Comment by wut42

Comment by wut42 2 days ago

No!

>Customary international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – precisely to avoid putting civilians at grave risk and produce the devastating scenes that continue to unfold across Lebanon today. The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction. A prompt and impartial investigation into the attacks should be urgently conducted.

Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at Human Rights Watch

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/18/lebanon-exploding-pagers...

loeg 2 days ago

These are not booby traps.

Reply View 37 replies

pvaldes a day ago

"Arguing over minutia to dilute and divest the focus from the main discourse" pattern detected again in this thread.

Reply View | 0 replies
wut42 2 days ago

still: The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction

Reply View | 10 replies
- mrguyorama 2 days ago
  
  >device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate
  Nope, artillery shells are not illegal and you can even miss where you are aiming! We once obliterated an entire French coastal village with naval gunfire on D-Day because information in war is imperfect.
  Accidentally killing civilians is not illegal in war! If you have a "valid military target" who takes a cab from the airport, you can airstrike that cab and not violate the Geneva Conventions.
  Consider that a nuke that you detonate in the center of a military base that also "just happens" to wipe out the entire city that base is in is not a war crime!
  
  Reply View | 9 replies
  
  wut42 2 days ago
  
  Yeah no you are targeting somewhere specific even if you miss.
  This was a large scale indiscriminate attack. Which is entirely forbidden in Geneva Conventions.
  
  Reply View | 8 replies
newspaper1 2 days ago

According to that definition they are:
"booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use"

Reply View | 24 replies
- abracadaniel 2 days ago
  
  That would hold true for something like a pay phone, but a personal electronic device, only used by the combatant, would not be associated with civilian use.
  
  Reply View | 23 replies
  
  anigbrowl 2 days ago
  
  You're assuming your premise as your conclusion. I am not at all convinced about how many of those targeted yesterday actually qualify as combatants. Also, just because a combatant owns something does not make the thing military. Pagers are commonly used by people in emergency services, industrial technicians, and so on.
  
  Reply View | 12 replies
  
  newspaper1 2 days ago
  
  A pager is a piece of consumer electronics definitely associated with civilian use. There's a story about a little girl who tried to hand her dad his pager from the dinner table and it blew up in her face. Civilians will not expect consumer tech devices to be bombs.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
  
  dtornabene a day ago
  
  according to who? A little girl was killed today precisely because she picked up someones pager. On top of that solar panels (!!!) are blowing up across Lebanon right now, do those count? Are those somehow incontrovertibly "associated" with a combatant?
  
  Reply View | 8 replies