France falsely calls Israeli attacks on Lebanon "disproportionate"

Brussels Signal reports:

France’s foreign ministry has said the European Union’s association agreement with Israel could be reopened for discussion in light of what it calls “disproportionate” Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

Speaking today, Pascal Confavreux, spokesperson for the ministry, stated that given the gravity of yesterday’s events in Lebanon and the situation in the West Bank: “One cannot exclude that the discussion on the suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement will reopen, in addition to national sanctions.”

He added that while Israel has the right to defend itself, its actions are “not only unacceptable but also disproportionate and lead de facto to an impasse”. 

The word "disproportionate" has a specific legal meaning. 

The IHL formulation of the rule of proportionality requires a balancing of the foreseeable civilian harm and the expected military advantage based on the knowledge available to the military commander at the time prior to the initiation of an attack. 

To determine if an attack is disproportionate, one must know what the military value of the attack is and balance it against civilian harm. 

France has no idea what Israel's targets were. So it cannot possibly know whether the attacks were disproportionate. Using that language in this context is wrong.

Now, a few days after the attack, what do we know?

Lebanese officials claim tat over 300 people were killed. Israel claims that it killed 180 Hezbollah fighters and also aimed at other Hezbollah military assets.

A 3:2 ratio of militants to civilians, in an urban area, would never be considered disproportionate when done by any other army. In history. 

Israel is not saying that there were any mistakes. It confirms the airstrikes - most done in a single ten minute period over wide parts of Lebanon. The IDF has lots of lawyers who look at the legality of every individual strike before it happens. In other words, the IDF knew what its targets were, what the likely civilian casualties would be, and decided that the military advantage outweighed the expected civilian losses under international law, knowing all those facts.

France knows none of this.

The irony is that France has a history of airstrikes killing civilians for no apparent military reason. In 2021’s Operation Barkhane in Mali, France claimed to target a jihadist gathering but ended up killing 19 civilians in a wedding party. In 2011, French led airstrikes with NATO in Libya killed civilians on several occasions with no known military reason for the strikes, yet France maintains to this day that they were all valid miliary targets - and therefore proportionate despite the dozens of civilians killed.

It is not willing to give the same benefit of the doubt to Israel that it insists the world give to France, even though Israel’s intelligence on targets is from all evidence orders of magnitude better than France’s has been in its recent conflicts. 

Words matter. Assuming Israel's tally of terrorists killed in accurate, France's use of the term "disproportionate" is objectively wrong. And even without that tally, France is irresponsible for using that term without knowing the intended targets and their military value.

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