Ami Ayalon Quotes

No, the United States does not target civilians.

According to the laws of war, a warring party can just walk away from civilian harm that they have caused.

We checked carefully the international law - what does a nation do when terrorists are using civilians to defend their life, as a shelter. And they say you do not have a choice.

The last thing we want to do is to go into an area and inflict unnecessary civilian casualties. One is too many.

But to cut off relations with an aggressor may often invite retaliation by armed action, and this would, in its turn, make necessary some form of collective self-defence by the loyal members of the League.

Most recently, terrorist forces have captured Israeli soldiers and fired rockets into Israeli cities - both unprovoked. These acts of aggression deserve the rapid and decisive response they received.

This war no longer has anything to do with knightly conduct or with the agreements of the Geneva Convention.

Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime.

No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.

It is a rule of international law that weapons and methods of warfare which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians should never be used.

You can't bomb a people just in case.

Perhaps the most basic rule of the law of armed conflict is that civilians and civilian objects must not be made the object of direct attack, although incidental injuries caused to such persons or objects in the course of a legitimate attack must be proportionate to the purpose of the attack.

Military people have a heavy investment in rules against torture, not only because we want to protect our own POWs from reciprocal brutalities … but also because war is so terrible that it desperately requires any limits anyone can agree on, any gesture toward dignity, any mitigation suggesting civilized scruple. There isn’t even persuasive evidence that torture makes its victims tell their secrets, instead of saying whatever we want to hear.

Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence. Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe. God forbid terrorists take American soldiers or travelers hostage and torture them as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Gharib.

The atrocities committed on our wounded and prisoners by the "chivalry" of the South may excite not only horror, hut a wild fury of revenge. But our cause should not be stained with cruelty and crime, even in the name of vengeance.

What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Were there not innocent civilians there? We are simply taking the rules of engagement that you have invented and turning them back against you.

We turned our Hotchkiss on the prisoners and made and end to them.

For the most part, I think American armies are awfully good in the business of protecting civilians, of not going over the line.

In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.

One of the fundamental pillars of international humanitarian law is that proper distinction should be made between military targets and civilians. That is why indiscriminate bombing, let alone the deliberate targeting of residential areas or agricultural infrastructure, is considered a war crime.

I know that Israeli soldiers will do everything they can in order to avoid loss of innocent life.

Hamas hides among unwitting civilians, who have no way of controlling its activities. This fact does not give Israel the right to kill innocent non-combatants, not even unintentionally. Besides, murder is not "unintentional" when you know it is inevitable.

I will not wage war against women and children! I have instructed my air force to limit their attacks to military objectives. However, if the enemy should conclude from this that he might get away with waging war in a different manner he will receive an answer that he'll be knocked out of his wits!

When a country is invaded and attacked and people resist it's important to speak up and to say they have the right to resist and to defend their right to resist.

If you are going to kill the families of terrorists, realize that there's something called the Geneva Convention we're going to have to pull out of. It would defy every norm that is America.