palestinian use of rockets against Israeli civilians. 90
Second, pro-Israel advocacy took direct aim at the credibility of human rights activists or public figures that alleged illegal wrongdoing by the IDF. In fact this counter-campaign became acknowledged policy by the Israeli government, as disclosed by the director of policy planning in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office: ‘We are going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups; we are not going to be sitting ducks in a pond for human rights groups to shoot at us with impunity.’ 91 Public criticism of HRW was furthered vis-à-vis its alleged bias against Israel, gaining strong endorsements from Holocaust survivor and Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel and, most notably, HRW’s own co-founder Robert Bernstein. 92 Pro-Israel activists also claimed that HRW’s senior military analyst during the Gaza war, Marc Garlasco, was a collector of Nazi SS and Wehrmacht World War II memorabilia – allegations that led HRW to publicly suspend Garlasco pending investigation. 93
However, the strength of pro-Israel advocacy was most notable with regard to the report on Gazan war crimes by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge and former Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. On 4 April 2009, the UNHRC appointed Goldstone as the head of a four-member investigation into war crimes committed by the IDF in Gaza. In September 2009, the 575-page ‘Goldstone Report’ declared there was evidence of a deliberate targeting of civilians, i.e. war crimes, by both the IDF and Hamas fighters during the Gaza war. 94 In fact the report referred to IDF operations as ‘a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population’. 95
The Israeli response to the Goldstone Report was one of shock and outrage, influenced by how the Jewish state was accused of intentionally targeting Gazan civilians. 96 In January 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu characterized the Goldstone Report an attempt to ‘de-legitimize’ Israel, declaring the report one of Israel’s top three security threats, alongside Iran’s nuclear programme and Hamas rockets. 97 Moreover, there ensued a barrage of public criticism and condemnation of both the report and Goldstone personally, supported by pro-Israel groups enraged by the report’s accusations. 98 These individual attacks against Goldstone reached such a pitch that he was nearly barred from his grandchild’s bar mitzvah, and reports emerged in the Israeli press that Goldstone had sentenced black South Africans to death when he was a judge during the apartheid era. 99 These various forms of public pressure reached a climax in April 2011 and, to the surprise of both his report colleagues and the UN, Goldstone partially retracted the report’s finding that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians. 100 He justified the volte face with a claim that more information had become available on IDF policies during the Gaza war. Nonetheless, it did not escape notice that Goldstone announced his revised stance using the following open-ended preface: ‘If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.’
Conclusion
What emerges from this study of the struggle between HRW and the IDF is a more varied picture of the politics of transnational advocacy than conventional theorizing depicts. Our aim was to provide a theoretical and empirical discussion that attempts to develop our understanding of transnational advocacy with regard to both general theory and the specific context of such advocacy in contemporary warfare. Building on existing scholarship, we have examined an important case of ‘naming and shaming’ in wartime with likely implications for the way we articulate the politics of transnational advocacy. Based on this empirical inquiry, we argue that the conventional formula of naming, shaming and compliance overlooks the potential of target actors to introduce a relational dynamic and discursively ‘push back’ their transnational activist accusers. Public and discursive sources reveal that Israeli authorities and pro-Israel advocates took material and discursive measures intended to refute and/or discredit the allegations raised by HRW. What is more, this process of adaptation and discursive intervention by the Israeli state, the IDF and pro-Israel groups intensified over time as allegations against IDF forces became more severe. In sum, advocacy by HRW had an impact on the IDF during the Lebanon and Gaza wars. Israeli officials and third-party sympathizers were compelled to respond to, and counter-act, their allegations. 101 The series of public rebuttals and organized counter-campaigns that ensued likely reflected the political significance of the advocacy inflicted by HRW; however, the reaction generated also had reputational and thus political consequences for HRW in return.
This brings us back to a key assertion of this study: that research on transnational advocacy would benefit from further examination of specific processes and cases of strategic interactions between transnational advocates and their targeted actors. As illustrated with HRW/IDF relations, transnational advocacy can be a contestable and thus relational activity, because it invites a struggle for moral and legal authority. Furthermore, when targeted actors perceive reputational and liability consequences from the work of transnational activists, and possess the discursive capacities to contest activist representations, a quagmire of competing discursive interventions can ensue over what is happening and who is (not) responsible. The vicarious ‘courtroom’ of the global media can ultimately work to aggravate this quagmire.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies ‘Security Working Group’, the College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University, and the International Studies Association 51th Annual Convention, New Orleans, 17-20 February 2010. We are grateful for the comments of Sergio Catignani, Jin-Young Chung, Mathias Delori, Erin Jenne, Friedrich Kratochwil, Kathleen Mahoney-Norris, Nicholas Onuf, Hannes Peltonen, as well as the anonymous reviewers. We gratefully acknowledge the material and intellectual support given by the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies, European University Institute.