Meanwhile, another day, another war crime…
Is that necessarily a war crime if the targets were indeed planning a terrorist attack?
Being disguised as noncombatants is itself a war crime, and so is killing wounded enemies (the one target was in hospital because he was partially paralyzed). What the targets were doing doesn’t change that.
Also, as for them planning a terrorist attack, I’ve learned better than to take the IDF’s word on anything in this war. See also this report on CNN about another recent war crime:
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/29/world/israel-cemetery-bani-suheila-intl/index.html
Thank you.
I’m not sure that second part is right.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule47
Bolding added.
If someone is in the hospital, but they’re actively planning an attack, would this rule apply to an attack against them?
If he was partially paralyzed, he was hors de combat and no, you don’t get to kill him even if he’s “planning an attack”. If he is incapable of defending himself or himself participating in combat, he’s not a legitimate target. Even Israel’s rules of war say so:
Israel’s Manual on the Laws of War (1998) states:
The laws of war do set clear bars to the possibility of harming combatants when the combatant is found “outside the frame of hostilities”, as when he asks to surrender, or when he is wounded in a way that does not allow him to take an active part in the fighting. In such situations it is absolutely prohibited to harm the combatant.
I genuinely don’t know: is engaging in strategizing definitively not “taking an active part in the fighting”? I would think that would count, but am not super familiar with the rules.
I don’t actually have an interest in any more discussion of hypotheticals, as I don’t believe the IDF when they say the sky is blue, so I don’t believe this particular paralyzed guy in a hospital bed undergoing treatment was planning a specific attack. They already definitely committed a war crime just by disguising themselves as noncombatants, why would I give them any benefit of the doubt about their reasons for doing so?
Fair enough.
And before any pedants jump in - I know Israel isn’t a signatory to the perfidy Protocol. Doesn’t mean when they do it, it’s not a war crime. Just means they’re not being hypocrites about it.
Fighting by your opponent’s standards is just in my eyes. Israel isn’t even stooping 1/10 as low as Hamas, so I am not sure what the problem is.
Not mine.
Yeah, with a bit of thought, I probably should have qualified that statement a bit more. Like, I don’t think anything goes just because you are fighting a truly despicable opponent. I just think the lines are pretty fuzzy.
War crimes are war crimes regardless of who you’re fighting.
War crimes are what the country that won a war calls it when the losers played by the same rules they do.
That’s a nice soundbite, but no.
If Hamas and IDF could be locked in a room together, I would be a lot less concerned about what they do to one another. But Hamas’s brutal attacks on innocent people doesn’t give IDF free rein to commit brutal attacks on innocent people. And IDF’s standards shouldn’t be “don’t be literally as bad as a bunch of terrorist murderers,” nor should it even be, “don’t be literally 1/10 as bad as a bunch of terrorist murderers.”
Especially if that translates into “indiscriminately kill 20x the number of people that a bunch of terrorist murderers killed”.
Even more disturbing: it may have seemed that Israel suffered a sneak attack and reacted by turning Gaza into a howling wilderness, but it now appears that Israel suffered a sneak attack and opened a file cabinet with a folder labeled “turn Gaza into a howling wilderness.”
So you would have no problem with the cities of Israel being leveled? Are home made missiles OK, or do you only accept professionally made ordinance delivered by billion dollar aircraft? If the explosives from an artillery shell are removed and turned into an IED that blows up a bus, is that good - or do you demand that all explosives be used in their original packaging?