Comment by bjourne
Comment by bjourne 3 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by bjourne 3 days ago
[flagged]
Yes. The term you used was "operative" and it is not synonymous with "member of armed force".
It indeed does. Unless you are a medic or a chaplain, if you are even under the effective command of Hezbollah, let alone employed by it, you're a valid combatant target. Uniforms and current participation in combat operations has nothing to do with it.
If you want to make the claim that Hezbollah operates schools and hospitals and that employment at those institutions doesn't designate somebody as a combatant, I will absolutely agree with you. But it's very unlikely, to me, that those people are carrying Hezbollah military command and control telecoms devices. We could learn otherwise, and if we do, I'll acknowledge that. But from what we're learning now, it's not looking likely.
No, you emphatically are not. The criteria is membership in the armed forces: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule4 Had it been otherwise, practically everyone working for the Israeli state would also be a "valid combatant target". Including reservists since they are also "under the effective command" of the IDF. I have no idea who carries these pagers and neither does you, so I'll refrain from speculating.
These pagers almost certainly went off on n the hands of doctors and clerics.
But again, this isn’t about some sort of ethical counting and categorizing of the injured. What can the intent of this attack be other than to spread terror? To say to the broad populace we will harm you when you least suspect it, independent of the military status between our countries and we will do it in surprising and asymmetric ways.
It eliminated their entire command and control network, hospitalized hundreds of their officers and command staff, put the IRGC on notice that it has been comprehensively infiltrated, and will force months of internal investigations and purges.
Further, it comes during a time where Iran has been publicly messaging about retaliation for the killing of Ismael Haniyeh, so there's a geopolitical angle to it as well: "we can do this, think about what we'll do next if you try launching another 300 drones at us".
I don't think it's very hard to make a military validity argument here (of course, it's easy for me to do that, since I'm shoplifting an argument from Noga Tarnopolsky and Oz Katerji here).
>That is, they were not uniformed soldiers engaged in combat. Hence, they were not legitimate targets. They may not even have touched a gun if they served in Hizbollah's civil administration.
Had precision strikes existed in 1944, nobody would complain if a Nazi office party got hit with a missile just because "they were civil administrators, not soldiers"
It wouldn't matter. They would have been considered combatants then, and are explicitly designated so under the Geneva Conventions now. Unless you're a medic or a chaplain, you cannot safely work for (or, really, even be "under the effective command of") Lebanese Hezbollah under the laws of armed combat.
To Kasey's point, the reciprocal is true, too! The laws of armed combat permit Hezbollah strikes on Israeli command and administrative staff.
No. All members of the armed forces of a party to the conflict are combatants, except medical and religious personnel.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule3