Israel and Hamas (and their American followers) are accusing one another of war crimes. Is it a war crime to capture a baby and then cut off its head? Is it a war crime to deprive civilians of electricity, food, clean water and medicines? Yes. Today those are war crimes. But where did the concept of war crimes come from?
Aristotle talked about a just war. Muslim armies in the 7th century made a point of sparing the lives of prisoners of war. But a legal code restricting military behavior was first published in the 1863, written by Francis Lieber for the American army and authorized by Abraham Lincoln. It banned the murder of babies but not starvation. That ban came later.
In World War Two, deliberately killing civilians from the air was not a war crime. Airplanes had not been covered in the early manuals. Hence the mass bombings of Berlin, London, Dresden and Tokyo, in that order.
In 1943 we knew that it was wrong to target children. Of course, we did. And today the deliberate targeting of civilians is forbidden but not always punished.
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