Israeli soldiers on the northern border have been seen using a medieval catapult-like weapon to shoot flaming projectiles into Lebanon, igniting plantations to prevent Hezbollah fighters from infiltrating into the south.
Footage widely shared on social media shows the soldiers loading a trebuchet and flinging fireballs into Lebanese territory. “This is a local initiative and not a tool that is widely used,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement, denying that this is a widely adopted tactic by the forces.
Yeah, that’s not the real reason. Might be a secondary reason, but just like in Gaza, destruction of food sources and civilian property is NOT incidental. It’s very much a deliberate tactic, which is a war crime.
Sooo… just bog-standard “counter-insurgency,” then?
No. Just because the US military does it with impunity doesn’t mean it’s standard and not a war crime.
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Yeah, international humanitarian laws weren’t codified because nobody was doing things that they should never do…
All the instances of targeting civilians and food sources as a weapon of war? You bet your ass I am.
Well… fine, then.
No, it was added to the Geneva convention in 1977
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(crime)
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Well, the question was on the practice’s legality, not its morality.
So yes.
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I agree, but you asked specifically about legality.
Depends on whether you define a crime as a “legal” bad action or a “moral” bad action. While the latter may be problematic, because anyone can have different values, it is still widely considered a bad thing to kill people who did not do anything.
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I am by far not an expert on this matter, but my understanding is that if people started becoming vocal about that, it’s because most people did not really care or know about the situation until Oct 7, and were bathed in a swarm of news articles since then. It’s hard not to have an opinion on something you know nothing about when you hear about it daily.