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Author Topic: Proportionality?
Free duh?
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3441

posted 27 July 2006 08:33 AM      Profile for Free duh?     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
What about proportionality?

quote:

Asymmetry
Here, Israel’s critics seem to miss a crucial point: although the rules and norms of international conduct in armed conflict apply to a sovereign state, they do not bind a non-state player, in this instance, a terrorist organization, such as Hizbullah.
Moreover, sharing the same fervent religious faith, Hizbullah operates mostly at the behest of the Iranian government, whose president has repeatedly called for Israel’s elimination. Hizbullah is thus complicit to Iran’s designs and a willing participant in their implementation.
This asymmetry challenges the premise of proportionality as articulated by Israel’s critics, because it must respond not only to the current provocation but to the much larger looming threat that Hizbullah and Iran pose to Israel’s very existence.
This argument of course does not exempt Israel, or any other aggrieved party, from indiscriminately conducting a military campaign that causes the death of innocent civilians. Yet, here too, Israel’s accusers are pointing to the truly horrific pictures of and reports about Lebanese men, women, and children caught, through no fault of their own, in a deadly conflict, without paying much attention to the causes of their tragic plight.
War is ugly

Israel sees this conflict as existential and is determined to destroy Hizbullah as an armed militia. But it has been Hizbullah’s strategy to hide behind women’s skirts and use children as human shields. Most of its arsenals are hidden in civilian-populated areas in southern Lebanon and southern Beirut, where its fighting men are also totally imbedded.
While Israel drops hundreds of thousands of leaflets and makes radio announcements and telephone recordings warning civilians to leave before any air strike, Hizbullah’s leaders encourage their people to stay put to deliberately increase civilian fatalities and so create international condemnation of Israel.
War, under the best of circumstances, is ugly, and with the best of intentions innocent people die. But no Lebanese would have died if Hizbullah’s blind leaders had not been operating under a deadly illusion that has led to the sacrifice of their young followers and disaster to their nation.
The questions now are how this unfortunate war should end and what measures are necessary not simply to prevent a repetition but to produce conditions in which Lebanon, Israel, and the whole region can benefit.


[ 27 July 2006: Message edited by: Free duh? ]


From: Canada | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Frustrated Mess
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8312

posted 27 July 2006 08:39 AM      Profile for Frustrated Mess   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I see. So Israel has to commit war crimes. It isn't that they want to, it is that those dastardly muslims make them.

And you feel comfortable repeating that white supremacist-type bullshit here?

Tell it to this 3 year-old:

[IMG]http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20060726/capt.8e689dc1c1ca4d96aa75ce303b66ead8.correction_mideast_israel_palestinians_jrl115.jpg?x=380&y=242&sig=JvYE42xZ1CJTd.9WuOdtYw--[/I MG]


From: doom without the gloom | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Free duh?
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3441

posted 27 July 2006 08:42 AM      Profile for Free duh?     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
[URL= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties]Civilian casualties[/URL]

Problems applying the concept today
One important prerequisite for applying the concept of civilian casualties is the clear distinction between regular combatant forces and civilians. In many military operations of the past decades as well as in many currently ongoing armed conflicts, however, at least one side was or is not made up of a regular military force. The concept of fighting combatants and uninvolved civilians is mostly modeled after the situation in Europe at the beginning of the modern age. Both the Hague and the Geneva Conventions were, in fact, created as a reaction to European wars.
This concept, however, is of rather limited use in conflicts where there is no such clear-cut distinction; this has been and is the case in almost every armed conflict of the early 21st century. In wars where irregular part time fighters swap the sword for the plowshare several times a week, according to need, and where fighting is viewed as the duty of any able-bodied person, without the need of formally joining a regular combatant force, thus lacking any perceivable distinction from non-fighting civilians, military leaders are faced with a growing amount of challenges trying to apply concepts which are in stark contrast to the situation at hand.
One attempt to solve the problem is by assuming the formal distinction of combatants and civilians as legally binding and therefore declaring any fighting civilian an illegal combatant who thus violates international law (unless participating in an organized levée en masse, in which case certain conditions would still have to be fulfilled on the side of the combatant).

Human shields
Tactic in war
The most famous use of human shields occurred in Iraq in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in advance of the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein's government detained hundreds of Western citizens who were visiting or living in Iraq to try to deter nations from participating in military operations against the country. A number of these hostages were filmed meeting Saddam, and kept with him to deter any targeted attacks, whilst others were held in or near military and industrial targets. Whilst the UN debated its response to the invasion of Kuwait, several international statesmen and peace campaigners visited Iraq to try to secure the release of the human shields, many returning with around 10 or 12 each time.
The tactic was used by the Bosnian Serbs in 1994.
Pictures from the Gaza Strip have documented incident of Hamas and Popular Resistance Committees using children as human shield, to prevent the IDF from firing over gunmen and Qassam rockets.[1] Human Rights Watch has reported that the Israeli Defense Forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields during the Battle of Jenin 2002. [2] The practice was subsequently outlawed by the Israeli Supreme Court but IDF continues to be practiced it[3]. Israeli human rights group B'tselem has documented cases of the practice used in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2006 [4].
The term human shield can also be used collectively where the shield is not an individual but the whole population. In this case, one party in a conflict intentionally positions its military assets amongst a civilian population or close to civilian facilities such as hospitals or schools in the hope that the other party will be reluctant to attack them. Furthermore, if the other party attacks these targets anyway, the resulting civilian casualties have propaganda value. In the case of popular resistance movements, which always operate amongst the civilian populations from which they arise, application of the phrase "human shield" is usually restricted to partisan polemics.
International law considers the use of human shields to protect targets a war crime. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids the use of any civilian as a shield: "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." (Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, August 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3516, 75 U.N.T.S. 287, art. 28)


From: Canada | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 27 July 2006 08:43 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
This thread has irredeemable sidescroll. And really, there's no need to start yet another thread on the Israel-Lebanon conflict when there are so many others going already. Please look for other threads where your post might fit before starting new ones.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged

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