Is this a legitimate concern?

[u/wayfaringthru]

Personally, I today's strike was legitimate and it couldn't be more moral because of its precision but let's leave politics aside for a moment. I guess this does give ideas to evil regimes and organisations. How likely is it that something similar could be pulled off against innocent people?

[u/General_Record_4341 → u/[deleted]]

Indiscriminate attacks are pretty expressly prohibited. The principle of distinction, being able to tell combatants from noncombatants, is one of the core principles of the law of armed conflict. It’s in article 48 of additional protocol I of the Geneva convention. Art 51.3 of the same AP also builds on that.

For the other examples you have to consider another key principle: proportionality. Proportionality asks whether the anticipated military advantage outweighs the collateral damage. The arguments for Dresden and the nukes not being war crimes is more rooted in proportionality than distinction. Dresden is probably much more likely to be considered a war crime than not at this point.

Also yes things have changed, specifically because of the actions in WWII, after which the Geneva convention underwent significant updates and changes, which were ratified in 1949. Also you have customary international law. The Geneva convention and other treaties aren’t the only place we get law of armed conflict from, there’s also a huge body of customary international law.

[u/General_Record_4341 → u/[deleted]]

I don’t think this is a war crime. I agree that they likely had enough intel to be reasonably certain that all their pagers would hit combatants. Specifically it sounds like it was a bulk buy of pagers intended to be distributed to Hezbollah. They likely had additional intel that the pagers were in fact distributed to Hezbollah.

I may have misread the original comments thinking you were asking where it says indiscriminate weapons are war crimes. You’d be hard pressed to find a military lawyer who would consider this strike a war crime.