livus comments on Israel: White Phosphorus Used in Gaza, Lebanon

[–] livus@kbin.social 11 points 3 years ago* (2 children)

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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[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 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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[–] livus@kbin.social 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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