Israel rescues four hostages alive from Gaza who were captured by Hamas at Nova music festival on October 7 - including girl seen kidnapped on back of motorbike

[keenforhelp]

Well done Israel - fantastic, wonderful news
xxx

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13508615/Israel-rescues-four-hostages-alive-Gaza-Noa-Argamani-motorbike.html

What 274 civilians were murdered. That seems very specific and precise

How did you get that figure?

That number includes the people holding the hostages and the Hamas fighters who used RGPs and other weapons to try to stop the rescue. Many of the civilians were likely killing by Hamas in the crossfire.

Seems nobody here can address the bombing and the mass slaughter. Bizarre.

It's not.

They're not

And we are meant to be discussing the hostages that were rescued

I'm responding to your claim that it was a war crime to wear a disguise to rescue hostages. You seem to not want to discuss it despite having posted it on a discussion forum?

Not really.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE AND INNOCENT BYSTANDERS IN WAR

Proportionality
The rules of LOAC provide some protections for civilians, but civilians can lawfully be killed in war. The LOAC principle of distinction prohibits attacks directed against civilians, meaning it is unlawful to intentionally target civilians. Civilians, however, may be incidentally harmed or killed in attacks directed at military objectives. The LOAC principle of proportionality only prohibits attacks against military objectives if the attack is expected to cause incidental harm to civilians or civilian objects that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Thus, the principle of proportionality implicitly authorizes the knowing or foreseeable (but not intentional) killing of civilians in certain circumstances. Indeed, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths has increased over the past century, particularly with the advent of aerial warfare, the development of more destructive weapons, and the urbanization of societies.

Innocence v. Non-Innocence

Civilians, like combatants, can forfeit their moral immunity through their conduct. Civilians who are responsible for waging, or those who make material contributions to, an unjust war can be deemed non-innocent. Non-innocent civilians can be permissibly harmed by States exercising their right of self-defense (although they retain their legal immunity from direct attack). Thus, attacks expected to cause incidental harm to non-innocent civilians, such as an attack against an enemy munitions factory, may be morally justified.

What about the 274 civilians murdered by Israel in the process?

That's quite a major twisting of what happened. The IDF was extracting the three male hostages and came under fire. So many of those killed will have been Hamas operatives. Civilian deaths could just as easily have been due to the RPGs and hand grenades Hamas fighters were using in a densely populated civilian area. Also the figures do come from Hamas.

Civilians were killed and that is a tragedy but to make it sound like it the IDF went in and deliberately murdered them is untrue. If Hamas had let the rescuers leave unopposed with the hostages, the deaths wouldn't have happened.

That's lovely

The living with not knowing what your loved one is going through must be unbearable

So happy for them

I've explained it at least 3 times. You can read back on the last few pages if you're interested.

Which would mean that Israel killed 274 civilians and Hamas killed one Israeli soldier in this massive firefight. Israel didn't kill any Hamas terrorists, and Hamas didn't kill any civilians.

That claim is from Hamas. I'm not sure it can be trusted.

Any civilian loss of live is deplorable, but people really need to engage their brains if they think it was an entirely one-sided battle.

Your explanation didn't make any sense, so I questioned further and now you're trying to brush me off. I shall draw my own conclusions.

Is this a US military source?

@DownNative they didn’t just return fire. This is a picture from CNN from the area.
There was intense bombing and shooting from the air in a busy market place full of largely defenceless civilians.

Anyway - we are not going to decide whether or not it is a war crime here. Both Hamas and the Israeli authorities cannot be trusted and the press aren’t let in - it’s impossible to get to the truth now.

Soldiers pretending to a civilian, occupied population to be refugees, and killing hundreds of people in the process of rescuing four hostages is breaking international law in my opinion, yes.

If they'd misrepresented themselves and not killed all those people it might be OK but they did kill people and the IDF bombed civilian areas.

I don't know how to dumb it down any further, sorry.

@LordPercyPercy have you seen the footage of the scene? It wasn't a few hand grenades that caused it.

Entering enemy territory disguised as a civilian isn't a war crime. You simply lose your rights under the Geneva Convention by being out of uniform and can be shot as a spy.

COMBATANT PRIVILEGES AND PROTECTIONS

Military uniforms have particular significance in the law of armed conflict. The uniform, or other fixed distinctive sign, is a fundamental aspect of combatant status and critical to the implementation of the principle of distinction. Combatants who discard their uniforms and fight in civilian clothing lose their entitlement to prisoner of war status, combatant immunity, and other privileges of lawful combatant status (see Quirin and Krofan, for example).

Are you afraid to click the link to see for yourself?

Exactly.

Presumably any "human shields" are not 'waging' though. Is simply being in the wrong place making a "material contribution" to an unjust war?

@MissConductUS it can be a crime, actually.

Article 37 - Prohibition of perfidy.

It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:

(a) The feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;
(b) The feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;
(c) The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and
(d) The feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.

@MissConductUS I didn't want to presume so I thought I'd double check the source but you appear to be hostile towards the question.

I think you'll find IHL acknowledges that unintended civilian deaths is a reality of war known as collateral deaths.

Indeed, you'll also find that IHL does not insist on ZERO civilian deaths as this is not practical in addition to handing a terrorist group like Hamas every advantage over Sovereign States.

You didn't argue law there - just an uninformed, emotionally rooted belief in what you think is/isn't permissible.

In Strategika URBAN WARFARE, COLLATERAL CIVILIAN DEATHS, AND THE LAWS OF WAR, John Yoo and Jeremy A. Rabkin state:

"Those who claim Israel has “clearly” violated international law seem to assume the law of armed conflict (LOAC) is as clear as the U.S. tax code. The main treaty setting out permissible tactics in armed conflict, Additional Protocol I (1977) (AP I) to the (1949) Geneva Conventions, was negotiated in the wake of the Vietnam conflict. It is full of general phrases, papering over differences between Western and Third World delegates to the drafting conference. It has never been ratified by Israel, nor by the United States and a number of other countries.

Israeli and American military lawyers acknowledge that their armed forces should conform with the main tenets of AP I, as a statement of customary law. But they are not obligated to conform to interpretations made by the International Red Cross or other advocacy groups, since these bystanders have no actual experience in combat operations, and “custom” under international law is determined by the relevant practice of actual states. While the U.S. tax code can be clarified by the IRS and innumerable federal court rulings, there is no accepted administrative authority on the law of armed conflict, and scarcely any authoritative court rulings on AP I. Many AP I provisions were incorporated into the Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) but neither Israel nor the United States has ratified that treaty."

JOHN YOO is Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. His latest book is Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power (St. Martin’s, 2020). Recent works include Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War (2017) and Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare (2014). Professor Yoo was deputy assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003; general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995 to
1996; and a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from 1994 to 1995. He graduated from Yale Law School and summa cum laude from Harvard

JEREMY A. RABKIN is currently a professor of law at George Mason University (GMU), where he teaches courses including ones
on international law and the law of war. He holds a PhD in political science from Harvard University. Before coming to GMU in 2007, he taught for many years in the Department of Government at Cornell University. His
most recent book is Law without Nations? (Princeton University Press).College.

So, IHL does not require zero civilian deaths, civilians who engage in hostilities become legitimate targets including those guarding hostages and areas cannot be rendered immune from military operations by the presence of protected status individuals.

If States could not act because a terrorist group is operating amongst civilians and also using civilians as human shields, then there would be nothing States could do militarily against such terrorist groups.

If that was the case, terrorist organisations would win every single time simply by taking hostages and using people as human shields.

But this is demonstrably NOT the case in International Law.

I think missconductus seems to be using the same source as downnative 🙊

The ihl source

You can continue to make rude comments and argue in favour of the "lawful" killing of civilians if that makes you happy but you're wrong, and your personal comments are not accurate.

As I said at the beginning I have no interest in debating this with you. Talking to people who are genuinely trying to justify the killing of civilians makes my skin crawl and I'd rather not subject myself to it.

This.

It really feels to me that you consider that a terrorist should get away literally with murder or taking a hostage if he or she can provide an innocent human shield .

This would mean the end of society

Israel never signed or ratified the Protocol I amendment to the GC.