[activeStick]

Originally Posted by RobotTalk

So the fun part about international law is that there actually are legal, written definitions of what constitutes war crimes and what doesn't, including the use of human shields. In this case, according to the Third Geneva Convention, it's the use of human shields and not the targeting of facilities that they're protecting, provided those facilities are legitimate military targets, that constitutes a war crime.

So yes, there is a war crime being committed, but it's Hamas that's committing it and not Israel, that is, if you're interested in long standing legal definitions and not made up standards.

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/cu...-ihl/v1/rule97

I, and others in this very thread, have been readily stating that Hamas are terrorists and have committed war crimes against innocent, civilian population. The difference in what we've been saying though - and something that some refuse to admit to - is that Israel may have also committed war crimes. For them, it's all on one side.

New York-based Human Rights Watch cited as possible war crimes the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate rocket attacks, and the taking of civilians as hostages by Palestinian armed groups, as well as the Israeli counter-strikes in Gaza that have killed thousands of Palestinians.

The taking of hostages, murder and torture are explicitly banned under the Geneva Conventions, while Israel's response could also be subject to a war crimes investigation.

Hamas militants stormed from Gaza into nearby southwestern Israeli communities on Oct. 7 and killed about 1,400 people, most of them civilians, in one day. They also took about 240 hostages back to the small, Hamas-ruled enclave.

In response, Israel laid siege to Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, and launched the most powerful bombing campaign in the 75-year-old history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, destroying entire neighbourhoods. Israeli ground forces then swept into Gaza at the end of last week with the stated aim of annihilating Hamas, with air strikes continuing.

Following aerial bombings of Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp this week, in which Israel said it targeted and killed two senior Hamas commanders, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights cited concern that Israel's srikes were "disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes".

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle...ct-2023-11-02/