Answer: “Seriously? I can’t even speak their languages to ask. I treated a bunch of burned, filthy, bleeding people while hoping I didn’t get shot! I didn’t stop to ask for fucking ID.”
A possible answer: “I’m sorry, but when someone is bleeding to death in front of me while screaming incoherently, my priority isn’t on finding out who their employer is and they’d be unable to tell me even if I asked.” Might stir some vestigial sense of shame in the bureacrat asking the question. Or not.
Meanwhile I’ve got a friend, who worked for his country of origin’s secret services and had to move to Canada because his and his family’s lives were threatened by organized crime, that realized the very person that was threatening him back home is now a Canadian citizen…
My friends friends friends uncle that he went to school with said "nuh uh!" and said your friend was making it up and my friend is now a Canadian citizen.
Look, I get the joke you’re making but seriously, people need to comprehend that the Geneva convention (even if we lump in the other treaties that often get confused with it) doesn’t cover what civilians are and aren’t allowed to do.
I and police for that matter can use tear gas pending local laws regardless of what the Geneva PROTOCOL says on the matter. Because I am not participating in a war in an official capacity.
A civilian doctor in another country might be tied by medical ethics codes he has agreed to but he is not tied by the Geneva Convention unless maybe if he is acting in an official capacity for the country and even then it would vary how international law would be applied because neither Hamas nor Palestine are signatories of that convention and likely Hamas soldiers are not fighting in uniform.
I am not casting a moral judgement on any of the above, I’m just tired of people not understanding what the Geneva Convention and the broader laws of warfare actually mean.
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