Comment by dijit 2 days ago
It's downvoted because it's the definition of proportional.
3g of explosives personally handed to the most senior leadership of your enemy and with enough explosive force that 98% of people who had them attached to their person survived is the very definition of restrained and targeted. Certainly not "indiscriminate".
hardly, pagers might be accessible by the population, but hand delivered pagers distributed by a terror organisation are not exactly the same.
Panasonic Toughbooks are technically available to the civilian population, but booby trapping a shipment of them that would be delivered to the US military would be a pretty sophisticated military strike. Hardly indiscriminite even if people took them home.
> hardly, pagers might be accessible by the population, but hand delivered pagers distributed by a terror organisation are not exactly the same.
Over god knows how many months you don't think they would spread ?
You don't think a dad would gift a pager to his kids or wife to stay in touch ?
Are you seriously suggesting that you would give away a pager, handed to you by your operator so that he can send you messages, a one-way legacy communication device selected as as an alternative for standard common cellphone specifically to avoid the risk of you being tracked by an enemy?
> It's downvoted because it's the definition of proportional.
Two wrongs don't make a right... are we really at that level of brain activity on HN of all places ? this is schoolyard level
You can have proportional terrorism, proportional war crimes, proportional crimes against humanity. Proportionality doesn't tell you much, it certainly doesn't tell you anything about it being indiscriminate or not
> Certainly not "indiscriminate".
Cool, go tell that to the two kids who died: https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0918/1470609-hezbollah-israel/
Also feel free to read the actual texts defining these things, detonating explosives in supermarkets is indiscriminate by nature, there is just no way around it if you're in good faith : https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule12
Both sides are clearly operating out of the boundaries we defined for conventional wars, is it really that hard to accept ? They're not even trying to hide it really... such a strange allergic reaction to these basic facts
Proportionality is at the center of defining a war crime.
"The principle of proportionality (Article 51(5) (b) API) states that even if there is a clear military target it is not possible to attack it if the expected harm to civilians, or civilian property, is excessive in relation to the expected military advantage."
https://www.diakonia.se/ihl/resources/international-humanita...
So, the case that Israel has to make here is that the expected millitary advantage from the operation exceeds the collateral damage. The fact that civilians died doesn't automatically make it a war crime from an international law point of view.
Their death is tragic, but such is war unfortunately... Lebanon is participating in this one whether they like to or not.
That aside, these definitions were written for a reason, even if they have no appeal to the current victims.
Am I misinformed, or was 3,000? They are the most senior 3,000? When you send out 3,000 explosive into the general population, how do you mitigate the collateral damage? I truly don't know the answers here. I'm under the impression that they all detonated simultaneously, so I'm keen to infer that there was very little thought given to civilians unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.
Man. Blasting off fingers and genitals is really something...
Were they not hand-delivered to Hezbollah?
All the information I have seen indicates that they were handed to Hezbollah and distributed by Hezbollah for the intent purpose of avoiding Israeli intelligence services.
Stuffing explosives into civilian appliances is the definition of indiscriminate.
If doing this isn't already banned by the Geneva Conventions, it is only because it wasn't practical to do. But then again, very little that has happened in this region during the last 80 years has been following any international law.