• kreskin@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    No. When a military attacks a civilian structure like that they have to prove they acted proportionally, and that they acted to minimize casualties of innocents. Israel never provides that proof and they do this all the time, so absent that poof they are legally war crimes. Its well established law. There is no “of a sort” – theres war crimes and not war crimes. Israel commits war crimes and this was yet another war crime. They cant just pretend any amount of dead civilians near a “target” is just fine. Thats not how any of this works. It’d be the same war crime if they blew up a stadium full of people to kill one man.

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      They don’t need to publish proof according to international law and it’s uncommon for any country to provide that. Operational security usually precludes that anyway. Proof and such come into play in a trial or Knesset parliamentary inquiry. Both of which have brought clarity in the past on Israeli action.

      Proportionality assessment is done by IDF officers and lawyers. They want their asses covered, because war crimes are also crimes under Israeli law and they want to continue traveling abroad. Proportionality is always judged by if the action is conducive to reach the military objective, while at the same time minimizing civilian casualties and damages. Zero civilian casualties is not required according to international humanitarian law.

      Anything Israel does is immediately labeled a war crime by some parties, regardless of what’s actually going on.

      It’d be the same war crime if they blew up a stadium full of people to kill one man.

      That would only be proportional under special circumstances, like if that man was extremely important, time was critical, and there was no other feasible way to target and get him. If that one man is a combatant and legitimate military target, he is also committing a war crime by hiding among civilians using them as human shields.

      So in the case of man in a stadium it would have to be literally Hitler about to launch another world war to justify blowing up the whole building. You can only get him there, because he‘s in the bunker connected to the stadium at all other times. In that case the stadium would also be filled with high ranking officers and party officials, but you said only one man. If you have a precision guided missile able to blow up only the VIP lodge, that would change the proportionality assessment of course. Proportionality depends on the objective.

      Israel‘s attacks on the apartment buildings only took out specific apartments, not destroy the whole building. This can be seen on footage from Iranian tv.

      So no, it’s not the same war crime, if it’s even a war crime.