Israeli soldiers on the northern border have been seen using a medieval catapult-like weapon to shoot flaming projectiles into Lebanon, igniting plantations to prevent Hezbollah fighters from infiltrating into the south.
Footage widely shared on social media shows the soldiers loading a trebuchet and flinging fireballs into Lebanese territory. “This is a local initiative and not a tool that is widely used,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement, denying that this is a widely adopted tactic by the forces.
Yeah, that’s not the real reason. Might be a secondary reason, but just like in Gaza, destruction of food sources and civilian property is NOT incidental. It’s very much a deliberate tactic, which is a war crime.
Sooo… just bog-standard “counter-insurgency,” then?
No. Just because the US military does it with impunity doesn’t mean it’s standard and not a war crime.
Strange… I could swear it was the exact same strategy used by colonialist forces since colonialism began, including every European power in Africa, right up to modern-day conflicts such as the Anglo-Malayan War, the Vietnam War, and pretty much everything Israel has done right up to this very day.
Are you saying it was all war crimes?
Yeah, international humanitarian laws weren’t codified because nobody was doing things that they should never do…
All the instances of targeting civilians and food sources as a weapon of war? You bet your ass I am.
Well… fine, then.
No, it was added to the Geneva convention in 1977
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(crime)
So something is only evil once a pack of institutionalized racketeers writes a bunch of legalese about it?
Well, the question was on the practice’s legality, not its morality.
So yes.
I’d say that there’s a whole lot more to it than merely it’s legality and/or morality.
I agree, but you asked specifically about legality.
Depends on whether you define a crime as a “legal” bad action or a “moral” bad action. While the latter may be problematic, because anyone can have different values, it is still widely considered a bad thing to kill people who did not do anything.
Is that all there is to it, though? The backlash against Israel since Oct 7 isn’t adequately explained by either… neither is the generalized silence on Israel’s behavior before Oct 7.
I’m reminded here of Sun Tzu’s concept of “moral law” - which neither concerns itself with morality nor law, but rather the credibility of the actors in question.
I am by far not an expert on this matter, but my understanding is that if people started becoming vocal about that, it’s because most people did not really care or know about the situation until Oct 7, and were bathed in a swarm of news articles since then. It’s hard not to have an opinion on something you know nothing about when you hear about it daily.