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“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      They never weren’t, but they at least had the decency to pretend like they weren’t before.

      • QHC@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oh, so war crimes are justified as long as the other side does it first?

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          1 year ago

          Potentially, sure. Things like carpet bombing civilian areas, certain uses of minefields, certain munitions, etc are banned by convention but the thing about the Geneva Conventions are that they are a mutual treaty. Your nation agrees not to do it to other signatories or nations or forces that have otherwise agreed to the limitations as well.

          In this case? No. Not at all justified. Hamas might not agree to the Conventions, and thus don’t benefit from the protections, but the moment they suspended elections they lost the right to claim they represent the Gaza Strip, even if Israel didn’t claim it as territory regardless.

          Israel is a signatory of the Conventions, and the Gaza Strip is their claimed land, this is a war crime against people they claim as their own, the actions of what amounts to a domestic terrorist network is irrelevant to whether they can starve people into submission.

          A standard genocidal tactic of imperialists everywhere, mind you, from the Irish famine, to the Holodomor, to the Bengal Famines.

      • ???@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Yes but this particular news story is about Israel publicly announcing a war crime.

          • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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            1 year ago

            It’s legally how the Geneva Conventions work. You are only bound to them if the other side agrees to it as well.

            However, Hamas is not the Gaza Strip, it is not Palestine, and Israel claims the Strip as its territory anyways so to claim the civilian population doesn’t accept the Convention so they aren’t bound by it is ludicrous.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      so wait. Siege is a war crime? Not taking a side, I’m just a technicalities kind of guy. Its not like locking people in a house. And don’t hostage negotiators do just that in the US? (Could be just on tv). But it’s a big place. Fuel and electricity are nice to haves. They should have some amount of food and water stored up. And the southern border is with egypt, so I assume they can’t actually do anything about that. Doesn’t seem like a straight up war crime. But I have never read yhe definitions they have at the UN.

        • wwaxen@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I just took a gander at the list as a refresher, and it is not 100% a war crime. You can argue this is an unjustified or excessive attack on civilians, but a judge may rule that is is required to defend against the enemy (Hamas).