Letter to National Post - Online -Oct 16th

Wkipedia defines war crimes as follows
War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity"
Nurenberg principle – planing, preparing, initiating or aging a war of aggression.
It also refers to the definitions in the Geneva and Hague Conventions There are obviously many definitions. Israel does not fit into any of them except perhaps the ill-treatment of civilians but the definition doesn't deal with the case of a war where civilians are being used as shields and participants by their own combatants.
However under the Nurenberg prnciples the leaders of Hamas, Fatah, and people like Ahmadinejad are clearly guilty of war crimes for "preparing and planning" war. These are the important war crimes criminals. They are the ones that should be tried at the Hague.
Lastly there must be a distinction between those that are defending themselves from a war started by others and those that commenced the war. The bar on what is a war crime should be much lower for the defender of a nation than for the aggressive attacking nation.