Hospitals have been caught in the crossfire during the Israel-Hamas war — both literally and in the clashing narratives of the conflict.
JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling. “Listen,” said Dr. Marwan Abu Sada as fighting raged around Shifa Hospital.
Kinda similar to the "human shields" argument. When I read comics growing up, when a villain takes a hostage the answer was never "kill the hostage" except for the edgiest of antiheroes, yet here we are with "human shields" being used as a justification to kill civilians. It's fucking wild.
Because Israel is committing war crimes. Because Israel has stated, unequivocally, that Palestinians are animals and must be scourged off the face of the earth.
Because both sides are fighting are major assholes. Hamas does hide arms and fighters in and around hospitals. Israel doesn't hold back attacking the hospitals to get at that gear, because they care more about killing Hamas than saving Palestinians. The civilians in Gaza are surrounded by assholes.
What a terrible headline. If APNews thinks it's a war crime, it has a duty to say so. You can't just write a headline like this without drawing the obvious inference.
Given most people aren't reading the article, the particularly relevant points:
International humanitarian law lends hospitals special protections during war. But hospitals can lose their protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. [...]
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes. And the bar for evidence is very high.
“If there is a doubt that a civilian object has lost its protective status, the attacker must assume that it is protected,” Khan wrote. “The burden of demonstrating that this protective status is lost rests with those who fire the gun, the missile, or the rocket in question.”
TL;DR: If Hamas is conducting military operations from hospitals, they can be legitimate targets in the eyes of international law, but precautions still need to be taken to avoid civilian casualties and the case for their military use should be overwhelming, not amorphous or tenuous.
Why are hospitals in Gaza under Israel’s crosshairs? Why? Is it truly that difficult to step back and think for a moment about why Israel would want to erase the current populace entirely?
Because someone decided it was such a funny idea to use these places to launch missiles at their enemies.
Fucking godawful people Hamas are, ruining the lives of 2 million people and assuring untold suffering for probably generations. The sooner those fucks are gone, the better.
JERUSALEM (AP) — The head of surgery at Gaza’s largest and most advanced hospital held up his phone Saturday to the hammering of gunfire and artillery shelling.
“It was the thing we somehow told ourselves wouldn’t happen,” he said, speaking by phone from the central city of Deir al-Balah, where he arrived by foot Friday after escaping what he said were strikes on the hospital with tens of thousands of others.
“It’s to say, ‘Not only will we kill and wound you, we will ensure you have nowhere to go to be treated,’” said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British Palestinian surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders in Gaza City.
Nonetheless, there must be plenty of warning before attacks to allow for the safe evacuation of patients and medical workers, ICRC legal officer Cordula Droege said.
Even if Israel succeeds in proving Shifa conceals a Hamas command center, the tenets of international law remain in place, said Jessica Wolfendale, expert in military ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
In an editorial published Friday in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued a warning to combatants that the burden of proof is on them if they claim hospitals, schools or houses of worship have lost their protected status because they are being used for military purposes.
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From the ISW report today:
Israeli forces fought Palestinian militia fighters near the Square of the Unknown Soldier less than half a kilometer from the al Shifa Hospital complex.[1] A Palestinian journalist reported that the al Qassem Brigades—the military wing of Hamas—ambushed Israeli forces south of the Square of the Unknown Soldier on Shuhada Street.[2] Other Palestinian militia fighters fought Israeli forces on Omar Mukhtar Street, which bounds the square.[3]
If you build your defense in urban environment you are supposed to evacuate the civilians.
This is standard for any half competent army.
I think Hummus didn't go to war school. They're just regular folk that have been pissed off too much and now want some payback. They're evil and such, they just happen to know nothing about rules of war.
Until recently I, myself a total war removed, did not know that you couldn't use certain weapons. Like nuklier weapons seem generally not an option since the attacker can't even fly away fast enough to leave unscathed. But cluster munitions sound like a reasonable thing to use if you want the best chance at hitting something. However that's illegal to use for whatever reason. But again hummus would use those in a heart beat if they could. What about really powerful lasers, yeah those are illegal too. But for very little money they could be using them to blind the opponent from great distances. Koreans used powerful green lasers to blind security cameras during their protests. And now ruzzia seems to really want to drop a nuke somewhere. Like that's gonna help end the war. Instead doing something like that would force the hand of the US to take the war to moscow in a really shock and awesome fashion. I would expect for absolutely no building to be standing there in just a few hours of constant barrage.
Anyway, just to summarize, hummus has no clue what rules there are about war. And they probably don't care from what we can tell so far.
Because the Palestinian elected government which happens to be a globally recognized terrorist organization decided to build headquarters below hospitals in hope of exploiting the rule of war you mention.
Except: doing what they did negates that rule, and all they did was put that entire hospital of their own people in the crosshairs.
This blood is 100% on the hands of the Palestinian elected government.