this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (12 children)

It's a question of proportionality. I'm generally sympathetic to the impossibility of waging war without civilian collateral damage, but Israel is clearly taking very little care to minimize civilian casualties with indiscriminate artillery fire and air strikes, and on the heels of an already legally questionable attack on Hezbollah just previously.

Civilians die in war. It's ugly. I get that. But there's no excuse for any supposedly modern and civilized state to not attempt to minimize civilian casualties proportional to the military objectives targeted.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (11 children)

I don't think it's clear that they are not trying to minimize civilian casualties, it's hard to imagine a more targeted attack than the pager attack.

I don't know what the numbers are like for the Lebanon part of the war, obviously, but in almost all modern conflicts we see that between 25 and 80% of casualties are civilians. I imagine we're on the high end here as hezbollah like to fight and hide amongst civilians and use them as shields.

I struggle to see how you can combat such an organization without heavy civilian casualties, no matter how you go about it. I'm not saying the Israelis are not making mistakes or even being disproportionate at times, but I just can't see how you're going to fight hezbollah without heavy collateral damage.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

This "human shield" line is Israel's most effective propaganda to date. They've used it repeatedly with Hamas and now rolling it out in Lebanon to waive away concerns about killing civilians

When you unpack it it is a meaningless statement. All military command centres in the world are in urban locations.

NATO is in Brussels. The UK Ministry of Defence is in London. Mossad is in Tel Aviv. Are all these countries using "human shields"?

It is not smart to have your most important military centres sitting in an isolated field somewhere.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It is not a meaningless statement at all. Hamas have been deliberately using civilians as human shields since at least the second infatida. They have publicly admitted as much on numerous occasions going back to 2008. They use mosques, hospitals and UNRWA schools as weapons caches and launch sites.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If you look at the actual evidence about Human Shields, and not just IDF sources, it becomes clear that Israel justifies it's deliberate attacks on civilians with that excuse. Bombing a residential area with civilians and claiming Human Shields does not make it any less of a war crime.

Tthere are some independent reports for past conflicts of Hamas jeopardizing the safety of civilians via Rocket fire in dense urban areas, two instances during Oct 7th, but no independent verification since then so far. None of which absolve Israel of the crime of targeting civilians under international law:

Human Shields

Intentionally utilizing the presence of civilians or other protected persons to render certain areas immune from military attack is prohibited under international law. Amnesty International was not able to establish whether or not the fighters’ presence in the camps was intended to shield themselves from military attacks. However, under international humanitarian law, even if one party uses “human shields”, or is otherwise unlawfully endangering civilians, this does not absolve the opposing party from complying with its obligations to distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects, to refrain from carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects.

Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields:

Deliberate Attacks on Civilians

Israel does deliberately targets civilian areas. From in general with the Dahiya Doctrine to multiple systems deployed in Gaza to do so:

When it comes to Israeli Soldiers and Civilians, there is also the use of the Hannibal Directive, which was also used on Oct 7th.

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