The last feature

Is it possible to distinguish an army operation from a terrorist act, victims - from killers, and justice from a crime

In the northern half of the gas sector almost cut off from the outside world, the assault on the Ash-Shifa hospital began. From the point of view of the Israeli command and politicians, this is the Hamas team bunker, which was covered by the hospital, associated with other parts of the armed underground with a branched network of tunnels. Israel built this bunker to demolish the wounded from the upper floors during the Arab-Israeli wars. From the point of view of Palestinians and millions of their sympathizers around the world, this is just a hospital in which more than 2000 staff and patients gathered (according to the administration) under fire.

This dramatic image reflected two approaches dominant in the world to interpret the phenomenon that arose after the Second World War as a national liberation movement, but degenerated today into a huge set of terrorist organizations-from Gibraltar to Uyghur steppes and further to the Andes. For many on the planet, this is still “justice fighters”. But, perhaps, only in the military environment there is no doubt what they really are.

This is how most people are arranged - even better to strive to seem to hell. In everyday life, for this, the intermediate stages of the fall are used. The prostitute erodes the essence of her employment, distinguishable from the life of an ordinary woman, with the help of a difficult to have a main status of a keeper. The killer likes to be called Killer: there are signs of a profession - an order, an agreement, a client, a fee.

Terrorists usually mimic under the real military using the intermediate status of partisan liberators.

If we recall, for example, Arab terrorist formations, they love to call themselves “brigades” or “battalions” of various martyrs or religious authorities. But 90 years of continuous terror were never made of militants, for example, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) of the real military - neither in public opinion, nor among their own. No matter how they all call themselves, the military themselves are unshakable in their path.

This impassable last border, separating the terror from the army, is easy to determine: you just have to be distracted by political, nationalist and even freedom -loving, but empty rhetoric. Give three generals - for example, from China, France and Brazil (from any countries in general, where there are modern developed aircraft) - the same combat mission in urban development. They will write to you how much they need and what fighters, how many equipment and time. And then ask: "If you take the hostages, it will probably be easier for you to fulfill the order?" And here all three will throw up and ask: "You and I have not confused us with terrorists?"

People who are not too interested in army issues, under the pressure of a continuous stream of information, lose this border in the mind. They tend to consider all the military: yes, Hamas - a wretched army, the struggle is strong, but all this is the military.

There is nothing next from reality.

According to the Gaga Convention of 1907, on the laws of the war and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war of 1949, instead of the concept of “armed forces” in key points, they talk about “combatants”. Indeed, such a status applies, including members of partisan detachments. But only in the presence of four signs:

1. Open wearing weapons

2. Form or insignia

3. The presence of a commander who takes responsibility for discipline and all actions

4. Fulfillment of the laws of war.

The Nuremberg Tribunal Mass executions of hostages in Belarus (up to 10 thousand at the same time) were imputed by the SS, special units and various detachments of nationalists from the territories of the USSR, which were not part of the army. Thus, the Wehrmacht avoided recognition of a terrorist organization.

Nowadays, people who ignore the laws of war (for which the hostage capture is part of the combat operation that organize sudden raids with executions to intimidate random passers -by) can be called only terrorists.

Even if they row in military uniforms and in their support the left -bar of Europe leads to demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of supporters.

The undisguised contempt, which I regularly meet among the military in relation to terrorist practice, is based on a banal sense of superiority. With modern means of armed struggle and intelligence, the detachments specializing in abductions and murders in the clean field will be torn to this army as soon as possible. Even the Taliban, closest in structure and training with the army, preferred to bypass the part of NATO (including very small ones), making raids traditional for terrorists from around the corner. Well, the ban on terrorist techniques for the army gives such an arrogant attitude of the military a certain moral right.

It must be borne in mind that sabotage acts organized by military scouts against the commanders and infrastructure of the enemy are legal military activities. It happens that there are attacks on the highest political leadership of the enemy as a leading force and governing body. But the secret killings of bloggers and writers cannot be considered sabotage.

The murders of Dugina, Tatar, the poisoning of Skripals and opposition Russian journalists are by international classification terrorist acts.

Well, it happens when the terrorists try to appear by the military, and the military and special services themselves, under the influence of very strong political motives, are drifted towards terror? History is rich in examples of the rebirth of military intelligence into a terrorist organization (the richest experience in our country).

Unlike front -line generals, special services are constantly faced with the need to make a political choice in their work. This does not make such a fatal transition so noticeable. But the military science does not accept any arguments about the admissibility of terror, if the Fatherland is in mortal danger.

Neither the military nor civilians are able to divide the combatants from the headquarters of terror and doctors with the patients of the hospital in one building into the “sheep and goats” - this is why Hamas is built.

There is no doubt that the IDF, from the sanction of the Netanyahu government, will not be much sorted out - the situation does not allow. After all, this is a counter -terrorist operation by the army in which the eternal damned question: "We save hostages or destroy terrorists?" (pursuing us in the tragedies of Nord-Ost and Beslan)-originally resolved in favor of the second part.

People tend to take the side of a weak, albeit that is rising into him. And then they ignore the true essence of their sympathizers in favor of a simple fact: the battle is in the hospital. After all, terror is also a consequence of political weakness, when there is not enough strength or brains to an equal struggle.

But in no case this should be an excuse for terrorist methods. The ability to draw a line and soberly look at what is happening - for me personally, it is equal to the courage to keep the main values ​​of world civilization. And no political sympathies and righteous anger should etch this moral basis of us.