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.
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.
Strange… I could swear it was the exact same strategy used by colonialist forces since colonialism began, including every European power in Africa, right up to modern-day conflicts such as the Anglo-Malayan War, the Vietnam War, and pretty much everything Israel has done right up to this very day.
Are you saying it was all war crimes?
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)
So something is only evil once a pack of institutionalized racketeers writes a bunch of legalese about it?
Well, the question was on the practice’s legality, not its morality.
So yes.
I’d say that there’s a whole lot more to it than merely it’s legality and/or morality.
I agree, but you asked specifically about legality.