6 ms·

Protected sites lose their protected status under the law of armed conflict if they are used to hide/support combatants. Agree or disagree with Israel's target

Protected sites lose their protected status under the law of armed conflict if they are used to hide/support combatants. Agree or disagree with Israel's targeting policies; that's still the law and has been for decades.

archagon 3y ago
If the law permits thousands of innocents to be slaughtered, then maybe it needs to change.
- gataca 3y ago
  Hamas is free to hand out uniforms to its soldiers to prevent civilians getting killed. They’re also free to build barracks instead of tunnels underneath schools to house their fighters. Until they do so civilians will continue to suffer.
- vladgur 3y ago
  THe reason these "international laws" are accepted by majority of modern nations is because they are somewhat reasonable and allow parties to military conflicts to wage military campaigns while attempting to minimize civilian casualties. If the laws are rewritten to state "you are never allowed to attack a hospital or a school. No exception", then what will follow is one party to the war will put their military installation insides schools and hospitals and the other party to the war to the war will say "these geneva conventions are unreasonable and we wont follow it" In other words, nobody would respect Geneva conventions if they are unreasonable
  - archagon 3y ago
    Regardless of any second-order effects, the truth on the ground is that many thousands of innocents are suffering, and I have a hard time seeing any societal configuration where civilians can be legally blown up or starved en masse as anything but immoral. If a terrorist government is embedded in your population centers, it should not be legal to raze those population centers in retribution.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - samatman 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - archagon 3y ago
        Things are very simple in my eyes. If tens of thousands of innocents are dying without an end in sight, there is a bleed that needs to be stemmed immediately. It does not matter who started it or whether the crisis is being used as propaganda or leverage. The truth is on the ground. It would be great to "defeat Hamas" as a solution, but I'm not sure how that's feasible at this point without razing Gaza.
        fortzi 3y ago
        Things are not simple, and a simplistic take of this matter is very prevalent, sadly. I mean, what are even the real numbers? Did you forget about the Hamas rocket hitting a hospital in Gaza, which they claimed was Israel's bombing that killed 500 civilians? Later they settled on 50, when it was widely accepted that it was their doing. Fighting Hamas is hard, mostly because it uses civilian population and infrastructure to its benefit, but what are the alternatives? reward Hamas' actions by letting them off the hook? I haven't heard any other suggestion on how do deal with Hamas except for fighting them head on.
        kaba0 3y ago
        Are you sure that stopping it will actually minimize the number of deaths in the long run? Is it better to kill 20000 people in a short time to reach permanent peace, or to save some of those people and then repeat the whole ordeal each 2 years, with more and more bloodshed? I don’t pretend to have an answer, but war brings up very hard to answer moral questions.
    - creato 3y ago
      How do you distinguish "retribution" from eliminating the threat posed by (in your words) a terrorist government? What do you propose as an alternative? Simply allow the terrorist government to continue to operate unimpeded, which enables attacks on your own citizens? There's no population on the planet that would accept that.
- colonCapitalDee 3y ago
  This a common misunderstanding of the international laws of war, and international law in general. In our personal lives the government can compel us to follow the law with the threat of overwhelming force; if I break the law I will be arrested, and regardless of how much I fight back I will not be able to stop it. Laws in our everyday lives are like commands from a parent to a child; the government, as the parent, can and will compel the child's obedience. International law is different. If a state breaks international law, there is no entity willing or capable of using overwhelming force to compel obedience. States have armies and some have nuclear weapons; the amount of force required to compel a state to behave a certain way is huge, and generating that force is extremely costly. When states break international law there are consequences, but at the end of the day violence is generally not on the table. Effective international law is a balancing act. An international standard of warfare that placed extremely strict standards on when it was permissible to kill civilians would make fighting a war significantly harder. No state would obey such a law because winning the war is the absolute highest priority, making the law worthless. Instead, laws of war try to outlaw actions that don't affect the ability of a country to win a war. No chemical or biological weapons (high explosives are more effective), humane treatment of prisoners (discourages the enemy fighting to the death), and no killing civilians unless in the pursuit of a military objective (if it's not in pursuit of a military objective, then it's a waste of resources). The goal of the laws of war is to prevent unnecessary violence, not prevent violence altogether. It's a case of "perfect is the enemy of good."
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    Exactly. International laws are guidelines more than rules.
    - incognos 3y ago
      ummm, no... they are actual laws. and you have to agree to them before joining the UN
- kaba0 3y ago
  The very reason these laws are there is to protect civilians. A hospital can more or less safely operate in a war zone if both parties play by the rules and actually care for their people. If you exploit these very rules for military advantage, then why not just put red crosses on your attack helicopters as well? There aren’t too many laws to war, but this just fundamentally makes sense.
- volleyball 3y ago
  GP is wrong. There is the law of proportionality in the Geneva Conventions which requires "that the expected incidental harm is not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage." >The word to pay attention to here is "military advantage" - i.e. "military value" of the target. Seeing a "hamas" go into a hospital or a rocket being fired from it doesn't give Israel the green light to bomb it. While there is no well-defined metric or number that defines proportionality - it is safe to say that Israelis don't meet the necessary criteria by any reasonable measure. Establishing the necessary proportionality to justify an attack on a hospital, refugee camp or shelter is needless to say, extraordinarily high. Take the recent ICC arrest warrants as an example. The ICC just ruled that Russian targeting of Ukraine's power grid constituted a war crime.“During this timeframe, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the court said. "The ICC said the attacks led by Koblylash and Sokolov on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm which was excessive when compared with any expected military advantage". This even though power infrastructure has clear military value. Now look at the siege and attack on Shifa hospital. If Shifa was a vital command-and-control hub where the head of Hamas operated from , or if it contained a major ammo depot - that may constitute sufficient military value to justify the incidental deaths caused by attacking a hospital. A calendar and a couple of AKs behind an MRI machine doesn't does not. Moreover the fact that Israelis had to go in and spend weeks on a fishing expedition to dig up (or make up) the sufficient evidence to justify the attack after-the-fact, proves that they didn't have the necessary justification to stage the attack in the first place. Thus the attack on the hospital violates the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. (But don't hold your breath for any action from the ICC - They are extremely biased and beholden to US and NATO interests). At this point the mountain of evidence is simply undeniable. When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin. Israelis killed more children in a few months than the syrians, russians did over many years. In terms of civillian/combatant ratio and the sheer intensity of civillian deaths in a short time-frame- I am not aware of any national force committing similar attrocity in the 21st century (Maybe the Ethiopian civil war, but I don't know, i am not versed on that conflict) If this was Russia or Iran we wouldn't be having this conversation.
incognos 3y ago
But the burden of proof rests on the army that attacks said protected site. They need to show that it hid or supported enemy combatants. And to date, no such proof has been provided. Show me proof of the expansive military complex with their large cache of weapons and hidden combatants and I will gladly shut-up.
- czl 3y ago
  The Israeli video footage showing of Hamas rocket launch sites inside Gaza schools are faked? Ditto the phone recordings of Hamas ordering ambulances for military transport those are fake as well? Do you believe Hamas follows “laws of war”? When they fire rockets at civilian populations? Are the Hamas rocket attack videos faked? Once the other side starts to bomb your cities and kill your civilians what should they expect will happen to their cities? War is an ugly brutal contest to terrorize or kill the other side to stop resisting. We try to have rules to control war but history shows once those rules start to get violated by one side you should not expect others to stick to them. All that said I think Israel will be responsible for lots of broken innocent civilian lives and broken infrastructure when this is all done and their best policy in Gaza will be like USA had towards Germany and Japan after WW2.

archagon 3y ago

If the law permits thousands of innocents to be slaughtered, then maybe it needs to change.

gataca 3y ago
Hamas is free to hand out uniforms to its soldiers to prevent civilians getting killed. They’re also free to build barracks instead of tunnels underneath schools to house their fighters. Until they do so civilians will continue to suffer.
vladgur 3y ago
THe reason these "international laws" are accepted by majority of modern nations is because they are somewhat reasonable and allow parties to military conflicts to wage military campaigns while attempting to minimize civilian casualties. If the laws are rewritten to state "you are never allowed to attack a hospital or a school. No exception", then what will follow is one party to the war will put their military installation insides schools and hospitals and the other party to the war to the war will say "these geneva conventions are unreasonable and we wont follow it" In other words, nobody would respect Geneva conventions if they are unreasonable
- archagon 3y ago
  Regardless of any second-order effects, the truth on the ground is that many thousands of innocents are suffering, and I have a hard time seeing any societal configuration where civilians can be legally blown up or starved en masse as anything but immoral. If a terrorist government is embedded in your population centers, it should not be legal to raze those population centers in retribution.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - samatman 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - archagon 3y ago
      Things are very simple in my eyes. If tens of thousands of innocents are dying without an end in sight, there is a bleed that needs to be stemmed immediately. It does not matter who started it or whether the crisis is being used as propaganda or leverage. The truth is on the ground. It would be great to "defeat Hamas" as a solution, but I'm not sure how that's feasible at this point without razing Gaza.
      - fortzi 3y ago
        Things are not simple, and a simplistic take of this matter is very prevalent, sadly. I mean, what are even the real numbers? Did you forget about the Hamas rocket hitting a hospital in Gaza, which they claimed was Israel's bombing that killed 500 civilians? Later they settled on 50, when it was widely accepted that it was their doing. Fighting Hamas is hard, mostly because it uses civilian population and infrastructure to its benefit, but what are the alternatives? reward Hamas' actions by letting them off the hook? I haven't heard any other suggestion on how do deal with Hamas except for fighting them head on.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        Are you sure that stopping it will actually minimize the number of deaths in the long run? Is it better to kill 20000 people in a short time to reach permanent peace, or to save some of those people and then repeat the whole ordeal each 2 years, with more and more bloodshed? I don’t pretend to have an answer, but war brings up very hard to answer moral questions.
  - creato 3y ago
    How do you distinguish "retribution" from eliminating the threat posed by (in your words) a terrorist government? What do you propose as an alternative? Simply allow the terrorist government to continue to operate unimpeded, which enables attacks on your own citizens? There's no population on the planet that would accept that.
colonCapitalDee 3y ago
This a common misunderstanding of the international laws of war, and international law in general. In our personal lives the government can compel us to follow the law with the threat of overwhelming force; if I break the law I will be arrested, and regardless of how much I fight back I will not be able to stop it. Laws in our everyday lives are like commands from a parent to a child; the government, as the parent, can and will compel the child's obedience. International law is different. If a state breaks international law, there is no entity willing or capable of using overwhelming force to compel obedience. States have armies and some have nuclear weapons; the amount of force required to compel a state to behave a certain way is huge, and generating that force is extremely costly. When states break international law there are consequences, but at the end of the day violence is generally not on the table. Effective international law is a balancing act. An international standard of warfare that placed extremely strict standards on when it was permissible to kill civilians would make fighting a war significantly harder. No state would obey such a law because winning the war is the absolute highest priority, making the law worthless. Instead, laws of war try to outlaw actions that don't affect the ability of a country to win a war. No chemical or biological weapons (high explosives are more effective), humane treatment of prisoners (discourages the enemy fighting to the death), and no killing civilians unless in the pursuit of a military objective (if it's not in pursuit of a military objective, then it's a waste of resources). The goal of the laws of war is to prevent unnecessary violence, not prevent violence altogether. It's a case of "perfect is the enemy of good."
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  Exactly. International laws are guidelines more than rules.
  - incognos 3y ago
    ummm, no... they are actual laws. and you have to agree to them before joining the UN
kaba0 3y ago
The very reason these laws are there is to protect civilians. A hospital can more or less safely operate in a war zone if both parties play by the rules and actually care for their people. If you exploit these very rules for military advantage, then why not just put red crosses on your attack helicopters as well? There aren’t too many laws to war, but this just fundamentally makes sense.
volleyball 3y ago
GP is wrong. There is the law of proportionality in the Geneva Conventions which requires "that the expected incidental harm is not excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage." >The word to pay attention to here is "military advantage" - i.e. "military value" of the target. Seeing a "hamas" go into a hospital or a rocket being fired from it doesn't give Israel the green light to bomb it. While there is no well-defined metric or number that defines proportionality - it is safe to say that Israelis don't meet the necessary criteria by any reasonable measure. Establishing the necessary proportionality to justify an attack on a hospital, refugee camp or shelter is needless to say, extraordinarily high. Take the recent ICC arrest warrants as an example. The ICC just ruled that Russian targeting of Ukraine's power grid constituted a war crime.“During this timeframe, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the court said. "The ICC said the attacks led by Koblylash and Sokolov on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm which was excessive when compared with any expected military advantage". This even though power infrastructure has clear military value. Now look at the siege and attack on Shifa hospital. If Shifa was a vital command-and-control hub where the head of Hamas operated from , or if it contained a major ammo depot - that may constitute sufficient military value to justify the incidental deaths caused by attacking a hospital. A calendar and a couple of AKs behind an MRI machine doesn't does not. Moreover the fact that Israelis had to go in and spend weeks on a fishing expedition to dig up (or make up) the sufficient evidence to justify the attack after-the-fact, proves that they didn't have the necessary justification to stage the attack in the first place. Thus the attack on the hospital violates the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. (But don't hold your breath for any action from the ICC - They are extremely biased and beholden to US and NATO interests). At this point the mountain of evidence is simply undeniable. When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin. Israelis killed more children in a few months than the syrians, russians did over many years. In terms of civillian/combatant ratio and the sheer intensity of civillian deaths in a short time-frame- I am not aware of any national force committing similar attrocity in the 21st century (Maybe the Ethiopian civil war, but I don't know, i am not versed on that conflict) If this was Russia or Iran we wouldn't be having this conversation.

incognos 3y ago

But the burden of proof rests on the army that attacks said protected site. They need to show that it hid or supported enemy combatants. And to date, no such proof has been provided. Show me proof of the expansive military complex with their large cache of weapons and hidden combatants and I will gladly shut-up.

czl 3y ago
The Israeli video footage showing of Hamas rocket launch sites inside Gaza schools are faked? Ditto the phone recordings of Hamas ordering ambulances for military transport those are fake as well? Do you believe Hamas follows “laws of war”? When they fire rockets at civilian populations? Are the Hamas rocket attack videos faked? Once the other side starts to bomb your cities and kill your civilians what should they expect will happen to their cities? War is an ugly brutal contest to terrorize or kill the other side to stop resisting. We try to have rules to control war but history shows once those rules start to get violated by one side you should not expect others to stick to them. All that said I think Israel will be responsible for lots of broken innocent civilian lives and broken infrastructure when this is all done and their best policy in Gaza will be like USA had towards Germany and Japan after WW2.