A global scorched wasteland: The incendiary balloon of international law - by Melanie Phillips

In the 20th century, Jewish lawyers, jurists and other activists sought to fashion international human-rights law into a defense mechanism to protect powerless minorities. The process through which it became a weapon to be used against the Jewish people is a tragic history.

Melanie Phillips..
JNS.org..
01 August '19..

For months now, Israel has been attacked by aerial incendiary weapons launched by Hamas during riots at the Gaza border fence.

These weapons—balloons or kites attached to flammable material—are driven by the winds off the sea towards southern Israel.

In just one week in June, they started nearly 100 fires in farmland and forests, in playgrounds and private yards. By last month, Hamas had burned more than 7,400 acres of Israeli land.

At the same time, Israeli communities near the border are also routinely attacked with rockets and mortars from terrorist groups stationed inside the Gaza Strip.

An American lawyer, Col. Matthew Aiesi, an associate professor at the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Va., was among a group of national security lawyers who recently witnessed these attacks for themselves.

As he has written, these are indisputably war crimes, violating numerous rules of warfare by deliberately targeting civilians and using indiscriminate weapons.

Aiesi says the United Nations or countries like Egypt working towards peace in the region should seek the surrender of those committing these war crimes to stand trial before a fair and competent jurisdiction.

Yet beyond Israel, these attacks are scarcely reported at all. And virtually no one is even stating that they are self-evidently war crimes.

The United Nations remains silent on the point. No surprise there: It has a long history of being institutionally malevolent towards Israel. Despite condemning it on countless occasions with spurious charges, the world body has never taken any action against the genocidal terrorists of Hamas.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.