War crimes in the Levant
In the current conflict in Israel and Lebanon, there are civilian casualties on both sides. Hezbollah and Hamas have targeted civilians with rockets, and Israel, it’s fair to say, has seemed indifferent to the consequences to non-combatants of its actions. As of this morning the official death toll is 320, very nearly all of whom are members of neither Hamas, Hezbollah, nor the IDF.
The “latest casualties” (a phrase horribly like “weekend sport roundup”) lists the following:
- Twenty-five Lebanese civilians were killed and 26 others wounded in raids on the village of Srifa, about 30 kilometres from the southern port city of Tyre, where 10 houses were destroyed.
- The bodies of five members of the same family were retrieved from under the rubble of their house in Salaa, another village near Tyre.
- Two civilians were killed and two others wounded in the bombardment on the border village of Rmeich.
- Six people, including a Lebanese woman and her three children, were killed in an air strike on the central town of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon.
- The bodies of two Egyptian workers were retrieved from under the rubble of a commercial center destroyed in an Israeli air raid on Ghaziyeh, south of the coastal city of Sidon. Five other civilians, including an Egyptian, were wounded.
- Four civilians were killed in air strikes on roads in Kfarshuba, Bazuriyeh, near the southern city of Tyre.
- Eleven civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a four-storey building in the eastern Lebanese village of Nabi Sheet, near the ancient Roman city of Baalbek.
- Five more civilians were killed in an air raid against a number of trucks near Maarabun, near Baalbek, on a road to the Syrian border.
- A civilian was killed and two others wounded in Beirut’s suburb Shiyah.
- Six civilians were killed and 12 wounded in a series of evening raids in various regions of the south, an initial police report said.
- A woman was killed in bombardments on the border village of Alma Shaab.
- A civilian was killed and two others wounded by Israeli military fire on Loussy in eastern Lebanon.
- One civilian was killed and 14 others wounded in several raids across eastern Lebanon, they said.
- Sixteen members of a joint army and police force in the city of Bint Jbeil were wounded in a bombardment on their headquarters.
- Fourteen Palestinians have been killed, four of them militants, in one of the worst days of violence in Gaza since the IDF launched an offensive to retrieve a captured soldier.
From what I can tell, no Israelis were injured in yesterday’s violence, although one person was killed and two injured on Tuesday by Hezbollah rockets.
The methods adopted by both sides are war crimes, but let’s look at it from the Israeli point of view for a moment. Hezbollah and Hamas launch rockets from populated areas; they don’t wear uniforms; they hide among civilian populations. So what choice does Israel have, since it can’t allow it’s people to be the target of attack without reprisal?
From the point of view of Hamas and Hezbollah it’s a little different. Israel has enormous funding from the US, and lots of high-tech weaponry. It has the luxury of hiding behind the metal walls of its tanks and launching missiles from warplanes at 10000 feet. It has no army, just committed civilians who must live as best they can. Since they didn’t choose this war they must fight it by any means possible, or their people will languish forever in refugee camps in Israel and Jordan and their land will gradually be appropriated by settlement. Israel puts no value on Palestinian life, so why should Hamas or Hezbollah put value on Israeli life?
For God’s sake! — Does being in a uniform and a tank or an F-18 make killing civilians acceptable? Does being unable to shoot the enemy’s soldiers make launching rockets at their cities acceptable?
Somehow Israelis take comfort from the fact that both sides have acted in an immoral way. They take some sort of moral high ground from the fact that most Israeli killing has been done by people in uniforms who have claimed that the purpose of the murder was the supression of terrorism – in spite of the fact, as clearly demonstrated by the situation in Lebanon at the moment, that most of the people murdered were civilians rather than militants. This leaves out the numbers killed by “neglect” such as poor medical care, sanitation and so on, when under Israeli protection in the occupied territories and refugee camps.
If it is unacceptable for Hezbollah to target Israeli cities because it is unable for military reasons to target Israeli soldiers, then it is surely unacceptable for Israel to target Lebanese cities because it is unable to target Hezbollah militants. And it’s no good saying “they shot first” unless you’re willing to go back to 1983, or 1948, or possibly to the beginning of time.
Yes Hezbollah is committing a war crime. Now can you look at the number of civilians killed by the IDF and tell me that is not also a war crime?
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