Hezbollah has been using laser guided anti-tank missiles a great deal since they started their fighting with Israel in October.
There is a qualitative difference between Hamas-style rockets and these missiles. First of all, there is no defense for a home or building targeted by such missiles. Iron Dome cannot defend against them; the missile are shot at ground level.
Secondly, they cannot miss. They use lasers or radar to guide them to their target.
Which means that this is a different quality of war crime than the Qassam-style rockets. The violation of the laws of war for Qassam rockets is violating the principle of distinction - indiscriminate fire does not distinguish between civilian and military targets; the rockets are shot in the general direction of a town and the terrorists don't know exactly where the rockets will land. They are tools of terror but Hamas can (and does) claim that they really only want to shoot military targets but just don't have the tools to be that precise. It is an obvious lie - in Arabic they happily admit they want to terrorize Jewish civilians - but they can at least make that claim.
Here, Hezbollah deliberately aimed at a civilian house. Their own video makes this quite obvious:
And they have shot scores of anti-tank missiles at homes, public buildings, chicken coops, businesses and vehicles have been hit by this fire.
The deliberate nature of knowingly and provably aiming at unquestionably civilian objects - and civilians - changes things from the violation of the laws of armed conflict to a grave breach of international law. It is the moral equivalent of holding a gun at a civilian's head and pulling the trigger.
Hezbollah has been aiming these weapons at civilian targets for months. One would think that human rights groups would be up in arms about using a weapon that is directly aimed at civilians.
One would be wrong.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, B'Tselem - none of them tweeted a word about a deliberate murder of a 76 year old woman and her son. A clear war crime, that was documented by Hezbollah itself, is not worth mentioning.
These organizations will dig as deep as they can, and spend tens of thousands of dollars, to to find bizarre new things to blame Israel for - but egregious war crimes by Hezbollah are simply ignored.
Because, to these organizations, Mira Ayalon and the other civilians murdered by Hezbollah are somewhat less than human.
