Proportionality and War Crimes

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Leiber Institute - West Point

The key point here which is often misunderstood is that varied body counts do not necessarily mean a war crime has occurred.

Opinions=mine
By this definition firebombing of cities during WWII were crimes. Even though there were military targets in those cities civilians were the main target so they were war crimes.

The nuking of Japanese cities probably were but it was not cut and dried. Civilians were the main target but the military objective was to prevent an expected 400,000 to 800,000 American dead and 1.7 million to 4 million casualties. A lot of evidence since then has pointed to the War Department Estimates being overblown, the Japanese were getting ready surrender anyway. Should current knowledge decide if an historical event was a war crime?

Which brings us to Gaza. Without knowing the mindset of the Israeli decision makers it is hard to know. While the main objective is the destruction of Hamas how much if any objective is killing civilians? Also of note these rules were made for traditional military conflict. It does not take into account an asymmetrical terrorist organization that apparently wants to see its own people killed in order to sway public opinion.

Unfortunately, that page does not define what constitutes an "attack," as opposed to other military operations. Are you aware of any good sources on the precise definition of "attack" in international law?

IDF spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari admitted that “hundreds of tons of bombs” had already been dropped on the tiny strip, adding that “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy” which imo shows mindset and kinda rules out the rule of proportionality.

International Committee of the Red Cross

Again it does pertain to the Gaza situation.

I know I posted this elsewhere, but a huge number of civilian residences have been destroyed and a large percentage of the deaths were innocent civilians including women and children. It certainly seems like accuracy was not high up on the list of priorities.

This was from this morning. The numbers may be higher now.

https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-p ... -4000-enar

Which might prove one admiral committed a war crime. There is probably not a war in history where war crimes are not committed. The final judgment will be is targeting of civilians widespread or systematic? I am pretty sure when this is over there are going to be multiple attempts to put Israeli leaders, generals, if not Israel on itself on trial. There are and will be widespread attempts in both traditional and social media to prove Israel is a racist, colonizing, state that committed massive war crimes. I am not naive. In the wake of 10/7 it would not surprise me at all if there is a widespread attitude of f**k them all.

I hope people can make a distinction between Israelis and less-than-ideal leadership. I’ve found various statements made by officials concerning, but it doesn’t change the way I feel about the people.

I also hope people can make a distinction between Hamas and Palestinians.

I’m not saying that Hamas and the IDF are equivalent. They are…different, obviously, although they’ve both caused a great deal of harm now and in the past, especially when it comes to civilians.

Agreed.

And thanks for the link in your signature to the page about the False Dilemma Fallacy.

Seeing as the IDF state they consult legal experts, it might prove more than one person committed a war crime. But yes it's only one man's comment (pretty important man), and he might have spoken out of turn.



I'm pretty sure that no one will stand trial, the court of public opinion is a different story.

F*ck them all as in civilians too? I hope you are wrong.

From 2014:

https://www.unrwa.org/2014-gaza-conflict

That’s a lot of civilian casualties and destruction to infrastructure in Gaza compared to Israel - 2,251 to 71 people killed.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 22 Oct 2023, 7:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.

It’s something I’ve seen a lot of in general - on and offline. It took me a bit to pinpoint it.

This is the internet, there will always be bad faith actors.

I am sure there is more than one important person in every war that commits war crimes. With Israel even if people think Hamas went to far and Israel is fact of life one has to live with most think it is a racist country. I mean the UN passed a resolution saying Zionism is racism. This was 1975.

Basically Israel opinion both the leadership and civilian has to a large extent a f**k you attitude towards public opinion. They look at history and see the whenever Jews are in diaspora they eventually got persecuted. Then after the Holocaust you have had the “never again” attitude. As noted in the war related threads Israel crimes as it is are not atypical, but they get a lot of the attention so a lot of Israelis conclude it must be antisemitism.

What they do care about is what the American administration thinks. So they would care about how public opinion affects that but only for that reason.

As far as not giving a f**k about civilian casualties after what just happened how does dehumanization not occur?

I don’t think I understand dehumanization, especially when children will be involved. Obviously, women weren’t part of the attacks, either. I just don’t get it. I seem to lack the vengeance gene or something because I’ve never truly experienced it.

Israel has engaged in less-than-ideal behavior in the past as well, such as in 2014, so problems aren’t completely relegated to this specific conflict as far as Israel is concerned.

War crimes do happen, unfortunately, but they shouldn’t. Every occurrence in every war should be recognized and appropriately dealt with IMO.

With all that being said, I’ve openly disapproved of my own country’s involvement in various wars and other countries as well, so I’m not just picking on Israel. It’s what’s happening right now, and it could impact at least one of our members directly.

I'm getting a vibe off you that I can't place , added to the fact that you claimed to live in Israel. It's almost like it's not you posting but someone else. Obviously this is my issue and I'm going to remove myself from this conversation as maybe I'm losing the plot.

Perhaps you have ASPartOfMe confused with someone else? ASPartOfMe has never claimed to live in Israel, at least not currently, as far as I am aware. I don't know whether he has ever lived in Israel, but currently, at least, he lives in the NYC metro area, where he has lived for most (if not all) of his life. He is a regular in some of my chat groups.