• Dasus@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    During WWII, bombing civilians wasn’t yet a war crime, but still frowned upon (Roosevelt wrote an appeal to stop it in September 1939 “Appeal to Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Poland to Refrain from Air Bombing of Civilians”).

    It has been a war crime for ~80 years now, so no, Israel doesn’t have an excuse. Especially since directly bombing civilians wasn’t something generally practiced by the allies, with exceptions like Dresden, which while being for terrorising citizens, was also because of how important Dresden was for German infra.

    Israel is indiscriminately bombing help convoys, hospitals, schools and everything with the guise of being at war with a vaguely defined terrorist organisation and not even the country they’re bombing, per se.

    At some point in past decades, the world decided that terrorizing civilians was off the board. Maybe it’s because we can see the results with our own eyes?

    People have been arguing against that since as long as wars have existed basically, but definitely after WWI and certainly after WWII when it was codified.

    It’s rather interesting, really.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Especially since directly bombing civilians wasn’t something generally practiced by the allies

      Bullcrap.

      The mass-slaughter of civilians from the air became SOP for the allies by about 1943. The firebombings of cities like Dresden and Tokyo is still some of the most heinous mass-atrocities in modern history - if not all history. This secret is out of the bag - the (supposed) “military value” of these targets was secondary to the mass-slaughter of civilians - and the architects of these atrocities (like Curtis LeMay) wasn’t shy about bragging about it, either.

      And the US did even worse during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.