Europe countries should join the BDS and boycott Israel

Thanks to my opponent for his reply.CON seems to focus solely on the issue of whether Israel commits war crimes, the first of my three points, and does not reject my arguments that if they are happening then we should care and if we care then the appropriate method is through economic boycott and sanctions like BDS.In this round I will therefore solely focus on the issue of whether Israel commits war crimes and human rights abuses.Does Israel Kill Indiscriminately?Two fundamental basis of International Military Law (IML) are discrimination and proportionality[1]. When either of these are not met the killing can be called indiscriminate. Simply put armed forces are required to recognise the difference between civilians and military and to ensure that any incidental civilian casualties are proportional to a legitimate military goal. or to put it another way, incidentally killing one civilian while trying to kill twenty terrorists is a tragedy - incidentally killing twenty civilians while trying to kill one terrorist is a war crime.CON argues that because the IDF says they cannot attack a target if it endangers innocents, they must not be able to. In the face of the bias inherent in using a a source with a vested interest in not being found guilty of war crimes, the much stronger and more neutral sources I cited in R1 and the mere existence of an IML presupposing that states cannot be trusted to judge themselves guilty or not of war crimes, I find this argument very lacking.Further, by reference to evidence we can see CON's claims are false.For instance Israel has been willing to fire heavy munitions into civilian homes and even level entire neighbourhoods both killing residents and pushing those who survive into a life of homeless poverty[2]. The first link includes quotes to Israeli soldiers own testimonies on this, so it is hard to refute.The UN Report On Protective Edge[3] also includes examples of them killing families of 20 odd civilians with precision weaponry for no valid reason.If Israel doesn't indiscriminantly kill civilians, what happened to the 22 members of the al-Daya family that were killed? What about the use of indiscriminate fletchette ammunition (which inherently makes it a war crime on par with Palestinian militant group's missiles) to kill five mourners at the Abd al-Dayem funeral? The 15 civilians killed at the al-Maqadmah mosque? The killing of all 8 members of the Al Hajj family? The 9 dead, 3 women (One of them pregnant) and 6 children, on the attack on the Al Qassas family? The 19 killed, 11 of which were children including an 8 month old baby, when a 1,000 or 2,000 lb bomb was dropped on the Al Najjar household? The 19 killed in the attack on the Abu Jabr house in a refugee camp?Human ShieldsCON states the IDF does not use human shields but his only evidence is his personal testimony that the Israel police cars are inconsistent with that. I beleive this can be disregarded because:1) The Jeep is that of the Israeli Border Police (IBP) that operate in Palestine, not the police that CON would see within Israel and be familiar with.2) That picture is from 2004 [4]. Based on his profile, CON would have been approx 3 y.o. at this point in time and I think it is reasonable to assume he wouldn't have developed an indepth knowledge of the vehicles used by different police branches at this age.3) It is consistent with other unrelated pictures of IBP vehicles.[5]4) In 2004 the IDF was using people as human shields by Israel's own admission. It was only on 2005 that the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that human shields (or the "neighbour procedure" as it is euphemistically known) was illegal with Israeli defence officials claiming that "the Israel Defense Forces made use of the ‘human shield’ procedure on 1,200 occasions over the last five years"[6]. I will present the case momentarily that they continue to use people as human shields afterwards even though it now violated their own laws as well as international ones, but this shows CON's argument for why they weren't using human shields can't possibly be true.5) There is compelling evidence to show that Israel is still using human shields. The Youtube link I included in R1 is from NGO Breaking the Silence, where IDF soldiers have spoken out about the culture of human rights abuses and war crimes. He explicitly states that they sued human shields and he is not the only IDF witness[7][8].Other systematic approaches looking at the evidence have concurred. For instance the UN report I cite in R1[9] examines this in detail throughout paragraphs 1032 to 1106. Although to dense to quote their reasoning and the individual evidence they use to come to the conclusion (it relies on evidence from Palestinians AND Israelis however) they conclude:"1105. The Mission also finds that the intentional use as human shields of those whose accounts are presented above qualifies as inhuman treatment of and wilfully causing great suffering to protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention. As such, the Mission considers the conduct of the Israeli armed forces in relation to such persons to amount to grave breaches of the said Convention. The use of human shields is also a war crime under article 8 (2) (b) (xxiii) of the Rome Statute."6) Even Israel admits there are still occasions when people use human shields[10], that example being from a few years ago when soldiers ordered a child to open a package they thought might be boobytrapped so the child would get hurt in the event of this being the case rather than them.Although Israel only very rarely recognises when soldiers commit human rights abuses (this example being a rare time they do)[11] and the punishment was very lax, it shows that your argument of "Israel never uses human shields" is even more pro-Israel than Israel's official position.This is followed by an argument that Hamas uses human shields. Part of my argument in R1 raised the issue that human rights abuses and war crimes are not allowed if someone commits them to you first. Con has not challenged this so I think this argument is irrelevant.Further, neither argument fits the definition of a human shield as presented in international law:"493: The Mission finds it useful to clarify what is meant, from a legal perspective, by using civilians or a civilian population as a human shield. Parties to a conflict are not permitted to use a civilian population or individual civilians in order to render certain points or areas immune from military operations. It is not in dispute that both Palestinian armed groups and Israeli forces were fighting within an area populated by civilians. Fighting within civilian areas is not, by itself, sufficient for a finding that a party is using the civilian population living in the area of the fighting as a human shield. As the words of article 57 (1) show (“shall not be used to render”, “in order to attempt to shield”), an intention to use the civilian population in order to shield an area from military attack is required. "[9]Even the IDF admits that merely taking part in military action in proximity to civilians does not in and of itself justify the classification of "human shields. Pnina Sharvit-Baruch, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, and former Head of the International Law Department of the IDF Military Advocate General, explained in a conference at the University of Haifa: "In a scenario like the Gaza Strip you cannot expect the other side or demand the other side to act only from empty areas, to go out of all the populated areas, fire only from there or from the beach area when no people are there, it's not something that is expected. Therefore to say that the fact that they are operating from populated areas, in itself is a war crime or is in breach of the law of armed conflict, is not a plausible argument"[3] Simply put, the expectation that Hamas should march out into barren areas like 17th century line infantry is frankly bizarre and inconsistent with IML. Urban warfare is almost as old as human civilisation and it is not inherently wrong or criminal. Soldiers specifically shielding themselves with civilians is and this is something that so far we only know that Israel is guilty of.Israel is good because of XCon provides several reasons why Israel should be viewed as good. As none of them contest my R1 argument that the prohibition against war crimes is absolute and there are no reasonable excuses for them, I beleive it is irrelevant. However in the short space left, I'd like to show how they're still misrepresentations.Israel does provide some services to Palestine, but the rationale for this is not benevolent. Israel has been economically blockading and damaging Palestine for a long time[12], keeping them from developing their economy and keeping them dependent on Israel. this allows Israel to use it's power to coerce Israel - for instance by shutting off those vital services it supplies[13] in contravention of IML[14].Similarly Israel's warning to Palestinian civilians to evacuate entire neighbourhoods before they attack is Israel's rationale for then declaring entire areas terrorist zones - allowing IDF to shoot kill any civilians with no heed for the basic principle of distinction.[3]Lastly in regards to administrative detention, the unsupported claim that they are all terrorists do not hold up. In fact "Israel has administratively detained Palestinians for their political opinions and non-violent political activity."[15][1] http://goo.gl...[2] https://goo.gl...[3] http://goo.gl...[4] http://goo.gl...[5] http://goo.gl...[6] http://goo.gl...[7] http://tinyurl.com... [8] http://goo.gl...[9] http://tinyurl.com...[10] http://goo.gl...[11] http://goo.gl...[12] https://goo.gl...[13] http://goo.gl...[14] https://goo.gl...[15] http://goo.gl...