Israel: Investigate Attack on Civilians in Lebanon
IDF Must Take Precautions to Protect Civilians Fleeing Areas at Risk
(Beirut, July 17, 2006) – The Israel Defense Forces should provide details about a bombing on Saturday that killed 16 people in a convoy of civilians fleeing a Lebanese village near Israel’s border, Human Rights Watch said today. Under international humanitarian law, all parties to an armed conflict must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians fleeing areas at risk.
And here is the first paragraph of the second:
Lebanon: Hezbollah Rocket Attacks on Haifa Designed to Kill Civilians
Anti-personnel Ball Bearings Meant to Harm “Soft” Targets
(New York, July 18, 2006) – Hezbollah’s attacks in Israel on Sunday and Monday were at best indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, at worst the deliberate targeting of civilians. Either way, they were serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.
No mention of deliberate targeting of civilians by Israel, although it is clearly doing that (and quite successfully.) Obviously its weapons do not hurt “soft targets” — except, oh wait, the Lebanese government says they’re using phosphorus bombs and vacuum bombs (thermobaric bombs, possibly the most lethal conventional weapons around). Perhaps this should be investigated? After all there have been many reports of people having phosphorus burns now.’
Earlier HRW had issued a call to avoid hitting civilians in both countries. But now that this has happened, a little even-handedness might be in order.
Disturbing that even a HRW has to follow the norms of American political and journalistic discourse on Israel and its neighbours. They do focus their demands on governments (e.g. calling on the Egyptian govt to investigate Sharqawi’s treatment) which creates incentives for not sounding too “shrill” so that they will be taken seriously. The Israel-Palestine debate being as vicious as it is in the US, and with the mainstream of American political discourse being so strongly pro-Israel, maybe they can only push it so far? Perhaps some of the HRW folks who read this blog can explain.
Very astute observations.
Just a few remarks on your observation, which I think is definitely to the point. I think the real issue for HRW is that while Hizollah’s attacks on Haifa are indiscriminate attacks on civilians with no apparent or even alleged military targets, the is “legally speaking� no reason to believe that Israel is targeting civilians as opposed to aiming for Hizbollah yet not taking enough care to avoid killing civilians. The difference under international humanitarian law is huge between these two positions. But having said that, I think it is insane to think that Israel’s intention is not to kill civilians. But that is a questions of interpretation of events not facts that could be stated as legally binding so to speak. Maybe then the IHL is superfluous or ineffective. Maybe. But it seems that HRW wants to stick to it so that its credibility and “neutrality� does not slip away. This would then raise the question of which is important: to take a strongly “political� position and sacrifice the strict “neutrality� or become “neutral� and sacrifice being politically effective and relevant.
As despicable as attacks on civilians in general you have to put this into the context of a huge discrepancy in technology. Even though there has been reports of Hizbollah using drones there scouting capability is much lesser than that of Israel who has acess to satelliute imaging to determmine its target. Hizbollah may be firing indiscriminately because it does not have much capability of choosing its targets. Also to be added is the very relative accuracy the rocket they use. They could hit military targets along the border though but they rather put pressure by showing they can hit inside Israel. Hitting farther inland may also be a way of being less easily detectable.
Khawaga 🙂 I agree with everything you say about the technological deficit. And it is true that at time Hizbollah fired into the civilians of Haifa, Israel had already escalated the crisis to a despicable extent. But in taking the decision to fire at Haifa even though they do not have the technology to target military posts, and also as you said in order to put pressure by showing they can hit further into Israel, Hizbollah has, from the purely legal perspective of the IHL taken the decision to kill civilians. Israel not only have the technology, but is also so much better at issuing statements saying that they do not want to kill civilians while doing exactly the opposite. This, back to HRW, complicates the legal framework of the issue. I just think it is not so easy and maybe we should think twice before calling them racists.
HRW and other HR organizations tend to be very, very conservative with the reports they run. The problem here may simply be that their information sources are biased, not the organization, and they want to run with stories they’re sure of. A lot of the information we’re getting is, unfortunately, extremely biased. I don’t think it’s fair to condemn them on a single story, but it is worth watching for bias over time.
Note that Amnesty International has a very strongly-worded statement that focuses on violence on all sides. Given that their objective is a cease-fire (while the US encourages more violence), I think that’s admirable.
From AIUSA: “Israel, Hizbullah, and the Lebanese government are all violating international law in the current escalating conflict.” That’s pretty direct, and it’s a statement of fact.
From Amnesty’s global site: “In Lebanon, it is civilians who are paying the heaviest price of the Israeli bombing campaign. At least 200 civilians, including dozens of children, are reported to be among some 215 Lebanese killed by Israeli air strikes in Lebanon since 12 July. In the same period, Hizbullah’s armed wing has killed 12 Israeli civilians, including one child, in rocket attacks into Northern Israel, as well as 12 soldiers. Hundreds of others, including many civilians, have been injured on both sides.”
Amnesty I know is extremely sensitive to any accusation of bias, and their primary objective is stopping violence against civillians, wherever they may be. I wish the media and US politicians had the same priorities.
I should add … I’m certainly not ruling out the possibility that HRW is under external pressure and capitulating to it, and I note even AI has softened what initially were attacks directed primarily at Israel. In fact, the best approach here would be to pressure human rights groups to consistently cover both sides of the story, so they hear concerns of bias from a non-unilateral source.
Israel is attacking military objectives. Bridges, airports, ports and roads utilized to further the abilities of Hizbullah are military targets. There is no intent to kill civilians when these targets are attacked and Israel considers it a tragic misfortune of war when these cauualties occur. Hizbullah’s attacks on Israel have one purpose; to kill innocent civilians. Under IHL there is one word for this – murder.
Bias in reporting of the happenings in the Middle East is just the norm. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert has stated he will not negotiate with either the Palestinian or Lebanese governments as they contain terrorists (Hamas and Hezbollah) who basically cannot “change their spots”. However, I have never seen any report pointing out the fact that many prominent Israili politicians including Menahen Begin, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir had been members of the Israeli terrorist group, Igun. Along the same lines Israel criticised the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to Yassar Arafat but seemed to forget Menahen Begin also received the same honour approximately twenty years before.
Mr Olmert has also said that Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets into Israel in defiance of a UN resolution. Well, there has been a UN resolution (I think it is No. 242) since the end of the Six Day War in 1967 that Israel should leave the territorties is acquired by force. Israel has consistently ignored this resolution (with USA support) and has driven out Palestinians from the occupied territories and established Jewish settlements – (when the Serbs did this in Bosnia it was called ethnic cleansing.)
I recently read a history of terrorism in the 20th century and the article concentrated on two movements – Sinn Fein/IRA and Muslim terrorist organisations and totally ignored Irgun and the Stern gang (or Lehi). This was inexcusable as the IRA and Muslim groups such as the PLO modelled themselves on the Jewish terrorist groups.
I am totally neutral in this situation – I have no Jewish, Arab or Muslim heritage and am not attempting to absolve the actions of Hezbollah or Hamas. I do wish to see some balance in the reporting of happenings in the region and they are put in the correct historical perspective
Do you think Israel will be able to eradicate Hezbollah? Will they be able to defeat them if tHezbollah hangs out amongst the civilians? Its probably very tough on Israel now. They’ve got to defeat Hezbollah, but, like all wars, civilian casualties is unavoidable. It really is a tough predicament for Israel. I’m thinking of starting a website to lend support to Israel. I’d like to know if you could link to me and support the cause. This is not about Arab, Israeli, Jew, Muslim, Christian or whatever. We’re talking about defeating terror, evil etc. If we don’t defeat all this evil, it will swallow up the entire world! Please join me in solidarity with Israel and the entire Democratic world. I’ll keep you updated about the website. Thanx in advance.
Hmmm, a website to support Israel. Not actually the most novel idea, Google “support Israel” there are about 217 million hits to choose from. Look forward to the updates.
Iskandr, Basha – of course HRW isn’t racist. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes on these statements, but I suspect they’re just bending over backwards to be even-handed until they can release conclusions based on careful investigation.
HRW has lost very big donors for their Israel work. To their credit, they shrug, find new funders, and keep doing it…just very carefully, knowing the Israel-right-or-wong crowd will go over every word with a fine-toothed comb.
Shoot, write an email. It’s probably helpful for HRW to get an earful from sympathetic critics as well. Otherwise HRW gets roasted only by the Bill O’Reilly’s, the FrontPage Mags, the NGO Monitors, and the Rose al-Yusefs of the world.
Not sure what you are seeing in the HRW report that is anywhere near racist. This whole phosphorus issue could be important but theres not enough info yet. It looks fair to me to point out that the Israelis are using lots of force but screwing up and hitting civilians sometimes while hezbollah is targetting them deliberately.
I just dont see how you can believe that Israel is “deliberately targetting civilians”. They could easily do that and obviosly are not or there would be hundreds of thousands dead in Lebanon.
Civilians in a war zone get hurt. Hezbollah has always planted itself in the middle of civilians and shoots from them. Yesterday they used Christian villiages as human shields and Israel even attacked the launchers there. When will honest people realize that hiding behind civilians is cowardly and invites civilian casualties.
These are disproportionately armed forces and each has its own moral dilemas. It still looks to me like the Israelis have more concern for hurting Arab civilians than Hezbollah does. And then Hezbollah kills 2 Israeli-Arab muslims yesterday along with the Israeli druze soldiers it has already killed. So cynical to then accuse HRW or racism. Help me understand your apparent blindness to the obvious.
[…] It may have taken them a while to say so (although there have been some really good statements since), but Human Rights Watch has come out with an unequivocal condemnation of Israeli strikes of civilian homes, saying they were deliberate and amounted to war crimes and calling for those responsible to be held accountable(bold mine): (Beirut, August 3, 2006) – Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today. The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes. […]