{"id":5913,"date":"2015-07-23T12:15:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martinkramer.org\/sandbox\/?p=5913"},"modified":"2015-07-23T12:15:10","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T16:15:10","slug":"the-war-crimes-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/2015\/07\/the-war-crimes-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"The war crimes industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In an earlier post, I flagged my <i>Mosaic Magazine<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/mosaicmagazine.com\/essay\/2015\/07\/who-censored-the-six-day-war\/\" target=\"_blank\">essay<\/a> on the film <i>Censored Voices<\/i>, an Israeli documentary that purports to expose Israeli war crimes during the Six-Day War. The filmmakers claim that the testimony of soldiers, published in 1968, had been subjected to &#8220;brutal&#8221; censorship by Israel&#8217;s military censor, who cut 70 percent of the original material. <em>Censored Voices<\/em>, we are told, restores those &#8220;silenced&#8221; voices.\u00a0In my essay, I questioned whether there had been any censorship of this magnitude, and asked whether the cases highlighted in the film were true, representative, or added to our understanding of the war.<\/p>\n<p>There have been three responses to the essay:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Military historian and analyst Max Boot <a href=\"http:\/\/mosaicmagazine.com\/response\/2015\/07\/war-is\/\" target=\"_blank\">provides<\/a> some fascinating insights into why certain conflicts invite charges of war crimes and others don&#8217;t\u2014regardless of the facts.<\/li>\n<li>Journalist and author Matti Friedman <a href=\"http:\/\/mosaicmagazine.com\/response\/2015\/07\/israel-and-the-moral-striptease\/\" target=\"_blank\">analyzes<\/a> what&#8217;s wrong with the flourishing Israeli genre of what he calls &#8220;moral striptease.&#8221; Among many nuggets: &#8220;The fact that the director of <i>Censored Voices<\/i> has earned complimentary coverage in Israel&#8217;s biggest women&#8217;s weekly and in El Al&#8217;s inflight magazine hardly suggests a society &#8216;crushing dissent.&#8217; In fact, it suggests a society where dissent is celebrated even in the heart of the mainstream.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Asa Kasher, philosopher and author of the Code of Ethics of the Israel Defense Forces, <a href=\"http:\/\/mosaicmagazine.com\/response\/2015\/07\/the-poverty-of-propaganda\/\" target=\"_blank\">argues<\/a> that you can&#8217;t judge the justice of a war by how soldiers wage it, and if you make vague charges of war crimes against Israel, you&#8217;re making it impossible for the IDF to investigate and ameliorate. That&#8217;s immoral.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My own summation is coming up next\u00a0week. In the meantime, take in these interesting responses.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff;font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color: #a7a7a7;font-size: 11px;width: 100%\">\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden;height: 0;padding: 67.676768% 0 0 0;width: 100%\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 0;margin: 0 0 0 10px;text-align: left\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7;text-decoration: none;font-weight: normal !important;border: none\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/3250257\" target=\"_blank\">View image<\/a> | <a style=\"color: #a7a7a7;text-decoration: none;font-weight: normal !important;border: none\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\" target=\"_blank\">gettyimages.com<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Responses to Martin Kramer&#8217;s essay on the film &#8220;Censored Voices&#8221; are coming in. <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/2015\/07\/the-war-crimes-industry\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101315,101406],"class_list":["post-5913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1967-war","tag-censored-voices"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sandbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}