Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
12 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Hamas, war crimes
The most damning footage came on August 5 from Gallagher Fenwick of the TV network France 24. Several days prior, he had been reporting live when a Hamas rocket whooshed over his head.
Returning later to scene, he revealed that it had been a densely populated area 100 meters from a U.N. facility and 50 meters from a hotel frequented by foreign journalists.
04 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, war and peace Tags: Hamas, human shields, International Criminal Court, Nuremberg trials, war crimes
Karl Student had a clever idea: use British prisoners of war as human shields for his advancing German troops in Crete in 1941. Six British prisoners of war died from fire from the British side of the battle. The use of prisoners of war as human shields was the subject of war crimes trials by the UK Military Court in the Student case in 1946 and the US Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in the Von Leeb (The High Command Trial) case in 1948.
Under the Statute of the Statute of the International Criminal Court ICC Statute, Article 8(2)(b)(xxiii) , it is a war crime to
utili[se] the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations
In 1990 and 1991, Saddam held more than 800 Western, Japanese, and Kuwaiti nationals as involuntary human shields at strategic installations in Iraq and Kuwait. Saddam broadcast this picture of him putting his greasy dictator paws over some poor child he was holding hostage.
In the Karadžić and Mladić case in 1995 before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the accused were charged with war crimes for using UN peacekeepers as human shields.
The Gaza Strip is not a free country. Those that disobey the orders of the Hamas government to not evacuate and to not leave buildings in the case of warning missiles risk severe punishments including execution. in the Gaza Strip, it does not pay to give neighbours ammunition to settle old scores.
Why hasn’t the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrests of the Hamas leaders who have enabled the use of human shields?
The Palestinian Authority has previously sought to invoke the jurisdiction of the International criminal Court against Israel. The Palestinian Authority has already acceded to the Geneva conventions earlier this year.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas would not only be able to sue Israel in the International Criminal Court, they would also expose themselves to war crimes prosecutions.
Israeli security forces make strenuous efforts to adhere to international law, while Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups are routinely engaged in war crimes, such as shooting rockets at civilians.
HT: icrc.org
21 Jul 2014 2 Comments
17 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, war and peace Tags: Alan Dershowitz, Hamas, Israel, laws of war, temporary doves, war crimes
Just war theory (jus bellum iustum) is split into two groups: “the right to go to war’’ (jus ad bellum) and ‘’right conduct in war’’ (jus in bello). Just war conduct should be governed by the principle of distinction:
Islamic militant terrorists — whether they are called al-Qaida, Isis, Hamas, or Hezbollah — all use similar tactics.
They target civilians while hiding among civilians in order to induce democracies to kill civilians so that the media will show gruesome pictures of dead children and blame these deaths on the democracy, rather than the terrorists who use children and other civilians as human shields.
The democracy is then put to the tragic choice of either allowing terrorist attacks against its own civilians or taking military action that risks the lives of enemy civilians.
…Israel has been very careful to try to minimize civilian casualties. They drop leaflets, make phone calls and even send noisemaking bomblets to warn civilians to leave areas to which rockets are being fired.
Mostly the civilians leave. Sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, the Israeli military does not fire at the rockets, thereby putting their own civilians at risk.
Yet some in the media describe the current situation in Gaza as a “cycle of violence.” The reality, of course, is that there is no such cycle. It is a one-way street that Hamas has driven down precisely in order to create the illusion of a cycle with equal blame on both sides.
There is no comparison — legally, morally, diplomatically or by any other criteria — between what Hamas is doing and how Israel is responding. Hamas is wilfully and deliberately committing a double war crime by targeting Israeli civilians and using Palestinian civilians as human shields.
The deliberate targeting of civilians, as Hamas admits — indeed boasts — it is doing, is a clear war crime. Hamas has specifically aimed its lethal rockets at Beersheba, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. This is a war crime.
Moreover, it is firing these rockets from hospitals, schools, and houses in densely populated areas in order to cause Israel to kill Palestinian civilians. This too is a war crime.
Alan Dershowitz (2014)
15 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, war and peace Tags: Amnesty International, Hamas, human shields, Israel, laws of war, temporary doves, war crimes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waSPsI9-ge8
The clip shows the small missile that strikes a building as a warning to get out.
This “knock on the roof” technique has been condemned by Amnesty International’s Philip Luther:
“There is no way that firing a missile at a civilian home can constitute an effective ‘warning’. Amnesty International has documented cases of civilians killed or injured by such missiles in previous Israeli military operations on the Gaza Strip,” said Philip Luther.
14 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, war and peace Tags: Gaza Strip, Hamas, war crimes
see the Google map at http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/google_map_palestine.htm which shows that much of Gaza Strip to be rural – ideal for Hamas military and missile bases away from civilians as required by the laws of war.The laws of war also call for uniforms and the carrying of weapons openly so the fact that compliance with these laws of law would make Hamas more exposed to air attack is beside the point.
13 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, liberalism, politics, war and peace Tags: Israel, war crimes
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