Attacking a civilian population of a country you’re not at war with is a violation of international law.
And Isreal has done it at least nine times in the last year.
Feels like increasingly that is the new reality for all of us, everything is a potential attack vector, even if it’s much less lethal attacks. Data grabs, money grabs, attention grabs. Show me something weaponizable that isn’t being exploited as one in one way or another.
Do something about it, then.
What is the UN human rights chief supposed to do about it?
He did all that was in his power:
Volker Türk told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council there must be an independent and transparent investigation of the two attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday where these devices exploded, reportedly killing 37 people and injuring more than 3,400 others.
They could all say they are going to disband if Israel doesn’t stop. Why even have the UN if they can’t do anything
Or better yet expel isreal
First of all, that’s also not in his power.
Secondly, how would disbanding the part of the UN that investigates human rights abuses help Palestinians?
Edit: Wait, you think the entire UN should be disbanded over this?
The UN is the only reason we haven’t had a nuclear war yet. Otherwise, countries wouldn’t have a neutral world forum.
No I think the un is mostly useless.
They are united about nothing
That’s not what the UN is for… it’s not a military force… it’s a round table for nations to work their differences out via words and not nuking each other.
People like to criticise the UN but the alternative to having the UN is having no UN. We’d be fucked
We need something more than the UN that has real power to stop Israel’s terror and genocide. The UN can fuck off and prevent it’s theoretical events elsewhere.
Oh man this letter is going to be worded so sternly!
Respectfullysubmitted,United Nations
“This letter is so VIBRANT with EXTREME ANGER that it will explode… but only metaphorically.”
They are…
They’ve had arrest warrants out for a while, but they do t have their own police force to enforce it
It relies on member states arresting them when they enter their country. It why Bibi hasn’t been going anywhere besides America. Biden is one of the few leaders willing to side with Israel over the UN
In one sense this is much worse, and more terrifying than the run-of-the-mill IED’s used by militant groups. Having to be suspicious of everything around you would be maddening. It’s indiscriminate mass psychological warfare, where the collateral damage goes way beyond the people actually carrying the devices.
OK, I’m gonna tell a little story that we used to tell in my part of the country. In my part of the country they grow a lot of watermelons.
So there was this watermelon farmer who got upset that everybody kept sneaking into his fields at night and taking watermelons.
So he came up with his great idea that he put a sign at the edge of the field that said one of these watermelons is poison. Now he knew that no one could take a watermelon cause they wouldn’t know which one was poisoned. He was quite proud of this idea.
So we came back in the morning to see how his sign worked. And sure enough no watermelons have been taken overnight.
However, he noticed the number one on his sign had been crossed out and somebody had put two.
However, he noticed the number one on his sign had been crossed out and somebody had put two.
That is both genius and a total Bond villain origin story.
How is it “indiscriminate” if solely Hezbollah operatives were targeted?
A booby-trapped baby stroller is indiscriminate - it goes off when anyone touches it, friend, foe, or child. Israel attacked the communications of its enemy and literally nothing else. That’s inherently discriminating between friend and foe.
How is it “indiscriminate” if solely Hezbollah operatives were targeted?
Because said operatives were often within exploding distance of civilians when the pagers were detonated. Shrapnel, even from a small explosion, can be deadly and has a fairly large range. Especially if you don’t have line-of-sight to your target before detonating the device; you have no idea what or who is nearby when it goes off.
“Explosive” and “targeted” generally don’t go hand-in-hand.
Weaponry is a human right.
Honestly, the real question to me is how many innocent people were maimed, injured, or killed in this attack. This is incredibly indiscriminate, even though the idea is that only the bad guys are holding the pages or walkie-talkies, but if they’re in a cafe they’re not the only ones getting hurt. Think of it as attaching an explosive to a thousand Hezbollah people, and then exploding them as they wander through a city. That’s the true crime, the potentially disproportionate massacre of innocent civilians.
We’re talking double secret probation. Super cereal shit man.
Constantly wringing my hands at the lack of adults in leadership. Accountability ends atrocity.
Israel:
seen ✓✓
They weren’t “ordinary devices”, they were encrypted pagers manufactured specifically at Hezbollah’s request for their own use.
“Ordinary device” in this context means anything that does not immediately resemble an instrument of war.
I don’t get this. It’s war, there isn’t much law. You can have agreements between countries, but is it really law if it’s not enforceable?
It’s enforceable. A war between two countries does not exist in a vacuum. The whole rest of the world can impose sanctions against the violator.
Whether they will in this case is another matter entirely.
Is that law though? No one is going to jail. Sounds more a contract or agreement.
Law between nation states is different than for citizens.
As if Israel suddenly is going to care about international law. They have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity for a long time now. This is telling nazis “hey, what you are doing is bad mkay?” like they would give a fuck.
absolutely. i mean it is not as shitty as cutting of the breasts of women who attended that festival back then. but I do not understand how pagers are “ordinary devices”. what a joke. and why does iranian ambassador have one?
Just because terrorists are doing horrible acts, doesn’t mean you are free to do whatever you want. Crimes against humanity and war crimes do not have an asterisk saying “except when the enemy commits crimes too”.
About the pagers, are they specifically made for the military? Or are they commercially available? Just because terrorists use them doesn’t mean no one else does. There are still many hospitals for example using pagers. Does that make doctors terrorists or military?
All you have to do to realize that this is a terrorist attack is to close your eyes and imagine the media response if Hezbolah did this to the IDF.
If they did it to the IDF, I doubt many would have an issue with it. Military is always a valid target in war.
If it was done to random civilians, then most would.
It all hinges on just how targeted the attack is, and how much you believe Mossad’s claims that it was all Hezbollah. We’ve seen their claims on bombing Hamas militants, and I doubt everyone in those 8 floor residential buildings were all Hamas members.
UN is totally irrelevant. Next.
