Israel's Astonishing Breaking Of International Norms
In the past few days Israel has made a lot of headlines, all for the wrong reasons. This is by no means an exhaustive list but they have:
Bombed an embassy -- Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing at least 7 Iranian commanders. My assessment -- there is (almost) absolutely zero justification for ever bombing an embassy. It doesn't matter who is in it. Our enemies are often in their own embassies. Certainly, some sort of protocol should at least warn of the strike. Diplomatic protection goes to the heart of world order and it was severely undermined in this strike. It's unlikely that anyone besides Iran, Syria, and Russia will make a big deal out of this, though, because the victims were members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, possible members of Hezbollah, and the strikes happened in Damascus. In other words, if the only people who died were bad guys the world will ignore it. But that doesn't make it right and it sets a dangerous precedent for future attacks by our enemies, not just our allies.
Israel bombs Iran embassy in Syria, Iranian commanders among dead - France 24
The Israeli strike against a World Central Kitchen, WCK, convoy in Gaza that killed 7 aid workers. WCK says they followed deconfliction procedures -- which is a fancy way of saying they coordinated their movements with the Israeli Defense Force, IDF, so that the military would know when and where these vehicles were moving. The very force that should have been guarding this convoy is the force that attacked it. Furthermore, some of those killed had recently complained to the IDF that they were being targeted by IDF snipers. So IDF should have already known their deconfliction measures were not safeguarding these aid workers.
So what happened? As analyst Charles Lister argued yesterday, if Russia did this the US would vehemently condemn the Kremlin for failing to protect these aid workers. I went one step further by noting that Russia HAS INDEED been accused of targeting aid workers. In Syria in particular, aid groups tried to use deconfliction measures to ensure that they were not attacked and Russia used that data to deliberately target the aid groups. In other words, IDF has a lot of explaining to do, because they've killed a remarkably large number of aid workers and it's beginning to look like they are either deliberately targeting these groups or they just don't care if aid groups stop helping the people of Gaza.
Israel's attack against the Al-Shifa Hospital remains highly controversial. The results of that siege are absolutely horrifying. Ever see what happens when a tank runs over a mass grave? Any assault against a hospital requires the absolute highest level of intelligence confidence and restraint. The reality is that the burden of proof for such an operation should lie with Israel, before the assault and not after it. The growing body of evidence is clear that many civilians paid the price, regardless of the presence of Hamas fighters in or near the compound.
Israeli siege in pursuit of Hamas leaves Gaza's largest hospital in ruins : State of the World from NPR : NPR
Bottom line, if any of these three incidents happened on their own the responsible country would have a lot of very serious questions to ask. The fact that all three incidents happened in Gaza, in a single weekend, certainly indicates that Israel has very little concern for civilian life or international law. At best they are predilected to prioritizing killing militants over verifying information or protecting civilians. At worst they are deliberately trying to inflict as much pain as possible on the Palestinian people. The latter is a strategy that worked for Assad (though not without substantial help from Russia) in Syria.
What to make of that? That's an article for another day.
