COMMENTARY:  By Eugene Doyle

Three more schools and a major hospital have been bombed in Iran and more in Lebanon by the US-Israeli military, all within the first week of launching their latest war.

This is a pattern, not “collateral damage”. Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said on March 7 that the US and Israel “recognise no red line in committing their crimes” against his country.

Densely populated parts of Tehran are being pounded by wave after wave of US and Israeli bombs.  Shahid Hamedani School in Tehran was struck on March 6, the day of the funerals of schoolgirls (6-12 year-olds) killed in Minab, Iran.

• READ MORE: Nearly 2000 people in Israel hospitalised since Iran war broke out: Ministry
• Thousands of protesters in London demand end to US, Israeli war on Iran
• 165 massacred schoolgirls in Iran – and the silence that exposes the West’s moral selectivity
• China’s Wang Yi says Iran war should never have happened — calls for immediate  ceasefire
• Suffering in Gaza and occupied West Bank remains acute as the world focuses on the US-Israeli war on Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

UN officials have confirmed that the Minab attack killed 160 children and five staff.

The Palestinians, despite the genocide inflicted on them by Israel and the West, have never become used to the daily killing of children: “The smallest coffins are always the heaviest,” Palestinians say.

Israel has killed many times more women, children and babies than they have Palestinian resistance fighters. There is even a name for this depravity — the Dahiya Doctrine.

Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine and the law of proportionality
International media are reporting that Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, is suffering another brutal aerial bombardment from the Israelis.

Dahiya — al-Dahiya al-Janubiya — is home to 700,000 civilians living in high-density housing. The suburb lends its name to Israel’s policy of using massive, disproportionate force against civilians and infrastructure to weaken an enemy’s resolve.

It is, of course, a war crime to do so.

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel attacked Dahiya, a popular stronghold of the Hezbollah movement. The massive bombing campaign wasn’t to achieve a military objective; the target was civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Hundreds of children were among the dead.

I have a fabric reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica on my office wall. It has been coloured red, green black and white – the colours of the Palestinian flag — to draw the important parallel.

The governments of New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and all the others, with rare noble exceptions like Spain, support this depraved criminality. We share values with the Israelis and the Americans, our leaders tell us.

The Principle of Proportionality is critical to protect children
The Americans and Israelis have a bloodlust and openly brag about their destructive abilities. Operation Epic Fury screams to the world: “war crimes”.

What should constrain US-Israeli violence is international law and the principle that there are limits to what is acceptable in “incidental” harm caused to civilians.

Proportionality is one of the foundational concepts in international law, along with other important injunctions like the prohibition of force against sovereign states. Under the Geneva Convention, before undertaking military action states are obligated to consider: Distinction (separating civilians from combatants), Proportionality, Precaution (taking care to minimise civilian harm), Military Necessity (i.e. don’t launch wars of aggression), and Humanity — prohibiting unnecessary suffering.

This is the exact opposite of the Dahiya Doctrine and the American Way of War — from Korea to Iraq by way of Vietnam. Over six million civilians were killed by the US in just those three conflicts alone.

Article 51 of the Geneva Convention
The principle of proportionality is codified in Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions, and affirmed as binding customary international law applicable to all parties in all conflicts.  This is further affirmed by the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Rule 14 which states:

“Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.”

The West has torn up its copies of international law but we need to keep its spirit alive. New Zealand, Australia and most of the “civilised world” are signatories to various treaties that require them to enforce humanitarian law upon belligerents. Instead, our countries work day and night to support Israel and the US in their evil work. Evil is the appropriate word here.

I will give the last word to the Israeli commander who led the 2006 terror bombing of Dahiya, General Gadi Eisenkot, chief of Northern Command:

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it (villages) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity.

Family members keep silent on the issue of violence in Fiji and individuals continue to be the victims, according to Jonathan Veitch, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative to the South Pacific.

While raising his concern on the issue at Nasinu Gospel Primary School on Friday, he said 83 percent of children in Fiji had reported some level of violence, either in their family or in school over the past six months.

“This 83 percent rate is far too high, and it’s not acceptable,” he said.

• READ MORE: Other Fiji reports

“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”

Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victim to deal with the trauma.

Speaking during a student-led press conference at Nasinu Gospel Primary School, Veitch expressed his concern about the alarming rate of violence against women and children in Fiji, whether physical or sexual.

“You (Fiji) do have high rates of violence against children,” Veitch said.

“This (83 percent rate) is far too high, and it’s not acceptable.

‘Curtain of silence’
“The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”

He said it was common in Fiji for family members to keep silent on the issue of violence while individuals continued to be victimised.

“If that particular person has to be stopped, we have to deal with it in our village.

“So, it’s not just UNICEF and the Government; it’s also the village itself.”

Veitch said significant pillars of communities must be involved in key conversations.

“We really need to talk about it in our churches on Sundays; we have to have an honest conversation about it.

“These kids shouldn’t be hurt; they shouldn’t be punished physically.”

Multifaceted approach
He said the issue should be dealt with through a multifaceted approach.

Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell expressed similar concerns and called for a change in norms.

“It requires government leadership and good laws,” she said.

“It requires the government to come together and say that this is a priority where violence against children is unacceptable.”

She said conversations regarding the matter needed to focus on changing the norms of what was acceptable and unacceptable in a community.

“A lot of times this issue is kept in the dark and not talked about, and I think it’s very important to have those conversations.”

She said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victims to deal with the trauma.

She added that society played a role in condemning violence against women and ensuring they were safe in their homes and in their communities.

Russell said while most cases were directed at men, there was a need to train the mindset of young boys to change their perspective of using violence as a solving mechanism.

Sainimili Magimagi is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

The New Zealand Children’s Commissioner is even more concerned about the deportation of a 15-year-old from Australia, now that he has had a briefing.

Judge Andrew Becroft sought information about the case after the deportation of the minor was made public earlier this week.

Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta was notified last week of the boy’s imminent deportation.

• READ MORE: Australia’s deportation of 15-year-old boy ‘heartbreaking’, says Green MP

The boy has family in New Zealand, but little information has been made public about the teen to protect his privacy.

The minister said the circumstances of the case were very complex, but signalled he was not a 501 deportee.

When asked yesterday, Mahuta said New Zealand had had no advice suggesting Australia had breached any international law.

However, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft did not believe Australia had stuck to its international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

‘We can’t play fast and loose’
“It is the most signed convention in history, we can’t play fast and loose with it.

“I think there is every reason to conclude, on what I know at the moment, that while two countries have signed that convention only one is really applying it and abiding by it,” he said.

Judge Becroft said the briefing he had received had left him even more concerned than he already was.

“Why put him on a plane by himself, without support to a country that I understand, we need to check this out, he has never been to before,” he said.

“By any analysis it seems to me to be outrageous on what we know so far and it needs to be taken up by the highest authorities and I understand it is being.”

Those concerns were echoed by Australian Lawyers Alliance’s Greg Barns.

Australian authorities have indicated that the minor may have voluntarily been deported from Australian shores.

But Barns has vetoed that as a possibility.

‘Inequality of power here’
“To deport a child of 15 years of age is always involuntary, whatever the child may say.

“There is a total inequality of power here, you’ve got the frightening force of the Australian border force and a young child and to say the child has consented to the action I find just extraordinary,” he said.

He said the convention clearly indicated the best interest of the child needed to be put first.

The convention also stated no child should be subjected to cruelty.

Barns said he could not see how Australia was acting in the child’s best interests.

“Children are put in immigration detention and whilst they might be separated from adults they’re in a facility that is completely inappropriate for children. It has none of the rehabilitative mechanisms or the care that is required,” he said.

“To then be shunted on a plane with border force security would be a frightening experience for the child.”

NZ needs to take a stand
He said New Zealand needed to take a stand.

“It is getting to the point where the contempt with which Australia treats New Zealand in relation to this issue both with adults and now with of course children are at such a level that New Zealand needs to be taking strong action against Australia, including making complaints on the global stage,” he said.

A spokesperson at the Minister for Children Kelvin Davis’ office said any questions about Australia’s decisions were a matter for the Australian government.

In the meantime, they said Oranga Tamariki had been working extensively with authorities both in Australia and New Zealand to “support this young person’s arrival”.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.