U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan on Oct. 22, despite criticism from Ukraine, Voice of America reported.
The BRICS group, a bloc of countries that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates, is convening in Kazan for a three-day summit from Oct. 22-24. According to Moscow, 36 world leaders are participating in the conference.
Guterres is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the event on Oct. 24, according to Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry criticized the U.N. secretary general’s visit.
Have you heard of the Geneva Conventions? How can you accuse Israel of waging war that is disproportionate and then turn around and say it’s a vague term and international laws of war don’t exist?
Vague insofar as it’s totally left to courts and individuals to interpret what the exact threshold of disproportional is. That’s why there’s a cottage industry in dissecting the ethics of every individual thing the US did in it’s recent wars. Damage and casualties are extremely lopsided here, though, even if you argue the lopsidedness is justified somehow.
I was trying to include the nuances to be fair to you, but apparently that was just confusing.
The main mention is Article 57, called Precautions in Attack, and it has this nice little section:
From a Westpoint academy article I just stumbled on, on proportionality:
The military objective here being a few Hamas fighters sprinkled around, and civilians and civilian objects being all of Gaza. I’m now pretty certain there isn’t a loophole based on what you’re doing or thinking at the time, like you seem to be suggesting.
You can’t cherry-pick one statement out of Article 57 and ignore everything else. Read the entire section. The whole point is to prohibit intentional attacks on civilians but to provide justification for attacks that harm civilians. Even attacks directly on civilians are justified under international law if those civilians are directly involved in hostilities. Here’s a brief article that summarizes these concepts: https://hhi.harvard.edu/files/humanitarianinitiative/files/conduct_of_military_operations_in_urban_areas.pdf?m=1615497739
I did read the entire thing - it’s not long. Yes, you can unintentionally harm civilians, proportionately.
It’s not intrinsic to urban warfare to do it this way, either. Compare any of the American operations of this millennium.
US operations have killed a lot of civilians. But there is no theater of war quite like Gaza, which is what makes the numbers that much more impressive.
Gaza is denser than a typical Arab area (gee, I wonder why) but the construction and customs are pretty much the same. Nothing about it morally, legally or tactically justifies flattening it any more than Fallujah or Kandahar.