Interestingly just nine days ago someone here shared a link to the US's Law of War manual for military personnel. It's pretty good for what it is. Since countries base this stuff on the same international treaties they've all signed, it's a guide to Israel's conduct during war (or just about anyone's) as well as the US's.
The question of whether what Israel did with the pagers was legal is not really controversial, or rather, it's not unclear what the law is. Find out the exciting answer in 6.12.4.8 Booby-Traps and Other Devices in the Form of Apparently Harmless
Portable Objects Specifically Designed to Explode. (spoiler alert: of course what they did is illegal)
In case you were wondering what the big deal was the other day about the US bombing shipwrecked "narco terrorists" there's 7.3 RESPECT AND PROTECTION OF THE WOUNDED, SICK, AND SHIPWRECKED.
I have questions about the concept of legality in a war like the one between Hamas/Hezbollah and Israel. The idea that in a war there can be legal and illegal actions established by international treaties to protect civilians as much as possible can only work if two (or more) legitimate states are fighting each other, with leaders who can be held accountable for the orders they give. But does it still make sense to talk about legality and international treaties when on one side there is a terrorist organization whose method of warfare consists of kidnapping or killing civilians? At this point, doesn't complying to international treaties only mean further endangering their own population?
Important note: I don't want to spark a debate for or against Israel's actions, but simply to better understand the real sense of applying international treaties and conventions in a war like this.
> The idea that in a war there can be legal and illegal actions established by international treaties to protect civilians as much as possible can only work if two (or more) legitimate states are fighting each other
This is not true (the laws of war work and have been applied successfully in conflicts not involving two or more legitimate states) and it's an assumption that seems to have negatively informed the questions that followed.
> with leaders who can be held accountable for the orders they give.
Holding leaders accountable ("legitimate" political leaders, terrorist leaders, rebel leaders, we can do it) is good, but we also hold individuals accountable.
> But does it still make sense to talk about legality and international treaties when on one side there is a terrorist organization whose method of warfare consists of kidnapping or killing civilians?
Of course it does. The notion that one side is no longer accountable for harm done to civilians in violation of the law because the other side has harmed civilians in violation of the law is wrong.
> At this point, doesn't complying to international treaties only mean further endangering their own population?
Sometimes yes. It certainly does put troops in danger often enough. Everyone who is party to these treaties is well aware that a country could be safer in a conflict if they just quickly incinerated the other side, and they've chosen to be bound by these laws anyway.
This operation was one of the most targeted military operations known in warfare. International law doesn't hold Hezbollah accountable for example. That is the reality today.
Parent meant this as a statement of fact (stating it's x that lies, and implying it's not y, or that x lies more than y). As such (true or not) it makes perfect sense, and requires only a very intuitive and casual understanding to get it.
Your comment reads as if it was some failed attempt at some kind of axiomatic construction (x lies _therefore_ y doesn't).
This is completely false. They fired thousands of missiles directly at civilians. 60,000 people had to evacuate. The only reason they didn't kill thousands of people is because the Iron Dome system is so good.
One of Hezbollah’s innovations was using anti-tank rockets which the iron dome could not hit. They were targeting military installations which is why there were almost no civilian casualties.
Your comments have been repeatedly and egregiously breaking the site guidelines. That's not ok, and if you keep doing it we will have to ban your account.
HN's rules don't change based on how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
I'm sorry and will stop but isn't spreading false Hezbollah propaganda against the rules? How are we meant to respond to people saying incredibly wrong things?
The short answer is that you (<-- I don't mean you personally, of course, but all of us) should respond to incorrect information with correct information, to bad arguments with better arguments [1], and do this thoughtfully and respectfully, assuming good faith and so on, as the site guidelines request (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
For a longer answer, I need to clarify the principles we rely on. I'm happy to give that a try, as long as it's clear that I'm not commenting on the specific topic of this thread.
People are allowed to be wrong on Hacker News [2]. They have to be, because we're all more or less wrong about most things.
It's not that the truth doesn't matter—it matters enormously! But it's not the moderators' job to decide what is true vs. false. It's the community's job to hash that out through respectful discussion and debate. Mods couldn't do it even if we wanted to—we don't have a truth meter [3]. Plus the community wouldn't stand for it. There would be a huge backlash against the mods imposing their views on everyone else.
Wrongness is part of hashing out the truth. One needs to be free to visit wrong points in the solution space, or we'd all be trapped in a hell version of the old nine-dot puzzle (the one that spawned the phrase "thinking outside the box") with no solution.
"Spreading false propaganda" is, of course, an extreme case of wrongness, but the right scope for describing the principles here is wrongness-in-general, whether it's being wrong in an extreme way or just ordinary wrong-being.
It's true that posting in bad faith, e.g. saying wrong things despite knowing that they're wrong, is worse than just being mistaken. But can we decide who is and isn't doing this? That would require reading their mind and/or heart, and that's impossible—so we can't use that as a basis for moderation.
Internet readers are too quick to jump to the conclusion that someone else is posting in bad faith. Nearly always, the other person is as sincere as you are. It's just that their background is so different from yours that they've ended up holding an opposing view on a charged topic.
Most people find it hard to tolerate differences of opinion that are outside of a certain radius from their own position. We can call that the "comfort radius". In the past I've called it the "shill threshold" [4]. Past that radius or threshold, i.e. outside one's circle of comfort, it feels impossible that anyone could possibly hold such obviously-wrong views in good faith. The other person must be a shill, a propagandist, or worse. What other explanation could there be?
Well, here's the other explanation: that person has a background different enough from yours/mine/ours that entirely different things feel obvious to them. The world is much bigger and more diverse than your comfort radius, or mine, can easily allow for. If the delta between X's background and mine is big enough, X's views are going to feel not just wrong, but obviously and incredibly wrong, and—as the delta gets larger—appalling, barbaric, and so on.
So what should we do? We should assume good faith, because assuming bad faith is wrong far more often than it is right, and instead work on tolerating the distance between the other person's view and our own. By "tolerating the distance", I don't mean agreeing with them. I mean being willing to endure the discomfort and bad feeling in one's own system (the rage, fear, you name it) that comes up when encountering a view that feels obviously and incredibly wrong.
This is sometimes called "bearing the unpleasant manifestations of others" [5]. It is hard and takes practice. Actually, it's one of the hardest things we have to do, but also one of the most important. (I am not advertising this very attractively, but it does suck.)
To the extent we do it, a kind of metabolic process takes place where one's intense initial reactions get converted into a range where one becomes able to do what I described above: respond to false information with correct information, and to bad arguments with better arguments, while—I'll add one more thing—remaining in good-enough connection with each other.
Or to go back to short-answer mode: if you're hot under the collar, wait till you cool down before posting [6].
You also have been breaking the site guidelines badly by perpetuating this flamewar and by using HN primarily for political battle. That's not ok, and if you keep doing it we will have to ban your account.
HN's rules don't change based on how right you are or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
We need you (i.e. everyone) to follow the rules regardless of how others are behaving.
It always feels like the other person started it and did worse (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...), so you (i.e. all of us) can't rely on that as a basis for responding. It leads to a downward spiral, and eventually scorched earth.
I agree with you about the previous comment, which was unhelpful, but regarding Hezbollah, I'm afraid you're making claims about things you want to be true more than you are relating any actual research.
It's my fault for picking this scab with you again in the first place, though.
Tptacek has been one of the more reasonable voices on this thread and it is odd you would single him out for criticism. Your use of the word "goybucks" is very concerning.
I apologized for correcting a comment from someone who I believe isn't in a place to discuss the issue, and who would predictably contest the claim --- since we'd already had the same disagreement elsewhere, bringing it up again, however valid my concern was, was bad for the thread. The apology was in no way whatsoever a reflection of my beliefs about what actually happened.
Though: this world's essentially an absurd place to be living in, it doesn't call for bubble withdrawal. I've been told it's a fact of life: men have to kill one another. Well, I say there are still things worth fighting for!
Jews use "goy" as a slur against non-Jews. As a so called "goy", I don't find "goybucks" offensive and in fact appreciate the attempt to reclaim the word.
This is just luridly false, especially (but not exclusively) in the context of Hezbollah's own actions in Syria, where they made and broadcast propaganda videos of them deliberately starving Madaya. When you make claims like this, you call into question everything else you're saying; it's hard to imagine where you could have gotten this notion from.
It's equally true in Israel, where Hezbollah fired tens of thousands of rockets indiscriminately, killing, among other things, a Druze children's soccer team in the Golan Heights. You can read this on Amnesty (no friend of Israel's) if you want.
Again: it's hard to understand where you could getting this notion that Hezbollah attacks are highly targeted from. That is anything but their operational signature.
>It's equally true in Israel, where Hezbollah fired tens of thousands of rockets indiscriminately, killing, among other things, a Druze children's soccer team in the Golan Heights.
An innocent kid was killed in this conflict? Thank God the other side didn't do that 20,000x more - then it would have been a real tragedy!
Especially if unlike some indiscriminate firing of crude rockets, they did it purposefully, with state of the art arms and monitoring systems.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here. I think you're trying to weigh Israel's actions against those of Hezbollah's? You're not going to get anywhere, rhetorically, with me doing that, because I'm no supporter of Israel's.
They fire guided munitions at Israeli troop positions. They fire unguided rockets and mortar shells into Israeli towns. A video of a targeted Hezbollah strike doesn't illustrate anything at all; everybody points the gun when it's useful to do so, it's what you do when you don't have a combatant target that tells the actual tale.
I can't say enough how odd it is to bring this kind of take into a discussion about Hezbollah. Note that I'm not making the case that Israel is fastidious about avoiding civilian casualties; that would be an unproductive argument to attempt on this thread. You have found one of the few arguments that are even less productive.
I don't have to debate that point, because it addresses an argument I didn't make. The problem is how deeply unmoored your argument is from reality. Exactly why is it that you believe Hezbollah's attacks are characterized by a high degree of targeting? It's clearly not true. Can you explain the logic and the sourcing you used to make that claim?
I already explained it with video evidence. I’m not sure why you hate Hezbollah so much, but I don’t share your animus. In fact I’d consider them an ally from an enemy of my enemy perspective. You don’t have to agree, but that’s my POV.
You didn't, at all. I didn't look at the videos you provided; I simply stipulate that they're real and depict what you say they depict. That doesn't demonstrate anything at all about Hezbollah's rules of engagement. When they have a clear firing solution on an IDF tank, they take the shot? Ok. And?
At the point where you're declaring Hezbollah a moral ally, I think the conversation has run to its logical terminus. Ask the Sunni Arabs in Syria how allied they feel with Hezbollah.
My understanding is that this non-reciprocity is why international law often feels so permissive of seemingly bad actions. It generally aims to forbid only strategies that are the highly destructive and non-effective at winning wars. The idea is that such actions are not necessary in warfare in any circumstance, rather than a coordinated and mutual choice to leave effective strategies on the proverbial table.
This non-reciprocity is also why many such laws come with large conditional statements. For example, hospitals are typically illegal targets. However, you cannot label a military outpost a hospital as a loophole. There is a gray area in between, where the law is generally more permissive than a layperson might expect.
It is unclear if these laws accomplish this goal in all circumstances. A smaller, modern army attempting to hide might not be able to find non-civilian concealment (e.g., the jungle in the Vietnam war), and there is probably a conversation about the (unfortunate) effectiveness of inflecting civilian damage on an enemy's will to fight and economic output. However, the above is my best understanding of what international law sets out to do.
Disclaimer: I asked AI to evaluate the above comment before posting, and it made the following (paraphrased) criticisms that you might want to consider:
- The primary purpose of IHL (international humanitarian law) is to distinguish civilian from military, not to only ban what doesn't work. Hence, the banning of chemical weapons and landmines.
- The hospital example is better framed as a requirement to distinguish between a civilian hospital and a military target
- Non-reciprocity has the advantage of being simpler to obey (the legal analysis does not depend on the enemy's past actions)
On the contrary, you have it completely backwards.
Each time one side beaches the laws of war, more on the other side are motivated towards extremism.
This cycle is why there is still war between Israel/Palestine after 74 years of fighting; both sides have continually committed atrocities, cementing the cycle of violence.
The Nazis tried the same argument at the Nuremberg trials. They claimed that they weren't bound by the laws of war (e.g., Hague regulations) since Poland and other states hadn't signed them. The court dismissed the argument and stated that certain rules are binding whether both parties are signatories or not. In Israel's case it is even worse since indiscriminate attacks have been outlawed since basically forever. At the Nuremberg trials, the argument "there is no precedent" had some merit, today it certainly does not.
I don't see how that would apply at all. These aren't nuclear weapons that take out entire populations, these are tiny munitions used to target Hezbollah operatives.
None of these have anything to do with what you cited above, which was ICRC's summary of customary law about inherently indiscriminate weapons. Your first and second links here are examining entirely different challenges to the operation's legality, and the third is just some vague assertions from questionable sources like Francesca Albanese.
You could ask ChatGPT and get a perfectly cromulent answer on what these have to do with what I cited. The key theme is indiscriminate weapons used for indiscriminate attacks. Alas, you can lead a horse to water...
Tiny explosives are certainly not the sort of inherently indiscriminate weapons ICRC refers to. You might want to read the article you linked to, which uses nuclear weapons as the main example. The difference in energy released by Israel's beeper vs a modern nuclear payload is at least 10 orders of magnitude.
ICRC is not really claiming that those examples are indiscriminate, they're giving examples of weapons that might arguably or sometimes be considered indiscriminate.
Some booby traps might fall into that category, but this isn't a toy or a banana, it's a device specifically issued to enemy personnel.
There can be separate textualist arguments about Israel's operation based on the specific language of CCW, but that's unrelated to the customary IHL you linked to.
For one it wasn't targeted, but either way, if it, as you claim, was targeted then it would be even worse because it's worse to kill and maim kids by targeting them than by being indifferent.
This was about as targeted as anti-personnel landmines, but spread out in civilian areas and detonated without any knowledge of their surroundings at the time.
Because mines are untargeted and designed to maim without discrimination as to who they might hurt there is a long running effort to prohibit their use.
Hezbollah pagers aren't randomly lying around though, they're normally attached to Hezbollah members. These were also much smaller than any anti personnel mine.
This was far more targeted than, say, any artillery strike that a commander could possibly order. Targeted doesn't mean it's impossible to harm something else. That's possible with any weapon, and far more likely with larger munitions like artillery shells.
It's not clear that Israel just set off all Hezbollah issued beepers; we don't know what methodology they used. We can guess based on reported casualties, but we don't know which casualties were involved with Hezbollah's military operations.
> What the israelis did would have been a worse crime if it actually was targeted.
It was certainly targeted, it just also had collateral damage, i.e. harm to non-targets.
What you have Israel do instead? Suppose they struck Hezbollah fighters with conventional artillery. They're not sitting around in open fields, so there still would have been collateral damage.
Would you again maintain that the strikes were "untargeted" because there was collateral damage? By this unusual definition, it seems impossible to do a "targeted" strike at least in any urban environment.
Israel should obviously have ended the occupations, payed reparations and prepared for the return of refugees.
The IDF doesn't give a shit about "collateral damage". They mainly attack civilian targets. That's the purpose of the organisation, to make life for indigenous populations in the vicinity of the state of Israel impossible. Destroy their agriculture and water sources, murder their children, displace them, destroy their homes, occupy the land, pretend to be a victim if someone fights back. Then sign some contracts every now and then and don't abide by them while claiming that the other party is the one who doesn't.
This has been ongoing for about a century, it was how the Haganah, Irgun, Stern gang operated. This is why the IDF has such a bad army, they aren't trained for combat and hardly ever have to experience it. Instead they're used for genocidal atrocities against unarmed civilians.
Ended the occupations meaning what, never enter Lebanon? What do you think Israel should have done about Hezbollah’s terrorism, just tolerate it and never let Israelis return to their homes in the north?
Apart from that it seems like you’re just switching topics to a variety of other accusations. We were talking about a particular operation which you claimed was “untargeted”, yet you haven’t suggested any better alternative (besides being nicer to terrorists in hopes that they stop?). In reality the operation had far less collateral damage than what’s possible with any conventional alternative.
Using force to halt or slow a genocide is not terrorism. And yes, Israel ought to retreat from lebanese as well as syrian and palestinian territory, stop it's cross-border attacks, allow displaced people to return to their homes and pay reparations.
The alternative is exactly that, to stop doing apartheid and occupation and allow justice to prevail.
There’s no question that Hezbollah’s bombardment was terrorism. It would be absurd to claim that they were targeting military assets when they routinely use unguided rockets which aren’t capable of doing so. Israel had every right to enter Lebanon in response.
Suppose we believe all captions in your links, so for example we'll assume that guy in shorts and flip flops was some sort of “spy balloon manager.”
It wouldn’t matter, because once you perform terrorist attacks, you’re still a terrorist even if you also attack valid targets sometimes. Same as Hamas, which is still a terrorist org despite attacking some IDF bases.
Even Amnesty has acknowledged Hezbollah’s routine use of unguided rockets, which can’t possibly target military assets but are just lobbed in the general direction of population centers. That makes them terrorists, regardless of what else they do.
They were widely distributed and there was no way for the israelis to know where they were when they detonated them, which they likely did out of desperation and not because they had good reason to believe they were in such and such a position.
It is fucking grim to incessantly defend state terrorism.
You don't seem to have an inch of a problem with terrorist, islamist militants that not only terrorise Israel, they also terrorise Lebanon. Ask the Arab League. Even they define them as terrorists.
Something here is grim indeed and it is not restricted to some regretable educational deficiencies.
Projectiles hit the wrong target all the time. Especially when we get into artillery or air strikes where there's no line of sight to a uniformed soldier, commanders can't be sure if they're going to hit the intended target. That's why we have the principle of proportionality rather than an impossible standard of zero collateral damage.
But surely "the most targeted strike of all time" would be "a single-target strike on a visually confirmed intended individual", right? Or at least that would be more targeted than any strike without LoS?
A parent comment claimed it was the most targeted “operation”, not “strike”. Some small individual strikes have 100% perfect targeting; I think the claim was about large scale operations like artillery barrages or aerial campaigns.
(I think the claim is technically false if we include open field conflicts, but probably true if we narrow it to comparable environments.)
Targeting Hezbollah operatives is certainly targeting, yes. The fact that there was still some nonzero harm to civilians, despite the targeting, does not refute that. Targeting doesn't imply zero collateral damage, which is an impossible standard.
The collateral damage was obvious and predictable. If you know about the potential collateral damage and do it anyway, then it's not targeted, even if you say it's targeted.
For example: say I want to kill someone. I know they live in NYC. So I target them by dropping a nuke on NYC.
Is this a targeted attack? Obviously not. But I said it was targeted! Doesn't work that way.
If you want to target people, you try your best to kill just them. If you're planting bombs in mundane places and setting them off in public, you are not doing that.
I don't know why we feel the need to defend military operatives by essentially claiming they're the stupidest people on Earth and cannot put 2 and 2 together. No no, they can. Meaning, this was intentional.
If I dive bomb an enemy position, knowing that it's dark and windy and I might end up hitting something else, that's still a targeted operation. Same deal with the pager operation.
> So I target them by dropping a nuke on NYC.
You would have plainly violated the principle of proportionality, which is about the relative weight of military advantage vs civilian harm. The pager operation on the other hand created a massive military advantage, with less civilian harm than what's possible with conventional warfare.
> planting bombs in mundane places and setting them off in public
You would have a stronger point if the conflict looked more like Ukraine, where enemies are mostly sitting in trenches wearing uniforms. Hezbollah operates very differently, storing and firing weapons from mundane civilian places. There's no real way to fight Hezbollah without bombs in such places, it's just a question of whether bombs are delivered by artillery, planes or other means.
> this was intentional
I'm not sure what you mean here. I of course agree Israel could have predicted that there would be non-zero harm to civilians. That's true of pretty much any operation though, at least in urban wars.
For comparison, consider Ukraine's massive truck bomb of the Kerch Bridge. Of course they knew there would be collateral damage, and 5 civilians ended up being killed. It was still widely considered legal, considering the major military advantage gained.
International law, as poorly enforced as it is, needs to have answers what to do with organizations that exist for the reason to destroy another country and that is financed through hostile nations. In this case Iran. Lebanon suffers as well here and Israel certainly isn't the main threat.
The Geneva convention doesn't apply to combatants in this case and you cannot be more targeted than this operation. You spoiler alter falls rather short on many accounts.
The truth is that the veneer of any international law is quite thin and you can pretty safely exist if you don't start aggression against another country. Any law that treats this differently isn't a law that serves justice.
You've posted this in multiple places in this conversation, and it's just sort of strange. A sniper shooting a uniformed enemy is "targeted." A thousand little bombs that blow up a bunch of people including some civilians is... less targeted.
Literally any operation that doesn't involve dispersed high explosives. I can't imagine why you're being so obtuse about it, it discredits anything of worth that might be buried in what you're posting.
> needs to have answers what to do with organizations that exist for the reason to destroy another country
Organizations...like Irgun?
Iran has existed for thousands of years....the Persian people's existence predates Judaism by hundreds of years. So how you equate Iran with being a state explicitly existing to destroy Israel, a state that is less than 100 years old, is beyond me. But don't let me get in the way of your narrative.
>Lebanon suffers as well here and Israel certainly isn't the main threat.
Out of all the major (and minor) actors in the theater of middle eastern geopolitics politics, only one nation has nuclear weapons. That nation also has a lot of nuclear weapons and isn't a signatory to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. That nation has also attacked US Warships. Another nation IS a signatory to said treaty and regularly allows international nuclear weapons inspectors into its enrichment facilities.
Note: fuck the Iranian regime they are religious nutjobs that are suffocating Iranians and have been for decades. I don't support ANY religious regime no matter where on earth it is.
Hezbollah exists to destroy Israel, not Iran. Iran current theological dictatorship just wants to see itself as leader of the Islamic world and uses Gazans as welcomed victims, just like Hamas. It famously fund terrorist activities like Hezbollah.
in the grand scheme of things, Hezbollah is a gnat going up against a fortified nuclear power.
Israel could eliminate them in a heartbeat but actively pursue the avenue that glorifies Hamas and hezbollah and keeps them active and new members pouring in.
It's hard to hate Israel when they are peaceful, don't encourage their "settlers" to colonize neighboring countries, aren't blocking aide, aren't blowing up hospitals and schools, and leveling entire cities of innocent people.
It's easy to hate Israel when their political body props up minor annoyances that can be used as convenient opportunities to have citizens rally 'round the flag, and ignore the fact that Bibi has been in power for decades and is actively trying to avoid jail due to gross corruption and heinous abuses of power. Oh yeah they also have a large amount of mission ready nuclear weapons available at all times.
Nukes versus a glorified caveman or two who have a few guns that predate the first Apple computer by a 2+ decades....hmmm.
Doesn't matter if they are a gnat if they fire ordinance at another country. And a while ago they weren't a gnat at all, they were the largest non-state militant force on the planet. Until Israel defended itself decisively and in my opinion that doesn't need justification.
Who really needs justification is Iran for funding these militants.
> and in my opinion that doesn't need justification.
It doesn't, but why does that justify their aggression towards noncombatants? Does it justify the killing of women and children, who then will go on to be culturally reinforced to hate Israel (for obvious reasons)?
What? Iran is a 2574 years old. Saying Iran exists to "destroy Israel" is absurd as your attitude to International law. Was Iran just sitting there planning how to destroy Israel for 2500 years?
Enjoy WW3, because that's where that attitude will take you.
ICJ has made no such finding. They will probably making a ruling on genocide allegations in the coming years; they certain have not made one yet. The opinions they've issued so far are here https://www.icj-cij.org/decisions
ICJ found the accusation plausible, and did later in another case conclude that the israeli occupation of palestinian land and apartheid is not lawful and must stop.
Whether ICJ had found genocide perpetrated or just plausible does not matter very much since international law demands that even the risk of genocide triggers state action to put an end to that risk. The ICJ judgement regarding plausibility also made demands towards Israel, which that state has refused to comply with.
Starving a population of millions and systematically destroying their homes and infrastructure does not become jolly fine and dandy just because some court hasn't yet deemed it genocidal.
This is still not accurate. What ICJ found plausible was "some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection". The then-president even clarified explicitly that the plausibility finding was about the existence of these rights, not the occurrence of genocide [1].
Noone is saying things are "jolly fine and dandy", but it's important to stick to facts when making such accusations.
It's not nitpicking - what the court is entirely different from what you stated (though it's understandable as a lot of sources misrepresent it).
The court can issue orders without finding any sort of violation, which is what happened in this case when they ordered Israel to "prevent genocide". It can be interpreted as a reminder to Israel of its obligations.
States have a clear obligation to stop the genocide in Palestine. Only the mentally infirm distrust that one is ongoing. Due to rules of process and the perpetrators waging war against the court it will likely never make a sound judgement in this case.
It has, however, found reason to order Israel to take certain actions, with the express purpose of preventing genocide, which the state of Israel has refused to follow and its politicians, pundits and other prominent members of israeli society have kept declaring their genocidal intent over and over again since then.
Do you worry more about the interpretation of legal minutiae than a developing mainstream in international relations that considers genocide and other forms of indiscriminate murder permissible?
idk isn't pager operation the textbook example of "trying to avoid civilian deaths" while getting your job done?
why is it "genocide"? is becoming hezbollah determined at birth? is hezbollah a race? does average civilian use walkie-talkie?
even if hezbollah was a race, after its civilian attack on 2023 (beheading babies, raping and killing even foreigners), I wouldn't even care about what those guys get
(also, don't say "humanity" like you represent the whole "humanity")
if you ARE talking about palestinian civilians, I don't think israel can do anything more gentlemen-ly to them other than pager-operation: the other option is carpet bombing and direct invasion (which is a completely another topic)
The ICJ has not said Israel's response is a genocide - not in Lebanon, which is what this thread is about, nor in Gaza.
“…the court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim… it did not decide — and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media — it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.” - ICJ head President Donoghue
First of all, you are conflating Hamas and Hezbollah.
Second of all, the stories about beheading of babies and mass rape on October 7, 2023 have been thoroughly debunked.
Third: the pager operation caused indiscriminate explosions at places where non-combattant citizens were present. Not very gentlemen-ly (to use your words), and indeed a war crime.
Fourth: What they did in Gaza is arguably worse than carpet bombing.
But the hundreds of concert goers who Hamas killed is very true. Remember how they paraded the broken body of that young German woman around like a disgusting hunting trophy?
How did you come up with that tally? Israel has refused to comply with requests from international investigators into the matter, likely because a lot of the casualties were due to IDF actions.
I remember the footage of "that young German woman" but it is to me extremely peripheral and did a lot less of an impression than the thousands of images of destroyed baby bodies I've seen that were caused by the IDF. The criminal actions perpetrated by palestinians on October 7th 2023 were pathetic compared to what the israelis have done for decades.
Claiming the IDF killed all of these people is a truly despicable lie that destroys your credibility.
On 7 October 2023, the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian nationalist Islamist political organization Hamas, initiated a sudden attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. As part of the attack, 378 people (344 civilians and 34 security personnel) were killed and many more wounded at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, an open-air music festival during the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret near kibbutz Re'im. Hamas also took 44 people hostage, and men and women were reportedly subject to sexual and gender-based violence. Some 20 of the attackers were also killed by Israeli security forces in the area of the festival.
I did not write "all of these people". I pointed out that the state of Israel has refused to provide conditions for an investigation of what happened, and instead it has mainly been the press and leaks to the press that have shed light on the issue.
What we have known for sure since then is that the IDF brought helicopters to the area where the festival was held and Hellfire:d generously, hence the large amount of burnt cars and the typical markings on asphalt roads and so on that are clearly visible in the early photos.
This and the use of tank artillery against inhabitants of the kibbutzim has caused several scandals in israeli politics and the opposition has been requesting thorough investigation for a long time by now. The IDF calls this policy of killing your own soldiers and civilians the Hannibal directive.
I've been following this genocidal colony for decades, every time they've been "mowing the lawn" as they call it there is a massive amount of imagery of murdered kids coming out of the Gaza strip. The reason you think I'm lying is that you haven't been paying attention, and this is probably also why you react so strongly to a single recording of palestinians parading Shani Louk. It might also just be that you're racist and deem israelis or zionists generally more human than the people they are exterminating.
Well, if that stops your thinking, maybe ponder the illegality of the israeli occupation of palestinian territory then.
The israelis must withdraw their people from palestinian territories occupied in -67 and ought to pay reparations for both the occupation and destruction of property, as well as allow refugees to either return to their homes or pay reparations to them.
Unless they do this immediately the international community ought to assemble an international military force and invade the region and put an end to the US-Israeli atrocities. Which is unlikely since they're both expected to use nuclear weapons in response to justice.
After losing WW2 Germany lost about 25% of its land. When Israel was created by UN mandate the Palestinians were offered their own sovereign state, something they never had, but instead chose to try to destroy Israel to get all of the land. They lost and are never going to get that land back. Your entire comment is completely deranged.
In WWII Germany was the genocidal aggressor, in this case Israel and its backers are the genocidal aggressors.
Punishing a state for genocidal aggression is quite a bit more reasonable than the might is right-ideology you subscribe to.
The palestinians have a right to statehood and self-determination, it's not something they need to be "offered". They also have a right to return to their homelands, and they have a right to oppose occupation, violently if they so choose.
And East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip. I'd also argue that the occupations of Lebanon and Syria are illegal, and that taking control over the Philadelphi corridor was an act of war against Egypt.
If you think such crimes of occupation and aggression are "very much needed", then I'll have to consider you morally impaired beyond the ability to take part in a reasoned discussion.
The northern settlements were largely evacuated and used by the IDF. The party to this conflict that systematically targets civilians is the state of Israel.
One could make the argument that the US and Israel committing genocide makes paramilitary action against them legal, since the US controls the UN security council through their veto power.
Right now Israel is an occupying power that systematically destroys civilian infrastructure and threatens an international force in Lebanon, making it permissible to fight back.
"The northern settlements were largely evacuated and used by the IDF."
This is a complete and utter lie. Hezbollah's missile attacks throughout 2024 led to the
evacuation of over 60,000 Israeli residents from northern Israel.
Try to imagine the US response to Mexico shooting that many missiles at a US city.
"Israel is an occupying power"
Israel isn't occupying Lebanon but Hezbollah is.
" making it permissible to fight back."
This is exactly what Israel did so brilliantly with the pager attack.
Close to a hundred thousand israelis were evacuated from the north at the peak of it. Out of thousands of attacks something like 45 israeli civilians were killed, like when the IDF brought civilians to repair power lines and Hezbollah attacked them. More IDF soldiers were killed between October 2023 and the so called ceasefire agreement, which makes it quite clear that Hezbollah practiced restraint in this regard.
I still agree with e.g. HRW that Hezbollah did not do enough to protect civilians, but adjacent to the crimes of the IDF it's a rounding error.
IDF discplaced something like 1.5 million people in Lebanon, many of whom still aren't allowed to return to their homes and those that try are commonly murdered, and similarly those that try to repair their homes have their equipment destroyed or are killed. Recently Israel bombed a parking lot filled with bulldozers and excavators and the like, to halt reconstruction in Lebanon.
Claiming that one of the largest parties in lebanese politics "is an occupying power" is insane. Israel is building military facilities in Lebanon and controlling territory, as well as attacking both Beirut and the Beqaa valley every now and then in violation of the so called ceasefire agreement.
"Hezbollah did not do enough to protect civilians"
What an insane statement. Hezbollah was intentionally trying to kill as many civilians as possible with the missiles. The only reason they "only" killed 45 is because Israel has invested so much into the Iron Dome system.
Hezbollah isn't a political party. It is a proxy army of Iran. That is why they started shooting missiles at Israel after Oct 7 2023 even though it led to the killing of its leader
Hassan Nasrallah
No, they did not. They also mainly used munitions that fly low and escape the israeli air defenses, which is why most of their targets were close to the border.
Hezbollah is a movement that is many things, among them one of the dominant parties in lebanese parliamentary politics. The name means 'Party of God', which is a hint. They also run hospitals, schools and other social services, as well as financial organisations. Due to the background as a militant mobilisation against israeli aggression they also have several armed factions, which is a very reasonable response to their southern neighbour.
Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders stated that they initiated militant action against Israel to support the palestinians and clearly expected it to shorten the genocidal campaign in the Gaza strip. As we now know, this strategy failed and Hezbollah misjudged the bloodthirst of israeli society as well as the degree of backing it would have from the US and european states. They should not have wasted time on a restrained attrition style campaign and instead acted more forcefully if they wanted to slow or halt the extermination of the palestinians.
As for Nasrallah, he is surely missed by many but he also spent his life expecting and preparing for martyrdom.
Yes. They formed as a militia to protect Lebanon against israeli invasion, because the relevant colonial powers did not allow the lebanese state to build enough of an army to protect its borders.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46147605
https://media.defense.gov/2023/Jul/31/2003271432/-1/-1/0/DOD...
The question of whether what Israel did with the pagers was legal is not really controversial, or rather, it's not unclear what the law is. Find out the exciting answer in 6.12.4.8 Booby-Traps and Other Devices in the Form of Apparently Harmless Portable Objects Specifically Designed to Explode. (spoiler alert: of course what they did is illegal)
In case you were wondering what the big deal was the other day about the US bombing shipwrecked "narco terrorists" there's 7.3 RESPECT AND PROTECTION OF THE WOUNDED, SICK, AND SHIPWRECKED.