Are these actions war crimes?

[earth_as_one]

1) Deliberately firing missiles and mortars at civilians.
2) Not allowing a prisoner to be seen by the Red Cross
3) Suicide bombers against civilian targets....
4) Use of civilians including women and children as human shields to defend artillery and tank positions
5) Use of civilians including women and children as human shields to block bullets and set off booby traps.
6) Use of civilians including children to search for explosives
7) Use of civilians including children to search for enemy positions and draw enemy fire
8 )Deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure for purely collective punishment reasons without any military purpose:
- hospitals, schools and universities, police and fire stations, mosques and churches, government buildings
- sewage and water distribution systems
- sewage and water treatment systems
- food production, storage and distribution
- electricity production and distribution
- fuel storage and distribution
9) Deliberately attacking ambulance drivers, paramedics, firemen and police and innocent civilians. including women and children.
10) Ethnic cleansing
11) Interference with the delivery of international medical and food aid, causing death from easily treatable diseases and food insecurity
12) Deliberately attacking UN and NGO aid convoys.

It should make any difference who does these things for them to be a war crimes or not. These actions either are or aren't war crimes regardless of who does them.

You can find examples of these actions here:

1) http://www.haaretz.com/news/diploma...of-rocket-barrage-on-southern-israel-1.392598

2) New Statesman - Gilad Shalit is free – now release the 164 jailed Palestinian children

3) BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israeli killed in suicide bombing

4) Amnesty accuses Israeli forces of war crimes - Telegraph

5) 'IDF troops used 11-year-old boy as human shield in Gaza' - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

6) Israeli soldiers who used Palestinian boy, 9, as a human shield avoid jail | World news | The Guardian

7)Breaking the Silence › Testimony - It went on night after night

8 ) Israel: Investigate Unlawful Destruction in Gaza War | Human Rights Watch

9) Under attack: how medics died trying to help Gaza's casualties | World news | guardian.co.uk

10) Ethnic Cleansing and Israel » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

11) U.N. Chief Says Israel Is Blocking Most Gaza Aid - NYTimes.com

12) Israel Attacks UN Aid Convoys to Gaza

Are any of these activities war crimes or crimes against humanity?

 

[Goober]

1) ?

OH WOW. Another Anti Israel Thread. You are an affront to critical and impartial thought.

 

[earth_as_one]

Actually this is an anti-war crime thread. Notice the list of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity don't accuse anyone of anything.

This thread is in response to efforts by you and others to hijack another thread. Since you can't stay on topic on that other thread, I started this one... where your posts and post by others will be on topic.

You are welcome BTW.

 

[DaSleeper]

EAO....No matter how you dress up a pig...it still smells like a pig!!!

 

[CDNBear]

Anybody care to start a pool on how many posts it takes before this turns into one of EAO's usual demonize Israel threads?

 

[earth_as_one]

Anyone care to start a pole on how many posts it takes before a troll tries to turn this thread into a personal attack against eao? I predict 5.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

Anybody care to start a pole on how many posts it takes before this turns into one of EAO's usual demonize Israel threads?

Not sure a pole would help. Perhaps a poll?

But the answer is 1. The OP has a whole bunch of articles which seem to be singular focused. Had EAO not provided the answers, it would have been a generic thread at least for a couple more posts.

 

[CDNBear]

Anyone care to start a pole on how many posts it takes before someone tries to turn this thread into a personal attack against eao? I predict 5.

You don't understand how this works do you?

 

[earth_as_one]

C'mon oleo... here is your chance to discuss this issue and be on topic at the same time.

 

[CDNBear]

Not sure a pole would help. Perhaps a poll?

Actually, it was supposed to say pool.

But the answer is 1. The OP has a whole bunch of articles which seem to be singular focused. Had EAO not provided the answers, it would have been a generic thread at least for a couple more posts.

I was trying to be generous.

C'mon oleo... here is your chance to discuss this issue and be on topic at the same time.

oleo, is the only one between the two of you, that actually discusses.

maybe you should pay attention to how it's done.

 

[earth_as_one]

.... Had EAO not provided the answers, it would have been a generic thread at least for a couple more posts.

Those were examples, not answers. Feel free to give your own examples.

 

[CDNBear]

Those were examples, not answers. Feel free to give your own examples.

Here's an excellent example of a crime against humanity...

Crimes against humanity

 

[Goober]

Actually this is an anti-war crime thread. Notice the list of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity don't accuse anyone of anything.

This thread is in response to efforts by you and others to hijack another thread. Since you can't stay on topic on that other thread, I started this one... where your posts and post by others will be on topic.

You are welcome BTW.

Really - The links are mainly anti Israel are they not?

 

[TenPenny]

Anyone care to start a pole on how many posts it takes before a troll tries to turn this thread into a personal attack against eao? I predict 5.

Nobody will turn this thread into a personal attack against eao, but there is some evidence that many will think it's further proof that he's a complete moron who can't post anything without turning it into an anti-Israel thread.

 

[lone wolf]

It must be a sad life to obsess so constantly on the ugliness in life. Just think where you might be if you'd just turn off the TV

 

[earth_as_one]

Really - The links are mainly anti Israel are they not?

How would you interpret this first example?

Some 20 rockets and mortar shells were fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Saturday, killing one man and wounding four others.

The rocket barrage followed an IDF strike on the Gaza Strip which resulted in the deaths of five Islamic Jihad militants.

Rockets were fired from Gaza into Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gan Yavne, and around Be'er Sheva. One man was seriously wounded in Ashkelon and eventually died of his wounds. Another man was moderately wounded in the Ashdod rocket strike and three others were lightly hurt. Moreover, 17 trauma victims were reported.

As a result of the escalation, classes were canceled in Ashdod, Ashkelon and other towns in the 40-kilometer range from Gaza. Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheva also called off classes, which were due to begin on Sunday.

Israeli killed as a result of rocket barrage on southern Israel - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

 

[Goober]

How would you interpret this first example?]

12 Links - How many are Anti Israel. You tell me?

 

[CDNBear]

12 Links - How many are Anti Israel. You tell me?

None. Because he's a non violent pacifist.

 

[Goober]

None. Because he's a non violent pacifist.

Regarding the Pool and the Pole discussion I can think of at least one scenario where both would be useful.

 

[earth_as_one]

Feel free to cite your own examples regarding the above list.

But does it really matter who does these things before you can decide if an act is or isn't a war crime? You would have to subscribe to Orwell's theory of Moral Relativity to believe otherwise:

Orwell: All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians(5). It is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive), the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of Indians from the guns, or Cromwell's soldiers slashing Irishwomen's faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is felt that they were done in the ‘right’ cause. If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world; and yet in not one single case were these atrocities — in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna — believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.