Cripple. History Major. Vaguely Left-Wing.
Would you like to more precisely outline the hypocrisy that is comparable in this case - between the targeting of combatants that results in collateral damage, and the assertion that attacking civilians with rocket barrages is valid because Israel has a ‘conscript army’, implicitly asserting that all Israeli civilians are legitimate targets?
I don’t ascribe to it.
Then repeating things like this
Hmmm I guess with Israel having a conscript army then rocket barrages aren’t acts of terrorism.
in attempting to equate collateral damage with attacking civilians should probably be avoided.
This is terrorism and a violation of International humanitarian law. It’s not a war crime because Lebanon and Israel are not formally at war
War crimes are not restricted to polities formally at war.
As an attack on Hezbollah militant fighters, sure, fair game. But this didn’t just attack them.
Photographs and videos filmed by victims and witnesses to the incident and reviewed by Human Rights Watch showed pagers exploding in various locales, such as grocery stores. Other videos that appear to be linked to the incident show adults and children in emergency rooms with severe penetrating traumatic injuries to their heads, torsos. and limbs, and other injuries consistent with the detonation of high explosives.
Unless there’s some proof that Israel targeted civilians or was exceptionally lax in targeting combatants, this has no relevance as to whether what they did was a war crime.
Hezbollah, in a statement, said that the pagers belonged “to employees of various Hezbollah units and institutions” and blamed the Israeli government. US and former Israeli officials speaking to the media said that Israel was responsible for the attack. The Israeli military has not commented.
Hezbollah is a paramilitary group. It’s going to be a hard sell to any lawyer or judge that targeting their members is targeting noncombatants.
“Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today."
That’s a very curious claim regarding international law on booby traps.
Not unless you’re making a meaningful attempt to target combatants. “All civilians are combatants” is the kind of Nazi shite that Israel indulges in, so I’d thank you to not peddle such grotesque views.
If Russians did the same to Americans, you’d be all “fair play, mate”?
At wartime, sure. Using explosives on enemy combatants outside of military-exclusive areas is not inherently a war crime.
Israel is in the wrong here because it’s part and parcel of their continuing strategy of escalation in service to Netanyahu’s forever war so he can stay in power, and the collateral damage is thus pointless from any perspective except that of keeping an authoritarian in power.
They’re not in the wrong because they chose explosives as their choice of attack against Hezbollah. Unless it comes out that their distribution of rigged pagers was utterly untargeted or something of the sort. Which I would not discount the possibility of, considering Israel’s history, but doesn’t seem to be the case according to what’s come out so far.
First of all, there was no way for Israel to know whether the people they claim to be targeting were combatants when the attack occurred since Israel had no information about the status of these bombs when they chose to detonate them.
So it’s your view that any explosive that isn’t tracked at all times with 100% accuracy is a war crime.
Uh. ‘Interesting’.
Secondly, placing a bomb in a common device that you have every reason to believe will spend much of its time in the proximity of civilians, in homes, markets and other public spaces, and choosing to detonate it without knowledge of the location of the bomb, or it’s proximity to your supposed target, is actively avoiding distinguishing between ‘combatants’ and civilians. I can’t believe that western brain rot requires this to be spelled out for it.
‘Western brain rot’, apparently, is when someone else disproves your utterly and blatantly incorrect claim about the definition of a war crime and then you flail around desperately seeking another justification for your claim once disproven. Okay.
Considering Israel’s history, I don’t know how much agreement there would be between my estimation of military value and the current administration’s.
“© those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”
Would you like to explain how setting up bombs within the personal devices of enemy combatants is striking civilians or civilian objects without distinction? Or do you think all collateral damage is a war crime?
Like, fuck’s sake, not every dogshit act by a criminal state like Israel is a war crime. Jesus H. Christ.
It’s important to note that this is the consensus of much of the international community and the US (and I presume its surrogate Israel) have not signed on to the above provision despite speaking to support it. The weasely approach we (the US) have taken to these standards really demonstrates how hollow our sentiments are when we feign moral authority in international affairs.
Was this really all just to say “US BAD” and “US PUPPET ISRAEL”? Holy shit.
-According to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, combatants are:
the armed forces of a party to a conflict, and also groups and units that are under a command responsible to that party for the conduct of its subordinates, even if that party is answerable to a government or an authority not recognized by an adverse party. Such armed forces shall be subject to an internal disciplinary system, which, inter alia, shall enforce compliance with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict
I dunno man. I just feel like if you’re at the point where you can clandestinely intercept huge amounts of your enemy’s personal communication devices, ‘turn them into bombs’ feels like a bit of a low-yield outcome.
I really don’t get it. Other than the “WAOW” factor, this certainly can’t have been a good use of resources for Israel.
That includes people who are members of your enemy’s military.
No, members of an enemy’s military are combatants regardless of whether they’re holding a gun or in a firefight at the time. The only exception is personnel such as chaplains and medics.
Macron et co hate the far-right more than the left, but only barely. Once the far-right was no longer in danger of being in control, Macron felt safe to fuck over the left by going with a fellow neoliberal shill.
Fuck Macron. It’s a shame this won’t remove him.
“End the genocide in Palestine or we’ll keep attacking civilian targets that have nothing to do with the genocide in Palestine!”
Look, I’m pretty positive about VOA generally, but when a ‘fact checker’ marks it as less biased than AP, the fact checker needs to sit down and rethink its life.
Dissipating heat in space is actually one of the major issues that comes up in designs for space applications. It’s… not easy.
You’re out of your depth here… Those reasons for affordable solar cells on earth in no way directly translate to applications in completely different environments (planets or moons)
‘on earth’
Did you miss the bit where I specified space applications, or did you just ignore it?
The Apollo programme’s own geologist, Harrison Schmidt, has repeatedly made the argument for Helium-3 mining, whilst Gerald Kulcinski at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is another leading proponent. He has created a small reactor at the Fusion Technology Institute, but so far it has not been possible to create the helium fusion reaction with a net power output.
This idea of “well earth has solar, so solar must work just as well on the moon!” doesn’t take into account natural lunar resources (solar needs rare earth metals) , atmospheric conditions, thermal conditions, material transport, etc… Sure, a well-functioning moon settlement would probably have a combination of thermo, solar, and nuclear power,
Holy fucking shit, dude, natural atmospheric and thermal conditions and material transport are exactly why nuclear power seems dubious to me as the basis for a moon base. I’m a proponent of nuclear power here on earth.
but it is strange how you’re writing off one of the most promising forms of energy that excites and interests space scientists most.
“Space scientists” here meaning ‘you’, apparently, since major investment into space-based nuclear power for earth-orbit and lunar applications has been very slim since the 60s despite niche applications and a small chorus of proponents, not unlike ‘Practical fusion in 20 years’ types.
These issues you’re having just sound like cope due to the fact that the US is now lagging in space science.
Uh. Okay.
The SS also included members that weren’t ‘militant fighters’, running a vast economic, political, and charitable apparatus, but few would dispute that attacking members of the SS would be attacking members of a paramilitary organization and legitimate targets.