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Israel: White Phosphorus Used in Gaza, Lebanon (www.hrw.org)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 58 points 3 years ago (19 children)

I get that they're angry and want to retaliate, but uh... that's a War Crime. Right!??

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  • [–] 48 points 3 years ago

    White phosphorus in general is not a war crime.

    General document for covering this is the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, in this particular case Protocol III, Article I §1(b)(i).

    Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signalling systems

    Of which White Phosphorus is typically within that category. It is incendiary and can randomly burn people, homes, and fields but the intended use is usually not to set fire but to provide cover, illumination, tracing, or signalling. There just happens to be a burning side effect that the UN usually shrugs off.

    How it's used however can become a war crime. Article II of the same Protocol § 2 and 3

    It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

    and

    It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except … and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective…

    So basically, you cannot deliver via aircraft, which video indicates that these were ground launched 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles, so check on (2), BUT it's debatable that Israel followed (3) and took all precautions to minimize civilians getting in the way. But I mean, does anyone really believe the UN holds anyone to any kind of scrutiny?

    So… I hope that answers your question.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago* (12 children)

    Using it against infantry targets is, but WP use by itself does not necessarily indicate a war crime

    It's commonly used by nations around the world to produce smoke for the purposes of concealment or signaling/marking

    I'm inclined to believe their intended use here are as artillery spotting rounds to guage whether fire is accurate or not, it's not like Israel doesn't have plenty of more effective conventional ways to kill people if that was their goal with these WP rounds

    I would probably call its usage in such a densely populated urban area reckless and callous at best but that's the name of the game in war unfortunately

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  • [–] 13 points 3 years ago (7 children)

    I'm pretty sure the reckless and callous use of it in a densely populated urban area is exactly what escalates it to war crime

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (6 children)

    Well if they're dead set on destroying whatever the target is, it's either that or run a higher risk of your artillery missing and destroying some other random building, so it's kinda lose-lose for everyone involved

    War sucks and picking between different ways to accidentally kill civilians tends to be the reality

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Forgive me, but I find it hard to believe that our 2 billion budget for Israel, combined with modern range detectors cannot produce a result that doesn't require us to boil/roast civilians alive. But that just might be the optimistic side of me.

    I am not saying you are not right, just that if we really wanted to put our heads together to find a solution, I think we could have come up with something that doesn't border the literal definition of a war crime.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    There's maybe one way you can perfectly calculate a ballistic trajectory that will pinpoint land an artillery shell on a position: if you're in a vacuum

    When you start adding environmental factors like wind and temperature differences you start getting into needing in-flight course correcting shells, which do indeed exist (they guide themselves via GPS), but even America with its $1.8 trillion military budget doesn't exclusively use them because they're so expensive (in the realm of $70,000 per shell vs $800 for an unguided one)

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    I know nothing of spotting round best practices, but surely there are other appropriate smoke screen chemicals that are less incendiary? Do all countries typically use WP for this purpose?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    After a cursory glance, it seems like your options for smoke generation are primarily either WP, or various ways of making literal clouds of hydrochloric acid

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Oh OK, my cursory search turned up Hexachloroethane which is only classed as an irritant, but I thought maybe you knew of a reason that wasn't appropriate to use.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    I saw that as an alternative but at least according to wikipedia:

    According to Steinritz et al., "Due to its potential pulmonary toxicity," zinc chloride producing smoke grenades "have been discharged from the armory of most western countries (...)."

    Despite its continued use by FPS (Federal Protective Services) as a riot control agent, the Department of Defense has begun to phase out the use of HC smoke after a 1994 report by the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory due to ensure the safety of US soldiers, noting that, "Exposure of unprotected soldiers to high concentrations of HC smoke for even a few minutes has resulted in injuries and fatalities."

    Leave it to the cops to use something the army is phasing out as too dangerous domestically on protestors

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

    @trafficnab

    it’s not like Israel doesn’t have plenty of more effective conventional ways to kill people

    All modern militaries have other effective ways to kill people.

    However, killing civillians on purpose and maiming them with deep open wounds that are resource-intensive to treat is normally seen as a war crime, and a weapon that is openly designed for that would raise even more international condemnation.

    This is probably the reason we repeatedly see white phosphorus used against civilians in conflicts where permanent territorial occupation is a goal (other examples by Russia in Ukraine, by Indonesia in West Papua). It has a terrifying, catastrophic effect on members of the population, and there is (im)plausible deniability.

    The excuse of using it as a "smokescreen" really does act as, well, a smokescreen.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    As far as I understand it the war crime part of it is generally considered to be the secondary effect of fires started by its incendiary nature going on to indiscriminately kill people, not the WP itself as a munition that directly kills (although this too is obviously inhumane)

    If they were blanketing entire neighborhoods with large WP bombs (like Russia in Ukraine) I'd be more inclined to believe indiscriminate civilian death and property damage was their goal rather than the more obvious answer of "making artillery more accurate, hopefully resulting in less collateral damage"

    Not trying to justify the invasion in general, I just think that the idea that Israel using a few WP artillery rounds is clearly with the intent of causing grievous bodily harm to civilians is unfounded at best, you can get into "they know they can't be too obvious about it so they can only use it a little bit" conspiracies rather quickly

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago*

    @trafficnab You are right, using incendiaries and ground-launched incendiaries in areas full of civilians is in itself a war crime under international law.

    But white phosphorus sticks to human flesh, cannot be extinguished, and burns right through to the bone. (This is one of the main reasons human rights organizations often call for it to be much more highly circumscribed).

    Doing this to civilians (whether few or many) on purpose would be a war crime whether it was an incendiary or not.

    I don't think it's a conspiracy to characterize the use of this substance in a built up area as reckless disregard for civilians.

    I've obviously taken it one step further in my statement above because I do think that the pattern of reckless disregard for human life that has been demonstrated in this conflict amounts to a deliberate inclusion of civilian targets. To me that doesn't seem like an unreasonable inference; YMMV.

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