Israel Commits War Crimes in Lebanon

In my opinion, there is no reason to exempt either Israel in Lebanon or the US in Iraq from liability. Her warning, therefore, was most certainly heard in Israel by backers in the Bush administration and the British government of Tony Blair. One hopes her words will resonate among people of goodwill throughout the world.

According to the BBC, Ms. Arbour is a former justice of Canada's Supreme Court. She was a chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, indicted the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. "

International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilities

-Louise Arbor, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Arbour stresses the "supreme obligation" of states to protect civilians and refers to the "scale of killings" in Lebanon, where the Israeli reaction is clearly seen to have been massive and disproportionate. The 1949 Geneva Conventions sought to prohibit, by international law, attacks which mainly targeted civilians as the Israeli bombardment seems to have done. Article 51 of the First Protocol to the 1949 agreements (updated in 1977) states:

Article 51: Protection of the Civilian Population

The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.

The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.

Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.

Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:

those which are not directed at a specific military objective;

those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or

those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.

-Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions, 1977

I venture to say that there is no reason to believe hat the government of Ehud Olmert has taken prudent measures to reduce civilian causalities. So far, Lebanese deaths have topped 300. In a mounting humanitarian crisis some 700,000 Lebanese civilians have become displaced refugees -by some estimates about 1/7 of the entire population. The reality on the ground is thus summed up: the entire nation of Lebanon is under attack and faces utter destruction of infrastructure and basic services.

In the meantime, Robert Fisk notes the significant difference between the "pin-point accuracy" of Israeli technology on the attack and the antiquated Hezbollah defense. Israel can and does target precisely. If civilian targets are disproportionately destroyed, it would appear to be by design. In other words, Israel can -if it wishes -avoid the mass murder of innocent civilians. But as Fisk points out: "...they continue to fill Lebanon's body bags with infants, women and children." At what point does deliberate targeting become "ethnic cleansing"? Chillingly, Israel's prosecution of these attacks bears an increasing resemblance to the systematic destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto by Nazis in World War II.

This is a war crime! The American people must demand of our illegitimate Bush administration that we join the rest of the entire world in demanding an immediate cease fire.