The smallest coffins are always the heaviest. The US-Israeli killing of children must be stopped.
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 7 March 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 6 March, the day of the funerals of schoolgirls (6-12 year-olds) killed in Minab, Iran. 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 as 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 amongst the dead.
According to Israel’s Institute of National Security Studies, the Lebanon War led to a formal framing for its war against civilians: The Dahiya Doctrine. In a paper titled “Disproportionate Force: Israel's Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War” written in 2008, they wrote:
“By instilling proper expectations of the IDF response among the civilian population, Israel will be able to improve its readiness and the resilience of its citizens.”
From Guernica 1937 to Tehran 2026
The Dahiya Doctrine is a strategy to make civilian suffering so great – whether that be in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iran – that they can bend hostile governments or groups like Hezbollah to their will. The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, warmly welcomed by Australia last month, lives and breathes this doctrine – for him, there are no innocents in Gaza.
Let’s be honest: this is very much in the tradition of the Nazi German bombing of Guernica in Spain in 1937 in which the targets were civilians. Terror bombing it was then; terror bombing it is now.
I have a fabric reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica on my office wall. It has been coloured red, green black and white – those 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 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
