The concept of proportionality in war can be complex and require careful analysis. And then, on the other hand, there’s the current reporting from Israel:
Gerry Simpson, of Human Rights Watch, said: “The Israeli military hasn’t said exactly whom it was targeting but it said it used aerial surveillance to minimise civilian casualties, which means it knew the cafe was teeming with customers at the time.
“The military would also have known that using a large guided air-dropped bomb would kill and maim many of the civilians there. The use of such a large weapon in an obviously crowded cafe risks that this was an unlawful disproportionate or indiscriminate attack and should be investigated as a war crime.”
Dr Andrew Forde, an assistant professor of human rights law at Dublin City University, said the strike was shocking. “When you see a situation where there are heavy munitions being used, particularly [in a] crowded civilian space, even with the best targeting in the world … that will necessarily create an indiscriminate outcome that is not in compliance with … the Geneva conventions,” he said.
[…]
Marc Schack, an associate professor of international law at the University of Copenhagen, said: “It is almost impossible to see how this use of that kind of munition can be justified. If you are talking about 20, 30, 40 or more civilian casualties, usually that would have to be a target of very great importance … For coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the accepted number for a very high-level target was less than 30 civilians getting killed, and only then in exceptional circumstances.”
Trevor Ball, a weapons researcher and former US army explosive ordnance disposal technician, identified a Jdam tail section and thermal battery which he said suggested either an MPR500 or an MK-82 bomb was dropped.
Notably the law professor says 30 civilian casualties is the upper limit of high-value targets. The law is messy and requires complex thought by trained professionals. Israel, however, reveals an intentional lack of respect for the law by claiming they have only a binary approach.
On Tuesday, an Israeli government spokesperson said the IDF “never, ever targets civilians”.
When they say they would never do something it’s in fact the opposite, because they setup a false choice where they clearly choose killing civilians.
The huge and growing casualty reports from Israeli bombs thus indicate no respect for any boundaries of any kind, willfull ignorance of law and order, for purposes of causing harm to a particular ethnic population.
This is not as unbelievable as it may sound, given the above false choice fallacy, if we can simply acknowledge that a seditionist group assassinated Israel leadership in order to capture the government and enact genocide.
