Around 9:30 p.m. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.

As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.

Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.

According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”

But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.

Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, planes, and helicopters to carry out attacks in the occupied territory for the first time in decades.

  • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    90% of Israelis are military or reservists, making them non-civilians under International Law.

    Not true. Until they are activated for service, they are noncombatants under international law.

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        They are noncombatants under international law. Noncombatants are not valid military targets.

        • Count042@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          So Israel is killing a bunch of non-valid military targets and justifying it by saying they were Hamas. Got it.

          You don’t actually have any standards or morals, and just want to justify everything as “With us or against us”

    • Count042@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Using that same logic, most of the Hamas members targeted by the Israelis are also civilians.

      Remember, Hamas is a singular governmental organization that kept the militant wing separate from the civilian wing. i.e. Gazan Hospital Administator? Hamas.

      That is a literal justification Israel has used to justify killing Gazan civilians, including police officers.

      So, which is it? Are IDF reservists military, or are Gazan police and hospital administrators civilians?

      You don’t get to have both.