AkivaMCohen: Heh. Hoping this is all coming across in the genuinely warm tone it's been intended in. But that's what I had assumed until I saw this, which reads as hoping the investigation will nail down the rule, not merely the application

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur to Palestine, said that Israeli and allegedly foreign soldiers were “perfidiously hiding in an aid truck” during the hostage rescue operation. If true, and I imagine Albanese wouldn’t say this lightly, that’s absolutely perfidy - a serious war crime.

I have yet to see independent confirmation of this, but it certainly fits an awful pattern. Hopefully we will have more info soon.

It is not in fact true; the truck was marked with a dish soap logo

this may still qual as perfidy but it's murkier, i am not an expert and the reqs i can recall rotate around pretending to be a protected group.

It's not murky. Pretending to be a soap truck is an acceptable ruse of war.

cool, that clears up my concerns vis a vis the details I'm aware of, thanks!

It is quite murky. This is an incorrect take. www.justsecurity.org/21285/disgui...

Killing With Military Equipment Disguised as Civilian Objects is Perfidywww.justsecurity.org The Washington Post earlier this year revealed US involvement in a 2008 Israeli operation that killed Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyah in a Damascus parking lot. In discussing various legal aspects of the o...

That is specifically limited to using a civilian disguise to kill

Perfidy is defined in Article 37 of First Protocol Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions (AP I) as “killing, injuring, or capturing an adversary.” It does not apply solely to killing adversaries.

Using shorthand since "does this apply" isn't turning on whether one specific one of those acts was conducted, but on whether the vehicle was used for anything but transport (which there's no indication it was)

If it can be demonstrated that the transport led directly to death, injury or capture, then I believe it’s applicable.

does this mean letting svcmembers fly commercial is a warcrime in the framework you're using?

That would be a very weird interpretation of “directly.”

we should nail down an interpretation for "directly" because it seems like that's part of the disagreement here. "without this the unit wouldn't be in country" is a causal chain and within that "directly" could apply. i don't think you're being that expansive but you are more expansive than tkarney

Yes, that’s exactly what IHL experts hopefully will do when they conduct a full investigation

I'm not sure how an "investigation" could answer a normative or interprative question. It can only tell you what happened, not how the law should or does treat what happened

Surely an adequate amount of evidence is needed to make a legal determination.

About the norm or the interpretation? No. Only about the application of whatever the law is to the particular circumstances (this part of the discussion is now in *my* professional wheelhouse) The particular facts of a particular situation should never ever impact what the law *is* (just how it

*applies*)

Yes, we need more evidence to determine if it applies in this situation.

Then I'm misunderstanding what you're saying you hope am investigation would do - love it looks like you meant the investigation would enable experts to determine what specifically the law prohibits, which is different from determining whether the prohibiting thing was done

I assumed it was implicit that I meant an “investigation to determine if a violation did or did not occur.”

Heh. Hoping this is all coming across in the genuinely warm tone it's been intended in. But that's what I had assumed until I saw this, which reads as hoping the investigation will nail down the rule, not merely the application

Sure, I could have clarified that I meant that an investigation would hopefully gather facts that could help experts determine if a violation took place, and that determination process would include said experts (not me) interpreting the law vis a vis “directly.”

And this 👆 attention to words and detail are why I like following @akivamcohen.bsky.social

I have been following both of these people for a long time and this conversation makes me happy to continue doing so.