Daniel Davies, in the process of putting the boot in to Michael Walzer, explains why the excuses made by the IDF for their shelling of UN schools, even if you believe them, are not good enough:
Under Protocol 1, Article 57, a commander has three duties (explained very clearly in “Constraints on the Waging of War: An Introduction to International Humanitarian Law” by Frits Kalshoven and Liesbeth Zegveld):
1) to do everything feasible to verify that the chosen target is a military objective
2) to take all feasible precautions in the choices of means and methods to avoid, or in any event minimise harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects
3) to refrain from carrying out an attack if may be reasonably be expected to cause such harm or damage in a quantity which would be excessive relative to the concrete and definite military advantage anticipated.
So, under international law, for example, “minimising civilian casualties” is a basic primary requirement – it’s something you always have to do, not something you get extra brownie points for and certainly not something you can trade off against a slightly dodgy choice of target. Furthermore, “minimised” casualties could still be “excessive” relative to the concrete and definite military advantage anticipated.
As Lenny puts it, the IDF doesn’t expect you to believe their excuses, but uses them to frame the debate:
And the first thing the IDF let us know is that it was done on purpose. Their excuse was barbaric, of course. The idea that an invading force may attack a building filled with hundreds of terrorised civilians just in order to kill two of those resisting the invasion is nothing short of grotesque. But the fact that it was barbaric was part of the point: rather than bluntly condemning a war crime, you were invited to focus on whether Hamas would be so evil as to attack Israel’s brave boys from within a civilian building. Because it is so frequently repeated you might be predisposed to assume that Hamas did indeed position its ‘infrastructure of terror’ among unsuspecting citizens but, whether you are so predisposed or not, you are already drawn into the macabre calculus of the murderer if you even get involved in that argument. You have tacitly accepted the logic in which war crimes are not merely acceptable, but actually appropriate, if the enemy really is as evil as Israel says.
What’s also important is the context in which these IDF “mistakes” took place, of a gratitious invasion of Gaza, a war waged more for the sake of Olmert’s election prospects than any great strategic need. As I’ve shown on Wis[s]e Words, the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was working. This is a war of choice, so personally I’d say Israel has even less scope than normal in what it can and cannot do because they are in the wrong from the start!
