Word: indirectly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...impossible to conclude other than that the consequences of the Phalangists' entry into the camps were utterly predictable to the Israelis. The situation was analogous to that of a person unleashing a trained, vicious attack dog on a defenseless other--the injuries from which would be attributable to the "indirect responsibility" of the dog-owner only at the expense of credible notions of intentionality and responsibility. It is immaterial that the Israeli may have had a "legitimate" aim in "mopping up" (to use that morbid and dehumanizing expression) Palestinian resistance--even though the train of events demonstrated that there...
...shared in the "indirect" responsibility for the deaths? Prune Minister Begin, said the commission, was "not a party to the decision to have Phalangists move into the camps." Nonetheless, it continued, he had displayed an "indifference" to the whole affair, and "for two days after the Prune Minister heard about the Phalangists' entry, he showed absolutely no interest in their actions in the camps." The commission concluded that Begin's "lack of involvement in the entire matter casts on him a certain degree of responsibility," but it did not recommend that he be obliged to step down as Prime Minister...
This idea comes to light in the report's basic principle of "indirect responsibility," an old principle, needing little clarification. What the Israeli commission called indirect responsibility, Thomas Aquinas deemed the sin of omission, and the concept antedates Aquinas in the Old Testament prophets. In domestic law it goes by the name of negligence. The application is familiar: by doing nothing to prevent a wrongful act, in spite of having the power to do so, one shares a portion of the blame. It may go further. If one sets into motion a train of events that lead...
...side virtues of the commission's work is that it elevates the principle of indirect responsibility to international cognizance. The jurists at the Nuremberg trials went to great lengths to cite positive acts, "crimes against humanity." No one was charged with just standing by. The difference in the Israeli report (apart from its not being a court verdict) is that at Nuremberg a victor was judging a fallen enemy, whereas here the accused were called to account by their own people...
...fundamental force of the report rests not in its application of indirect responsibility, nor in the explosive political context in which it struck a match. Rather its value is that it makes use of a kind of truth that is ordinarily the preserve of psychologists and clergymen. More than that, it claims for this truth equal weight and status with objectively provable reality. The commissioners record that witnesses characterized the massacre as "a disaster which no one had imagined and which could not have been-or, at all events, need not have been-foreseen." They then make this extraordinary announcement...