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Israel raids Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital, urges Hamas to surrender (www.reuters.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Is Hamas not the slightest bit culpable for using a hospital to stage militant operations? I think they are.
Is it not a brazen war crime to use the sick and injured as a human shield? In fact, it is.

Hamas militants should be nowhere near any hospital, school, place of worship, or other place where civilians and noncombatants may be gathering. To use places like this as a base of operations is both cowardly and completely against international norms and laws. The IDF would have zero justification for any military operation at Al Shifa Hospital had Hamas not made the horrible decision to use it, and the suffering people within it, as a shield. For context:

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Optional Protocols of 1977 (the main treaties of International Humanitarian Law – IHL) set a range of minimum standards for the conduct of hostilities. They are based upon the fundamental principle of distinction between civilians and other protected persons, on the one hand, and those who take part in hostilities (combatants for short).

The term “civilian” refers to individuals or objects (e.g., premises) that do not have a direct role in hostilities (See Rule 5 and Rule 9 of the Study on customary international law by the International Committee of the Red Cross – ICRC). An attack against a civilian person or object is therefore generally a violation of IHL and may constitute a war crime. A person or object can however lose its civilian status if it starts making an effective contribution to military action. It would then become a legitimate military objective (and hence a target) (See Rule 10 of the Study on customary international law by the ICRC). This determination must however be unequivocal: when in doubt as to whether a school or hospital has become a military objective, there is a presumption that it retains its civilian status.

Even attacks against legitimate military targets must, however, follow two additional principles: 1) the principle of proportionality – whereby an attack that would cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited (See Rule 14 of the Study on customary international law by the ICRC) – and 2) the principle of precaution in attack – which states that constant care must be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects. All feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects (See Rule 15 of the Study on customary international law by the ICRC).

https://watchlist.org/publications/what-does-international-law-say-about-attacks-on-schools-and-hospitals/

Hamas are certainly not ignorant of this, and so they must know that by using the Al Shifa Hospital as a strategic location they are deliberately putting a target on it, so why would they do it?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hamas 100% wants to provoke IDF killings of Palestinian civilians. This is not a shock, this is how modern guerrilla/terrorist/resistance wars work (pick your adjective).

The Vietnamese resistance under Ho Chi Minh were the most masterful recent practitioners, but the IRA, LTTE, etc also deployed this.

Israel is playing into Hamas's hands and will get about as much benefit (reputationally and politically) from killing Gazans and razing their homes as the US did in Vietnam.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No one here at all says that. What people are saying is that those in the hospital should not have to pay for Israeli shit or for Hamas shit just the same

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Obviously I agree with that. I think all sane and reasonable people agree with that.

At the very least, civilians should have somewhere to go to escape from the fighting, and the sick and injured especially should be able to seek treatment in peace.

Make no mistake though: if Hamas really have been using this hospital as a strategic location for keeping hostages or other militant activity (so far the publicly available evidence suggests that they have been, though, you know, fog of war and all that), then what they are doing is cowardly, shameful, harmful and criminal, as they would be knowingly putting patients in harms way by essentially inviting proportionate counter-operations on the hospital from the IDF.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Is Hamas not the slightest bit culpable for using a hospital to stage militant operations?

Sure, but the difference is that that the IDF is actively murdering with weapons that we are giving them.

Also, if Hamas is subject to the Geneva convention then they are a legitimate state authority. Are you sure you want to take that position? Because it means that literally everything that Israel is doing in Hamas is a war crime.