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A Brief History of War Crimes Against Hospitals [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-11-18
In a Nov. 16 article exploring “how hospitals became sacrosanct in international law,” history professor Juan Cole notes the actions of the Axis powers from the 1930s and early 1940s:
Even before WW II, the Axis powers were committing war crimes at hospitals. Italy’s Mussolini ordered an invasion of Ethiopia on October 3, 1935. The International Committee of the Red Cross immediately mobilized to provide aid to the battle-stricken. Its international branches set up over twenty field hospitals for treatment of the Ethiopian wounded. The Italian Air Force bombed most of them.
Cole quotes from a thorough report which says Mussolini called the Red Cross field hospitals “nuisances” when he was asked about Italy’s attacks on them.
Cole provides another example of Axis war crimes against hospitals: when Japanese soldiers invaded Singapore in February 1942, they attacked the British Military Hospital (now known as Alexandra Hospital), which was built for 500 patients and now had 900.
They trained artillery fire on the hospital on February 14 and invaded the hospital. They indiscriminately fired at the people they found there. After the war, prosecutors wanted to bring Japanese commanders up on charges at Nuremberg for the hospital massacre. They could not, however, identify the individuals responsible.
Professor Cole quotes from the Rome Statute signed in 1998 which he describes as “underpinning the International Criminal Court.” The statute includes as a war crime this action: “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives.”
Cole also quotes from the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949, article 18: “Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.”
Cole comments:
Only if the hospital is used as a base to launch an attack on the enemy is it a legitimate target. That would require that mortars be fired from its roof or an artillery piece be put in its yard. Small arms don’t count for this exception.
In addition, he quotes from Article 19 of the 4th Geneva Convention: “The fact that sick or wounded members of the armed forces are nursed in these hospitals, or the presence of small arms and ammunition taken from such combatants and not yet handed to the proper service, shall not be considered to be acts harmful to the enemy.”
Regarding the Israeli invasion of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza on Nov. 15, Cole observes:
so far the Israel forces that invaded al-Shifa Medical Complex have only been able to display some small arms they found in a room. They have not presented evidence that al-Shifa was being used as a base to attack the Israelis with armor or artillery.
As for the Israeli claim that the hospital was a Hamas command and control center, Cole says:
if the military target is below the hospital and not in the hospital itself, attacking the hospital is a war crime.
Cole points out that cutting off water, fuel and electricity is an attack on hospital patients who need electricity to survive, such as premature babies in incubators. He says such measures are “an action against civilians and a war crime.”
In conclusion, Cole states that “the Israelis, like the Japanese at the British Military Hospital, have taken dozens of prisoners from the hospital, though any massacres the Israelis committed have been through aerial bombardment or through cutting off electricity and fuel to the complex.”
www.juancole.com/...
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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of the blog Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan.
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