Hamas-led groups committed war crimes on October 7: Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has published new research detailing war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Hamas-led Palestinian armed groups on October 7 in Israel.
Hamas fighters led four other armed groups in attacks against 19 kibbutzim and 5 moshavim (cooperative communities), the cities of Sderot and Ofakim, two music festivals, and a beach party on October 7, HRW said.
“The Hamas-led assault on October 7 was designed to kill civilians and take as many people as possible hostage,” said Ida Sawyer, crisis and conflict director at HRW. Hamas officials, however, told HRW its fighters were instructed not to target civilians and to abide by international human rights and humanitarian law.
Israel’s ensuing assault on the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of October 7 amounted to the war crime of collective punishment, HRW also said, exacerbating Israel’s 17-year illegal blockade of Gaza and its crimes of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.
Taking hostages is not abiding by international human rights and humanitarian law. And the assault was most definitely planned to take as many hostages as possible, even though Hamas mostly wanted to capture soldiers.
CNN's take
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/17/middleeast/hamas-israel-october-7-attack-human-rights-watch-report-mime-intl/index.html
Same stuff except focusing more on the alleged (and largely debunked) sexual and gender based violence. Got to get those trigger words in for Western audiences! Sexual violence is worse than gravely wounding and blowing children to bits it seems... (All violence is terrible, double standards are terrible as well)
38 children killed on October 7, thousands traumatized.
You never see CNN mentioning that. Yet the one gang rape at the Nova festival (which was debunked) has been repeated ad nauseam.
Hamas rejects Human Rights Watch report citing ‘lies and blatant bias’
Earlier we reported on a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that said Hamas’s armed wing and four other groups “committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians” during the October 7 attack on Israelis.
In response, Hamas rejected “the lies and blatant bias” towards Israel and demanded HRW withdraw its report and apologise.
“The Human Rights Watch report adopted the entire Israeli narrative and moved away from the method of scientific research and the neutral legal position, and became more like an Israeli propaganda document,” Hamas said in a statement.
HRW said dozens of serious human rights violations occurred on October 7 including “murder, hostage-taking, and other grave offenses”.
A video screengrab shows the aftermath of the attack on the Supernova music festival in southern Israel on October 8
You filmed yourself committing war crimes... I haven't seen the footage myself but I'll believe the general consensus and as well as the results / evidence of the attack. Many war crimes were committed that day, whether all originally intended or not.
Armed resistance is justified, however not against civilians. Shit when horribly wrong on Oct 7, Hamas is responsible. Just as Israel is responsible for the ongoing genocide, civilian deaths, continued destruction and abductions from Gaza.
Violence as Redress: A Right to Rebellion for Armed Groups under International Law?
https://www.justsecurity.org/95653/right-to-rebellion/
This analysis discusses the place of the right to rebellion and, drawing on the work of Eliav Lieblich, on the concept of jus ad bellum internum (or internal jus ad bellum). Looking at an armed group’s limited right to rebellion is not aimed at glorifying or romanticising violence by non-state armed groups, but points to the situation some communities find themselves in without any legal or political process to remedy the violations they experience. For those who are oppressed, such as communities living under military occupation, and who have experienced decades of violence and displacement, law often rings hollow in failing to remedy violations that continue to deny their rights and dignity. In some ways, violence speaks in ways that the law will not or cannot. This reflects the inherent, often Western, hegemony in international law: on the one hand, it valorises self-determination, but on the other, it permits the continued violation of the human rights of people denied self-determination, which risks the law amounting to “empty rhetoric.”
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Many armed groups operate within a community where they have political and/or material support from members of the community (e.g. Maoists in Nepal, IRA in republican communities in Northern Ireland). In turn the armed group may provide medical care to civilians or weapons to community volunteers, who would otherwise not be able to secure their own defense in situations of lawlessness. Such a resort to violence by a group is not unlimited. This is because failure to comply with cardinal rules of IHL could delegitimize an armed groups’ resort to violence, unless redressed by the group, i.e. to account for harm caused, through amends to victims in an effort to prevent their repetition. Such actions differentiate a legitimate armed struggle from terrorism – that is, violence is aimed at State forces and not to spread terror amongst the civilian population.
While the attacks were originally aimed at military bases i.e. State forces, the results are for everyone to see.
In the situation of Myanmar, Syria and Gaza different international fora have been engaged to stop international crimes, but it has not abated nor redressed the violations that civilians still suffer. This is not to justify the violence of armed groups in such contexts, but rather to underscore the failure of international law to provide justice for the worst violations that can be committed against other human beings, where violence or death are their only recourses. Such resort to violence is limited by necessity and proportionality, which does not give rise to a pre-emptory form of self-defense and only allows the use of violence to prevent further harm, not to carry out international crimes or reprisals against other civilians.
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Moving beyond discussion of when the resort to force by non-state armed groups is lawful, it is also important to focus on the reason why such groups exist, which is often ignored, neglecting an important opportunity to end conflict and prevent its repetition. Instead of tackling the structures that gave rise to violence and addressing grievances, we risk conflicts becoming protracted, as some violations and injustices are piled on top of historic ones, entrenching positions of enmity.
Israel’s PM rejects calls for official inquiry into October 7 attack
In a speech to Israeli lawmakers in the Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed demands for the creation of a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 attacks saying “first, I want to defeat Hamas”.
There are increasing calls for an official probe into the deadly assault by Palestinian armed groups. The Israeli military last week released the results of its first internal investigation that admitted “severe mistakes and errors”.
Netanyahu has been accused of avoiding an inquiry to stay in power.
The prime minister said on Wednesday that Israel is “progressing methodically to achieve the goals of the war: the release of the abductees [and] the destruction of Hamas”, the Haaretz newspaper quoted him as saying.
