- Dec 29, 2008
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I never make shit up, and perhaps you shouldn't either. There is nothing fucked up about the concept of collateral damage. It is a key concept in International Humanitarian Law, also known as the Law of Armed Conflict, and it is used not to justify civilian deaths, as you seem to think, but to impose limits on it in wartime.Stop.
I am addressing the OP. "Arabs or Palestinians...the Jews are so few...10 million Jews and over a billion Muslims." The OP is addressing how many Jews vs ...what?
So in a war of Israel and HAMAS in the GAZA strip there are how many Jews/Israelis vs how many people in the Gaza? No on is effing saying Israel is targeting all Palestinians, but you just said hey, they're collateral damage. How effed up is that? And please do not make shit up again -- I am not defending HAMAS or attacking Israel.
If you said it was unlawful to launch an attack if any civilians would be killed, you would, in effect, be validating the use of civilians as human shields, as Hamas does, and no country would find that acceptable.
International humanitarian law is not formulated to make war more emotionally palatable to you, but to find a balance between the need to seek military advantage in a war and the rights of civilians, and that would be impossible to do without distinguishing between those civilians who are targeted and those who are killed in the crossfire between opposing sides. The same concept is found in domestic law when the needs of police to solve/prevent crimes is balanced against the civil rights of civilians by requiring probable cause before police can arrest or detain people.
Right now, Israeli is abiding by International Humanitarian Law targeting Hamas assets with precision bombs while Hamas relentlessly tries to kill Israeli civilians with wave after wave of rockets.