Here is an article with lots of useful information about how “indiscriminate” Israel’s weapons really are. This interests me a great deal\u00a0because I have been\u00a0raising problems about\u00a0the interpretation of international law used by\u00a0leading human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, on this point since the 2006 Lebanon War.<\/p>\n
At that time\u00a0I got into a dispute with HRW’s\u00a0Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson, who argued that Hizbullah was committing war crimes by definition when\u00a0it\u00a0fired rockets\u00a0at Israel, even if it hit military targets,\u00a0because those\u00a0rockets were primitive and inherently inaccurate. By contrast, Israel’s missiles were not inherently inadmissible because they were considered by HRW to be precise\u00a0(see my articles\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>.) That was clearly nonsense in 2006. During the war, Israel dropped millions of cluster munitions – little bomblets that serve effectively as land mines \u2013 all over southern Lebanon, endangering the whole civilian population of the area.<\/p>\n But Norman Finkelstein recently pointed out the more general problem with this view:<\/p>\n By this standard, only rich countries, or countries rich enough to purchase high-tech weapons, have a right to defend themselves against high-tech aerial assaults. It is a curious law that would negate the raison d\u2019\u00eatre of law: the substitution of might by right.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It may not be entirely surprising that HRW and others interpret international law in a way that serves rich and powerful western states, however many civilians they kill, and criminalises\u00a0developing states, however few civilians they kill. The current fighting in Gaza illustrates this point in dramatic fashion. Some 95% of the Israelis who have been killed\u00a0during the fighting\u00a0are\u00a0soldiers; some 75% of the Palestinians who have been killed are\u00a0civilian.<\/p>\n But this Guardian article adds another layer of insight into HRW’s dubious distinctions. Ignore the irritating framing of the article, which suggests that the high Palestinian death toll\u00a0may be\u00a0down to human or systems errors. Experts discount this theory in the article and also point out that Israel is often not checking whether its shooting is accurate. In short, it gives every indication of not taking any precautions to ensure\u00a0it is hitting only\u00a0military targets (or rather targets it claims<\/em> are military in nature) \u2013 that recklessness makes it fully culpable.<\/p>\n But we also have experts here who make the point that much of Israel’s precise weaponry is not precise at all.<\/p>\n Andrew Exum,\u00a0a former US army officer and defence department special adviser on the Middle East, who has studied\u00a0Israel’s military operations, says this:<\/p>\n There are good strategic reasons to avoid using air power and artillery in these conflicts: they tend to be pretty indiscriminate in their effects and make it difficult for the population under fire to figure out what they’re supposed to do to be safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n “Pretty indiscriminate”! So doesn’t that mean Israel was committing war crimes by definition every time it made one of those thousands of air strikes that marked the start of Operation Protective Edge, and that it is continuing to make\u00a0now?<\/p>\n But it’s not just strikes from the air that are the problem. There’s more:<\/p>\n However, military analysts and human rights observers say the IDF is still using unguided, indirect fire with high-explosive shells, which they argue is inappropriate for a densely populated area like Gaza …<\/p>\n [Israel’s 155m howitzer]\u00a0shells have a lethal radius of 50 to 150 metres and causes injury up to 300 metres from its point of impact. Furthermore, such indirect-fire artillery (meaning it is fired out of direct sight of the target) has a margin of error of 200 to 300 metres.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read that again:\u00a0a margin of error of up to 300 metres, plus a lethal radius of up to 150 metres and an injury radius of 300 metres. So that’s a killing and injury zone of close to half a kilometre from the intended “precise” site of impact. In a territory that is only a few kilometres wide. In short, the\u00a0main shell Israel is using in Gaza is entirely imprecise.<\/p>\n Set aside what Israel is trying to do in Gaza. Let’s assume it is actually trying to hit military targets rather than being either reckless about hitting civilian targets or deliberately trying to hit civilians, as much of the evidence might suggest.<\/p>\n Even if we assume total good faith on Israel’s part that it is trying to hit only Hamas and other military sites, it is clear it cannot do so even with the weaponry it has. The inherent imprecision of its arsenal is compounded many fold by the fact that it is using these weapons in densely built-up areas.<\/p>\n