British forces support Israel in response to Iranian missiles

Apologies Rodney, maybe I wasn’t clear- I have seen those photos and from a technical perspective it’s amazing that we have weaponry that can do that. I fully agree a hellfire or spike wouldn’t have touched those tunnels.
My point was that the accounts state they (the Israelis) were following that convoy containing the target, saw the guy arrive at the location, and had enough time to get government authorisation and scramble F-15s with bunker busters to hit that target with sufficient confidence that he hadn’t already left.
To me, that says that they could have hit that convoy on the move with whatever smaller precision guided weapon they liked. Even if it caused some collateral casualties in the street, it pales into insignificance compared to the option taken.

I actually think that if I was able to track a notoriously difficult to locate high value target, I’d want to know where he was going ! That target is worth far more than just one convoy, it’s not a 3 level underground Lidl 🥴

How am I changing the subject? Israeli actions in Gaza and Lebanon are linked. Which 500 deaths are you talking about? Israelis in the north have been evacuated, so they’re alive, I’m not proposing that Israelis be killed.
My point is that Israel has, in the last couple of weeks and particularly with those bunker strikes in Beirut, massively escalated the conflict in the north from where it was- because Netanyahu and his government expanded their war aims related to Hamas in the Gaza strip. Why did they do this? Because the conflict there was petering out and they needed things to remain hot so that the coalitions that keep them in power didn’t collapse. Why did they do that? Because Netanyahu is trying to avoid criminal prosecution, and the hardliners are using the conflict to expand illegal settlement and further displace non-Israelis.
Beforehand, the war aims were the removal of Hamas and some kind of very loose comments about what they’d do with Palestinians afterwards; justifiable, even if the settler groups were busy taking additional Palestinian land that had been abandoned due to the fighting with the IDF. Then, the addition of the line item: Return of displaced Israelis back to the north. All well and good, seems reasonable. How are they going to do that? historically, that border has died down after the fighting in Gaza has died down- so should return to normal on its own as the IDF achieves its war goals in Gaza. But instead they chose the “multiple 1,000 kg bombs into a crowded residential area” approach.
We have seen time and again how strikes that kill civilians drive the survivors into the ranks of extremists, this is human nature and one of the key lessons we got out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Israeli experience will know the same thing, yet they chose that over what could have been a more targeted strike to achieve the same war aim of killing Hezbollah commanders. You have to ask yourself why. And my answer to that is contained in my first paragraph of this response. It has nothing to do with wanting more Israelis to die; in my view, this action has guaranteed more Israelis will die down the road.

With regards to Darfur, am I obliged to list every single state or non-state actor that I condemn before I criticise Israel? It’ll be a really long post…
I don’t contest any of the history you list there, it is the way of the world and the history of mankind. Israel is not the only country to have ceased to exist due to conquest, temporarily or permanently.
I would point out, however, that post WW2 the western allies (Britain fairly key among them) set about instituting what’s become known as ‘the rules-based international order’, largely enforced by the US but also via ourselves. War crimes, justifications for war, and other items were clearly defined, prohibitions enforced upon ourselves, allies, and expected of others. Last time I checked, we were still at the very least pretending that we subscribed to this, sought to enforce this, and expected it of others.
I do not think that Hezbollah and Iran comply with this, and I condemn them for it. For the record, I don’t think the RFA do in Sudan either and condemn them too. But I’m not sure why I can’t therefore also condemn the Israeli government for also pursuing objectives via means that contravenes the rules we’ve put in place either. I’m just looking for consistency.

If Hezbollah deliberately put their command bunker under a civilian block of flats it ceases to be a protected target. That’s protocol 1 of the Geneva convention which defines using Civilians as a Human Shield as a war crime.
The evidence is in the pictures and that they killed their intended target.

Hi Rodney, leaving aside the questions of whether Israel can be in a state of war with a non-state actor like Hezbollah (I think they can, although a lot of the pro-Palestine and Al Jazeira crowd would state otherwise), I would agree with you that what Hezbollah did constituted a war crime under protocol 1.

However, articles 47 states: “‘ Article 47 — General protection of civilian objects ‘

1. Attacks shall be strictly limited to military objectives, namely, to those objectives which are, by their nature, purpose or use, recognized to be of military interest and whose total or partial destruction, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a distinct and substantial military advantage.

2. Consequently, objects designed for civilian use, such as houses, dwellings, installations and means of transport, and all objects which are not military objectives, shall not be made the object of attack, except if they are used mainly in support of the military effort.”

And article 52: 1. Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals. Civilian objects are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 2.

2. Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.

3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.

This puts the onus on Israel to minimise damage and destruction to Civilian Objects and the Protected Persons therein, or they have committed their own war crime. As I noted in my previous response to you, there were other options that they could have followed that would have caused less collateral damage.

Again, this is not about only holding Israel to account, I am very mindful of Hezbollah’s war crimes. But last time I checked, it is entirely possible for both sides of a conflict to do bad things- and we should criticise both for them.

you raise a very good point. The issue is you will see is this consistency getting more and more lost as the world moves ever closer to all out global war.

Very true. bleak, but true…!

It makes all the difference to say there are hardliners on both sides, because defending Israel and saying they’re whiter than white in everything they do makes us liars.
I repeat that I support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. And yes, it absolutely makes things verging on impossible given the intent of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. But let’s not pretend that the actions of the settler movement over the last 70+ years has had zero impact on the state of play today.
We make ourselves look stupid at best and complicit at worst if we don’t acknowledge that.

I think comparing any modern warfare to WW2 in terms of strikes on civilians is a misleading argument.
It was impossible with the technology available in the 1940s to avoid bombs falling on civilians areas in attacking e.g. a railway station. The accuracy statistics from Bomber Command make that clear.
The onus is on the person dropping the bombs to limit damage to military targets to the best of their ability. With modern laser guided bombs there is no reason for one to land on an entirely civilian target unintentionally.
The difficulty comes where your military opponent is deliberately hiding among civilians, as is seen here. The letter of the law seems to be that because attacking the soldiers is a legitimate target, it’s allowed, but that doesn’t make it right.
Any modern military ought really to be aiming for zero civilian casualties. Joe is right that Israeli personnel and members of the chain of command (but not Israel itself) have almost certainly committed war crimes during this conflict and the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah do not absolve them of the duty to follow and uphold the rules of war.

No argument with much of what you are saying in principle.

But even with laser guided bombs, detonating pagers or whatever, there is always going to be collatoral damage. As in WWII, it is impossible to completely exclude civilian casualties. As the intensity of the war increases, as ground troops have to move into civilian areas, the proportion of those civilian casualties will inevitably rise.

No military can aim for zero civilian casualties in such scenarios – whether it is World War II or the current Middle East conflict. That is just totally unrealistic. You don’t shrink from the primary imperative of acheiving the objective. In that sense, modern warfare is no different than what prevailed in WWII.

As for “war crimes” that very much depends on the specific case and on who judges those specifics. War itself is a crime and much of what happens in the context of a crime becomes just another terrible detail.

I phrased my reply badly, I think.
I don’t expect miltaries to actually achieve zero civilian casualties: as you said, that is always unrealistic.
Instead that should always be the aspiration; how can we achieve the mission with a minimum of casualties? That needs to take place over a strategic scale- can we fight the battle away from cities? and a tactical one – how do we clear the house without shooting the owners?
In war, as with politics, courtesy and attention to duty is in short supply.
Maybe we should go back to the 1700s with war as a sort of extension of sport, with the field agreed in advance and polite exchanges before the shooting.

I think we forget just how controversial the levelling of German cities was, even at the time. Sailor Boy rightly points out that they were operating at the limits of the available technology. If the RAF and USAAF had precision bombs capable of levelling the factories and leaving the houses (largely) standing, they would have done.
I have pointed out a couple of times that Israel very clearly had a line on their targets from well before they entered this bunker under the residential tower blocks. They could have taken them out with a hellfire or similar with far less collateral loss of life (I also am a realist and realise that zero collateral is unrealistic). But they didn’t, they dropped multiple 1,000 kg bombs on blocks of flats instead. They had the choice that the WW2 RAF and USAAF didn’t have, and they went with the bloodier option.
I’m not questioning what Hezbollah would do to Israel if they had the opportunity, but why that means that Israel can’t be criticised is beyond me. There is ample evidence that strikes like this drive people towards the ranks of Hamas and Hezbollah and all the other similar organisations, yet Israel thought they’d maximise the potential for this rather than minimise it. It’s self defeating, if nothing else.