Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus.
As far as I understand it the war crime part of it is generally considered to be the secondary effect of fires started by its incendiary nature going on to indiscriminately kill people, not the WP itself as a munition that directly kills (although this too is obviously inhumane)
If they were blanketing entire neighborhoods with large WP bombs (like Russia in Ukraine) I’d be more inclined to believe indiscriminate civilian death and property damage was their goal rather than the more obvious answer of “making artillery more accurate, hopefully resulting in less collateral damage”
Not trying to justify the invasion in general, I just think that the idea that Israel using a few WP artillery rounds is clearly with the intent of causing grievous bodily harm to civilians is unfounded at best, you can get into “they know they can’t be too obvious about it so they can only use it a little bit” conspiracies rather quickly
@trafficnab You are right, using incendiaries and ground-launched incendiaries in areas full of civilians is in itself a war crime under international law.
But white phosphorus sticks to human flesh, cannot be extinguished, and burns right through to the bone. (This is one of the main reasons human rights organizations often call for it to be much more highly circumscribed).
Doing this to civilians (whether few or many) on purpose would be a war crime whether it was an incendiary or not.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy to characterize the use of this substance in a built up area as reckless disregard for civilians.
I’ve obviously taken it one step further in my statement above because I do think that the pattern of reckless disregard for human life that has been demonstrated in this conflict amounts to a deliberate inclusion of civilian targets. To me that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable inference; YMMV.
As far as I understand it the war crime part of it is generally considered to be the secondary effect of fires started by its incendiary nature going on to indiscriminately kill people, not the WP itself as a munition that directly kills (although this too is obviously inhumane)
If they were blanketing entire neighborhoods with large WP bombs (like Russia in Ukraine) I’d be more inclined to believe indiscriminate civilian death and property damage was their goal rather than the more obvious answer of “making artillery more accurate, hopefully resulting in less collateral damage”
Not trying to justify the invasion in general, I just think that the idea that Israel using a few WP artillery rounds is clearly with the intent of causing grievous bodily harm to civilians is unfounded at best, you can get into “they know they can’t be too obvious about it so they can only use it a little bit” conspiracies rather quickly
@trafficnab You are right, using incendiaries and ground-launched incendiaries in areas full of civilians is in itself a war crime under international law.
But white phosphorus sticks to human flesh, cannot be extinguished, and burns right through to the bone. (This is one of the main reasons human rights organizations often call for it to be much more highly circumscribed).
Doing this to civilians (whether few or many) on purpose would be a war crime whether it was an incendiary or not.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy to characterize the use of this substance in a built up area as reckless disregard for civilians.
I’ve obviously taken it one step further in my statement above because I do think that the pattern of reckless disregard for human life that has been demonstrated in this conflict amounts to a deliberate inclusion of civilian targets. To me that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable inference; YMMV.