Thread by @nadimhoury

Thinking a lot about the @972mag article on Israel's targeting. Much of the conversation is focused on Israel's violation of proportionality. That is obvious. But actually, the main issue is that it is violating the principle of distinction. A 🧵
972mag.com/mass-assassina…

What the article describes as “power targets” are not considered under IHL as legitimate military targets. A Hamas member's home is not legitimate. Otherwise, any building in Israel where a reservist lives, would be legitimate. It defeats basic premise of distinction under IHL /2

What Israel is doing is not new. When I worked on 2006 war, we found a similar pattern of Israel basically eroding the principle of distinction. Think of the Dahieh doctrine. It assumes that anyone in a particular area is a combatant /3
hrw.org/report/2007/09…

The article notes that Israeli officials know exactly how many civilians are left. Guess what, they knew it as well when we looked into it in 2006. For instance in 2006, Halutz said they knew that 500 civilians remained in Bint Jbeil when they targeted any movement in that town/4

Israeli officials are well aware that they are violating IHL. This is why they have tried to reframe things: 1) refer to fighting Nazis and WW2 tactics (Dresden) or 2) Counterterrorism (fighting ISIS). But the whole point of Geneva Conventions was not to repeat WW2 atrocities /5

Invoking "fighting terrorism", does not change the law. Neither does invoking right to self defense. But many Western politicians have been parroting this line. In fact, they are chipping away at the edifice of international law /6

Meanwhile, the ICC prosecutor which should be putting perpetrators on notice is busy issuing platitudes. His job is accountability. Leave the empathy for others, or at least use your empathy to stop the violations /7

One key difference with 2006 is the reporting that AI is being used to make the decisions. But remember that a human is deciding the threshold for the algorithm. I wonder how a generative AI function in this context. If you ok 10 civilians in one strike, you ok 20 in the next? /8