Supporting Israel’s fight against terrorists and all that, but are you bothered by its tactic of turning thousands of widely-distributed pagers and walkie-talkies into bombs?
Yes, it was a brilliant operation that targeted members of Hezbollah high enough in the terrorist organization to rate the organization giving them equipment. Yes, many of us laughed when we first heard about it. And yet. . .
I know it’s a paradoxical phrase, but it used to be commonplace: Does this fall outside the bounds of “civilized warfare”? It would seem to violate the Convention on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons (1980), to which Israel was a signatory, prohibiting booby traps “in the form of apparently harmless portable objects.” Yes, Islamist terrorists such as Hezbollah use booby traps, but does that mean Israel is right in doing so? Should warring parties care about such treaties and other “laws of war” as in the Geneva Conventions?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In