…apparently.

Despite widespread condemnation expressed by the United Nations and the international community against the use of cluster bombs during the 72 hour assault against Lebanon, Israel maintains that its measures were legal.

As scores of cluster bombs are discovered daily by Lebanese citizens, those officers who approved the attack walked free, vindicated after a year long trial.

According to the inquiry by the head of the army’s Defence College, the majority of cluster bombs were dropped in open areas, while their use in urban areas was an “immediate response” to target areas that were being used as launch pads by Hezbollah guerrillas.

That a multitude of civilians were killed, and continue to be killed by unexploded cluster bombs was deemed irrelevant, as the findings were accepted by the army’s Judge Advocate General Avihai Mandelblit.

During the thirty-four day conflict about four million cluster ‘bomblets’ were dropped on Lebanon, and since the war ended more than thirty people have been reported killed by cluster bomb and land mine explosions.

While the use of cluster bombs is not deemed illegal under international law per se, Israel is exploiting the aged loop-hole that enables them to cite Hezbollah as the intended targets, therefore bypassing an outright charge of ‘indiscriminate killing of civilians’.

Alas, a trial by an Israeli court never was going to reach a fair verdict, and Israel once more gets away, quite literally, with murder.