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Everyone seems to be arguing as if they have lots of evidence disproving the Israeli part in war crimes and I’ve seen plenty of videos of absolutely cold blooded murders of unarmed civilians and massive destruction of civilian infrastructure. If Israel is not starving Palestinians why did the US build a jetty to take in aid?
I don’t mention that Hamas are also war criminals because I think everyone can agree they are already. It’s obvious.
Anyway I always thought that courts like this should have a special higher authority and any of us arguing on hacker news, I believe they are brave to take this case, will review the evidence fairly and a court case can happen at some point. If these leaders are innocent then I’m convinced the court will find them not guilty, but they should be allowed to follow any evidence, your or my opinion on hacker news really isn’t very relevant compared to that of experts in war crimes and international law.
The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements. Any country that has one of its citizens (or leaders) convicted by the ICC cannot be compelled to honor the judgement, it can only do so voluntarily, whether it’s a signatory or not. If a country chooses not to comply, the only option is for the ICC to wage a war to enforce its judgement, which it can’t do, and is unlikely to convince others to do.
The name of the ICC does not describe what it actually does. The only role it’s ever actually fulfilled is to punish people who have already lost wars. Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers, and random African warlord losers.
The most optimistic outcomes for the ICC here are sanctions (which Israel’s closest allies wont participate in) or restricted international movement for the involved parties (which Israel’s closest allies will also ignore), and I still think that’s rather optimistic.
Well I think the ICC disagrees with your assessment of them, and they are in fact proving you incorrect by doing the exact opposite of what you’re claiming; attempting to try people who have potentially committed war crimes even though they are allies of western countries. I think this is an excellent thing personally and while it might be a new development for the court I think it’s very reasonable to follow the evidence and come to a conclusion despite huge political pressure.
Of course they would disagree. Their entire existence is based upon this fiction. The fact that they are attempting to reinforce this narrative doesn’t prove anything. If Netanyahu appears in handcuffs in The Hague I’d be forced to reassess my position, or better yet one of the too-many-to-count US war criminals. But I’m quite confident that’s never going to happen.
Talk is cheap, and it doesn’t matter what the ICC says, its role is defined by what it actually does. Which is as I’ve described.
Milosevic was sent to The Hague after being ousted by a political revolution. I guess you could say that's not exactly the same as losing a war, but certainly within the theme of international law only applying to history's losers (as opposed to history's criminals).
No matter how you spin it, a court created in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials has ironically sealed Israeli leadership's outcast international status. Win or lose, History won't be kind.
Absolutely right and there didn’t changed much in the last 100 years. Here a quote from a old book: ‘It is true that there exists a vast body of what is termed “international law”; but this bloodless caricature lacks the first essential foundation of law in capitalist society, the existence of a sovereign power capable of enforcing it…’[1].
> The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements. Any country that has one of its citizens (or leaders) convicted by the ICC cannot be compelled to honor the judgement, it can only do so voluntarily
This misunderstands how icc works. Generally the accused has to be in ICC custody for the case to go forward. Once the accused is in custody, the ICC has all sorts of power over them.
Perhaps you mean arresting people is hard. That is true, but the merit part only cones after that part.
> Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers
Neither of those were the ICC.
----
You're not entirely wrong of course. The ICC has trouble enforcing warrants against powerful people from powerful countries.
The US putting a bounty on the head of an internationally-recognized terrorist and leader of a violent non-state actor like Al-Qaeda is nowhere near comparable to an international body putting bounties out for the leaders of sovereign states of millions.
Right, in this hypothetical one bounty target has been convicted of war crimes by an internationally recognized court, and the other is Osama bin Laden.
You’re right about that, The ICC has actually only ever prosecuted Africans (and recently issued a couple of warrants against Russians). But The ICC, The ICTY and the IMT/IMTFE all have essentially the same authority when it comes to enforcing “international law”, which is none at all. International laws aren’t real, there is no international government, international police or international armed forces. All international legal or military actions take place only with the voluntary cooperation of all countries involved. If any country decides to withhold that cooperation on any particular issue, then there is no enforcement mechanism. Which is why all of history’s “international courts” have only ever prosecuted the losers of wars.
> International laws aren’t real, there is no international government, international police or international armed forces
What you are expressing here is essentially a variant of the philosophy known as "legal realism" – laws only exist to the extent they are enforced, so a law lacking a sufficiently effective enforcement mechanism isn't really a law at all.
However, that perspective was rarely heard prior to the 20th century. Historically, international law grew out of the work of early modern European scholars such Grotius. Many of them (Grotius included) were natural law theorists – they saw the law of nations as grounded in human nature, and ultimately established by God. In those days, much of Europe – even in the purely domestic sphere – was still governed by customary law: laws evolved due to custom, whose content was never entirely clear, and which were never perfectly enforced. The continental legal tradition was founded on ancient Roman law, which continued to be studied as a kind of abstract intellectual system in universities long after it had ceased to be enforced in practice – however, rather than an exercise without any practical relevance, lawyers and judges would apply its provisions to every day cases, but only when they could get away with doing so – an attempt whenever they could to impose some neat Roman order on the anarchic mess of royal decrees and Germanic pagan custom. Against that historical background, the idea of international law without any clear lawgiver or law-enforcer made much more sense than it does to you.
The way it works today is the way it’s always worked. Laws have always needed enforcers, and international laws have only ever been enforced by the winners of war against the losers of war. That’s why the Romans enforced egregious reparations against the Carthaginians after the first Punic war (and took many of their men into slavery), which lead to the second Punic war (after which the same thing happened again).
> The way it works today is the way it’s always worked. Laws have always needed enforcers
Again, you are relying on a contested viewpoint in the philosophy of law as if it were obviously true, despite the fact that many people (both historically and today) disagree with it.
It is one thing to argue for a contested philosophical position – but if you are just going to assert it as "obvious" or "self-evident", then you are really just preaching to the choir, you can only ever convince people who already agree with you.
I'm simply stating the facts of history, which your primary criticism of seems to be that they're too realistic. Describing a viewpoint as contested doesn't really mean anything, you are here contesting it, so it's self-evidently contested. That doesn't lend any credibility to what you're saying. Laws without enforcers are just somebody's ideas, and having some esoteric philosophical objection this doesn't change the reality of the situation.
I could issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, and hold a trial for him myself. Perhaps I could also contrive some philosophical justification for why this would be a deeply meaningful act, but the reality of daily life would continue without any regard for such a gesture.
> I could issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, and hold a trial for him myself.
And it wouldn't be discussed through-out the Internet. It wouldn't be spoken about on CNN and other mainstream media.
It all really comes to this, doesn't it? It all comes to the established belief in the authorities. With enough uncontested claims like yours, the power of ICC would fade. However because of witty responses of skissane, its power grows.
One of the best quotes from the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire:
> A King, a priest, a rich man and a sellsword are in a room. Those three man tell the sellsword to kill the other two.
> I'm simply stating the facts of history, which your primary criticism of seems to be that they're too realistic.
No, my criticism is that you are making the category mistake of confusing history with philosophy of law.
Nobody disputes the historical fact that international law has never seen any more than selective enforcement.
The dispute is about what relevance that historical fact has for the ontological status of international law qua law. That's a philosophy of law question, not a history question.
You are also ignoring the historical fact that the vast majority of states prefer to claim compliance with international law (however dubiously) rather than openly defy it. If other states accuse them of violating international law, the standard diplomatic response is to dispute the contents of the law or its application to the facts at hand, not to reject the whole concept of international law. Your nihilism about international law ignores the real historical fact that states at least pretend to believe in it – and a lot of the people who make those decisions on behalf of states (diplomats, bureaucrats, politicians, etc) aren't just pretending to believe in it, they really actually do. This is a real historical and contemporary phenomenon your theory can't explain.
> I could issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, and hold a trial for him myself.
There is an obvious difference – nobody with any real world power would accept what you did as legitimate. Whereas, if the ICC issues an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, many people around the world with real power (government officials, judges, diplomats, international bureaucrats, etc) will officially consider that a legitimate act. Now, of course, despite the fact these people do have some real world power, it is unlikely to be enough in practice to actually bring about Netanyahu's arrest. But still, that's a very different situation from your hypothetical of an act which nobody with any significant real world power would accept as legitimate.
And, an ICC arrest warrant is likely to have some real world consequences for Netanyahu – it will likely reduce somewhat his ability to travel internationally; it is also likely to harm Israel diplomatically and politically (e.g. it could well make an easier job for people lobbying for various governments to recognise the State of Palestine); conversely, it is likely also going to help Netanyahu in Israel's domestic politics; whereas, your warrant/trial would have zero real world consequences for him or for his government or country.
I find it a little unfortunate that the ANC, who have explicitly stated they won't enforce the ICC warrant against Putin (and have previously ignored ICC genocide charges against a Sudanese leader), were still considered a reasonable group to prosecute Israel.
Makes it look rather like they did so at the behest of Russia (whether on behalf of their ally Iran or as a simple continuation of Russian support for the ANC, who knows).
Even if it only looks like that, the conflict of interest is sufficiently obvious that I find it difficult to regard the ICC's indictments wrt Israel as judicially legitimate.
(this is not to imply that Israel is anywhere near innocent of all accusations made against her, only that I see no reason to trust the ICC's judgement in the matter of which ones she's guilty of)
The ICC is not prosecuting Israel. The ICC prosecutes individuals. South African or the ANC have no saying in who the ICC pursues cases against.
The ICJ is handling a the case against Israel filed by South Africa. The ICJ handles only cases with state parties, and only on the basis of complaints of one of those state parties.
The two cases are entirely separate, and the ICC and ICJ are two entirely different courts. The ICC was created under the Rome Statue. The ICJ, meanwhile was founded on the basis of the UN Charter.
I think ICJ giving credence to South Africa given they consider the ICC optional is still ... unfortunate, at best, but "conflict of interest" is rather less applicable.
"The merits of the case are mostly irrelevant because the ICC doesn’t have the authority to enforce any of its judgements." - tell this to Slobodan Milošević
He was delivered to the court by his own country who was heavily pressured by the United States. That is obviously not going to happen to Netanyahu considering both US political parties back Israel.
A conviction would also require signatory states to arrest the convicted persons - or give up the support for the ICC. Almost all of the EU is member of the ICC. A conviction, or even just an arrest warrant would lead to massive political complications for the EU-Israel relations.
> If a country chooses not to comply, the only option is for the ICC to wage a war to enforce its judgement
not just does the US criminal elite not recognize ICC but they took it one step further with spelling out[1] what might happen if a US criminal is being charged by the court:
"The Hague Invasion Act", allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.
... so not only should Israeli and Hamas war crimes be prosecuted, but in order not to appear utterly hypocritical, and "to do right by history", should US/UK war criminals like Dick Cheney, G.W. Bush, Tony Blair, and all other despicable criminal soldiers face the music for what they did in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other places. Kidnapping from a sovereign country, torture, etc ... Just utterly barbaric.
But the US especially is a lost cause considering how they treat the worst transgressors and war-criminals like the execution without trial as in the case of Osama bin Laden. So just imagine if anyone would propose having US war criminals meet that very same fate? It would get you banned on every Internet site for "hate speech" LOL. Which is why it's pointless to cite laws, the justice system or pen and paper to solve something that is immune to that.
- You act like it’s unreasonable for the United States to not want US citizens held by bodies the United States doesn’t recognize the authority of. No sovereign country would accept this.
- What crimes and under whose jurisdiction are Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and George Bush guilty of? Osama bin Laden was indicted by a US grand jury under US jurisdiction and refused for extradition by the Taliban, not to mention his Interpol arrest warrant from Libya.
You also linked the Wikipedia page for the Hague Invasion Act but didn’t bring up this paragraph from the Abu Ghraib one:
> In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits. England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.
Let’s not act like the United States not being party to the Rome Statute means that US soldiers can commit crimes with impunity and not be punished under policy like the UCMJ.
For the US to engage in acts of war against countries that make their choices as to how to apply treaties with the force of law in their territory is pretty extreme, yes. Most countries do accept that if their citizens are held in foreign territory for violation of laws enforceable in that territory, that is an issue for diplomacy, not invasion.
> unreasonable for the United States to not want US citizens held by bodies the United States doesn't recognize the authority of. No sovereign country would accept this.
Many US citizens killed by state actors abroad, including by allies. Nothing of note happens. The key here is you think it is unreasonable for US war criminals to be tried at all (even when they commit atrocities in countries party to the Rome Statue).
US doesn't recognize any bodies that aren't 100% under the control of US interests.
The people I've mentioned are guilty of acting on made up fake intel (Iraq has WMD's). They ought to face the same fate as Saddam Hussein.
Also in Abu Ghraib low ranking soldiers got convicted when the entire chain of command's been guilty of these crimes. It wasn't a one off.
The US always has and always will continue to commit war crimes because they never had to reckon with their imperial past. And chickens are gonna come home to roost because no other country has been subject to propaganda by its own government while also to that of other countries (Russia/China) as the US. And having such a large number of people simply being illiterate isn't helping.
The reason Trump came to power isn't just because Russia made that happen (also Russia winning the infowar and enabling Trump is the biggest successful Information Operation and achievement of soft-power in the last 4000 years).
I might change my mind if the US is able to do a peaceful handover of power (without an insurrection) next time this is due. And also provided that they do manage to treat the homeless as human beings. Until then this country remains a failed experiment whose population lacks manners, history, culture, cuisine or basic decency. And every soldier (no matter from what poor background they stem) are an embodiment of that failure.
I guess this sounds like Anti-Americanism. But actually I think the US model is the most promising system we have in something that claims it's the free world. I'm just allergic to all forms of nationalistic boot-licking. And I also believe that the only way to make a system stronger is when it's being critcized. Being addicted to applause and praise for imperial achievements of your own country is for the simps who have never lived abroad, and/or for nationalist bootlickers (the US is full of both).
* Israel is the one operating the jetty. If you look at photos the trucks bringing the aid from the sea to land have yellow Israeli civilian plates. These are civilian Israeli contractors being paid by the Israeli government to disperse the aid because the Americans refused to have boots on the ground
* it only takes 3 people (prosecutor + 2 judges) to completely crumble the western block. You could suspect war crimes for any post 9/11 war campaign and arrest every past and present leader of the Us, France, UK, Australia since 2001 because 3 people said so. That’s way too much power for a small group
> * it only takes 3 people (prosecutor + 2 judges) to completely crumble the western block. You could suspect war crimes for any post 9/11 war campaign and arrest every past and present leader of the Us, France, UK, Australia since 2001 because 3 people said so. That’s way too much power for a small group
There are two additional checks-and-balances which you have not mentioned: (1) Decisions of the Pre-Trial Chamber can be appealed to the Appellate Chamber (2) the UN Security Council can by resolution suspend proceedings in any case for up to 12 months (indefinitely renewable).
So, a prosecution requires (1) the Prosecutor to decide to prosecute, (2) at least two out of three Pre-Trial judges to approve the prosecution, (3) at least three out of five Appellate judges to dismiss any appeal of that decision, (4) either a majority of the UN Security Council or else at least one of its permanent members to oppose suspending the prosecution. That's more than just 3 people's say-so. That's six people plus at least one major world power say-so.
Think for a minute why Israel might be “providing security” for this floating pier (built by the US), or why a sea-route for aid is even necessary in the first place. Wouldn’t it be much, much simpler to bring in aid by land (via the many border crossings also administered by Israel)?
The pier provides something else to Israel: a large escape hatch for forcibly transferring a large population without resettling them in Israel (or Egypt). This plan was suggested last year by an Israeli think tank linked to Likud and the current Israeli war cabinet: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231024-israel-think-tank...
(By the way, there is still some aid attempting to enter Gaza via the land routes but there are multiple examples of trucks being blocked and food being destroyed. Here’s a video from last week where the IDF watched as food aid was blocked and burned: https://x.com/sapir_slam/status/1791143191988543538?s=46)
The tragedy of a people who often experience racism being perpetrators of it always shocks me. The difficulty the majority of human beings have differentiating people who look like my enemy, from my enemy, is really impossible for me to understand. Targeting every part of a group in this way rather than as individuals based on the content of their character is something that is still a pipe dream :-(
So your take is Israel is going to take the US military built port and put millions of Palestinians on a boat? This goes way beyond conspiracy theory
Like you mentioned there are hundreds of trucks going in per day but there are also issues with Egypt shutting down their side, Hamas bombing the Israeli gates, and israeli protesters blocking aid. The sea bypasses all 3 of those issues. They’ve already transferred in hundreds of tons of aid in just the few days it’s been open.
Israeli soldiers are on video laughing about blowing up schools, staling women's underwear, shooting civilians, there's been massacres of civilians trying to get food aid, Israel has turned off water for all of Gaza as collective punishment, there's been genocidal statements by Israeli officials, targeting of UN vehicles and international aid groups etc. etc..
There's a hit Israeli song about wiping Gaza making the charts there, there's settlers attacking Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, mobs burning Palestinian vehicles and homes, blocking aid trucks, burning UN property in East Jerusalem etc.
Please can we stop pretending that Israel is somehow a state that can do no wrong and that every criticism of them is simply haters ganging up on them?
Of course every criticism should be targeted at specific individuals, which is exactly what the ICC did.
The US signature was shaky to begin with (it was never really ratified through the proper channels) and I doubt they would've kept their signatures with the impending invasions following 9/11.
With the so-dubbed "The Hague Invasion Act" I'd say the US has not only withdrawn its signature, it actively threatens anyone trying to hold their citizens accountable to things like war crimes. Officially, they're an observer these days, but practically, I think they're only there to see their enemies get convicted, and nothing else.
> The US signature was shaky to begin with (it was never really ratified through the proper channels) and I doubt they would've kept their signatures with the impending invasions following 9/11.
What you are saying here is a bit confused. Under US domestic law, the President has the unilateral authority to sign whatever treaties the President wishes. Ratification comes after signature, the US never ratified the Statute. So there was nothing actually "shaky" about the signature.
This is a topic which confuses a lot of people. Agreeing treaties under international law is a two-stage process – the first stage, "signature" is in-principle agreement but isn't actually legally binding (except for a limited obligation "not to defeat the object and purpose of the treaty", and it isn't very clear what that even means); "ratification" (sometimes also called "acceptance" or "approval") is fully binding agreement. For less important treaties, the two stages are sometimes collapsed into one ("signature without reservation as to ratification"), but for major treaties the distinction is generally preserved. Also, joining a multilateral treaty subsequent to its entry into force is often a single stage process ("accession"). However, the average person doesn't understand this two-stage process, and is used to everyday contexts where signing a contract is sufficient to make it legally binding.
There are some particular reasons why Americans find this even more confusing than people of most countries do. Many Americans have the idea that the US Constitution requires treaties to be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the US Senate. However, strictly speaking, the President ratifies treaties, not the Senate; the Senate just gives the President permission to do so. Furthermore, US law distinguishes between "treaties" (whose ratification requires two-thirds Senate consent) and "international agreements" (whose ratification doesn't) – but as far as international law is concerned, both are treaties – whether some act of ratification requires consent by the US Senate is an internal American matter with which international law is largely unconcerned.
Actually, US law distinguishes three types of "international agreements" (all of which are treaties as far as international law is concerned) – treaties (President ratifies with consent of two-thirds of Senate), congressional-executive agreements (President ratifies with consent of ordinary majority of both House and Senate), and sole executive agreements (President ratifies unilaterally). It is generally understood that "treaties" are used for foundational legal issues, military alliances, borders, human rights, etc; congressional-executive agreements are primarily used for trade; sole executive agreements are used for more minor matters of international cooperation. However, there is no precise legal rule regarding what type of agreement is to be used for which category–the Supreme Court views it as a "political question" which it expects the President and Congress to sort out between themselves, largely without its input. Under international law (Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties article 47), if the President ratifies something, that ratification is still binding under international law on the US, even if US Congress (or even the Supreme Court!) decides the ratification to be illegal or unconstitutional – unless its illegality/unconstitutionality was "manifest" and "objectively evident" to the other states parties at the time the President made it.
Is it not a three-stage process? I found that treaties seem to be unenforceable unless there is a legally mandatory statutory implementation of them, regardless of whether they are ratified.
For instance, in Illinois there was until recently no punishment for a violation of the Vienna Convention by law enforcement, therefore the Convention was essentially worthless. (Illinois state law generally requires a punishment to be attached to make a law mandatory, otherwise the reading of "shall" is directory)
> Is it not a three-stage process? I found that treaties seem to be unenforceable unless there is a legally mandatory statutory implementation of them, regardless of whether they are ratified.
As far as international law is concerned, once a treaty has been ratified and entered into force, it is binding on the ratifying state, they have an international legal obligation to obey it, and they can be subject to consequences under international law if they violate it. The nature of those consequences vary greatly depending on the details of the treaty - often treaties have dispute resolution mechanisms to be invoked if one party claims another is violating it (such as the ICJ, arbitration, WTO dispute settlement, etc). Trade treaties often permit imposition of tariffs in cases of violation. In extreme cases, violating a treaty could even result in military action (e.g. what happens if you sign a peace treaty to end a war and then decide not to comply with it?) On the other hand, many treaties are rather toothless in that they fail to provide any real consequences for violations. Still, just because there might not be any real consequence for the violation, doesn’t negate the violation’s legal existence.
Coming to your question about implementing legislation - different countries have different systems. In countries with a “monist” system, international law is considered part of domestic law, and so a treaty once ratified automatically becomes part of the law of the land. Conversely, in countries with a “dualist” system, international law and domestic law are viewed as two independent spheres, and the domestic legal system will not consider a treaty binding absent domestic implementing legislation. And “monist” and “dualist” are ideal types, and some national legal systems are actually hybrids that don’t neatly fit in either category, combining elements of both - they may be monist with respect to certain categories of treaties and dualist with respect to others. Even in a purely monist system, some treaties might be considered “non-self executing” - for example, some treaties require states to criminalise certain acts under their domestic law, but leave the detailed definition of those crimes up to each state party - even in a monist system, such a treaty will likely be viewed as domestically ineffective absent domestic implementing legislation, since the crimes it seeks to create are too vaguely defined to actually be prosecuted. Also, in some countries with a federal system, e.g. the US, implementing legislation may be required at both the federal and state levels; in others, the federal level has the power to impose treaties on the states, even in areas where it would not normally have legislative competence (e.g. the external affairs power under the Australian constitution)
However, from an international law perspective, the question of whether domestic implementing legislation exists is irrelevant. If a state ratifies a treaty and it enters into force, they have an international legal obligation to obey it - and if they fail to do so because they haven’t enacted the necessary domestic legislation, international law does not consider that a valid excuse-they are guilty of violating it, and have to face the consequences of that violation, whatever those may be.
You are talking about the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. There was a 2001 ICJ case on that, the LaGrand case (Germany vs United States). The LaGrand brothers were born in Germany, moved to the United States, never became US citizens, stabbed a man to death in 1982 in Arizona in the course of a bungled bank robbery. Under the Convention, they had the right to German consular assistance, and US authorities had the duty to inform them of that right, but failed to do so. They were sentenced to death, and the state of Arizona executed them in 1999. Germany got an order from the ICJ that the execution not go ahead, but the US chose to defy the ICJ order and execute them anyway. In 2001, the ICJ found that the US had violated Germany’s rights under the Convention by so doing. However, given Germany did not make any request for damages, and the US decided to formally apologise to Germany, the ICJ did not impose any penalties on the US for the violation.
The US argued that under the US constitution the federal government was powerless to compel the state of Arizona to comply with the Convention or the ICJ’s order. Germany even filed a case with the US Supreme Court seeking it to compel Arizona to comply, but it ruled that under the US constitution Arizona didn’t have to. However, international law doesn’t care about the US constitution. If the US constitution prevents the US from obeying international law, that’s an internal US problem of zero relevance to other countries or to international institutions such as the ICJ. Given there are over 190 sovereign states in the world, if national constitutions were an excuse for disobeying international law, international law would quickly turn into a dead letter. Also, while US law considers the federal government and state governments to be “separate sovereigns”, as far as international law is concerned, it is all one country, and the US (represented by the President and State Department) is internationally responsible for the acts of all its subdivisions, and if the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to make states obey international law, that’s its internal problem, with which other countries ought not need to be concerned
This has to be the most comprehensive and informative reply to any question I've posed on the Internet in the last 30 years of being online. Thank you!
I'd not heard about the Arizona case; it actually tracks almost identically an Illinois case, People v. Madej, with a Polish citizen under the same circumstances (although zero information online outside of the court filings).
What powers would the ICJ have to punish individual actors at fault in a situation like this? Or to force an injunction? (outside of monetary damages which does you no good if you're dead)
> This has to be the most comprehensive and informative reply to any question I've posed on the Internet in the last 30 years of being online. Thank you!
Law has always been a passion of mine, and international law in particular. I even applied for law school once but wasn’t accepted. If I tried again, applied to more schools, I probably would have been accepted by one of them eventually, but I took it as a message from the great beyond that it wasn’t meant to be. Still, if one believes in parallel universes, I reckon there must be one out there in which right now I’m a lawyer instead of a software engineer
> What powers would the ICJ have to punish individual actors at fault in a situation like this? Or to force an injunction? (outside of monetary damages which does you no good if you're dead)
The ICJ has very broad powers to order states to do things. The only real limit is its own judgement about what is legal and what is prudent-if it starts ordering things which the international community views as unreasonable, it could greatly harm its own reputation, and I think its judges are aware of that risk and keep it in mind when making decisions.
However, while the ICJ can order states to do things, it has no actual power to compel them to obey its orders. Under the UN Charter, that’s the job of the Security Council. In theory, if a state violates an ICJ order, the Security Council can order military action to enforce it. In practice, that obviously doesn’t work when one of the P5 is the respondent, since they aren’t going to vote for military action against themselves. And even if the respondent is some friendless pariah country, other states might not view enforcing an ICJ order as worth going to war over.
An unenforceable order isn’t entirely worthless though. Obviously it can have negative diplomatic and political consequences for the state concerned, it can harm their reputation in the court of international public opinion. And a case can be valuable for establishing legal precedent. The LaGrand case actually was important in that the ICJ for the first time ruled that its provisional measures (basically a preliminary injunction) were legally binding. This was unclear because the wording of the English text of the Statute of the ICJ suggests they are not but the French text suggests they are, and both the English and French are equally authoritative. Faced with that contradiction, the ICJ decided in this case to follow the French over the English.
Whereas Palestine's signature is fake. I don't know how else to call it. I mean are we now to believe the "state of Palestine" is going to arrest and deliver Sinwar, Deif AND deliver the hostages to Israel just because this guy asks?
And they didn't waste any time in stating they would never actually execute the signed treaty. At least we already know that:
(Yes, I know what the BBC title says, Hamas statement that they won't follow the treaties they agreed to uphold is there, for their own people. In THE SAME STATEMENT they complain that it isn't applied faster to their opponents)
(Also: obvious conclusion, if Hamas has no intention of holding up treaties they signed, then that makes any peace with them worthless, even if it's a signed treaty. Without a trusted counterparty there is no choice)
I think you need to make a distinction here between the Palestinian Authority (which signed it) and Hamas (that supplanted it through violent uprising). The PA still exists and would happily comply, they just don’t have a presence in Gaza.
Absolutely true; Gaza’s system of government has collapsed since long ago, and the “democratic” election, that many people use to justify the equivocation of the Gaza population and Hamas, involved less than half the population of the enclave and had numerous other issues that make the Hamas rule a farce.
That being said, even those that didn’t vote for Hamas would probably not have elected the PA, as public trust of Palestinians in the PA has eroded due to Mahmoud Abbas’s unwillingness to step down and the perception that the PA is a puppet government.
All this to say that Palestinians lack a trustworthy government, much less a government that could be responsible for turning in the Hamas members the ICC wants to arrest.
If you think like this, then "warcrimes" are bullshit. The whole point of the UN, the Geneva convention, warcrimes legislation, ... is that it would apply 100% in situations where government collapses, in situations where there is nothing but violence, in civil wars (arguably worse than the current situation). That genocide is forbidden AND punished even in the total absense of public trust, in the absense of government, in war, ...
So that's the problem I have with the statement: it's true, absolutely, but if we think like this then human rights aren't human rights, but merely subject to governance. Your statement is true, but is a denial of international law. If your statement is true, you may as well abolish the international criminal court. After all, if a government exists, there's no need for them and if a government doesn't exist (or doesn't apply) then, as you say, the rules don't apply. So what's the point?
Your statement is true, but the world would be a much better place if your statement was false, and therefore we'll at least pretend it is false.
(and, of course, if you think like this, then absolutely anything goes in war)
In fairness, Israel did have a point that the original judge selection process was unfair to them. Realistically though that is probably not the main reason they didn't sign it and that issue has since been rectified.
It's not about being held accountable at all - it's about who is holding them accountable.
The belief is that as sovereign nations, they can hold their own people accountable, and no one else should have the right to hold them accountable instead.
Is not one of the principles of the ICJ that if a nation process their own war criminal citizen, the ICJ has no jurisdiction. But if they do not properly, the ICJ does.
You are confusing ICJ & ICC. But yes, that is one of the principles of the ICC.
(ICJ = a court for countries to go to when they disagree on how to interpret a treaty. ICC = throw individual people in jail who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide)
Only if the country brings good faith cases themselves against the individuals involved in the war crimes. And it only gives them cover for the crimes they are tried for.
> Except when they can't, as in the case of senior government figures.
It is a principle of democracy that senior government figures can be held accountable.
E.g. in the US, Trump, a former president and a potential future president, is currently in several trials.
E.g. in Israel, where Netanyahu is under trial in several cases (unrelated to the ICJ) and where e.g. a former PM was convicted of several charges and served time in prison.
I could be missing something but I don’t think any of those three have ever been convicted by the ICC.
The examples are domestic crimes because the argument is that the US doesn’t need to be party to the Rome Statute because it would enforce similar penalties on servicemen and leaders using domestic jurisdiction. Others countered that the US somehow can’t do that despite the former president literally being on trial as we speak and the above commenter provided examples to the contrary.
I must be mis-remembering some Facebook memes based on the 2012 conviction in absentia by a Malaysian tribunal. Seems like the ICC never took it up; although they almost certainly should have. US sanctions and pressure on the ICC not to seems to be working.
> The belief is that as sovereign nations, they can hold their own people accountable, and no one else should have the right to hold them accountable instead.
There is no such thing as a sovereign nation in the modern age.
Even if you ignore the dependence on international trade (i.e. relying on other nations to trade with you), sovereignty requires the military ability to defend yourself against any adversary trying to impose their will on you. In the nuclear age we've effectively abolished this concept thanks to Mutually Assured Destruction. If China wants the US gone, either China "wins" (i.e. the US surrenders or offers a compromise) or the world ends (i.e. the outcome of global thermonuclear war makes "US" and "China" meaningless concepts).
So if "as sovereign nations" is no more than a meaningful flourish, the belief becomes simply this:
> they can hold their own people accountable, and no on else should have the right to hold them accountable instead
We can break this down again:
> they can hold their own people accountable
It's interesting that you say "can", which already admits that there is a difference between the ability and willingness to do so. But even if we ignore this, the important consideration here is that there can be a mismatch between what "they" think "holding their own people accountable" means and what others think.
By "they" you reference the US and Israel but legal entities don't do anything, people do things. Granted, those people exist within social systems of power but at the end of the day people within those states will be the ones holding people accountable or not. If you think of this in terms of people, a potential conflict of interest becomes apparent: the people being held accountable are the military and political leadership and legislators, the people holding them accountable are military and political investigators and courts. The victims of the alleged crimes are not represented by either of these groups as Gazans are generally not fully Israeli citizens.
This isn't to say that Israel's legal system might be unfairly biased against Gazans or that it might err on the side of ignoring crimes against them or that this might be a systemic problem. My point is merely that there's a credible reason to believe that an investigation by Israel into alleged actions by its government against Gazans might be biased simply based on an in-group/out-group distinction between the involved groups.
> no one else should have the right to hold them accountable
This is begging the question of "accountable for what". You can only hold someone accountable if there's some bar they're supposed to meet. Israel was a signatory to the Rome Statute (although it walked back from it in 2002 along with the US) and we're talking about the ICC so the bar seems to be "upholding human rights and abstaining from human rights abuses and war crimes".
You might argue that no outside state should be allowed to intervene in another state's human rights abuses as long as they are contained to that state's territory or only people who are subjects of that state. But clearly Israel doesn't believe this or otherwise the Mossad wouldn't have a history of abductions and assassinations. And it's a good thing too because otherwise we wouldn't look at events like the Rwandan genocide as a horrific failure of the international community and instead just consider it business as usual.
Legally speaking, the ICC clearly has the "right to" do what it is doing. But if you mean morally, again I don't think you believe this unless you believe interventionism is never justified. In other words that would mean you want to go back to the Peace of Westphalia and abolish the notion of universal human rights entirely and allow states to commit genocides, engage in chattel slavery or do all kinds of unspeakable horrors as long as they do so within the confines of their own territory.
I don't think you're saying any of that. I think what you're instead arguing for is nothing more than special pleading: it's different when {the US, Israel} does it.
I don't think the US govt gives a hoot for the common soldier except where their warrant would provide precedence for a senator or president to also be arrested.
It's politically embarrassing as attempted prosecutions of soldiers in Northern Ireland have shown. It all gets swept under the carpet, on a pretence it's not good for national security. If you prosecute successfully an individual there is a reasonable chance all military personnel involved could be successfully prosecuted is perhaps another reason it won't happen.
Using the military to prosecute aggressive military operations in an area the clear majority are unarmed, unprotected civilians again shows there is virtually no chance of prosecutions being taken.
Add to that the severe limits added to press freedom, to the point it's obvious the plan is there is no independent reporting, the repeated and systematic targeting of hospitals, ambulances, medical and aid workers, treatment of people detained, never mind densely packed civilian areas which in similar ongoing conflicts (Ukraine/Russia) would be directly called out as war crimes without equivocation, but are ignored, then is there even any point attempting to prosecute individual soldiers?
Seeking arrest warrants for those with most direct decision making powers is far more legitimate, necessary even. Demands for limitless, in all senses, military operations help no one longer term.
Yeah nothing better showing their true intentions than IDF soldiers posing and smiling with Palestinian equivalent of "Holocaust 2023" message they just sprayed on the wall, while still holding the can.
Would it be correct to think of an ICC warrant not as a “warrant” in the traditional sense, but as sanctions?
That is, a court ordered warrant is typically executed by a government’s law enforcement. There is no such proactive enforcement mechanism available to the ICC.
Instead, the governments that have ratified the ICC-related treaties have simply agreed to arrest warrant targets if they happen to travel to their jurisdiction.
As such, it seems more like a “travel-ban” or “house arrest” than a warrant. Is that correct?
I don't think it makes sense to look at it this way. I would look at it as any other warrant issued by any body. If the target of the warrant lives in a country that recognizes ICC warrants, then it's more or less similar to a warrant issued by that country's government. If not, then it's similar to a country issuing a warrant for the arrest of someone who lives outside their jurisdiction, with no extradition treaties in place.
I do agree that the end result is a sort of "travel ban", but that's no different than if the US issued a warrant for (say) a Chinese citizen living in China. The Chinese government is probably not going to hand that person over, and that person is effectively barred from travel to the US (and likely other countries like Canada that might help the US enforce that warrant if the opportunity presented itself), unless they want to get arrested.
It's a real arrest warrant when its target is in a country which is a party to the Rome Statute. The ICC has conducted a number of investigations involving war crimes and crimes against humanity in Africa, for example; many of those have led to convictions.
A warrant is a standing order to arrest someone on sight.
A warrant may additionally grant the police extrajudicial powers to enforce the warrant but that's a separate legislative concern. In the case of the ICC the enforcement is left up to individual member states. There may be consequences for not enforcing a warrant when the opportunity presents itself.
This is more akin to empaneling a grand-jury in the USA - it is driven by the prosecutors office and is the first step before review to see if adequate evidence exists to justify a "real" warrant that would lead to arrests.
If they get a warrant - its just like a warrant in the USA, maybe the cops bother looking for you i.e. go to your house / work / last known address but more often they just wait until you get a traffic ticket or something where you happen to interact with them. If you had a warrant from another state, the local cops would need a pretty good reason to bother actually looking for you.
> If you had a warrant from another state, the local cops would need a pretty good reason to bother actually looking for you.
Often goes slightly further than this. The state issuing the warrant must pay “transport fees” to the state doing the arresting. The arresting state calls the warrant state to see if their transport fees will be authorized. Most of the time, those fees are not authorized by the issuing state. So the suspect is let go, if the police interaction wasn’t otherwise justified in an arrest.
The reasons for why transport fees are generally declined vary, but I’d imagine that as long as the suspect stays out of the issuing state, they can’t commit more crime in that state, so the outstanding warrant is itself an effective deterrent against crime in the issuing state…the suspect generally will avoid returning. Also jails/prisons are overcrowded, dockets are overflowing, etc.
But generally any police interaction which shows a valid warrant in another state, the “local police” will by default attempt an arrest. It’s not “unimportant” to them. Just they can’t do anything with the suspect if they arrest them without approved transport fees so there’s simply no point in completing the arrest.
I learned all this just last week by picking up a homeless fugitive hitchiking along the interstate. But he’d had enough interactions with police in various states and seemed otherwise intelligent enough to be a reliable narrator on the matter.
In my area (Metro Detroit) it must be flipped. I had a rougher life when I was younger and did pass through the jail system once or twice...
The main counties around me go pick you up, not relying on the arresting jurisdiction to transport. One county in particular, Macomb, has a bad reputation in that it will drive across the country to pick you up. Traveling pick up buses criss cross the country. The bad part was the sometimes multi-week long trip spent in handcuffs sleeping in shitty hotels eating cheap McDonald's for every meal.
> Would it be correct to think of an ICC warrant not as a “warrant” in the traditional sense, but as sanctions?
I think it is best to think of it as a warrant because it is a standing order for any member state to arrest them. Whether those member states actually do so is not certain, South Africa for instance has shirked recent ICC arrest warrants multiple times.
ICC signatory countries are meant to arrest anyone on the ICC warrant.
South Africa did not with a Sudanese war criminal:
"As a signatory to the Rome Statute that governs the jurisdiction and functioning of the Court, South Africa was obliged to arrest al-Bashir when he was in the country, and to extradite him to The Hague to face trial."[1]
Last year, Putin cancelled a visit to South Africa as there's an ICC arrest warrant out for him.
It's my understanding that it also has knock on effects to countries hosting those people, or refusing to arrest them, as it means that weapons shouldn't be exported to the hosting country.
Leaving out personal opinions, I would love to hear some thoughtful speculation on how this might pa out. Will the ICC actually approve the warrants? How far will the US and/or Israel go to threaten or discredit the ICC leadership? Will Egypt or other neighbours respond? What is the reaction in China? Will Europe and the Netherlands stand by the ICC unconditionally?
I think warrants issued against Sinwar, Al-Masri and Haniyeh are very likely. Warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant IMHO are over 50%
Proportationality and intention are important when the ICC interprets what constitutes war crime or crime against humanity. These cases also set up a precedents.
Arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant is for:
- Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
- Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
- Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
- Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
- Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
- Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h); Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).
If Netanyahu produces a document from the Israeli Supreme Court allowing his actions, doesn’t that make it impossible to prosecute him?
ICC works in conjunction with national courts. If a country has a functional, independent judiciary, that judiciary gets the right to address the wrong. Or not.
Israel’s judiciary is both functional and independent. Very independent. Of Netanyahu in particular.
And the Israeli judiciary seems to be going along with this.
> The ICC is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems; it prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely.
> If Netanyahu produces a document from the Israeli Supreme Court allowing his actions, doesn’t that make it impossible to prosecute him?
No, it does not.
> ICC works in conjunction with national courts
Not in the way you are suggesting.
> If a country has a functional, independent judiciary, that judiciary gets the right to address the wrong
No, the ICC will rule a case inadmissible if a state has investigated and/or prosecuted that specific case (not just if it has some general level of legal functionality), unless the ICC also fines that the investigation or prosecution was not genuine (e.g., was pretextual for the purpose of, say, giving the accused an exonerating document to wave around to protect against ICC prosecution.)
My limited understanding is the location/country of the proposed violation or the violators need to be a signatory. In this case, Palestine is a signatory so the actions of Israel in Palestine as well as the actions of Hamas (acting anywhere) are within the court's jurisdiction.
The "State of Palestine" (the official name in this context) is a signatory to the ICC, and is the location of the committed crimes. I guess you could technically make an argument that despite Sderot et al being an occupation under international law, because they are in the actual control of Israel which isn't a signatory then crimes committed there couldn't be prosecuted by the ICC. Given that the only party who would try to escape arrest for crimes in those areas are Hamas leadership, I doubt that's what Israel wants. Also, I doubt Hamas is willing to legally state any part of Palestine is "Israel", particularly for a relatively non-existential threat like an arrest warrant.
And to add on to JumpCrisscross, ICC warrants are only valid in countries that are currently member states of the ICC [0], though countries will gladly turn the other eye depending on mutual interests (eg. Narendra Modi's close relationship with Japan, France, Singapore, UAE, and Israel because they didn't enforce US travel sanctions on him when he was CM of Gujarat in the 2000s).
Notably, the US is NOT a signatory of the ICC (this was a whole thing in the Iraq War days).
It kind of gives the game away when you see that the US is not a signatory but had a big say in appointing the Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in 2021 and have instituted the "Invade the Hague Act" that would allow the US to invade the Hague if they were to prosecute any American personnel
The Biden admin cooperated with the ICC, specifically quietly handing documents to the ICC that details Putin's war crimes and urging them to submit arrest warrants for Putin. Notably Russia is also not a signatory of the ICC, so there is definitely precedent for this process that even has had the backing of the US.
IMO Khan's speech today really speaks for itself. The "International Rule of Law" is nothing but a joke if we don't not apply it equally and blindly that will ultimately lead to the degradation of modern society and our species. I highly urge people to go and check out his speech on the matter and to form your own opinion.
>The "International Rule of Law" is nothing but a joke if we don't not apply it equally and blindly that will ultimately lead to the degradation of modern society and our species.
Part of the "Rule of Law" is enforcement of that law. Who could realistically enforce it against the US? How about China?
Rule of Law requires you first establish monopoly on violence via global hegemony. If you are willing to accept some kind of global state where individual nations have lost sovereignity then okay, but if not what ends up happening is you limit your own actions while your enemies (who don't care for such rules) can walk free to do whatever.
There is precedent for the ICC [1], I believe a majority of all the ICC convictions were actually charging individuals committing crimes against their own people without crossing state lines.
The fact that China gets away with its treatment of the Uyghurs (and plenty of other major powers that technically break ICC laws) is definitely an example of how much international law is a farce, though they aren't getting around the ICC by staying within their own borders.
I don't think this is relavent to the complementary principle.
If the israeli judicial system made a good faith attempt to prosecute this crime following the standards of international law, it would probably prevent this warrant even though Israel is not a party to the court.
>produces a document from the Israeli Supreme Court
This would mean that Netanyahu has been charged, tried and eventually acquitted of the same crimes. ICC investigates if the national proceedings are genuine.
To start the process, Israeli prosecutor must prosecute.
> The ICC was established by its state parties as a court of limited jurisdiction. Those limits are rooted in principles of complementarity, which do not appear to have been applied here amid the Prosecutor’s rush to seek these arrest warrants rather than allowing the Israeli legal system a full and timely opportunity to proceed.[0]
---
The ICC defines:
> 1. Complementarity: The principle of complementarity governs the exercise of the Court’s jurisdiction. This distinguishes the Court in several significant ways from other known institutions, including the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (the ICTY and the ICTR). The Statute recognizes that States have the first responsibility and right to prosecute international crimes. The ICC may only exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems fail to do so, including where they purport to act but in reality are unwilling or unable to genuinely carry out proceedings. The principle of complementarity is based both on respect for the primary jurisdiction of States and on considerations of efficiency and effectiveness, since States will generally have the best access to evidence and witnesses and the resources to carry out proceedings. Moreover, there are limits on the number of prosecutions the ICC, a single institution, can feasibly conduct.[1]
namely,
> The ICC may only exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems fail to do so, including where they purport to act but in reality are unwilling or unable to genuinely carry out proceedings.
The US argues that the ICC has not adequately allowed this process to play out through the courts in Israel.
---
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs states:
> The criteria of unwillingness or inability to carry out proceedings would involve some indication of purposely shielding the accused from criminal responsibility or a lack of intent to bring the person to justice. This may be inferred from political interference or deliberate obstruction and delay, from institutional deficiencies due to political subordination of the legal system, or procedural irregularities indicating a lack of willingness and inability to investigate or prosecute genuinely.[2]
---
Imo the hermeneutics are clear, though it will be up to the lawyers from either side to make arguments in favor of/against.
"Prosecutor’s rush to seek these arrest warrants" does not seem to be true.
ICC prosecutor did not bring this case quickly without warning. He has consistently demanded that action must be taken or he will prosecute. Israel's Supreme Court has the authority to conduct judicial review of laws and government decisions and intervene in exceptional, extreme cases. Israeli prosecutors have had time to charge.
>Since last year, in Ramallah, in Cairo, in Israel and in Rafah, I have consistently emphasised that international humanitarian law demands that Israel take urgent action to immediately allow access to humanitarian aid in Gaza at scale. I specifically underlined that starvation as a method of war and the denial of humanitarian relief constitute Rome Statute offences. I could not have been clearer.
>As I also repeatedly underlined in my public statements, those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my Office takes action. That day has come.
But the amount of aid going into the Gaza strip has increased dramatically (up to the Rafah crossing being taken). i.e. Israel did take action on this matter.
EDIT: It's also important to note the odd timing of asking for arrest warrants for the Hamas leadership at the same time as the Israeli arrest warrants.
Clearly unlike Israel there is no chance in *$#@ that Hamas would prosecute their own leadership for violation of international humanitarian law. The Hamas violations have also occurred earlier.
I.e. Israel should be given more time for its independent legal system to evaluate whether or not there's a case and pursue it. Israel justice system has put prime ministers and presidents on trial. Hamas shouldn't be given any time.
Given this you'd think arrest warrants for Hamas leadership would come a lot sooner.
Since this isn't the case one has to wonder if the prosecutor is doing a "both sides" kind of thing, maybe afraid of backlash if they only go after one side, in which case the response of Israel to the request to increase aid (which has happened) is not relevant.
> Israel justice system has put prime ministers and presidents on trial.
> Clearly unlike Israel there is no chance in *$#@ that Hamas would prosecute their own leadership for violation of international humanitarian law.
Huh, I almost forgot there were massive protests against the current PM when he set out to cripple the ability of the said Judiciary from trying him in court. But go on.
You also forgot that the PM failed and the Judiciary is still independent and the PM is still under trial. What's your point exactly? What you're saying is evidence of a functioning democracy and the courts are still independent.
EDIT:
I can't find a concise summary but latest update:
"422 aid trucks were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip, yesterday, (May.19). These trucks entered from the various aid routes we developed: Ashdod port, Erez crossing, Judea and Samaria, and JLOTS (maritime route)."
EDIT2:
It's worth mentioning that since Israel took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing Egypt is refusing to let aid in through that crossing.
I live about eight kilometers from Gaza, the aid trucks are on all the highways at pretty much capacity, and it's been like this for quite a while. I really don't see how much more aid could get in without building more infrastructure, and in fact there is a new port in the strip being built (maybe done already).
It should be noted in context that even bringing in aid is dangerous. The population attacks the aid drivers for two reasons (one, to get the aid, and two, they consider those drivers "traitors" and have been attacking them for long before the current conflict). And there is not insignificant risk to the Gazans as well, there was an incident a few months ago where an aid truck ran people over trying to stop it and some people were killed in a very gruesome fashion.
Yes, because those aid drivers collaborate with the Israelis. This was going on long before the current war, when they were driving products and not aid.
I think you guys are referring to two different accounts of the same incident. Hamas claims Israel gunned down Gazans (not sure how we got to hundreds, I don't think even Hamas claimed that) and Israel claims the Palestinians mobbed the trucks and got run over as the trucks were trying to get away.
The Hamas started calling this the "Flour Massacre" since it has a certain ring to it. Given where the information is coming from I suspect it's not true. Like anything else, we don't have independent information. The IDF did investigate this as well and admitted to shooting at people approaching their security vehicles (that were there to secure the aid delivery).
Part of why it's so hard to communicate about these issues is that we all inhabit a world of propaganda that we have to work hard to see through. But in this case Hamas didn't claim anything. The people that were on the ground describe a deliberate ambush by IDF soldiers: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/1/flour-massacre-how-g...
The Israeli military often cites that it is impossible to make a difference between Hamas militants and civilians. It reminds me of the VN war in which the VC often dressed as civilians to kill US military personnel. The US was condemned leading attack against VN villages allegedly housing the VC. At some point, they used mercenary like the South Korea military to squash those VC by hitting the whole village with extreme prejudice. Who was at fault?
Pretty clearly the U.S. and the South Vietnamese military. Just because you can't tell who is a combatant and who isn't doesn't give you permission to slaughter entire villages.
The rules of war evolved specifically so armies would not feel the need to slaughter civilians.
Uniforms, military facilities kept separate from civilian infrastructure, etc. are rules for a reason.
If the group killing your soldiers isn't adhering to these rules of war then all the civilians in the area will find themselves at risk.
There is no world where combatants can expect to be allowed to enjoy the protections civilians are afforded while still killing you.
> There is no world where combatants can expect to be allowed to enjoy the protections civilians are afforded while still killing you.
That is true, but this does not take away the protection afforded to civilians. As a concrete example, if you take fire from people in civilian clothing holed up in a hospital, then you can return fire in that specific occasion, but you may not start to indiscriminately fire upon people in civilian clothing or hospitals.
(Also, you are not required to wear a uniform. You are required to distinguish yourself from the civpop by at least openly wearing arms and/or wearing a distinctive sign. Keep in mind not everyone in a uniform is a combatant, and not all combatants are armed.)
I see a parallel to the absolute annihilation of Manila during WW2 by a sustained artillery barrage lasting a few days, by U.S. forces - estimates are that, despite the battle also known as the Rape of Manila, 40% of civilian casualties are due to Allied bombardment.
I'd also be very curious at the ICCs classification of a civilian (dressed) mob cheering for the murderers and rapists of 22 year old girls like Shani Louk paraded through Gaza.
Look at Iran, a sworn enemy of Israel where students refuse to step on American flags put in front of doors and cheer for the death of the Butcher of Tehran and their own citizens abroad parade with both Iranian and Israeli flags... - not the picture we see in Gaza.
> I'd also be very curious at the ICCs classification of a civilian (dressed) mob cheering for the murderers and rapists of 22 year old girls like Shani Louk paraded through Gaza.
Still civilians, obviously. Cheering something does not make you lose civilian status. Only actively engaging in combat in some capacity does.
Then I guess the question is: what constitutes combat. There were many people who streamed over the fence with Hamas, is invasion engaging in active combat? There were many people who spit on, hit, or otherwise assaulted the kidnapped civilians, is that actively engaging in combat? The ones who were freed said they were kept in civilian homes, does jailing civilians against their will count as actively engaging in combat? IDF soldiers report many children and women acting as spotters for Hamas, is that active combat?
I think the answer to all these questions entirely depends on which side of the conflict you support, those who see Palestinians as hapless victims who have been abused by the evil Jews will say of course none of this is combat and attacking those innocent people is the highest war crime; on the other hand those who see Jews just trying to live in peace in their homeland being attacked by bedeviled Palestinians will argue that assisting soldiers in war makes you an active combatant, and thus a legitimate (though possibly regrettable) military target.
> Then I guess the question is: what constitutes combat.
There are international laws that define these things. Sure, some of it is a judgement call, like all laws, but those laws do exist.
I'm not a lawyer or very knowledgable about international law, but I'll try to answer to my best understanding:
> There were many people who streamed over the fence with Hamas, is invasion engaging in active combat?
Yes, if they are actively attacking civilians. If they "streamed over the fence" to rob and loot (which many did), I'm not quite sure.
> There were many people who spit on, hit, or otherwise assaulted the kidnapped civilians, is that actively engaging in combat?
Spit on? I don't think so, not if they weren't the ones who captured the kidnapped civilians and they were just "passing through" as in the infamous videos. Other forms of assault? Depends on that context.
> does jailing civilians against their will count as actively engaging in combat?
Yes, I'm fairly sure that keeping a hostage makes you an active combatant (and committing a war crime).
> IDF soldiers report many children and women acting as spotters for Hamas, is that active combat?
Yes, spotters are quite clearly combatants.
> I think the answer to all these questions entirely depends on which side of the conflict you support,
It shouldn't, really. That's what international law is for (and in general, our principles shouldn't depend on which side we support).
My main disagreement with most people, I find, is a disagreement on the base facts. Most people are ignorant of most of the base facts of what is going on in this conflict. Though yes, sometimes people do agree on the facts and interpret them differently.
These reasons for the arrest warrant could apply to a dozen heads of state that I could mention offhand, and I'm just a layman in that field. Is there such a warrant issued already for Assad, president of Syria? Wasn't the recently deceased president of Iran called "The Butcher of Tehran" for a reason?
It has to happen in a place where the ICC has jurisdiction. Palestine has ratified the Rome Statue, and the crimes are happening in Palestine. Syria and Iran have not.
> It has to happen in a place where the ICC has jurisdiction.
Oh, convenient.
> Palestine has ratified the Rome Statue
There has not been a political entity called Palestine since the Rome statue was enacted. I believe that you are referring to The Palestinian Authority, the distinction is in fact important here in a conflict where words are often deliberately misapplied and misused in order to direct a narrative.
In any case, The Palestinian Authority does not rule the Gaza strip. Then were overthrown in a very bloody coup, 2005 or 2006, in which Hamas threw some 100 PA members off the top of the buildings.
> I believe that you are referring to The Palestinian Authority
You would be incorrect [0]. The UN recognizes a "State of Palestine" independent of the specific government, which includes both Gaza and the West Bank. This entity, the state of Palestine, not the PLA (that would be weird, like saying the Tory party is signatory to the Rome statute), is signatory to the Rome statute. The state of Palestine is a non-member observer state in the UN.
You're correct that it's good to be precise here, so you should do so around the specific political entity of Palestine when that is what is being discussed.
Terrific, thank you, I much appreciate the correction. You'll notice that I stated "I believe", showcasing the uncertainty. I appreciate any additional information to help wade through the mess of information and misinformation surrounding the conflict.
The question of Palestine's admissibility to ICC proceedings was subject to a sophisticated legal review years ago, in relation to a former case.
The gist of the argument can be gleaned from its sub-headings:
Palestine is a State for the purposes of the Statute under relevant
principles and rules of international law...... 25
C.1. The Montevideo criteria have been less restrictively applied in certain cases........ 25
C.2. It is appropriate to apply the Montevideo criteria less restrictively to Palestine, for
the purposes of the Rome Statute ..... 29
C.2.a. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and it has been
recognised that this implies a right to an independent and sovereign State of Palestine... 30
C.2.b. The exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is being
obstructed by practices contrary to international law................... 32
C.2.c. Palestine has been recognised by a significant number of States.............. 34
C.2.d. No other State has sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territory............ 35
C.2.e. Palestine’s status as a State Party must be given effect........ 36
C.2.f. The Prosecution’s alternative position is consistent with international law ........ 39
C.2.g. Participants’ arguments regarding a possible referral by the Security Council are
unclear.......... 40
D. The Oslo Accords do not Bar the Exercise of the Court’s Jurisdiction........ 40
D.1. The Oslo Accords regulated a gradual transfer of power to the Palestinian
Authority over most of the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) and Gaza.............. 40
Coincidentally, Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the EU, announced earlier in the month that several of the bloc's member states intend to recognise Palestinian statehood on the 21st of May - today.
You forgot to mention that the coup attempt was by some Western powers and Fatah, against a democratically elected Hamas government, where western powers supplied weapons, intelligence, incentives and training for a coup. They just lost.
> Hamas threw some 100 PA members off the top of the buildings
Also you should support this, because this seems 1) ridiculous given the total number of casualties and nature of the fighting 2) I can only find claim of 2 persons being thrown off building, 1 from Fatah and 1 from Hamas.
Eg. hundred page report from PCHR named "Report on Bloody Fighting in the Gaza Strip from 7 to 14 June 2007" doesn't mention 100 PA thrown off the rooftops.
Displacement of civilian populations in occupied areas, and mass settlement of occupier civilian populations into the West Bank also needs to be up there.
It is also a war crime, and doesn't even have the fig leaf of an active war to justify it.
I addressed that. The Israeli government did not and does not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. The citizens move there of their own accord, which is permissible. In fact, in this specific case, there exists a pre-occupation law that specifically allows for it.
> The Israeli government did not and does not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. The citizens move there of their own accord
If you have something official that I could read, I would appreciate it. I have been researching this for quite some time. But a blog post, but official declaration or regulation.
According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, construction began for approximately 1,280 housing units in the first half of 2023 in Area C.
All of these Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, because they amount to the transfer by Israel of its population into an occupied territory.
They discuss settlers moving of their own accord and then the later "legalizing" of such moves by the State of Israel.
For one thing, that is only documentation of Israeli building, not a statement of what law is being broken.
For another, that document specifically mentions that the new buildings are in Area C, which has been recinded by the PA (for purpose of discussion, the details are far more complicated than that).
You asked for "something official", "[not] a blog post", "an official declaration".
I took up the challenge and found for you an official document of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights declaring " All of these Israeli settlements are illegal under international law".
> not a statement of what law is being broken.
From the linked document:
International human rights law and international humanitarian law apply concurrently in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan. This includes the obligations contained in the international human rights treaties to which Israel is a State party,[4] as well as the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1907 (Hague Regulations) and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention), which are binding upon Israel as the occupying Power under international humanitarian law
You'll notice that those documents just repeat "Illegal under international law" and mention some laws that are to be applied in the area. There is no mention of any specific law being broken. That is the problem. What specific law is being broken?
And I'll point out again that Israel (the Occupying Power) does not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
Out of context you are trying to use that quote to protect some land from people living on it. But if you read the entire article, the article clearly protects people from forced transfer - both the residents of the occupied territory and the citizens of the occupying power.
>International human rights law and international humanitarian law apply concurrently in the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan. This includes the obligations contained in the international human rights treaties to which Israel is a State party,[4] as well as the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land of 1907 (!_Hague Regulations_!) and the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (!_Fourth Geneva Convention_!), which are binding upon Israel as the occupying Power under international humanitarian law
I added emphasis to the quote in the comment you're replying to since you missed it the first time.
Yes, exactly, these laws protect people (from forcible transfer), not land (from people settling it) nor political entities (e.g. ambition to establish a state). I've read the documents in full, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention's 49th Article. It clearly protects people from forced transfer - both the residents of the occupied territory and the citizens of the occupying power. But it does not prevent people from moving of their own free will.
And brought up yet again in peer replies while I've been asleep.
You've oft mentioned your repeated failure despite your best efforts to find out which laws are being violated here .. it may have something to do with your demonstrated habit of simply not reading closely.
As mentioned I myself have no stance here other than someone who took an interest in the question and sought a reference.
You appear to be either arguing in bad faith or someone troubled by a reading disorder.
And I've repeatedly debunked why the law in question is being applied incorrectly. In any case, repeating something does not make it correct.
> And brought up yet again in peer replies while I've been asleep.
I've been posting during waking hours in the land in question. I live here, I've been researching this for almost a year and a half. I understand that you live far away and sleep while events are unfolding here, but please don't try to burden me with that.
> You've oft mentioned your repeated failure despite your best efforts to find out which laws are being violated here .. it may have something to do with your demonstrated habit of simply not reading closely.
I do not believe that attacking my reading ability actually promotes either one of us understanding.
> As mentioned I myself have no stance here other than someone who took an interest in the question and sought a reference.
You might not have a stance, but you seem to be affected by the "it's repeated often, so it must be true" thought process - you even defend it.
> You appear to be either arguing in bad faith or someone troubled by a reading disorder.
Neither. I have addressed the concerns presented towards me. The laws are actually quite clear. Try to read them, specifically the 49th article of the geneva convention that people like to throw around, without the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict. You will see that these laws apply to states, not people. Furthermore they protect people, not land or political entities.
> And I've repeatedly debunked why the law in question is being applied incorrectly.
You should take up your case for why this is wrong with the lawyers who proof read the Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
> In any case, repeating something does not make it correct.
Indeed. This entire thread is repleat with comments by yourself repeating the claim that you have debunked this interpretation.
> You might not have a stance, but you seem to be affected by the "it's repeated often, so it must be true" thought process - you even defend it.
Read more carefully - I have stated an official position in an official report and referenced it.
This is exactly how we reported such things in the mineral intelligence and energy intelligence companies we launched and later sold on, one to Standard and Poor (of the S&P index).
> The laws are actually quite clear.
Indeed.
You can easily see how the UN Human Rights lawyers read and applied the convention in the case where an occupying country failed to contain their citizens, and went further to support them.
That is the inaction and the action of the state at fault.
"Since 1967, government-funded settlement projects in the West Bank are implemented by the "Settlement Division" of the World Zionist Organization.
Though formally a non-governmental organization, it is funded by the Israeli government and leases lands from the Civil Administration to settle in the West Bank."
The citizens move there of their own accord, which is permissible
In the sense of Article 49 -- "transfer" obviously means any form of actively supported migration (not the coerced transfer) of these peoples into the OT.
In fact, in this specific case, there exists a pre-occupation law that specifically allows for it.
Which "law"? Something from the time of the Mandate?
> In the sense of Article 49 -- "transfer" obviously means any form of actively supported migration (not the coerced transfer) of these peoples into the OT.
No, it does not. Read the entire Article, I've read it. It protects civilians, it does not hinder their freedom to move. And it was specifically written in response to German transfer of civilians to Poland, while not interfering with German willful movement into occupied France.
> Which "law"? Something from the time of the Mandate?
No, the Brits did not touch the complicated Ottoman property laws. The Ottomans passed a law that anyone - Muslim, Jew, Arab, Druze, or other - could settle the land and they would then rightfully own it. This was to increase the tax yield of the very barren area, and it was wildly successful.
It protects civilians in occupied territories. Not the supposed "rights" of persons from an Occupying country to settle into these territories under the protection of the Occupier's armed forces and civil administration (as is the current situation in the West Bank).
This is plainly obvious from the language of the GCIV; and it is the overwhelming consensus interpretation of legal scholars on in regard to this section.
> The Israeli government did not and does not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
This is false.
West Bank settlement is funded by the Israeli government through the World Zionist Organization.
EDIT: downvoters, please understand, the above statement is true. The government of Israel supports settlement via the WZO, which has a division (named "Settlement Division") with the specific purpose of making settlement possible through whatever loopholes can be exploited.
The downvotes are an attempt to obfuscate this fact.
"One of the mechanisms used by the government to favor the Jewish local authorities in the West Bank, in comparison with local authorities inside Israel, is to channel funding through the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organization. Although the entire budget of the Settlement Division comes from state funds, as a non-governmental body it is not subject to the rules applying to government ministries in Israel."
> Despite the international hatred of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, there is no international rule or law forbidding it.
This flies in the face of most of what I've heard/read on the subject. Israel is considered an occupying power (in WB and Gaza), and occupying powers in general aren't allowed to build settlements in occupied territories, no?
I'm not sure how the Ottoman law is connected to this at all? Why is that the reigning law of that land, the Ottomans haven't had ownership of it since 1918. Isn't it considered Jordanian land, since they annexed it after 1948?
> Isn't it considered Jordanian land, since they annexed it after 1948?
The Jordanians occupied the land, and the annexation was recognized by only two States (Iraq, ruled by the Jordanian king's brother, and I forgot the other one). The Arabs now disregard that annexation, under fear that it would legitimize an Israeli annexation.
Everything in this conflict is a war of words and changing one's interpretation of past events to suit current goals.
I addressed that. The Israeli government did not and does not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. The citizens move there of their own accord, which is permissible. In fact, in this specific case, there exists a pre-occupation law that specifically allows for it.
We seem to be discussing this in parallel in two places.
Anybody interesting in this should look a bit further up in the thread for my response to the same comment by the same poster. I've continued the conversation only there.
Yes, just as fine and dandy as any other village in the world. The Ottomans specifically said "come, all peoples, come settle this land" and nobody has changed the law since (one mandate that didn't and two occupations that can not). All talk of "it's illegal" either do not mention any law being broken, or grossly misinterpret laws that are applied with the correct interpretation in other geographic places.
There is much noise me about the settlements, but after a year and a half of researching this I come up empty searching for any solid arguments against them.
> I'm not sure how the Ottoman law is connected to this at all? Why is that the reigning law of that land, the Ottomans haven't had ownership of it since 1918.
I failed to address this in my previous reply.
The Israeli occupation can not change the laws of the West Bank. An occupation can pass temporary orders, which are usually limited to (and often renewed after) three years.
Neither could the Jordanian occupation changed the laws of the West Bank, for the same reason.
The British Mandate was allowed to changed laws, and they did change many laws. However Ottoman property laws are very, very complicated and they decided that there was no reason to mess with it. So during the British Mandate the Ottoman property laws remained.
So the land in question has been through a UN mandate and two occupations (one still ongoing), without the property laws being changed. Those Ottoman laws still stand.
> Indeed, it's not clear why the parent poster is talking about countries, when war crimes are crimes against people.
This is exactly the point that I am making. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva convention is intended to protect people from forced transfer - both the residents of the occupied territory and the citizens of the occupying power. It applies to states, to protect civilians. It does not apply to civilians, and it does not protect land nor political ambitions.
> Wait, you're saying that because Israel isn't moving citizens into the WB, and it's being done voluntarily, then that makes it legal?
Yes. That is both the letter of the law and the intent of the law. That was the specific case with the Germans for whom this law was introduced, and that is how it has been applied in other areas as well.
> How does incentivizing civilians financially to move there fit into this? How does protecting civilians via the military fit into this?
There is no financial incentive, other than far more general financial considerations such as the expense of living in e.g. Tel Aviv. But one could move to Dimina, Eilat, or Kiryat Shmona for the same reasons - there is nothing special about the West Bank financially. As for the military protecting civilians, does not every military protecting it's civilians? When I was serving, we would protect Arab civilians just like we would protect Jewish civilians. The Arab clan wars are seldom discussed, but are a far greater cause of casualties than the Arab-Israeli conflict excluding wars.
> Yes. That is both the letter of the law and the intent of the law. That was the specific case with the Germans for whom this law was introduced, and that is how it has been applied in other areas as well.
Do you know of a good place to read about this?
> There is no financial incentive, other than far more general financial considerations such as the expense of living in e.g. Tel Aviv
This seems false to me. I don't know many details, but it's pretty often discussed that there are different incentives. I can link you to a B'Tselem report about this, but I assume you dislike them as much as I do. So here's instead a CBS story about there being financial incentives to encourage settlers (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israeli-govt-offers-incentives-...).
I'll quote a few relevant sentences (translated to English):
> For example, the government eased the rules for obtaining loans to purchase properties in the area. Additionally, it lowered the taxes on property purchases. Moreover, the government created incentives for entrepreneurs to build in the area.
> As for the military protecting civilians, does not every military protecting it's civilians?
Of course, but the specific accusation against settlers is that they go and build settlements, sometimes purposefully to disrupt Palestinian villages, and then the army has to go surround them and protect them, disrupting the villages more.
There have been numerous terrible incidents, since October 7th, of settlers using various forms of intimidation to drive out Palestinians, e.g. setting houses on fire, sometimes while being protected (but not stopped) by the IDF.
None of this addresses the resettlement or removal of existing people, which is plainly a violation of article 49.
Establishment of settlements is also at least tacitly, and in some cases explicitly, supported by the government, which undercuts the claim that this is citizens acting solely of their own accord.
> None of this addresses the resettlement or removal of existing people, which is plainly a violation of article 49.
Yes, you are correct. The people who already live on land are protected from displacement by an occupying power.
If you have specific incidents of displacement that you word like me to address, I'll do that. The recent Sheik Jarrah incident that made international headlines was a property dispute - in fact a terrific example if you want to discuss it as the Jordanian occupation displaced the Jewish family living there.
It does seem strange that the ICC is charging both the chief of a terrorist outlaw pirate gang Hamas, and the figurative sheriff that's trying to round them up. It's not like the ICC is going to raise an army to arrest Sinwar, and that's the price of admission to becoming an arbiter of what is "just" in this scenario.
It's similar to the ICC's impotent protest of Putin, when they only would pose a serious concern to those who would oppose Putin, and face investigation for their methods. The ICC is demonstrating the logical flaws at the very heart of its structure.
There are two weak points I can see in this argument.
Most importantly, if a sheriff was trying to catch a murderer by burning down the hotel where the murderer was known to sleep in, with all other guests still inside, I assure you any legal system would seek to arrest the sheriff just as much as the original murderer.
Secondly, while Hamas is clearly a terrorist organization, it is also the de facto and de jure sovereign power in Gaza, it's not an outlaw gang. Just like Hitler was not an outlaw pirate, even though his actions were the highest crimes against humanity.
Its one thing for the ICC to seek accountability months or years in the future when the dust has settled, but that's not what is happening.
Let's extend your hypothetical-- let's stipulate there is a bloodthirsty monster that holds an entire hotel hostage while actively bombing and attacking a nearby town. The monster is de facto hotel manager, because the the despairing people in the hotel at some point elected the the monster to rule the hotel. The sheriff of the town next door (which is being bombed) shows up and defends the town as best they can by attacking the hotel, and there ensues a pitched battle.
What role at that point do bewigged stateless jurists play who have no force of arms at their disposal to defend or attack or secure the peace? As a matter of history Germany did suffer mightily in WWII for the crimes of the Nazis; if the ICC were in operation then would it have arrested (or investigated and hobbled) Churchill, Zukov, Patton and Eisenhower? And then impotently and cynically declared its dissatisfaction with Hitler and Goebbels after blunting the Allies' efforts solve the problem the only practical way available to anyone, by force of arms?
I sympathize with the humanitarian concerns on both sides, but in this case the ICC is demonstrating its own flaws, which are legion. In your hypothetical, the only people threatened by the bewigged jurists are the sheriff and town precisely because they respect the international order and rule of law, and the ICC would, practically speaking, due to its inherent flaws, solely do the bidding of a monster.
The point of the ICC trial is to investigate, in the name of the signatory states, if the crime of genocide is being committed by another state, signatory or not. Then, it is up to those states that recognize the court to follow through with the impartial decision.
Today, France or the UK or Germany or my own country, Romania, can claim that collaboration with the regime in Israel and/or the one in Gaza is not problematic, because no court of law has found that they engage in genocide. If the ICC finds that there is a credible enough case that they would issue arrest warrants for the highest ranking politicians of those two states, then this would be no longer acceptable. They would have no more fig leaf to hide behind: a court we recognize as legitimate has made it clear that there is a plausible case for genocide taking place, and so we must (if we abide by our own laws, treaties, and logic) end our collaboration with these regimes and seek to bring them to justice.
And I find it very interesting that you're comparing the Palestinians with Nazi Germany, and Israel with the Allies. In fact it was Israel that invaded and is currently occupying the Palestinian territories, just like Nazi Germany did with so much of Europe, and it is Israel conducting a genocidal attack in Gaza, not the other way around. Palestine is much closer in this scenario to occupied France or Poland, striking back occasionally at their occupiers. Unfortunately, they are lacking powerful allies like those two countries had to help them free themselves, and they have also been radicalized and are choosing to murderously and condemnably attack the civilian population of Israel instead of focusing on military and state installations as those revolutionary forces mostly did.
The best summary I've heard for "right" and "wrong" here was an invitation to imagine a hypothetical where one set of combatants or the other laid down their arms, what would be the outcome?
If Israel did so, Hamas would rampage and slaughter the people of Israel just as they did Oct. 7.
If Hamas did so, on Oct. 6 they would have lived in peace. If they did so now, the civilians of Gaza would live in peace, and Israel probably would downgrade its activities even against the Hamas organization specifically.
This indeed is the key issue in every war, which by its very nature is a failure of both politics and of "justice" of the bewigged variety. There is no "justice" in war, only the right to self defense which Israel alone reasonably claims here. I tend to be sympathetic to international institutions like the ICC, but this demonstrates it's either corrupt or impractical or both.
> If Hamas did so, on Oct. 6 they would have lived in peace.
Peace in the sense of no actual violence, perhaps. But, from everything I’ve read, the actual conditions imposed on Gaza by Israel prior to October 7 seem barely tolerable by those at the receiving end. As far as I can tell, the West Bank has merely been peaceful-ish.
> If they did so now, the civilians of Gaza would live in peace
There are ~2.4 million people in Gaza, total land area of 141 square miles, no usable water or electricity (does anyone actual believe that, if Israel turned the water and electricity supplies back on right now, that anything would actually work?) and nowhere near enough food. Reports suggest that over half of the housing stock has been destroyed. There wasn’t a whole lot of economic activity before the war.
What would happen if Hamas disarmed itself tomorrow? Or disappeared outright? I don’t think Gaza would magically be okay.
Those are the hard problems, and they're problems that historically came from the Palestinians refusing to accept that the Jewish state has a right to exist, and refusing to accept that Jewish people have a right to live in large numbers in Palestine.[1] It's ironic and cynical to hear the "apartheid" claim with reference to Israel, because the nation exists to combat apartheid practiced against Jews, in a region dominated by governments that are aligned to an official religion that isn't Judaism. The plight of Gazans is a tragedy, and one which the Palestinians arrived at by refusing for generations to honestly and unequivocally embrace a peaceful coexistence with the Jewish people in Palestine.
> If Hamas did so, on Oct. 6 they would have lived in peace. If they did so now, the civilians of Gaza would live in peace, and Israel probably would downgrade its activities even against the Hamas organization specifically.
That is a fabrication that goes boldly against everything we know. If Hamas layed down their arms, the Gaza population would still live in an open-air prison, with no access to anything that Israel doesn't want them to have. It's very likely that Israeli settlers would start stealing their land like they do in the West Bank, with help from the IDF and enthusiastic support from the Israeli government.
It's telling that Netanyahu and most others in the Israeli government, and the general Israeli public, have been explicit and consistent for at least a decade: they see no future for Gaza and the West Bank different from the present. A two-state solution is unacceptable to them, and an integration of such a large Arab population into a single Israeli state would undermine the Jewish character of Israel. So, if the Palestinians put down their arms, they'll continue to live as a stateless people, without the right to leave the territory except at the whims of a country they have no say in. Basically, they'll live as prisoners, as will their children, and their children's children.
I don't think there's a reasonable way to look at this situation and come away thinking that more Gazan civilians will be alive if Hamas continues fighting.
This was not what was being discussed. The question was not about this war in particular. It was about all Gazans (or Palestinians in general) laying down all arms or other resistance to the Israeli occupation. The poster before was ridiculously claiming that Israel would end its oppression of Palestinians if they only submitted, and I was responding to that.
Even still, I do not agree at all that if Hamas stops fighting, Israel would immediately stop hostilities. I think they have proven very clearly, through words and actions, that they are seeking to break the spirit of Palestinians (or at least of Gazans), and to punish them for October 7th. If Hamas surrendered, Israel would just claim that they didn't, that it's either a ruse or that only a handful of the terrorists have surrendered and they need to continue the killing until they can confirm.
My argument doesn't depend on the premise of Israel ending hostilities if Hamas surrenders. I don't think they will. The argument is simply that Hamas's continued hostilities will increase Gazan civilian casualties, which is difficult to argue against.
It's not if Israel continues its killing campaign. At best, I could agree that Hamas surrendering would not increase casualties, but I doubt it would decrease them in any way.
I don't think that's a very defensible argument, but if you really believe that our premises are probably too far apart for it to be productive to keep talking about it. I don't think that Israeli attacks on Hamas installations are proportionate, but I don't think it's a mainstream bit of analysis that they're completely decoupled from Hamas itself.
Again, I would say, the Rule of Lord Farquaad applies.
You could look at West Bank and arrive at a conclusion that laying down arms did not end the occupation, not the colonisation. Neither the different rules for Palestininas and Israelis.
And? Ending the occupation isn't on the table, at least not by Hamas force of arms. Militarily, the conflict has been catastrophic for them. Every day they delay surrender, more civilians will die. Strictly through a military lens, they should end combat immediately.
The alternative argument seems to be that Hamas should sacrifice Gazan civilians to make a moral point. There's a scene in Shrek about that kind of logic.
One of the two people named in the the link title here, and three of the five people against whom warrants are sought by the prosecutor in the request that the article concerns are Hamas leaders.
Well Netanyahu should be OK given how careful, reserved and calculated the IDF has been, and this will be reflected in any court proceedings.
If Netanyahu is punished for this, then GWB must face a more severe punishments for his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan which saw far more collateral damage.
Its not just the US. A western democracy has never been issued a warrant like this. It's not that hard to find crimes being committed by western leaders (is no one listening to this seasons Serial podcast? Guantanamo is still open).
If this goes through every western leader past and present can have a warrant out for them at any minute, it really doesn't take much to find 1 suspected violation and a need to arrest and stand trial to see if they are guilty.
At that point the court would effectively lose it's legitimacy, as it would be unable to enforce/execute those warrants. Not saying that that is a) good or b) isn't where we are heading... it mirrors the trajectory of the UN and it's certainly in line with trends in economic fragmentation.
This is the real crux of any "Rule of Law" body. Can you enforce it? With the US attached, nearly any law could be enforced globally (by force if necessary) if it got out of hand. But what do you do if the target is the US? Or now China? or even protected by them?
Build an economy that outcompetes them, and is technologically more advanced and then build, carrier strike groups conventional forces, and nuclear weapons.
>But what do you do if the target is the US? Or now China? or even protected by them?
You do nothing. Which is why all of hand-wringing around this ICC decision is for pointless. There is no such thing as "international law" in any practical sense.
Cynically from Russian/Chinese point of view that is much preferable.
The "Free World" consistently drums out propaganda for universal "Rule-Based Order". Should the ICC fail to move forward with this, Rus/CN can cynically claim that "Rule-Based Order" is no more than fraud. Good luck forcing China to accept South China Sea Arbitration (which they didn't even participate in the 1st place)
> How far will the US and/or Israel go to threaten or discredit the ICC leadership? Will Egypt or other neighbours respond? What is the reaction in China? Will Europe and the Netherlands stand by the ICC unconditionally?
He would definitely would - though I’d imagine that most his travel would be done on a diplomatic basis - so it’s possible the Vienna conventions might apply and preclude detention. (not really sure, I’m not a lawyer).
Support / condemnation will be staunchly factionally split from within all Western Nations. Speaking about a National Unified Will is ridiculous at this stage in history. Eventually, the anti-Israel faction will dominate everywhere except for one or two select Nations that does not include the US. Though, its possible that the US also stays loyal for an indefinite time period. Accurate predication for support / condemnation is rooted in deeper history and geopolitical logic than most people consider.
A high profile Islamic terrorist attacks would shift the narrative, for example. On the other side, if the war cools down a bit people will gradually lose interest in the same way that no one cares about Modi's past actions.
For perspective, I'm with Israel. Though, I'm for saving as many Palestinian lives as humanly possible. Which should be all of them, should the clerics and State Actors stop abusing them via radicalization and the Islamic World works with Israel toward offering appropriate options.
But what I'm speaking about, in terms of prediction, isn't the way that the wind blows. What I'm speaking about is high level State intention.
No one today can seriously believe that State political orientation is a grassroots effect. The reality is that, with the exception of extremely unstable States that are de facto puppets of other Nations, the broad political orientation of modern States is an effect of the allowable movements, opinions, revolutions, propaganda, and migrations that are facilitated by the agencies over decades. Ergo, the eventual orientation of any State toward or away from Israel has to be assumed to be in that State's geopolitical interest as dictated at the highest level.
As we can easily observe, if there was an event and the resultant popular effect was not in the State's interest than, no matter what, the event would be minimized into oblivion by State Press.
Conversely, the Press will manufacture events out of virtual non-events if that assists the State's interest.
Only the State or God will determine whether or not it supports Israel, in any future. That's my starting point for prediction.
>Seems like in most cases the state is more pro-israel than the population.
In some cases. But like I said, Western Nations are now factional at a high level (in my observation, and whether or not this is an intentional result - in my view, it might be). And the short to medium term may not predict the long term. What is also possible is that what the State says, in any period, may not predict its long-term strategy.
If there are 25 candidates, how many votes do you need to come in second? And how many supporters do you need for those votes, when it's pay-to-vote and everyone can vote as many times as they want?
The fact that Israel didn't win the popular vote suggests that the support for them is not particularly strong in Europe.
You don't need much support to win when everyone else's votes are split between 24 candidates.
And there is already a precedent for strong popular support. In 2022, Ukraine won the popular vote with 439 points, with 239 points for the next country. This year, Israel lost with 323 points vs. 337 points for the winner. Ukraine, which came in third, also got pretty close with 307 points.
Similar forms of activism, such as petitions and protests, are supposed to demonstrate support for something, but they often end up showing the opposite. Because the absolute number of supporters rarely matters. What's more important is the number of supporters as a fraction of the total, or relative to the expectations.
Once upon a time, I was involved in something controversial. There was a petition opposing us, with a very large number of signatures for that context. But the petition ended up strengthening our case, because it showed that the opposition to our plans was no more widespread than what we had assumed. The next elections proved us correct. A large number of people with a particular opinion didn't matter, because they were a small enough fraction of the total.
OP described this system as "it's pay-to-vote and everyone can vote as many times as they want".
This sounds exactly like the scam that the right wing runs in America regarding the "Best Selling Book lists". There are a number of right wing books on the list each year but it turns out those books are purchased in large bulk by right leaning groups funded by billionaire donors and are then handed out for free at events or dumped on the clearance channels. It gives a fake impression that the books are more popular than they really are and is in effect a way to blunt the effectiveness of left wing thinking.
This is also done via channels such as PragerU. Right leaning groups funded by billionaires produce white papers describing their thesis which are then sent out to groups such as PragerU and Ben Shapiro in the form of talking points to be inserted into the narrative of their videos.
The main reason I can think of would be that they didn't need to 'astroturf' that many, due to europeans generally being conservative and anti-arab or anti-muslim. But they ran a campaign to get votes, and exactly how efficient it was is very hard to pinpoint.
Zionists have quite extensive tooling and robust parasocial networks for running propaganda campaigns. Why wouldn't they use that to try and become the next host of the Eurovision pop tournament?
Between so many options to vote on Israel could get the max points from each country with less than 5% of votes. Its disingenuous to portray this as if a majority of Europeans support Israel.
Maybe they are scared to talk because Pro-Israel supporters do things like scrape Linkedin profiles and search for Palestinians flag in a bio and then target those peoples employers for harassment?
Honestly it could go either way, there is a lot of astroturfing on both sides to make the noise level so absurd that its hard to see a clear picture.
I have never seen such a large physical response to Israel in my life though, that really leads me to believe that this may be a step change from past incidents regarding Israel/Palestine.
Also the fact that the rich Pro Israeli donors are freaking out more than in the past seems to indicate something has changed.
>They showed 24,686 dead which appeared to be a downward revision from the figure of about 35,000 which had been reported earlier in May, with 7,797 children and 4,959 women confirmed dead, about half the toll cited in previous reports. But the UN said on Monday that estimated overall death toll remained about 35,000.
>Farhan Haq, a UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed. Haq said it was expected that, as the process of identification continued, the official tolls among women and children would also rise.
Or, and I assume you have not considered this, but maybe you should, there is no genocide. And virtually everyone except for some noisy activists knows this.
You live in a bubble if you think social media represents people. Social media represents the highly motivated ones. It does not reward quiet thinkers, it rewards "useful idiots" who have brainless slogans.
The normal people who actually think about things don't participate because they have better things to do than useful idiots.
And then you have people like me who also have better things to do, but feel obligated to post occasionally to at least try to reduce the amount of misinformation.
You are right in that Internet does not represent real life. I saw this during the Bernie 2020 campaign. While there were unbelievably large movements online and even in cities like NYC(that 30k+ rally was a historic day) at the end of the day it led to a false belief that things were much better than they really were.
I was concluding the same thing at the start of this Israel/Palestine conflict but then I saw amazing amounts of resistance to Israel, the likes which I have not seen before. People taking the time to protest in real life gives a more reliable indicator of the internet support. There has definitely been a step change in favor of Palestine. I predicted that i'd see this in my lifetime but I honestly thought it would have taken another 20+ years as more Pro israel older generations died off. The fact that it is happening now and that the rich Israel supporters are freaking out and doing whatever they can to "suppress" the narrative makes me think we are seeing some sort of slow moving shift.
So the ICC already decided on this? No? Well, then I wouldn't be so sure about this if I where you. Because starving a population, denying them water, fuel and medicine amounts to genocide in all but name.
No it doesn’t “amount to genocide in all but name”. Genocide is a very specific crime with a very specific special intent. All of what you named are possible without a genocide.
The US seems to have been extremely strong in its reaction to the ruling.
"“My colleagues and I look forward to make sure neither Khan, his associates nor their families will ever set foot again in the United States,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote on X."
"The ICC is the world’s first permanent international war crimes court and its 124 member states are obliged to immediately arrest the wanted person if they are on a member state’s territory."
I don't understand how the US and many other EU governments can be so extremely critical of a court which as far as I know has been considered legitimate by all of them (except the US which apparently removed its signature... anyone knows why?), and whose decisions have always been applauded by all of them (including Putin's arrest [1]), except for this last one.
Quoting from the linked article [1]: "British journalist George Monbiot wrote in a Guardian op-ed that the ICC targeting Putin was an example of the organization's bias in favor of prosecuting crimes by non-Westerners, ...".
Looks like that's the real issue here, doesn't it?
Imagine a leader of a country saying that the judiciary's decision is wrong and that the judge won't be allowed to travel freely anymore because of that. That would be the end of the rule of law. Why is it different in this case?
You are making a conclusion based on rationality and governments operating correctly (ie. compromised based consensus between different sides of the political aisle)
Tom Cotton is a clown senator that is an symbol of the dysfunction of the US government of the last few decades. He along with a few frequent imbeciles are the reason there is so much dysfunction. If there was any redeeming factor of the current US system, he would be impeached and removed a long time ago.
It seems more likely than not that the ICC will approve the warrants. This is unprecedented for the ICC to turn its gaze toards a key US ally.
As for how far will the US go, well in 2002, Congress passed (and Bush signed) the American Service Members Protection Act, more colloquially known as the Hage Invasion Act. It authorizes the president to use all necessary force including invading the Netherlands if an American servicemember or appointed official is ever taken into ICC custody. This includes officials and servicemen of key allies, including Israel.
So will Betanyahu or Gallant actually be arrested? Almost certainly not. The practical effect of this is political not legal.
The goal of protests, boycotting, ICJ applications, ICC warrants, UN (GA and SC) motions, "Undecided" voting in Democratic primaries and so on are to incrementally pressure the two key players here: Israel and, more importantly, the US. Why? Because the US could end the conflict with a phone call. They could end it with a press release.
BDS (Boycott, divest, sanction) movements were considered successful in isolating and ultimately toppling the Apartheid South African regime in the 1970s and 1980s. Given this success, an awful lot of lobbying has been directed at US politicans to pass so-called "anti-BDS" laws that are laws in ~37 states. For example, to be a teacher in Texas, you need to sign a contract agreeing to never participate in a BDS movement against Israel.
So the practical effect of ICC warrants is just to incrementally isolate and pressure Israel.
One phone call to whom? Hamas? The conflict is 2 sided. It may pause. But not end. This is very different from Russia invade Ukraine, there is no dispute of the sovereignty in a wider sense. Even china would not say U belong to R. But the hell of P and I, …
There is no easy solution … from camp David to now.
> There is no easy solution … from camp David to now.
Everyone from the Hague to UC Berkeley administrators is learning one hard truth: agreements with some polities in that part of the world and their ambassadors are not worth very much. But if you pretend that they are then it seems like there are easy solutions.
To Israel. The modern state of Israel simply cannot exist without the largesse and political cover the US provides.
> There is no easy solution
Yes and no. End the genocide. End the apartheid. Nuremberg-like trials to deal with war criminals on both sides. Reconstruction of a single state. 750,000 settlers has made a two-state solution impossible.
We've been here before: post-US civil war and post-apartheid South Africa.
There is the idea that the currently oppressed population will rise up in vilence against their former oppressors. History doesn't back up this view. Our modern examples such as Reconstruction showed the opposite: the rise of the KKK and the rise of violence against former slaves by their former oppressors.
Afghanistan has been described as the graveyard of empires. This region may be vying for that title.
Israel existed for decades without US support. No Jews will agree to live under a Muslim majority one state solution, it will inevitably decay into something similar to Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt.
How can the US end the conflict with a phone call? I think that is unlikely because I suspect those phone calls have already been had.
And really the only way we are resolving this is by actually solving the underlying issue, which is that there are a set of people essentially locked up in a prison for 30 years and/or slowly being shot by settlers in the West Bank.
Press release: "We're halting all arms shipments to Israel". There's even a legal basis for it, the so-called "Leahy laws" [1]. Israel cannot exist without hte largesse and political cover the United States provides.
I agree about solving the underlying issues and the injustices that have historically taken place but the above is intended to answer the question and engage in analysis rather than arguing the merits, which is likely an unproductive conversation.
Israel is a net exporter of arms. Israel supplies a long list of countries with technologically advanced and strategically important weapons systems that are difficult to substitute. A US embargo would be economically painful, but Israel is perfectly capable of living without US military aid and exports.
- Giving up access to the Temple Mount for a peace treaty with Jordan
- Repeatedly offering peace deals to the Palestinian leadership following the Oslo Accords ('2000 Camp David Summit, '2001 Taba Summit, '2007 Olmert offers etc.)
> Shlomo Ben-Ami, then Israel's Minister of Foreign Relations who participated in the talks, stated that the Palestinians wanted the immediate withdrawal of the Israelis from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and only subsequently the Palestinian authority would dismantle the Palestinian organizations. The Israeli response was "we can't accept the demand for a return to the borders of June 1967 as a pre-condition for the negotiation." In 2006, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated on Democracy Now! that "Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well."
Multiple members of Clinton's negotiating team also dispute that interpretation:
> Robert Malley, part of the Clinton administration and present at the summit, wrote to dispel three "myths" regarding the summit's failure. First myth, Malley says, was "Camp David was an ideal test of Mr. Arafat's intentions". Malley recalls that Arafat didn't think that Israeli and Palestinian diplomats had sufficiently narrowed issues in preparation for the summit and that the Summit happened at a "low point" in the relations between Arafat and Barak.
> The second myth was "Israel's offer met most if not all of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations". According to Malley, Arafat was told that Israel would not only retain sovereignty over some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, but Haram al Sharif too, and Arafat was also asked to accept an unfavorable 9-to-1 ratio in land swaps.
> The third myth was that "The Palestinians made no concession of their own". Malley pointed out that the Palestinians starting position was at the 1967 borders, but they were ready to give up Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and parts of the West Bank with Israeli settlements. Further, the Palestinians were willing to implement the right of return in a way that guaranteed Israel's demographic interests. He argues that Arafat was far more compromising in his negotiations with Israel than Anwar el-Sadat or King Hussein of Jordan had been when they negotiated with Israel.
---
2001 Taba Summit
[2]
> A new round of talks was held at Taba in January 2001, during the last few days of the Clinton presidency, between President Arafat and the Israeli foreign minister, and it was later claimed that the Palestinians rejected a "generous offer" put forward by Prime Minister Barak with Israel keeping only 5 percent of the West Bank. The fact is that no such offers were ever made.
They’ve fought them all before and repeatedly won. Before they had US funding, before they had nuclear weapons, before they had an overwhelming advantage in material and technology.
US funding of Israel is used to buy votes in the US, and to buy some influence in Israel, it will not change the military situation much.
Israel hardly needs those arms to continue their war in Gaza. It's nice, certainly, and the precision weapons help reduce Palestinian deaths, but Israel does not require it.
You also forget that Israel has fought all its major wars without the US.
And Israel's GDP is ~500billion, of which ~25b is spent on defense. So, that 3.8b would be a dent, but not insurmountable.
Economic measures could be a different story, but pulling that lever on an an ally of 75+ years would damage the US's credibility. Not to mention to the domestic impact in the US. I don't think any decision makers weighing national interest would go there.
Plus, if the US successfully isolated Israel, it's highly likely the whole region would be at war in short time. Hard to imagine the West not getting involved again at that point, except now in a significantly worse position.
The issue is not the genocide in Gaza. The issue is restocking iron Dome, and the ability for Israel to defend against attacks from Hezbollah and Iran… assuming other powers don’t change their stance towards Israel.
The lack of working Iron Dome would mean that Israel would have to go on a big offensive. The lack of US aid will elevate Israel's war posture, not decrease it. People seem to keep forgetting this is an existential war for Israel, there is no clear end goal for Israel's enemies besides its destruction. Of course Israel will never "give up", give up what? Its existence?
Palestinian leadership has not shown willingness to take peace offerings that would improve the lives of their people
- '2000 Camp David Summit offer
- '2001 Taba Summit offer
- '2007 Olmert offer
In fact, during the peace talks between '2000 and '2001, the Palestinian leader at the time, Arafat, with control over the main armed faction in PLO at the time, Fatah, has failed to thwart the waves of violence against Israeli citizens, for the following 4-5 years, known as the Second Intifada.
No, but completely eliminating Israel isn't (and shouldn't be an option), so hopefully 1967 borders is where it can end. Israel returns occupied territories, Palestine/Hamas stops wanting revenge for everything Israel has done, international community puts pressure on both sides to accept that. Probably not gonna happen, but I think it's the optimal outcome.
>Given this success, an awful lot of lobbying has been directed at US politicans to pass so-called "anti-BDS" laws that are laws in ~37 states. For example, to be a teacher in Texas, you need to sign a contract agreeing to never participate in a BDS movement against Israel.
These are unconstitutional laws that unfortunately are easy to pass but difficult to remove. There needs to be more legal challenges to remove these laws. There have been positive efforts to remove these laws although the states find new ways to keep amended versions of the laws on the books which requires further lawsuits to challenge.
A) I'm told warrant approval is almost always a rubberstamp.
B) There will be a discrediting campaign, but ICC's future is the least interesting thing to me.
C) I'm not sure this leads to a conviction, but actual trials will probably take years by which time Bibi and co will be out of office. Again not so interesting.
D) Bibi was already done for. But paradoxically this strengthens him domestically temporarily and massively strengths the Right next elections. I'll expand on this below since this is IMHO interesting.
E) It makes attacking Israel a bit more 'legitimate', but in the ME legitimacy for that was already sky-high. War with Lebanon was very high likelihood anyway.
F) Saudi normalization is DOA for this term (always was, but admin was blind to everyone's interests. Qatar would have had to be nuts not to put every possible roadblock here, and Biden admin could never see what was in front of its eyes).
G) Hamas has not so simple problems here. The various ideas for reintegration has hit serious roadblocks, and later on I believe this will cause them bigger problems than Israel which can always change leaders.
---
D is not 'rally around the flag'. It has to do with the opposition is built: its deep links with the 'security state'. The security state is outraged and itself vulnerable to possible warrants. The same logic could have easily justified adding Gantz.
An Israeli Left opposition which can't claim the world likes them more (due to warrant risk) and loses its security credentials (security state links to pre and post Oct failures, warrant risk again) is dead in the water. Which means it needs more time before an election to find its footing again... But on the other hand, it wouldn't like possible ICC isolation either. So a temporary delay before losing in the elections.
> I'm told warrant approval is almost always a rubberstamp.
Its pretty similar to an indictment in the US (to judges rather than a grand jury); its an unopposed process where the prosecutor knows the standards and chooses when to bring a case to that step based on confidence in being ready to meet the standards. There's not a lot of probability of surprises if the basic work is done competently and in good faith and not with an intent to push the envelope.
> I'm not sure this leads to a conviction, but actual trials will probably take years by which time Bibi and co will be out of office.
Trials won't take start until the individuals being tried are in custody for trial. (They don't have to be at the same time.)
>There's not a lot of probability of surprises if the basic work is done competently and in good faith and not with an intent to push the envelope.
It's a tiny bit higher since IMHO he pushed the envelope on starvation (the reported malnutrition death count is 32 out of over two million people), and on not engaging with Israel (was due to a trip to the country before issuing indictments), but given unopposed nature, his advantage is so large I don't see odds of this being rejected.
>Trials won't take start until the individuals being tried are in custody for trial. (They don't have to be at the same time.)
Yeah, the other comment slagged me on this. The essential 'this isn't resolved for years, by which time they are out of office' is right.
ICC does not have trials or conviction in absence.
After the arrest warrant goes out, everything stops until people charged are in custody. It's very unlikely that Gallant or Netanyahu will ever be arrested. Their travel will be just limited for the rest of their lives.
True. I never assumed that, though I see now why my phrasing could imply it. You're right - they're probably not stepping in that court. But even if they did, it would take years.
My other point - ICC can issue secret warrants, and no denial would be credible due to its very nature... This is poison to Gantz's political career and same for any active general who would want to join the current opposition following service. The current Israeli opposition is just not competitive without generals, and all they've left are certain people who are very... outspoken to put it mildly.
Do you have a source for that? This doesn't make sense to me since it relies on more than a hundred different countries to enforce them, it'd be impossible to keep anything they do a secret
Search for the Thomas Lubanga and Mr Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo cases. The ICC can issue 'sealed' (secret) warrants and tell the countries very late in the process.
Yeah, in practice any such warrant will eventually leak, but it's still a risk for anyone who might be on the other end which de facto creates limits to anyone who might fall under suspicion.
> ICC can issue secret warrants, and no denial would be credible due to its very nature
If that's the case then they are defacto banned from travelling. Still these secret warrants will be shared with the respective countries, right? So they should know?
Biden has already called the indictment "outrageous." [1]. The U.S. Secretary of State has also spoken out against the indictment [2].
Needless to say, they're backing him, and the ICC can't arrest Netanyahu. At worst, the U.S. government will sanction ICC officials as they did under the Trump administration.
I personally can't believe the ICC is equating the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government. What a shameful organization.
The Biden situation is predictable and calls into question the strategy behind the ICC arrest warrants.
First things first: neither the Polizio di Stato, the Garda, nor the RCMP are actually going to arrest Sinwar or Netanyahu. The practical impact of the warrants will be (at least in the near term) negligible.
Concurrently: unlike the ICC Genocide case, which is difficult and unlikely to succeed, the ICC war crimes warrants are probably broadly going to be seen as strong and compelling. Reporting has Biden and his team maneuvering for months to keep any kind of supply lines open to Gaza; he knows firsthand that some of these charges have validity.
But the USA is Israel's most important ally; further, reporting suggests that Biden's team has been the only thing between the current situation and abyss that would kill 3-5x as many civilians. That pushback only functions because of soft power (Israel would not depend on US arms suppliers for indiscriminate bulk bombing, massed land incursions, or supply blockades).
What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront. You can't really do diplomacy wth a world leader while at the same time saying (or implying) that they belong in the Hague.
There's a general vibe where people want international justice to work in simple moral terms, where everyone just lays the truth as they understand it out, a tribunal sorts out the details, and the chips fall as they may. But international law absolutely doesn't work that way; for similar reasons, Assad won't be charged by the ICC for killing half a million Syrians (Syria is not a signatory to the ICC).
Once you accept that the court is fundamentally political, you're left asking: are the politics of this move effective? Will they hasten an end to the conflict, or save lives?
Either way: once the warrants were announced, I think you could have taken bets on what Biden (or literally any other American president in the last 50 years, or any major party candidate for the presidency) would have said, and all the money would be on exactly this. We're not signatories to the ICC to begin with!
(I think Netanyahu is a criminal; the Hague is fine with me, though I think it's more likely he'll do his time in Maasiyahu after the Israelis convict him once his coalition falls apart).
However, Israel is not the USA's most important ally.
The US is not really an ally of Israel at all. The NATO countries are.
Japan and South Korea are. They have US troops and bases. The US does not send troops to fight in Israel's wars. The US just sends money.
Right, my point is that we're most important external input to Israel's decision-making process, not that we depend on them (beyond the political fact that the US electorate broadly supports Israel as an enterprise, and ranks the Gaza war at the bottom of important issues).
Israel was one of the US most important assets in the Middle East. At that time, gas/oil ran the world and it was the energy source. The US is simply stuck with that baggage. Meanwhile China is building solar like there is no tomorrow and essentially creating and monopolizing the new energy source.
> What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront.
He didn't have to say anything about the substance. He could even use them as leverage in negotiations without publicly saying anything about the substance, by conditioning US efforts to get the UNSC to hold them in abeyance (which it explictly can!) conditioned on a cease-fire and concrete steps on aid.
Would it work? Probably not. Would it be better for the US interestd broadly than getting nothing at all while undermining the credibility of an institution that the US, while not a member of, has found practically and diplomatically useful in a number of past cases? Absolutely yes.
> We're not signatories to the ICC to begin with!
We have shut up about, or actively supported, the ICC in many cases, and given the US public nominal goal of a two-state solution demonstrating that international institutions are willing to take on abused on both sides of the conflict without ignoring the legitimate interests or rights of people on either side is something the US ought to be backing rather than burning down.
Everything you're pitching here seems predicated on the idea of breaking off all practical diplomacy with Netanyahu. Which, if you think you can topple Netanyahu, sure, but I imagine there are career diplomats telling the administration that moves like these are as likely to bolster Netanyahu's position as they are to hasten his ouster.
Certainly it is not my contention that the US is consistent with respect to the ICC.
It's a bad situation. I genuinely think that the administration is playing the best it can with the cards it was dealt. I think we're all clear what the counterfactual other administration would be doing.
If it weren't for a large portion of the American public having religious motivation (evangelical protestantism) to support Israel unconditionally, no matter what, then the US would be able to exert considerable pressure on Israel, for instance by threatening to cut off Israel as Israel has been cutting off Gaza. No more arms shipments, no more UN Security Council vetos of any anti-Israel resolution, etc.
But of course this is politically impossible for the US. Near half of the US population would throw an absolute fit.
Evangelicals are a small component of the electorate relative to Israel's support (they're like a quarter of the population, and, of course, they're locked in completely to the opposition party; Democrats don't meaningfully campaign for evangelical votes.)
But unconditional support for Israel is a rare topic with mostly bipartisan agreement from the leadership class. The disagreement from the public is very likely more correlated with age than with the party someone supports.
> Near half of the US population would throw an absolute fit.
But a large chunk of the population is already throwing a fit, and given the spread in views among different age groups, that's a growing chunk of the population.
If by this you mean they're throwing a fit over Israel and Gaza, no, I don't think polling bears this out at all. Even within the context of the schools themselves, protesters are small minorities of the students and faculty. A large chunk of the media is throwing a fit, to be sure!
I think the best way to sum up public opinion from what we know given polling and on-the-ground numbers is that Americans just don't much care about this. We care. But as is so often the case, caring about this issue makes us the weird ones.
The situation is ripe for a new political party that isn't wed to zionism. Opposition to zionism is growing on both the left and the right, particularly among young people, but neither had a party to represent this.
No lasting and significant opposition to Zionism will ever take root. To boil it down to a jingoist set of phrases understandable by the masses would require overt antisemitism.
I.. think I disagree. In a sense, Trump technically laid a foundation for that with a rather clever MAGA phrase. Regardless of what you think about him, his policy or his stance on anything, he showed that there are phrases could be utilized to tap into that section with little effort and are not as easily dismissed.
Now.. those could be attacked as overly nationalistic, but that is a separate discussion.
<< No lasting and significant opposition to Zionism will ever take root.
I think I agree despite (n)'ever' being a really long time. A year is eternity in politics and this year is already pretty crazy. I honestly can't say it is impossible.
I'm hoping that the last year or so will finally deliver a replacement for American FPTP - the Republicans are split between RINOs and MAGA devouts, and the democrats are split too between the centrist and progressives too.
I don't know if it'll actually happen, but this is probably the most likely path towards it, if there is one.
The RINOs are moving towards the welcoming arms of Democrats and the "progressives" don't have a home anywhere as they are barely even tolerated in the Democratic party.
Normally you'd think at least one of the parties would adapt to appeal to the younger generations. Unfortunately I think there is some truth to the idea that Israeli influence is very strong in D.C., so neither party has so much as offered an olive branch to the young.
What the heck does "Opposition to Zionism" even mean? Opposing Zionism is the same as opposing the Irish desire to have Ireland, or the Kiwi desire to have New Zealand.
I suspect you don't know what Zionism is, because otherwise your message makes no sense.
There are at least two dozen countries in that area (mid east) of the world who are, constitutionally and in practice, ethnostates. Their constitution explicitly states that they are an "Arab state" and that their laws are based on Sharia law. Just Google for and read the constitutions of those countries in the Arab league, for example Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Syria, etc. And then there is Iran.
Those who actively claim they are opposed to Israel because it is an ethnostate but are not also actively calling for these other states to be dismantled need to explain why that is not anti-semetic.
There is also the related question on those opposed to Israel because it is a "European settler/colonial" state. A significant majority (66%) of Israel consists of brown people. 25% of Israel is not Jewish, and of the rest (the Jewish population), at least half of those are indigenous to that area, and are, from a racial perspective, just as "non-white" as anyone else from that area.
There are a couple things that set Israel apart from the other countries you listed. Israel gives Jews specifically enumerated privileges, such as a right to citizenship. It also implements an apartheid system in the West Bank — territory it occupies in violation of international law — in which Israelis and Palestinians are subject to two different legal systems. It has withdrawn from Gaza, of course, but it still exerts a high degree of control over it, such as an air and sea blockade.
I don’t know why you think the current demographics of Israel preclude it from being a settler/colonial state. There is a formal effort to attract Jewish settlers. Just a few months ago, there was literally an event in my hometown advertising property in the West Bank to Jewish prospective residents.
Regarding the West Bank/Gaza: My opinion is that settlements should be removed and there needs to be a path to a Palestinian state. An act of good faith would be to remove the settlements unilaterally, unfortunately, that did not work out too well in Gaza. Advertising West Bank property to Jews is, in my opinion, abhorrent, as well as making a bad situation worse.
On what happens in Israel, all Israeli citizens have equal rights. All countries have rules on who can become citizens. Yes, Israel is unique (I think) in the reasons for citizenship. Israel is also unique in its needs for survival. I am not sure if there are other differences, there could very well be.
On the settler/colonial issue: What I find most interesting about this is how vehement many people are in my country (US) on Israel being a settler/colonial state, when, almost without exceptions, they are the ones living on Native land, using Native resources, and participate in a conspiracy to eradicate Native culture (this is anyone in the US who is not a Native American), and are therefor themselves settler/colonists, while it is the Jews who are native to the middle east, whether the 50% who are Mizrahi or the other 50% who are returning to the land their ancestors were kicked out of.
And the Palestinians are also native to that area. The fundamental issue is: Can there be a compromise where each of these peoples get a land of their own, or is the idea of a Jewish state anywhere is what at some point of time was Dar A-Islam unacceptable.
> On the settler/colonial issue: What I find most interesting about this is how vehement many people are in my country (US) on Israel being a settler/colonial state, when, almost without exceptions, they are the ones living on Native land, using Native resources,
The US is undeniably a settler culture. I am outraged at the actions of my ancestors [1] who played a part in that culture. Just because I'm descended from reprehensible people doesn't mean I'm precluded from complaining about reprehensible people today.
> and participate in a conspiracy to eradicate Native culture (this is anyone in the US who is not a Native American), and are therefor themselves settler/colonists
Not saying that the US in the past hasn't been genocidal, but many of the people complaining about Israeli settler culture today are also broadly supportive of current Native American rights issues, which is the opposite of participating in a conspiracy to eradicate their culture.
> while it is the Jews who are native to the middle east, whether the 50% who are Mizrahi or the other 50% who are returning to the land their ancestors were kicked out of.
And here comes the special pleading. What Israel is doing in the West Bank is seizing land from extant landowners, transferring it to a favored landowners, and turning the former landowners into second-class citizens. This is exactly the kind of policy that people complain about in settler colonies. Claims of it's-our-ancestors'-land-from-centuries-ago don't fly in international law (see also Russia's diplomatic failure to assert this vis-a-vis its invasion of Ukraine), and it certainly doesn't justify forcible expropriation of land from current landowners.
[1] Indeed, my great-x-I-don't-remember-how-many grandfather participated in the Cherokee Strip land rush, so this is literally personal ancestry in play here, rather than vague reference to historical US ancestry.
You appear to agree with the parent commenter about the practical matter at hand: they believe existing settlements in the West Bank need to be dismantled, as do you. At this point, do we even reach the question of whether there's special pleading happening?
The subtext here (clear from the invocation of the Mizrahim) is existential arguments against the the state of Israel as construed in its conventionally recognized borders. In that sense, the "settler colonial" notion is complicated and unavailing.
But you and the preceding commenter would seem to agree with the common argument that settlements in the West Bank are a direct, probative, and actionable instance of unjust settler colonialism.
("parent commentator")
yes, any settlements outside the pre-67 borders should be dismantled, they are wrong, and criminal, and will never allow for peace. Anyone responsible for this should be removed and banned from power, at the bare minimum. I would go further - dismantle the settlements, and let the Palestinians do whatever they want with the land - West Bank and Gaza. give them a state. Will that solve the problem ? No, there will be further wars, but at least we get past this issue.
this is a practical matter - both Palestinians and the Jews have claims going back a long way to all that land (rivertosea), but (during the Palestinian Mandate) they just kept massacring each other, so the governing power gave up and there was a roughly even split of the land (1/2 of the 30% left after 70% went to Jordan), and that just needs to be good enough for either side, even if neither are satisfied
Wars have consequences. 13 centuries of Islamic rule came to an end in 1917, and the Ottoman Empire lost and was dismantled. Land was given back roughly along the lines of past histories, not perfectly, but nothing is.
right of return ? well, at least as many Mizrahi Jews in Israel and other countries could claim that from the nearby countries, but that is about as likely and practical to happen as reversing the Nakba. Wars have consequences.
Why stop at reversing 1948 ? Why not just go back another 30 years and reassemble the Ottoman Empire ? I am sure that would make everyone happy.
For me, minimal requirement of anti-Zionism is the right of return to the Palestinians—and their descendants—who were displaced in the Nakba. Israel is allowed to exist, but it is not allowed to manipulate the demography which favors a single ethnic group. In other words, the anti-Zionism seeks to dismantle Israel as an ethnostate.
I don’t see how this is more fundamentally complicated than other settler-colonial enterprises. The inclusion of the Mizrahim is no different from e.g. when the British did settler colonialism in Northern Ireland (then Ulster) by granting very favorable land deals and work to Scots. No doubt many (if not most) of the Scots were of Gaelic ancestry. That fact doesn’t change the dynamic at all. The Ulster Plantation is a schoolbook settler colonial project, which was wrong and evil in every way possible. What mattered is that the English demanded a certain culture would come up on top, that the Scottish immigrants were not Catholic, spoke English (not Scottish Gaelic; and certainly not Irish), and that they behaved like the English when after they settled stolen land.
This is a false dilemma, you don’t need an ethnostate to protect your rights. Having an ethnostate by definition your privileges comes at the cost of other people’s civil rights. Jewish civil rights should be protected by the same democratic institutions as everyone else’s. If you have a fear of a certain ethnic group gaining equal political rights, what does that say about you?
Regarding the right of return for the Jewish people displaced from the countries surrounding Israel, sure, I’m in favor. As far as I know, the discriminatory laws which pushed a lot of the exodus have long since been repealed and families who fled to Israel don’t face nearly the same level of discrimination as Palestinians wanting to return to their homeland. (Reparations still need to be payed and Iraq could probably step up their game and re-issue citizenships to their emigrants).
That said, the tit-for-tat mentality is not helpful here. Yes, the Jewish emigrants (particularly from Iraq) deserve reparations for passed wrongs, but whether they get that or not should not affect whether Palestinians are granted their basic right of return, and the dismantling of all Israels’ ethnocratic policies.
Nobody is getting reparations, Mizrahim Israelis do not want a right of return to Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen, nor would they be welcome there (Ansar Allah's first "official" action was to expel Jewish people from Sa'dah), and Israel itself is premised on being a homeland for the Jewish people. Maybe we're just kibitzing, and that's fine, but if we're being serious we should probably give some consideration to our actual constraints.
Is Israel an ethnostate (or an ethno-religious state, if that's your jam)? It rhymes with one, for sure. But if that's the case, so is Japan. I have never once seen a protest in North America against Japanese ethnocentrism. At least I understand why Israel is structured this way (it was founded within 1-2 Kendrick Lamar album release dates of the liberation of the concentration camps).
There's some innuendo in your post --- "what does that say about you" --- are you prepared to field the same kind of innuendo directed back at you? Because Israelis and Jewish supporters of Israel in the west notice and point out that Israel is held to a different standard.
A reasonable answer to that is that Israel has spent 20 years working to prevent a 2-state solution, and effectively occupying Gaza while slowly colonizing the West Bank. That's fair! But criticism of Israel's modern day activities have a tendency --- as they did here --- to bleed into critiques of the premise of Israel itself.
The standards here are proportional to the crimes. Japan does not have a policy of racialized demography. They have not e.g. expelled the Ainu from parts of Hokkaido, prevent the Ryukyu people from moving to Honshu (though there is plenty of historic wrongs here that needs addressed; and yes, Japan is criticized for that). Japanese Americans which want to immigrate to Japan need to go through the same immigration process as Korean Americans, etc.
The demographic policies of Israel are way worse than any other democracy, which is why people criticize Israel harder, and why anti-Zionism is a global political movement. People protested Apartheid South Africa for the same reasons, and is the reason why anti-Apartheid became a global political movement.
Understanding why Israel maintains their ethnocratic policies is no justification for it. I’m sure you can also understand why F.D. Roosevelt ethnically cleansed the West Coast of Japanese Americans during World War 2. But that was still a human rights disaster. Thankfully, that policy was reversed and the victims were given the right of return. Palestinians were not so lucky. Anti-Zionists like my self want Palestinians to get that minimum level of justice. If there was still a Japanese exclusion zone on the West Coast, I would for sure be protesting that.
There is a Palestinian American living in my community, she would like to at least visit the birthplace of her grandparents. But she cannot, Israel’s ethnocratic policies won’t let her. If Israelis are uncomfortable living in a place which gives her racial group equal rights, then I’m just gonna say it, they are racists, and they should not be given an ethnostate to keep their comforts.
I don't think you're correct about this. I think Japan is both much more racist than you think it is, and Israel less (both are deeply problematic in this regard, though it should be clear by now that I have far more sympathy for Israel [within its 1967 borders] than Japan). Have you talked to an American long-term resident of Japan about this? I've heard stories that knocked me on my ass.
There's nothing practical to be said about this stuff. Everybody in the world is racist. It is a strength of the west, and of the US in particular, that we pay so much attention to it. There's no "should" about Israel, only "is". Israel is a nuclear-armed state with a thriving, self-sustaining economy and one of the world's better regarded militaries. If you want to call it an ethnostate, that's fine (I will then call Japan an ethnostate as well). I don't like ethnostates either. But it is what it is: the history and purpose to which Israel --- which, unlike Japan, at least nominally proscribes racism! --- is designed is profound. It's not going anywhere.
I'm fond of pointing out that you'd have a stronger argument that Texas be returned to the Coahuiltecans. Texan settlers hadn't just survived the Holocaust. There was no large scale exchange of populations, with Tamaulipecan tribes somehow finding reservoirs of Germans and Czechs to expel from Nuevo Leon. But, again: nobody is protesting this.
I would say my position is this: to litigate the existence of Israel itself is to surrender any hope, at least rhetorically, of self-determination for Palestinians on any Palestinian land.
> I'm fond of pointing out that you'd have a stronger argument that Texas be returned to the Coahuiltecans.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the minimal requirements of Anti-Zionists is that the Palestinians which were displaced in the Nakba be granted the right of return. I personally don’t care if there are two states, one called Israel and the other Palestine. But for the state which ends up being called Israel should grant those it displaced the right of return. Texas does not exclude Coahuiltecans from visiting Texas. Texas does not control its demographics with racialized exclusions (I know some Texas politicians would like that, but they are not allowed; and if they were allowed, there would be riots).
I know Japan has a lot of problems with racism. Japan also has a history of being settler colonialist. They’ve even committed a couple of genocides in the past. What sets Israel apart though is they continue and maintain their policies of racialized demography. Japan used to do that (particularly in Korea, but also in Ryukyu), but they don’t any more. Today Japan recognizes the Ainu as a distinct indigenous minority group. They recognize the Ryukyu people as a subgroup (though honestly they need to recognize them as a minority group). They don’t exclude the Ainu nor the Ryukyu from any parts of Japan. They don’t have a policy prevents them from gaining political influence. etc. Stating that Japan has ethnocratic policies similar to those of Israel is lying at best.
For Israel to exist as an independent democratic country besides Palestine in a two state world which meets the minimal requirements of anti-Zionism, they need to relinquish these ethnocratic policies. A good start would be to sign and ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (like Japan has). They don’t have to grant citizenship to every Palestinians, but they must at the very least allow free travel between the two states, and they must allow those which were displaced in the Nakba to have the option of dual citizenship. Recognizing that Israel did settler colonialism and apologize for it would be appreciated as well (Japan has yet to do that).
A viable path forward that gives displaced Palestinians self-determination is to return Israel to its 1967 borders, dismantling the West Bank settlements, and facilitating an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza, with air and sea ports and trade, if not with Israel (though: it would) then with any other state that would trade with them.
A non-viable path forward is demand the repatriation of millions of non-Jewish people to right one half of a wrong (not that it would matter if you could somehow right the other half) done in the 1940s and 1950s. Israel will not allow it to happen. No imaginable Israeli leadership of any ideology or party would allow it. Israel's allies won't allow it to happen, but that doesn't matter.
The Arab world was (is, really) in the verge of normalizing relations with Israel, premised on the viable solution I outlined above. It is not in fact a requirement of the Arab world that Israel accept a Palestinian/Arab majority in its 1967 borders.
What's frustrating about this is not the concern that Palestinians might somehow succeed in the non-viable cause (I don't like ethnostates either?) but rather a certainty that it can't happen, any more than Mexicans will gain as-of-right dual citizenship and free travel into their original Texan lands, and the knowledge that the pursuit of that doomed cause comes at the cost of generations of Palestinian lives deprived of self-determination on any terms because western philosophizers oppose what they see as half-measures.
And I'm not picking on them - tons of countries are like that, and that's fine as long as they ensure equality of all citizens, which Ireland, New Zealand, and Israel have all done.
I didn’t know about the “White New Zealand Policy”, but it seems to have been rolled back in the 80s. Ireland is not the same as Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.
I assume you chose the word “citizen” carefully, so let’s just imagine that in a hypothetical Palestinian state — whether alongside or unified with Israel — Palestinians would enjoy the same rights as Israelis, unlike today.
Anyway, obviously you aren’t picking on them for any of that, and I’m not super interested in debating it. I’m just answering your question about what “opposition to Zionism” means.
"let’s just imagine that in a hypothetical Palestinian state — whether alongside or unified with Israel — Palestinians would enjoy the same rights as Israelis, unlike today."
If/when there is a Palestinian state, there is no basis to assume that they would enjoy the same rights as Israelis. It would be their own state, and their rights are determined by them. For example, Syrians do not have the same rights of Israelis, and Israelis do not have the same rights as Syrians.
Currently, Israeli Palestinians (Israeli Arabs) have the same rights of Israeli Jews.Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza do not have those same rights.
I could have worded that better. In a hypothetical one-state solution, they would enjoy the same rights; in a hypothetical two-state solution, as you say, it would be a nonissue.
Regardless, you have correctly identified one of the core things that anti-Zionism opposes: in Israeli occupied territory, there is currently de jure discrimination against an indigenous ethnic minority population.
I agree that there is discrimination in the occupied territories. I also have the personal view that Israelis should not be in the occupied territories (the settlements), and that there needs to be a clear path to a Palestinian state. Clearly, simply removing the settlements and withdrawing from Gaza without a better plan was not sufficient.
I also do not understand what this has to do with anti-Zionism in that Zionism is the notion that the Jews have a right to a homeland, and not be relegated as a people to the hims of others. Yes, there is an occupation of West Bank/Gaza, however, I would not deny the right of the Persians to have an Iran, even though I am very much against their current government, and they have taken over control and created misery in other countries (Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and are attempting to do so in Iraq and Syria).
You can be against the current government of Israel, you can be against occupation (as many people, including Israeli's are), but to be against the existence of a Jewish state (anti-Zionism) without being against an Egyptian state, a Persian state, a Jordanian state, etc is singling out the Jews, and needs to be called what it is.
Obviously no group is monolithic, but I would define Zionism not as notion that Jews have the right to a homeland but a political movement to create and support a Jewish ethnostate, which (in its current form) is predicated on the dispossession of and discrimination against an indigenous population. These are specific, enumerable things that set Israel apart from other Middle Eastern countries, and until they are addressed I don’t believe it’s fair to describe anti-Zionism as “singling out the Jews”.
"predicated on the dispossession of and discrimination against an indigenous population"
I am unaware of anything like this in Israel's laws. I assume what you mean by this is the Nakba, which happened after Israel's creation, and as a result of a war declared by the Arabs with the stated intent on destroying the new nation. About 650k-700k Arabs fled/forced/chosen to move out due to that war. Those who stayed ended up with lives comparable to that of their fellow Jewish citizens, I do not see much in the way of discrimination for those who stayed.
Also, as a result of that war, 850k-900k Jews fled/forced/chosen to move out of the surrounding nations. These people were forced out of their homes and their lands simply because they were Jews.
Many, many indigenous people were dispossessed during those times, no nation in that area has clean hands. If you want to single out Israel, that is your right and prerogative, but if you want to be fair (which you do not have to be) you should do some research and understand that many middle eastern countries have dispossessed and discriminated against their indigenous populations. Some did it because they were attacked, some did it just "because"
The section on NZ refers to a set of racist policies that ended in the 1980s and are now thoroughly discredited. Are you sure you want to cite it as a comparator to Israel?
Same with Norther Ireland. Parent links to policies of Northern Ireland aimed at minimizing Catholic’s political powers, including via controlling the demographics. History has shown these policies to be very wrong and very much the reason for the Troubles.
Historically this region suffered from settler colonialism where Britain encourage Protestants to move into the area. If you wanted to make a comparison to anti-Zionism, then the Nationalist‘s fight for civil rights and political representation is much more apt, then Protestant hardliners wanting to keep the demographics in their favor in order for continue suppress the rights of Norther Irish Catholics.
Ironically, the IRA were not afraid to use terrorism to further the nationalistic cause (similar to a certain Palestinian resistance movement), and when the British tried to defeat them militarily (including via occupation) it only made matter worse. What did work however was stopping these policies which stripped Catholics from their civil rights, and granting them a political avenue for their prospects. Turns out that if you have political means for your goals, you are less likely to use terrorism.
I suspect above poster wrote zionism as a way to refer to neo-zionism, since people often mistakenly call nzo-zionist proponents that way.
The gist of the idea is that zionism is a "dead" ideology already, since it has reached its goal of creating a state. The remaining question about it is whether Israel should adhere to post-zionism or to neo-zionism.
Most people in the west opposing the current situation would probably fall in the post-zionist category if they were told about the concept.
Zionists don't control American foreign policy any more than does motherhood, apple pie, or General Mills breakfast cereals --- they are all just things that the American public is aligned on. Israel enjoys broad support in both parties, and that's in part because the voters of those parties support Israel.
Except unlike all of those things, explicitly Zionist organizations spend millions of dollars lobbying and campaigning. For example, AIPAC alone has spent almost $2 million to unseat Jamal Bowman in his race against George Latimer, whom AIPAC themselves recruited. [1].
“Controls American foreign policy” is hyperbolic; I don’t think support for Israel would just collapse if those orgs vanished. But come on, comparing Zionism to “motherhood” and “apple pie” is disingenuous.
That's a weird thing to oppose considering most parties see the control running exactly the other way. The US needs Israel more than Israel needs the US.
Honest question: why does the US need Israel? Or, to put it another way, what concrete help or advantages has Israel given the US over the last few decades?
Even in the (ill-conceived and disastrous) Iraq and Afghanistan wars other ME nations produced a lot more help than Israel did.
More complex answers involve having an allied county in an area with a lot of Russian influence.
The history is long and complex, but keep in mind Israel ran all by itself for decades, and defended itself in multiple wars, without any US help. It was when Russia started helping Egypt that the US recruited Israel. It was not the other way around.
For a while when Russia seemed powerless people started questioning the relationship, but after Ukraine it was re-energized.
Other answers are cultural: Israel is very similar to the US and Europe, same equal rights for citzens, same democracy, same culture of freedom. And the US is allied with all countries that are similar to it.
Nothing would happen. Israel has defended itself from multiple wars without US help, if anything Israel's enemies are weaker than they were in the past.
Weirdly enough it's actually Israel's enemies that benefit from the US - without the US Israel would just do what it needed to to stay safe, and never mind if the other country is hurt. Israel would not care, because their own security comes first.
With the US Israel is like "fine, we'll do the bare minimum".
This is also why all those people who what the US to stop helping Israel are so incredibly foolish. If Israel felt less secure they would fight with even greater ferocity. If you want Israel to stand down make them feel very very secure.
First, there's $330b of financial support since 1946. Access to advanced weapon systems since 1962. Crucial intelligence + diplomatic support in all the big wars (56/67/73); crucial munitions support, and an offer to send a large numbers of ground troops in 73. Solid and almost unquestioning diplomatic support (or acquiescence) of essentially every action Israel has taken since 67 (no matter how provocative or ultimately detrimental to its own interests), backed by the assurance of automatic UNSC veto of course.
In the current operation, you've got 2 carriers parked offshore along with other assets in the region; special access to fuel depots and arms caches (that even Ukraine doesn't get); technical support from U.S. companies like Google, etc.
The idea that Israel fights its wars "without US help" just ludicrous.
Meanwhile, in return -- Israel just doesn't provide all that much. The U.S. supports Israel mostly for ideological regions (such as the kindling that it provides to the apocalyptic fantasies of the Christian Right) and to please other domestic political constituencies; and yes, out of a legitimate sense of moral responsibility since the Holocaust -- but not because it really needs Israel to be around (in the sense that it needs the UK, Germany, Japan, etc). It objectively needs countries like Sweden and Turkey more than it needs Israel.
Completely cut off from U.S. aid -- it would survive of course, but under significantly diminished circumstances. In particular it would have to give up the Greater Israel project -- which it of course needs to do anyway, but it would have to do so much sooner, and in an abrupt, violatile way leaving it in a much less secure position than it would like to find itself shunted into.
If you want Israel to stand down make them feel very very secure.
This is of course the mantra we've hearing since 67. And which brought us to the place we're in now.
This is all extremely weak. The Biden administration could stop the war today by calling Netanyahu and saying they will cut off aid and protection guarantees if they don't. Reagan has actually done so in the past.
Everything else is domestic politics, and personal convictions for Biden. But Israel will not continue this war if the USA tells them to stop it. They are far too dependent on USA aid for it.
Edit: here is the full quote about the events in 1982:
2 P.M. (8 A.M., New York time) -The Israeli Cabinet meets. A message from President Reagan arrives, expressing ''outrage'' and, reportedly threatening to halt the Habib mission. The Cabinet decides to end the raids and order new ones only if they are ''essential.''
4 P.M. (10 A.M., New York time) -President Reagan tries for hour to call Mr. Begin but cannot get through. 4:50 P.M. (10:50 A.M., New York time) - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia calls Mr. Reagan. 5 P.M. (11 A.M., New York time) -A new cease-fire goes into effect in west Beirut. 5:10 P.M. (11:10 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Reagan reaches Mr. Begin for 10-minute telephone call. 5:40 P.M. (11:40 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Begin calls President Reagan to say that a ''complete cease-fire'' had been ordered.
The domestic political situation was different. Begin’s grip on power at the time seems like it was tenuous, the economy was in bad shape and the war had escalated out of control. It even seems that Begin wasn’t fully aware of what was going on in Lebanon. Netanyahu has already stated that they’ll continue without US support.
Sure, Netanyahu claims this in front of the cameras, but when the specter of delays in US aid was actually hanging in the air, Israeli officials were painting a very different picture [0]:
> Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein said that when he was on Capitol Hill last week, he told all of his interlocutors that the aid “is extremely urgent.”
> “This is aid for immediate needs, not for something we’ll use in a matter of years,” he emphasized to JI on Thursday.
The clear reality is that Israel, while extremely high tech, just doesn't have anywhere near the necessary production of ammunitions and weapons to act in this war without US aid. Especially if the USA and EU countries were to prohibit weapons shipments entirely (as they clearly should for any country currently engaging in a genocide).
Even the recent successful defense against the Iranian retaliation required direct US and French assistance, it wasn't possible with Israeli forces and equipment alone.
Israel is currently dependent on external munitions suppliers, which do not necessarily need to include the US. Israel did leverage US assistance to shoot down Iran's drone attack, but it also leveraged Arab state cooperation. It is probably not the case that Israel is existentially dependent on US military aid. It's worth remembering, though, that Israel wants that aid, and also wants the tacit endorsement of the United States, and is acutely aware that one of our two political parties is more committed to Israel's current leadership than the other; read anything they say with a grain of salt.
If the US and EU countries were to cut Israel off, what other options does it have? Russia is already importing various weapons, a good part of them from Iran, who will absolutely cut them off if they start helping Israel. India and Pakistan are not sympathetic to Israel. Arab countries will feel internal pressures if they become major suppliers to Israel. Who is then left? Would China really wade into this conflict, and endanger their own relations with the Arab world?
Their second largest trading partner is the second largest munitions supplier in the world. Further: the Arab world is not in fact aligned against Israel. They are much more concerned about Iran than they are about Palestine.
None of this is going to happen, because everybody involved is aware that Israel would be sustainable after a realignment away from the west. Everything gets worse for everybody (except China) after that occurs, so it won't be allowed to occur.
(It's further mooted by the fact that opposition to Israel is largely an Internet phenomenon; Israel enjoys broad, bipartisan popular support in the US, Gaza is at the very bottom of polled issues in order of importance to the electorate, and a very significant chunk (possibly more than half) of people rating Gaza as important support Israel.)
I did not say that the Arab world is united against Israel. However, there is significant anti-Israeli public sentiment everywhere in the Arab world, even more so than against Iran. Even if Arab leaders are not as sensitive to public sentiment as more democratic countries, they can't easily ignore it entirely, and becoming the main supporter of Israel is not a comfortable domestic position for any Arab leader.
Also, you are grossly misrepresenting public opinion in the USA and the EU. In the USA there is a significant and extremely vocal minority, especially among the Democratic party base, that deeply care for the genocide in Gaza. This has been visible in the major student protests, and in the significant protest votes in Democratic primaries (>10% undecided in some states!). And given the extremely tight election, this is very likely to cause issues for Biden. Now, whether reversing support for the genocide would cause larger issues is debatable, but I think unlikely - as most of the avid Israel-can-do-no-wrong supporters are not going to vote against Trump anyway.
In Europe the situation is even more difficult for the pro-genocide camp, as the population, especially in Western Europe, and doubly especially among the significant Arab, Pakistani, Indian, Turkish, and North African immigrants, is much more sensitive to the issue of colonial genocide.
The student protests, which are for obvious reasons not representative of the whole population, are themselves numerically a small portion of the faculty and staff at the institutions they're taking place at. Excellent recent examples of this: repeated instances of walkouts or sit/stand protests at commencement ceremonies, where everyone involved is arranged out on a field, almost as if to make these kinds of tallies easy to make (but serious tallies of protests at Columbia, Chicago, and UCLA have also been made). It just doesn't take a lot of people to make a lot of noise.
The "10% undecided" thing is a statistical null result, mirroring the last Democratic reelection campaign (Obama's, against Romney), which didn't include any attempted organized effort to lodge protest votes with "undecided" and still ran up those counts.
Polling --- Pew is a good place to start --- shows Israel below every other "major" issue, even among 18-29 year olds --- except (ironically) student debt. The issue gets less important as you go up in age brackets into cohorts that actually turn out and vote.
The groundswell of support for Palestine in America is, I believe, largely an Internet phenomenon. It's easy to forget that we're the weird people who tune in to this stuff. Most people just live their lives, and, for reasons that are straightforward to understand, care a lot more that a 12 pack of Diet Coke got weirdly expensive than about whatever is happening across the world. We have the same problem marshaling support for Ukraine!
> What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront. You can't really do diplomacy wth a world leader while at the same time saying (or implying) that they belong in the Hague.
He doesn't have to do diplomacy with them. He could call their bluff. He could unilaterally start delivering food and dare anyone to stop him. If Israel starts killing "3-5x as many civilians" he could declare war on Israel.
All of these are things he could do. Won't. But could.
The US Navy can unilaterally establish supply operations by sea almost anywhere in the world. If a carrier group sailed in and started setting up a port in Gaza to deliver food, there's no chance Israel would be able to do anything about it.
Right, this is like an Orson Scott Card fantasy. Which, don't let me yuck your yums or anything, but no, this isn't really a possible scenario. Israel will be an Article 5 NATO member before it is a military adversary of the United States (neither thing will happen, but if we're betting on impossible scenarios.)
I agree that the scenario is quite unlikely but I brought it up to dispute an argument you made: That, as the US has to negotiate with Israel, they have to go against the ICC.
My point is that the US could "assent to the validity of the ICC charges". The "fantasy" is several unlikely escalations away after that, and even that scenario is something that the US could deal with.
So ruling out that they go against the ICC because they have to, we can conclude that they go against the ICC because they want to.
The US doesn't even assent to the validity of the ICC itself, let alone the recent charges. If the whole argument is an attempt to dispose of the question of whether the US cooperates with, recognizes, or cares about the ICC, that question is disposed of: the US does not. I think the Hague Liberation bill is silly and performative, but let the record show that we have a statute obligating us to invade the Hague if the ICC breathes on us the wrong way.
Something like half the world's population doesn't acknowledge the ICC. And the ICC hasn't covered itself in glory over the last 20 years --- the Darfur fiasco being the most obvious example.
All this just brings me back to: the ICC charges are a political act (fair enough! politics matter!) and should be evaluated on their political effectiveness. The predictable result of the charges: the leader of the only political party in the US that even ostensibly cares about Palestine disavowed the charges. How'd that help?
I think that "an enforced naval military blockade of Gazan seafront since 2007" is a more accurate phrasing of that state of affairs than "Israel's leaders may object...".
> reporting suggests that Biden's team has been the only thing between the current situation and abyss that would kill 3-5x as many civilians
Um. What?
Biden's team vetoed UN calls for a ceasefire three times.
Biden's team has delivered how many billions of dollars of weapons in the last 8 months?
Biden's team has consistently and repeatedly lied in front of the whole world, saying that they see "no evidence" of genocide. This, during the most documented mass murder in all history. This, despite clear and unequivocal genocidal statements from Israeli leadership, media, and populace.
How many people have resigned from his team now, saying they can't have this much Palestinian blood on their hands any more? To claim that Biden has prevented deaths in the last 8 months is breathtaking. At every juncture he and the team he still has have been complicit.
I think this here is what Hilary Clinton was talking about recently... she got panned in the media for it, but I'm pretty sure she was right (and I'm by no means a fan).
You seem to be saying in your above comment that Biden's only possible choice is to appease Israel to hopefully get some humanitarian concessions from them. This is probably true due to the reality of American domestic politics, but if we ignore that then other choices are obvious. Treat Israel as we once treated South Africa. Force regime change by isolating them.
Yes, that is what I am saying. Cutting off arms sales to Israel will not prevent a supply blockade of Gaza or a Rafah invasion, both of which are issues that the US has publicly campaigned on --- we don't know what other red lines the US has set up, or how much worse this could yet become. Contrary to popular belief, it's not at all clear that Israel is dependent on the US militarily; we're a small part of their defense budget.
I think domestic politics are certainly a factor, but not a big one in an ICC case, because Americans, to a first approximation, do not give a shit about the ICC; further, we aren't a party to the ICC, so it's not as if the administration is being asked to do something or help adjudicate.
I want to say again that I think this particular case is well-founded. But an ICC warrant against the leader of a non-signatory is fundamentally a political act, and while I don't take issue with the stated intent of that act, I don't get the theory of change behind it.
I put it to you directly: what good comes of this while Netanyahu remains in power?
Bush's settlement policies didn't work at all. West Bank settlements drastically increased in the years following that showdown. Can you look at a graph and spot the point where Bush "brought Israel in line"?
(I kind of like Bush 1, at least as a competent operator with some discernible principles, and think Israeli settlement of the West Bank is abhorrent).
I think that's unlikely to be true. I think it's a self-serving western myth that Israel, with one of the largest economies and the best trained and resourced military in the region (see the Arab States performance vs. the IRGC in Syria and Yemen for counterexamples) is a US-dependent proxy. The west tried to ice Russia out of supplies for the Ukranian invasion, and that didn't work despite near-unanimity. Israel will just buy bombs from China, which is their next largest trading partner after us. We will lose all influence over Israeli policy, at least until [insert US partisan political argument here].
(I also think it's not at all clear that serious policymakers in Israel "want Gazan land", let alone need it; the messianic nutballs bolstering Netanyahu's coalition are, to put it mildly, not representative of mainstream Israel policy thinking.)
A reminder that we're just talking about this stuff here; this is HN, not the UN Security Council. If we're going to have threads like this here, we're going to have to accept that we're having curious conversations, not high-stakes deliberations. So: I can be wrong about all of this stuff, and I'm glad to hear why. But we're not going to solve Israel/Gaza on a thread.
(You didn't say anything to prompt that disclaimer, it's just a stress reaction from previous threads).
I think the biggest thing the US is doing for Israel is discouraging regional actors from getting involved. If the US took no position here either way, the conflict would probably turn into a proxy war pretty quickly. Whether you think that's good or not depends on your viewpoint. I personally prefer that the states in the area, even if they don't necessarily directly represent the Palestinians, negotiate the conflict because they have to deal with the fallout on their own borders/politics.
Being able to purchase weapons from the US also gives them significant political latitude internally. When a significant amount of your economy and government spending goes to making weapons, you're going to affect domestic budgets, which will make coalition building much harder especially in a country with as many small parties as Israel. We see this in Russia as well but because Russia is not democratic when it comes to defense allocation, it simply throws its dissidents in jail or encourages them to leave.
Or just make them themselves. That seems fully within their capabilities if push comes to shove. After all, we are talking about bombs not fighter jets.
> (I also think it's not at all clear that serious policymakers in Israel "want Gazan land", let alone need it; the messianic nutballs bolstering Netanyahu's coalition are, to put it mildly, not representative of mainstream Israel policy thinking.)
And yet are regularly re-elected. And have been for decades.
It is not the case that the ultra-right fringe parties like Jewish Power had governing power for decades. It's a parliamentary system, weirdos get elected to the Knesset, but the governing authorities --- at least prior to Netanyahu, and even during Sharon's time! --- were normies, not neo-Kahanist terrorists. It's easy to find lots and lots of political analysis about why this has happened, much of it having to do with the probability that Netanyahu could wind up imprisoned (for things having nothing to do with Gaza) once he fails to assemble a governing coalition.
This dynamic – a political leader trying to run away from justice – has, historically been a very common way in which states fail; which is why a lot of people who pay close attention to such things are very concerned about the state of US democracy.
I believe that 'tptacek's point could be summarized as "the facts are, in a real sense, not material to this conversation, as we are operating entirely with the domain of realpolitik rather than morality".
Biden, in _theory_, could say to Israel that "continued arms supplies are contingent on surrendering Netanyahu and Gallant to The Hague immediately", but a) it's not at all clear that that would work, b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse, and c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
I hate all of that too, and it doesn't speak well of us as a society or species, but what _should_ happen and what _would_ happen are two very different things.
> tptacek's point could be summarized as "the facts are, in a real sense, not material to this conversation
Tptacek is demonstrating this well by editing the part of the comment I quoted, then acting confused. However, I don't subscribe to the idea that facts are not material to discussions involving claims of fact.
The claim Biden is preventing deaths in Gaza while sending the bombs that are killing them and vetoing ceasefire resolutions left right and center, even against the will of his own voters, would require stronger evidence than has been provided.
Also, international law, including the Genocide Convention, is binding on all signatory states. 'Realpolitik' is not a defense for complicity in genocide.
However, let's look at your abc points, ignoring international law for the moment:
a) it's not at all clear that that would work
We've skipped past the issue, which is that we shouldn't be sending arms at all at this point. We also have other leverage which hasn't been used yet - sanctions, trade restrictions, etc.
b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse
This has merit - Israel did threaten to use more unguided bombs if the arms flow stopped. Too bad Biden's people vetoed the UN ceasefire resolutions three times, against the will of basically the entire planet. What about the realpolitik of that loss in our global standing?
c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
Believe it or not, and despite tptacek's claims above that most people don't care, polls in fact show that significantly more registered Democrats disapprove of Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza (sending arms) than approve, and that this is affecting their vote [0].
> "This issue is a stone-cold loser for Biden," said Douglas Schoen, a pollster and strategist who reviewed the Reuters/Ipsos poll results. "He's losing votes from the left, right and center."
The 'political repercussions' case is pretty flimsy [0].
Bigger picture - this disagreement seems fundamentally rooted in conflicting political philosophies, as alluded to above. More facts are not going to change that.
An example... "'Realpolitik' is not a defense complicity in genocide." Says who? I mean I agree with you on the face of things, but who gets to decide what genocide means? And what does it mean for international law to be "binding on all signatory states"? Some view overconfidence in this notion as Wilson's great and lasting mistake.
Unfortunately, there is no compiler that can adjudicate these types of questions for us.
Realpolitik is a defense. The ICC issues a verdict that your committing war crimes, and are to be put to death. Your 10 carrier strike group, says you aren't, therefore you are not put to death. Proving that the court of the carrier strike group is superior to the court of the ICC.
Maybe your court of carrier strike group says the ICC judges are committing war crimes, issues a warrant for their arrest, the SEAL team executes the warrant against the fugitives from justice, and tries, convicts and executes them.
If you still think realpolitik isn't a defense, look at a practitioner of it like Kissinger, ask yourself why Pinochet, et al, were tried, but say Kissinger was not for Operation Condor.
You need to make a distinction between positive (what-is) claims and normative (what-ought) claims. When you say realpolitik is a "defence", whether or not it is actually used as a "defence" in reality is disconnected on the validity of that position as a moral fact.
Outside of a courtroom, and ignoring all international law and externalities, sure. Within the Hague, or the parts of the world where international justice is respected, not so much.
> the court of the carrier strike group is superior to the court of the ICC.
Until your 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms. Or no country wants to trade with you any more, because you can't be trusted and their citizens are furious.
Or until China utterly dominates you economically and geopolitically, because they invested in growth instead of carrier groups. Or until you're stretched too thin on too many fronts and no one wants to help any more, or any of the other unintended (possibly world-ending) consequences of our wilful and belligerent disrespect of long established international law.
... But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
This still is not quite grappling with the fundamental issue imo
Realpolitik, in the sense Morgenthau and Kissinger understood it, absolutely takes into account management of public opinion and risks related to violation of international standards. It just does not only take those into account in decisions related to national interests.
> But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
This is stated as a fact and dismissed on the basis of a tacit moral argument rather than reasoning. Why would the claim be silly? I see no reason for those statements to be cast aside as un-addressable or 'farcical'.
On the other hand...
> 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms
If this were possible Houthi drones would have done it already (against a single carrier).
> because they [China] invested in growth instead of carrier groups
China has been investing heavily in their military for three decades [0]. And we will see about that growth part... it is not looking so rosy for Xi currently.
You are advocating for extrajudicial killing, which is a war crime, and you are advocating for targeting civilian groups based on the believes that they are destined to do crime in the future?
This is an extremely racist opinion. And I would go so far as call it genocidal speech. This post needs to be removed from HN.
The killing of combatants and combatant support personnel without judicial authorization is not in fact a war crime. The term you're looking for here is hors de combat, which was coined specifically to separate out the people who can't be extrajudicially killed during a war.
I don't understand the preceding comment well enough to defend it or to see the racism in it; there is context I am probably missing.
> From the river to the sea what is the only flag you see?
In it’s most favorable interpretation is a call to keep Palestinians subjugated and stripped of political and civil rights. This speech has been used to promote a Jewish ethnostate, which is in fact racist, and in the worst cases this speech is used to advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
At best this is an advocacy for a racist policy, at worst this is genocidal speech.
> Well, the IDF is executing lots of war criminals, even future ones in Gaza ;)
I can’t take this any other way then the author is stating that killing of innocent civilians in Gaza is justified because otherwise they were destined to become war criminals.
This kind of speech was very common among people justifying police brutality and neighborhood crackdown against black people in the USA. It is extremely racist as it stipulates that Palestinians, by merit of being Palestinians, are inherently bad people and deserve to die.
It was the precious reference (backed by a smiley no less) to how the good the current operation is at killing "future" war criminals -- obviously referring to minors. Who are also just as obviously being collectively subject to air strikes for the crime of being you-know-what.
It was a truly disgusting comment, actually. Unfortunately "frank" and deeply revelatory expressions of this sort are by no means unusual in the sphere of public discourse that supports the current operation in Gaza. From the highest levels down.
The reality of life is my dads apartment was bombed by the US when he was growing up. War sucks. It’s not racist but you can’t let Hamas run things, that’s just the way it is.
Sometimes it sucks when your apartment is in the same town as a ball bearing factory.
The Air Force didn’t give anyone a weeks heads up either, what the IDF is doing is so far from a war crime it’s not even funny.
>Biden's team vetoed UN calls for a ceasefire three times.
"Calls for ceasefire" that didn't include "calls to release the hostages", to say nothing of the fact that Hamas leadership had already been shouting they would "repeat October 7th again and again until the final destruction of Israel" and so on.
It's really not in Israel's interests to hamper any aid if it ever was. There's no need to coerce on this point. Biden could have gone 'Yay ICC!' and still got cooperation here.
Israel has three alternatives:
Option 1: Do a real siege (never tried. Gaza has less malnutrition deaths than Cali according to their own figures, and besides everything would have been over months ago if it did. That's the real weakness with the ICC case).
Option 2: Provide aid yourself (expensive).
Option 3: Let other people do it for you and not pay for it.
Obviously the optimal choice is the last one. The real differences between US and Israel are elsewhere (e.g. delusional postwar planning by both sides).
It's a PR play ultimately, they can't just say "Netanyahoo is a war criminal, K thx bai". That would call the court's judgement into question for a lot of people. If massacring civilians and aid workers is a war crime, then yeah, he's a war criminal, but they have to also address the elephant in the room, that Hamas is also wantonly committing war crimes and is calling for even more even though they're significantly less powerful in this dynamic.
I don't like this "but Hamas is worse" rethoric. War crimes are ware crimes, you're not allowed to commit them because the other side is worse than you.
This may be how things played out after the second world war, but it's a horrible standard to live by. If the ICC has any integrity, they won't take "but they started it" as an excuse.
Under the Geneva conventions, yes, but the Rome statute only copies select passages of the Geneva convention, and I don't believe the "we can commit war crimes as long as you don't promise not to commit war crimes" is part of what's copied.
The Rome Statute does allow foe the ICC to convict according to the Geneva conventions as well, but the exemptions therein don't necessarily apply.
First of all, "In cases not covered by this Protocol or by other international agreements, civilians and combatants remain under the protection and authority of the principles of international law derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity and from the dictates of public conscience." (Article 1, second paragraph, Additional Protocol I.)
Second, both Israel and Palestine have signed the main conventions. Israel with reservations, and have not signed AP I and II. Palestine have signed all of them, unconditionally.
Since both are signatories, they are both bound by the conventions even if the other party breaks them.
It should also be noted that the geneva conventions have passed into customary international law. They apply even to countries that haven't signed them.
> Aren't you? I thought the Geneva convention and similar treaties all require reciprocity.
No, i don't think so.
To quote the fourth geneva convention (fourth convention is the part related to treatment of civilians):
> Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.
For the same reason they didn't issue a warrant against the Israel government over the past twenty years: the conflict spiraled out of control months ago.
In 2019, the ICC got involved following the 2014 Gaza war and concluded that war crimes were taking place (on both sides, in different ways), but they concluded that they lacked jurisdiction. Investigations has been ongoing ever since.
You're not wrong, but the world is imperfect and they're forced into this weird role of being both a political institution and an "international court" which, as constructs go, doesn't make a lot of sense.
Short of going full "one world government" or the next best thing, "team america world police" you can't really violate state sovereignty even if someone is doing atrocities so instead you need to convince key players or a critical mass that something should be done. If successful, you can then tighten the screws on that person as fast as you can get all the relevant bureaucracies moving.
By combing these warrants into a single press release they've completely lost any legitimacy.
There were no "screws needed" to issue an arrest warrant against Hamas months ago. Yet they didn't.
They should have issued arrest warrants years ago against Hamas for deliberately firing into civilian territory. It's an easy case to make, no one at all claims Hamas didn't do that.
But, nope, they did not issue any warrant.
No, they only issued a warrant against Hamas to pretend like they have some balance in trying to issue a warrant against Netanyahu.
It's no longer Netanyahu on trial, it's actually now ICC that is on trial. If the ICC actually grants the warrant against Netanyahu they have proven themselves to be a bunch of clowns with no legitimacy.
Yeah, again, you're not wrong. While I'd maybe call that position a bit idealistic, it is really weird that they didn't go after various people earlier. That said, they don't have their own carrier strike group so they have to generate international cooperation. The US is already kinda iffy on the ICC's existence because they've called out our war criminals before and, for reasons I don't fully understand, that's a problem. The whole thing is very...contrived I guess?
A big complication is that on the one hand you have an identifiable army, on the other hand you have something akin to a militia/guerrilla where combatants and non-combatants are hard to ID often because one person can be both. When you have a resistance it get further muddied because like in WWII France, the resistance was civilians. So you can be a civilian and a combatant.
Things like what Milosevic or what Janjaweed leaders do are identifiable.
International law looks at this differently. There's a huge difference between targeting civilians and striking genuine military targets that have civilian human shields, especially after issuing a warning and taking reasonable precautions. The first is a war crime, the second is actually allowed by Geneva conventions. The phrase “killing civilians” throws these differences out of the window and simply shouldn't be used in intelligent conversion about this topic.
> There's a huge difference between targeting civilians and striking genuine military targets that have civilian human shields
Even in the latter case, the cost to civilian lives has to be proportional to the the military value/lives saved long-term by ending the threat. This is not proportional: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
But unfortunately, the latter case does not account for all that we've seen in the last few months and years. There's been plenty of "targeting civilians" too
As far as i understand, Israel disputes much of this (not that civilians have died, but that it has been non porpotional). ICC is innocent until proven guilty, so its going to take more evidence than anonoymous leaks to get a guilty verdict.
Additionally they werent charged on the basis of unporportionality afaik, i think all the charges are based around failing to let in enough food aid, causing a famine.
> i think all the charges are based around failing to let in enough food aid, causing a famine
No, starvation is only one of the alleged offences: "the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza"
I guess we'll have to wait and see what the case is when it gets to trial. The legal report https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-p... makes it sound like the primary thing is alleged use of starvation, with other attacks being in the context of that (with the caveat that other charges are still under investigation):
> The Prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister
of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, on the basis that they
committed the war crime of ‘intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of
warfare’ under article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the ICC Statute. The Prosecutor also seeks to
charge the two suspects with various other war crimes and crimes against humanity
associated with the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare under articles
7 and 8 of the ICC Statute
> especially after issuing a warning and taking reasonable precautions
Ahh, yes, like when the IDF told Gazan civilians by evacuation order to move to the south of Gaza because they were going to intensify bombing in the north.
And then increased bombing of southern Gaza by 85% in the next 10 days...
Does anybody look at it like that though? If a sibling of yours was accidentally killed in a car accident would you consider that to be the equivalent as somebody deliberately running down your sibling? While the end result is the same the intent is different.
Maybe you could argue Israel is not accidentally doing this, but collateral damage of civilians will almost always happen regardless of how careful attacks are planned. I don't think there has ever been a war that occurred in such a densely packed area that has had no civilian causalities.
Then you disagree with international law and common sense. If my siblings are killed with a rocket that targeted a hospital turned a weapon silo, I would blame those who put the weapons there, not those who launched the rocket.
> But there is version of this where weapons at the hospital are removed by force, without bombing it.
Version A (what happens now): Israel calls everybody in the vicinity of the hospital, gives them time to evacuate. Then Israel strikes the hospital with a missile without a warhead. Then Israel actually bombs it.
Version B (what you suggest): IDF storms in with guns blazing.
What version, in your opinion, will result in more civilian deaths?
The Israeli army would use their miliary assets on the ground. They invaded and established a temporary occupying force to deal with Hamas, so resources other than air are available.
The air force can hit the targets required around the hospital to allow an easier time for ground forces. Reach the hospital, and use those ground forces to secure it.
They already use ground assets. Your plan needs more detail. When the IDF ground forces enter a hospital hallway where Hamas terrorists have positioned hostages in front of them and behind them, what should the IDF do? N.B.: the terrorists are shooting at them.
What do you imagine that demonstrates aside from that it is possible for mistakes to occur? Especially when you're fighting an enemy for whom it is an advantage for you to kill its own population for the propaganda value.
And what makes you think the IDF is so discerning in their targets? They attacked the USS Liberty with the intention of killing everyone aboard knowing it was a US vessel and they've been continuously killing tens of thousands of women and children, they also purposely target and kill journalists
These things are easily googlable yet you haven't bothered to do the slightest bit of reading before dismissing the claims outright. Even the US president had said that the attack on the Liberty was 100% intentional while knowing it was a US vessel
While I understand your point about the optics of it, optics should play no role in determining whether somebody is guilty of war crimes. When optics are a primary factor, war crime laws are a tool the powerful use to punish the weak.
I have my issues with the ICC, but they are supposed to enforce international law impartially.
These warrants were released simultaneously even though Hamas broadcast the footage immediately after Oct 7. (The footage of the man being decapitated with a hoe was even shown live from the UN, before the news cut off the broadcast.)
The real issue with the warrants isn't 'equating'. It's the political point to cover two deeper issues:
First, that Biden admin and others can't escape culpability for any such claim if it's considered credible. Second, the dubious factual basis (trucks were allowed in all the time; temporary port and air supply obviously with Israel's approval; the very low malnutrition death count according to Gaza health ministry's own reports).
The first made the admin's reply inevitable. The second made it even more likely, but it's a too complex point for PR I guess, so they went with 'equating'.
Biden technically has authority to invade the Netherlands if they arrest any member of the military or government of Israel under the American Service-Members' Protection Act since Israel is a major non-NATO ally.
>I personally can't believe the ICC is equating the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government. What a shameful organization.
I agree 100%! Over the past year, Israel has caused orders of magnitude more innocent deaths by terrorist actions (as outlined in the warranted issued here), has a much higher civilian death rate during military operations (Oct 7 was around 60%, while IDF's battles have been higher, with both sides hiding military targets within civilian areas) and should be taken far more seriously, as their support from other national aggressors like the US makes them far more dangerous.
> How far will the US and/or Israel go to threaten or discredit the ICC leadership?
If warrants are issued, I’d bet at least the House votes to sanction the ICC [1]. If Trump wins, I’d bet it passes. (Which is ironic, since every moment of attention on Israel and Palestine is a win for Trump. This war is Biden’s abortion debate. He’s checkmated, with massive vote losses regardless of what he does.)
Yes. I reckon Trump will win this presidency purely on the number of conscience voters not voting for Biden this time around. I don’t think the (probably PR) building of the port is going to save Biden here.
That is not to say I think Trump would have handled the situation any better. I’m sure it would have been fuel on the fire.
Can we all agree on one single thing though:
The Governments of USA, Germany, UK and Israel would be best informing the world of their definition of genocide as there is definitely a massive difference in opinion of what genocide is. It is super important. If they can explain why and how what is happening doesn’t match the definition of genocide agreed upon in the Genocide Convention of 1948 then maybe the world will stop using the word. But until they can change everyone’s minds, people are going to keep believing it. I think that would solve a lot of this back and forward.
They absolutely are. Really everyone with a non-cynical opinion in this whole mess, on both sides, is deeply unserious. There are no solutions here, at all. Everyone wants something terrible. Push one side and you eventually get to "The Palestinians Deserve What They Get". Push the other and you get to "Jews are Colonizers Who Need to be Driven Out". And BOTH SIDES use the term "genocide", largely incorrectly, to describe those horrors and are SHOCKED AND OFFENDED that anyone would describe their own opinions so.
I've just given up. My general political feelings align mostly with the Palestinians here, if for no other reason than it stops the immediate bleeding faster. But there will be no peace here, not within our lifetimes.
> Really everyone with a non-cynical opinion in this whole mess, on both sides, is deeply unserious. There are no solutions here, at all. Everyone wants something terrible.
You've put my thoughts into words better than I could.
I'm not seeing a happy ending to this story, ever. I keep thinking about the turf war storyline in The Last of Us II (which was clearly written as an allegory for the Israel-Palestine conflict), and I think the storyline's conclusion was apt. There is only death and misery ahead. Get out if and while you can, and don't look back.
I disagree, but I appreciate your opinion regardless.
The thing is, there is a definition of Genocide and while I think what Hamas did in October was absolutely monstrous I just can’t logically conclude they committed Genocide. So anyone saying that is just ‘saying it’ if you catch my drift. But for what is happening in Gaza, I just want my Government to explain why so I can know for sure that I am mistaken about it and it isn’t genocide. The definition shows it is, but my Govt are saying that it isn’t. It just feels like a whole load of double think to me. Y’know what I mean? If there’s a definition of what it is, then why is the world seeing with their eyes it is genocide and a few powerful allies of Israel saying it isn’t.
Why does logic need to be so controversial eh? A definition is right there yet ‘opinions’ are taken more than fact in this age.
Feeling the same as you - won’t be any peace in the middle east at this rate.
...is not all of what Hamas is responsible for, nor a limited statement of its goals or desires. Nor frankly does it even reflect the limits of what non-palestinians like you are calling for. All the kids in NYC chanting "From the River to the Sea" are embracing a genocidal frame (that the expulsion of an existing population from its home is an OK thing to do). And... you don't really care, and choose to excuse that while you condemn the other side.
And so you (yes, you personally) are making things worse and not better. Because when Hamas or whoever finally gets to the line with an army capable of marching across it, they'll think they have your support.
Like I said, there will be no peace here. And the reason is opinions like yours that choose to excuse one evil while you rail against another.
I read and then re-read the parent. It does not not appear that he has been discussing the totality of both 'sides' actions ( and there is a loooong history there ), but rather focused on most recent Hamas action and Israel's response to it.
From where I sit, OP is not wrong. It is tiring - it is especially tiring when it is couched in moralistic 'you should support <my side>' with the undertone of 'because we are the good guys'. I am starting to seriously doubt there are good guys here.
<< And so you (yes, you personally) are making things worse and not better. Because when Hamas or whoever finally gets to the line with an army capable of marching across it, they'll think they have your support.
And I guess this is the weirdest part. There is really one army in this conflict. An army with technology, training, supplies and knowledge seemingly to do whatever is needed -- some of it courtesy of American taxpayer -- and still managing to fail so hard across the board against seemingly inferior enemy, who adopted guerrilla warfare.
<< And the reason is opinions like yours that choose to excuse one evil while you rail against another.
I remain unconvinced. OP is not excusing anything. Personally, I can easily say Hamas is bad.
Can you openly say Israel's response is bad? Can you even openly state its response is 'over the top'?
No? Then the discussion will remain fruitless and the issue will remain as-is for and will not be solved within our lifetimes. Might as well check out and keep US semi-safe.
> Can you openly say Israel's response is bad? Can you even openly state its response is 'over the top'?
Israel's response is bad. Israel's response is 'over the top'.
Can you state that responses to that which embrace eliminationist goals are likewise bad? Do you condemn not just "Hamas" but Palestinian nationalist aims (oft-parroted by activist westerners who don't really understand what it means) of retaking the 1948 land? Or do you just look the other way and figure The Jews Have It Coming? You're picking a side here, whether you admit it or not. And picking a side means that someone loses.
<< Can you state that responses to that which embrace eliminationist goals are likewise bad?
Sure, elimanationist goals are likewise bad. I will go even further, it is a really bad idea for the humanity to go down that path, because, if history taught us anything, it is really, really hard to stop violence once it starts.
<< Do you condemn not just "Hamas" but Palestinian nationalist aims?
Can you define those a little more closely? I am hedging, because it is already moving way past the discussion at play and if want to evaluate all nations nationalist aims, I am not sure we should be limiting ourselves to just Palestinians.
<< You're picking a side here, whether you admit it or not.
I worry that you may have chosen a side and are not arguing in good faith ( whether you admit it or not ). Based on your statement, no matter what I say, you have already made a determination about me and my views. That is fine. I am ok with stopping this conversation here. I am not expecting to change minds. I was, however, expecting more.
<< And picking a side means that someone loses.
Does it really have to be that way? Is it truly a zero-sum game? It is not a rhetorical question. I am curious if you can imagine a non-binary world.
> I worry that you may have chosen a side and are not arguing in good faith
Which side do you think I've picked? What can I say to convince you that I haven't? There are no solutions here. There can be no Palestinian homeland within the 1948 borders without terrible violence. There will be no peace within Gaza and the West Bank without it. At best we can achieve a detent for a while and an end to the immediate violence, with a pie-in-the-sky best case of some kind of end to the west bank settlement activity and maybe a little clawing back of recently-taken territory.
If you're asking for more than that, on either side, you're perpetuating the conflict and making things worse. Because eventually we'll get to a stage where one side isn't dominant, and what happens then is an actual shooting war with millions of civilian casualties.
Zero disagreement. This is an HN thread. It is not even intended for a solution. The fact that is even discussed here is an indicator how unusual a conflict it is.
I am not a dignitary. I hold zero to no real world power. Frankly, if I did, I assume I would not be discussing stuff online for practical reasons. As it stands, its just two humans talking.
<< There can be no Palestinian homeland within the 1948 borders without terrible violence.
I will ignore for a moment the 1948 restriction.
I look at this from an outsider point of view so when I see words like this, I can't help but respond with 'but there already is terrible violence; how exactly do you want to escalate it?'
<< actual shooting war with millions of civilian casualties.
There already is a shooting war with all the horrors war can bring. The only thing missing is millions of civilian casualties. And it does not look like it ( war ) is being contained. If anything, there is a growing risk of expanding and moving beyond ME region.
<< If you're asking for more than that
Best I can ask for is a plea that both sides stop. Right now, this is probably the only reasonable way to stop immediate violence. And I suppose we can worry about 'day after' then. But as I mentioned before, once the violence starts, it may be hard to stop.
<< Because eventually we'll get to a stage where one side isn't dominant
Because it worked so well now with a dominant party?
<< pie-in-the-sky best case of some kind of end to the west bank settlement activity and maybe a little clawing back of recently-taken territory
So what do we do? Nothing? It goes full circle to 'there are no solutions here'.
edit:
I think I will be removing myself from the remainder of this conversation. It was genuinely interesting to me so I thank you for your answers. It looks like it is going to be a long week here as I am starting to get half panicky dms.
> I will ignore for a moment the 1948 restriction.
Demanding people leave their homes doesn't work. They fight. They kill. They'll starve. They'll die. This is exactly the problem we're seeing in Gaza, and it's just amazing to me that you don't understand it's symmetric.
It doesn't matter who you think "should" be living there, Israelis actually are. Homes are homes. People in the western pro-palestinian movement have fooled themselves into thinking that Israelis will just move to The Bronx or Palo Alto or whatever, and that's not remotely how it works.
> Because it worked so well now with a dominant party?
It's working comparatively well, yes. Both Israeli and Gazan casualties are bad, but low relative to total population. That's not the way real ethnic wars work, usually. If a Palestinian army thinks they can actually win, they'll invade and kill everyone. Because to their worldview it's their land and the Jews are invaders, and that's what you do with invaders. It shocks me the extent to which people don't understand this.
<< It doesn't matter who you think "should" be living there, Israelis actually are.
Hmm, are you suggesting that the moment Palestinian settler is able to eke out a piece of land he/she is able to defend from Israel, it is automatically acceptable ( in a might is right kind of way )? Is this really an argument we should be putting forward? Does it not clash with your previous statements somewhat?
<< it's just amazing to me that you don't understand it's symmetric.
Do I really though? Is it possible you are trying to force me into a particular convenient label? It makes no practical difference, but I would like you to note that most of the people here are used to 'internet argumentation tactics'.
<< It doesn't matter who you think "should" be living there
My friend, this is the reason we are unable to keep this conversation going. You are putting words in my mouth.
<< It shocks me the extent to which people don't understand this.
What is there to understand? Violence begets violence.
> My friend, this is the reason we are unable to keep this conversation going. You are putting words in my mouth.
My apologies, I took your evasion of the homeland border issue as evidence that you didn't want to treat with the fact that it's completely unresolvable. If that's not the case, I'm happy. But you're still not giving ground here and unless you do, you're basically siding with and supporting the aims of the folks who want to ethnically cleanse the levant.
Once more, to repeat: Israel's actions in and administration of the West Bank and Gaza are terrible injustices. But they're stable injustices and just "turning off" Israeli dominance in the region, which seems to be your goal, is going to hurt things very badly.
<< My apologies, I took your evasion of the homeland border issue as evidence that you didn't want to treat with the fact that it's completely unresolvable.
No worries. It was an evasion guided by trying not to muddy the waters further. I am not sure, bringing border issue into the mix would make anything clearer. It would likely force us down the history lane along with all the distractions associated with it, discussing sources, whether they are valid, biased, accurate and so on.. and while I am sure it would be a really interesting conversation to have, I do not think I am the right person to discuss it.
<< you're basically siding with and supporting the aims of the folks who want to ethnically cleanse the levant.
I purposefully choose not to align myself with either. I am, as it were, neutral, partially because I have no direct stake in outcome ( although I am open to argumentation on this front -- would you be able to make a case for it being useful to US interests ). If it makes you feel any better, I approach question of Ukraine in roughly the same way ( and I technically have a bigger stake in outcome there ).
<< But they're stable injustices and just "turning off" Israeli dominance in the region, which seems to be your goal, is going to hurt things very badly.
I find the phrase 'stable injustices' interesting and I suppose it does speak to something deep within us when as long we know something bad is coming, it is not as bad, because it is just the way life ( currently ) is. All of a sudden, its all ok, because it is, what it is. Might as well complain about the weather really. Pointless.
Do you not find it mildly depressing that you have effectively excused 'terrible injustices' by saying they are at least stable ( and predictable I suppose )?
As for goals, I am not sure I have actual goals here. If I did, I think this conversation would be more structured. But it isn't. I chat with you in this manner precisely, because my mind is not made up and, if it helps, you do offer interesting counter-arguments.
With that in mind, can you elaborate on how 'turning off' Israeli dominance would 'hurt things very badly'? I am a sucker for balance so it is possible I am missing something.
I'm not the person you're replying to, but I'll try.
Assume that October 7 is what Hamas and Hezbollah would do on a much larger scale if Israel were militarily weaker than them. (You could, for example, take the Hamas charter as reason to think that.)
In that process nine million people get killed or displaced, with "killed" being a significant fraction. That's orders of magnitude worse than the status quo. Note that "who's right" has nothing to do with that evaluation - it's just based on the body count.
That I think is the case that the current "stable balance" is better. Even though it is tragic, brutal, and deadly, it still is far better than what could happen if the equilibrium were destroyed.
But this argument is totally dependent on whether you believe that Hamas and Hezbollah would do that. Personally, after October 7, I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you may see it differently.
> Do you not find it mildly depressing that you have effectively excused 'terrible injustices' by saying they are at least stable ( and predictable I suppose )?
More than mildly so. But it remains the best option.
> With that in mind, can you elaborate on how 'turning off' Israeli dominance would 'hurt things very badly'? I am a sucker for balance so it is possible I am missing something.
When you want to kill someone else, but they are overwhelmingly superior, you can't. So you won't try, for the most part. When their power wanes and yours grows, there comes a point where you think you can win. And that's when you roll the tanks.
"Balance" is about stability, not equality. Fuck with Israeli dominance and eventually Iran sneaks enough weapons into Gaza that we see Hamas start to take and hold territory. How is that better?
I have to give it to you. It is not better ( defined as value of 'total amount of suffering generated' ) so it is a decent counter-argument from that perspective. I will need to digest it, but I think you can count this post as a point in your favor.
“choose to excuse one evil while you rail against another.”
Well that is incorrect and to put words in my mouth and then personally attack based on said words is kind of pointless.
My argument is about genocide. Words don’t equate genocide, but certain actions are. I don’t think you’ll be winning any nobel peace prizes for figuring out the difference.
And my argument is that your "genocide argument" is overnarrow and has the effect of picking a side in a conflict that cannot and will not end unless people stop perpetuate it like that. Stopping your particular favorite enemy has the effect of empowering and emboldening their enemies, who are just as bad.
Please tell me by what metric and to what other conflicts are you comparing this to where over 35,000 people (over 15,000 of which are children) killed constitutes the "lowest civilian casualty rate in modern history". The smugness with which you treat the tragedy that is currently unfolding is disgusting.
Not parent, but let's take each side's numbers at face value:
The Gaza Ministry of Health says as of today that 35,562 people have been killed [0].
The Israeli Ministry of Defense in March said it has killed 13,000 Hamas operatives [1].
Leaving aside the two month gap between these figures, the civilian casualty ratio is 1:1.7.
I tried to find a source for what a "typical" casualty ratio is in urban conflicts. This source [2] claims that 90% of overall casualties is a typical number. That would be a ratio of 1:9.
John Spencer, who chairs the Modern Warfare Institute at USMA, and seems to be an authority on the subject, has a tweet addressing this specifically [3], in which he cites the Battles of Mosul, and Manila as having casualty rates of 1:2.5, 1:6 respectively.
I don't think proving the negative of "lowest civilian casualty rate in modern history" is feasible, but a nearly 5x improvement in civilian casualties compared to the assumed norm, and lower civilian casualties than Spencer's comparisons seems to indicate that the claim is not without merit.
It’s hard to believe those numbers when (according to anonymous Israeli military officers) the Israelis are willing to routinely accept civilian casualties of 20 to 1. https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
Neither the Gaza Ministry of Health, nor the armed wing of Hamas have released the number of combatant casualties, leaving the IDF's number as the only estimate available. If that estimate is incorrect, they could and should challenge it by putting forth their own.
The source you provided says "for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians". This is clearly an upper bound, and makes no claim about how close to this they actually come.
In the same way, I might offer my customers an SLA of two nines in their contract, but never drop below three in practice. Part of effective planning is describing the worst case scenario, but that doesn't imply it will actually happen.
Neither the Gaza Ministry of Health, nor the armed wing of Hamas have released the number of combatant casualties, leaving the IDF's number as the only estimate available. If that estimate is incorrect, they could and should challenge it by putting forth their own.
Modern History is already quite good compared to the entirety of history. The bog standard Siege of La Rochelle ended up starving the civilian population of 27,000 to 5,000. War is brutal, and when you dealing with brutal enemies like Hamas it's never going to an orderly affair.
> 35,000 people (over 15,000 of which are children)
For what is worth, the UN estimates are significantly lower with less than 8’000 children (and 5’000 women) out of the 25’000 identified casualties. Maybe there are indeed 10’000 additional victims as Hamas claims (the UN take that number at face value, Israel estimated are slightly lower) but it seems unlikely that 75% of them are children. It’s not physically imposible though.
> If a country has a functional, independent judiciary, that judiciary gets the right to address the wrong. Or not.
There is no definition of Genocide but only of what you can get away with. These countries are engaged in a proxy war via Israel. They can't replace Israel right now, heck they can't even replace the current leadership. So they just have to explain away and launder the reputation of the operation.
One of the interesting aspects to me, is that ICC considers this both a non-international and international armed conflict (mildly different laws apply depending on which it is, but the difference is small as far as i understand)
How could something be both? Palestine is either a separate state from Israel or it isn't.
> How could something be both? Palestine is either a separate state from Israel or it isn't.
I don't think this is correct. Palestine's status is disputed. Legal status isn't a physical property, it's a social one, so if many people think "A" is "B", then "A" is in some sense genuinely "B".
Considering the conflict in both contexts avoids "Oops, the entire thing is nullified because it's technically Conflict Type 1, not Conflict Type 2."
I agree its disputed, but i don't think it follows from that that it is both. Like hypothetically (i say hypothetically since this is not the situation at hand afaik) if there was one crime that only applied to non international armed conflicts and one that applied to international, i don't think it would be just to charge with both just because its a bit unclear which is the correct one.
War crimes require a nexus to an armed conflict, and for some war crimes this conflict
must be international.5 For this reason, it is necessary to assess the situation in Gaza
and in Israel to determine whether an armed conflict exists and if so, its nature.
13. The Panel agrees with the Prosecutor’s conclusion that the conflicts in Israel and Gaza
comprise an international armed conflict and a non-international armed conflict running
in parallel. Hamas is a highly organized non-State armed group, and the hostilities
between Hamas and Israel have been sufficiently intense to reach the threshold of a
non-international armed conflict. The Panel’s assessment is that the non-international
armed conflict between Israel and Hamas began, at the latest, on 7 October 2023, when
Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood against
Israel and Israel launched its Operation Iron Swords in response. The Panel has also
concluded that there is an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine on
the basis either that:
a) Palestine is a State in accordance with criteria set out in international law, for which
there is a sufficiently strong argument for the purpose of an application to the Court
for an arrest warrant, and an international armed conflict arises if a State uses force
against a non-state actor on the territory of another State without the latter’s consent;
or
b) Palestine and Israel are both High Contracting Parties to the 1949 Geneva
Conventions, and that pursuant to the text of Common Article 2 of the Conventions,
an armed conflict between two High Contracting Parties is international in
character; or
c) There is a belligerent occupation by Israel of at least some Palestinian territory.
14. The Panel’s assessment is that the international armed conflict began at the latest on 7
October 2023, when Israel first started responding to the Hamas attack on its territory
by using force on the territory of Palestine without the latter’s consent.
Also, it is not that hard to imagine conflicts that are technically both, e.g. a conflict that starts out as non-international and becomes international at a certain point.
I don't see how this relates. The point was about Palestine as a state. If enough people recognize Palestine as a separate state, this becomes an international issue. I believe this was the A is B claim digging made. What would be the analogous claim for your point? That some folks believe Palestine is it's own state, and some folks don't, and that the views are not mutually exclusive?
Yes, that is my point. The same applies to Taiwan. Guatemala considers Taiwan a country, China does not. Some countries belong to both groups depending on the context.
Yeah, but we are judging a thing that happened in time. So the sets will have some noise/overlap who will specify the conflict as A or B during which time of the conflict.
The ICC likely judges about crimes that happened during multiple phases of the conflict, hence the conflict could have multiple types.
I’s guess it depends on who you’re talking to: some organizations or states see Palestine as a state, others do not, and others see it as a future state but not one at this time. Keeping a definition broad lessens the chance of outright dismissal of otherwise cogent claims of wrongdoing.
That’s all insofar as anyone or entity actually respects international law. It comes down to states agreeing that it’s in their best interests to cooperate on a matter. As long as the USA and Europe support Israel and don’t bring to bear any leverage to stop this insanity and form an independent state, the ICC can call Palestine whatever it wants to describe the situation.
I don't think it matters what other groups think, it matters what the ICC thinks, and they already ruled they think Palestine is a state, at least in a preliminary fashion (i'm sure if this gets to trial the question will be relitigated).
Additionally ICC only has juridsiction if Palestine is a state. So the entire thing goes away if Palestine is not a state (since only states can aceede to the rome convention).
I do not think Palestine being a state is the same question as if this conflict is international. I think it may be possible for both Palestine to be a state and this conflict be non international. However IANAL and that is pure speculation.
It is not a separate state. Israel controls the borders and the airspace of Palestine and Palestine is not allowed, at least by law, to raise its own army, navy, air force. Israel is thus sovereign over Palestine and the Palestinians are its subjects, which is why Israel is not a democracy, and why this conflict is a rebellion.
Considering the Oct 7 attack it seems pretty wise of Israel to have not allowed Hamas a more advanced military. It is the professed goal of their government to eliminate Israel.
> Palestine is either a separate state from Israel or it isn't
I don’t believe the ICC’s jurisdiction is limited to state-on-state conflicts. The more-curious question is how the ICC is claiming jurisdiction over non-signatory nations.
Except Isreal isn't a signatory nation, and all of the land in question is part of Israel. That's not a judgement either way, there have been some attempts to change that, but the ICC doesn't actually have any jurisdiction here.
Apparently "Palestine" (which is not a state/country) signed on and due to that the court ruled (in some other case) that it does have jurisdiction. Also the "Palestine" side of the warrants are against Hamas which also feels weird (Hamas is also not a signatory nation and many suggest that Hamas != Palestine). Given Palestine is a signatory does it mean they have to take action to extradite the Hamas leadership to face trial? What consequences do they face if they fail to do that?
Generally when states sign treaties it applies to the de jure state, not just what it de facto controls.
> Given Palestine is a signatory does it mean they have to take action to extradite the Hamas leadership to face trial? What consequences do they face if they fail to do that?
Almost certainly nothing. They are obligated to help, but realistically if the palestine authority had the ability to capture hamas leadership i imagine they would have done so a long time ago, as the two sides fought what was essentially a civil war a while back.
The only UN approved borders are the 1967 ones I think. Interesting to see that it would apply to a lot of the settler colonies in the West Bank as well.
>Also the "Palestine" side of the warrants are against Hamas which also feels weird (Hamas is also not a signatory nation and many suggest that Hamas != Palestine).
The ICC prosecutes individuals not states, so there's no contradiction here.
>Given Palestine is a signatory does it mean they have to take action to extradite the Hamas leadership to face trial?
Yes
>What consequences do they face if they fail to do that?
There's no penalties built into the statute. It tends to have diplomatic blowback. See [1] for a prior example.
I'm wondering the same, but also wonder if the situation off the coast of Yemen and Iran's recent response to Israel bombing their embassy made the conflict partially international?
The conflict cannot be not considered international simply because Palestine's recognition is blocked by the US on Israel's behalf.
Nor can it be not international due to the vagueness of Israel's borders. Israel has internationally legally recognized borders (the Green Line) and is acting outside them.
In fact Palestine’s recognition is not blocked by the US. What is blocked by the US is Palestine becoming a full member of the UN.
The two things are different. Switzerland did not join the UN until 2002. I’m sure that we can all agree that Switzerland was recognized as a state prior to 2002.
Becoming a full member of the UN is a sufficient but not necessary condition for recognition. The other way is simply to get as many other states as possible to recognize you.
Arguably Palestine’s recognition by the UN General Assembly is also sufficient.
"Hellish flamewars in deep subthreads are not ok...please don't do this. If you're hotly indignant, step away from the keyboard until that changes. Nobody 'wins' on the internet anyway, and it's not worth destroying this community for. Not to mention your heart." that should be a permanent "required reading"/prologue on every forum (if that forum might be contentious). I guess part of the issue is "who decides what is 'contentious'?" Anyway, thanks for that refreshing reminder.
> I guess part of the issue is "who decides what is 'contentious'?"
You can write "russia is genociding ukrainians". You can write 'china is genociding muslims". That isn't hellish flamewar. Guess what is hellish flamewar?
Why haven’t Hamas returned the hostages ? See the differences between the examples you gave ?
Hamas haven’t retuned the hostages because they believe their own people are dying for the glory of God as martyrs.
Don’t forget the government of Palestine waged war on Israel though ? I mean what did they think was going to happen after October 7 ? A picnic ?
The government of Palestine, who had a responsibility to take care of its people believed every Jew should be wiped off the face for the earth. So I’m not sure what Israel is left to do besides basically demolish the country to ensure its own security.
I actually can see the difference between Russia, China and this personally. It would be like Taiwan attacking China. Which they won’t do because they’re not insane fanatics.
What do you think Israelites should do instead ? Go back to Europe ? Ceasefire so their enemy can regroup and kill more?
Another interesting question is, will it end Netanyahu's career if it goes through? It seems like a major deficit for a PM to be unable to travel to the majority of relevant states. Most of his international trips have been to central Europe so far, and I think Europe is too invested in the ICC to circumvent it, even if some member states were to criticize this decision.
As a former Israeli, I cannot say this enough: please take Netanyahu, dig the deepest hole you can, throw him in there, lock it up and throw away the key.
You claiming to have been Israeli in the past (what does that even mean?) does not give you any greater validity in criticizing Netanyahu.
A majority of Israelis voted for this government's representatives, including Netanyahu, some specifically voting for him (his party has almost x2 as many votes as the second-biggest voted party).
Democracy doesn't work only when the representatives that you like are elected.
Very strongly doubt it - decisions like these probably only benefit Netanyahu's rally around the flag effect. If it feels like the whole world is against you, you rally to your leaders.
Significant portions of those disapproving are people who want to intensify the war in Gaza, so I doubt an ICC warrant would make them more opposed to Netanyahu.
Think it is easy in the US to think Israeli public opinion somehow mirrors the US but the vast majority of people in Israel right now are pro-war (similar to the US post-9/11) and anti-two state
e: not sure why I'm downvoted for something that can easily be confirmed by googling polls
> Significant portions of those disapproving are people who want to intensify the war in Gaza, so I doubt an ICC warrant would make them more opposed to Netanyahu.
Israel has a multi-party legislature. Netanyahu can be outflanked on the right.
He was outflanked by the right in 2019 when Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu and Lapid's Yamina withdrew it's support for Likud and joined Bennett's and Lapid's anti-Netanyahu coalition in 2021, but Bibi was able to leverage fringe Kahanist and Mizrahi parties to reclaim the top seat.
Hell, Bibi would make a coalition with the Arab List/Ra'am (the Islamist Party in Israel) if it meant remaining PM (and thus retaining immunity)
Traditionally, the hard right Jewish parties would always win around 20 seats in Knesset but would never be a major part of any coalition - but Bibi has alienated just about every single faction in Israel at this point trying to extend his rule.
Certainly, but if he is outflanked on the right it won't be because of the ICC arrest warrant. If anything, that might help prevent him from being outflanked on the right.
His career is already in a bad place as far as i understand. If anything it might help him because he could cry that they are unfairly (regardless of if true) out to get him.
The current political situation in the US gives me every indication that the US would provide Netanyahu asylum if these warrants to through. The US has withdrawn from the Rome Statute and therefore has no obligation to arrest him.
Neither is the US nor most countries in the World.
The only major countries/blocs that are ICC members are the EU/EFTA/EU ascension candidates, UK, Canada, Mercusor (lowkey surprised Venezuela's still a signatory), Mexico, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NZ.
Edit:
Yes. 124 nations did initially sign the Rome Statute.
> The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Act authorizes the president of the United States to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court". This authorization led to the act being colloquially nicknamed "The Hague Invasion Act", as the act allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.
It was introduced in 2002 when the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and hasn't been rescinded. So if the US ever committed war crimes in those countries, or any other ones; too bad. The US so totally and completely doesn't recognise the ICC's jurisdiction that it will literally invade the Netherlands in order to not be bound by it in any way, shape or form.
Is this all that weird? The ICC is fairly Eurocentric. India and China aren't signatories either.
The "Hague Invasion Act" is performative silliness enacted in the immediate wake of September 11. The truth is that no major European country is going to arrest an American, Indian, Philipino or Israeli politician. There's kind of a deus ex machina thing happening with the ICC; you still have to do standard-issue diplomacy.
What do you mean they wouldn't arrest? Israel's foreign minister Tsipy Livny had arrest warrants issued against her by courts in the UK and in Belgium.
What's frustrating about that is that a lot of the US's early efforts to not get involved in the ICC was to protect Henry Kissinger from prosecution, who, most objective observers tend to agree did commit or authorize multiple war crimes, from assassinations of Chilean leaders, to the carpet bombing of Indochina, particularly Cambodia, and others.
> What's frustrating about that is that a lot of the US's early efforts to not get involved in the ICC was to protect Henry Kissinger from prosecution
No, it wasn't; the ICC (which the US had a lead role in negotiating and initially signed despite never ratifying it) was never going to have retroactive authority, and the US knew that was not an issue long before it “unsigned” the Rome Statute.
Both the unsigning and the “Hague invasion act” were in 2002, during the runup to the 2003 Iraq War; it was about protecting people then in office from consequences in the war of aggression they were about to launch, to the extent it was about protecting specific people and not just the broad idea of American exceptionalism and opposition of the US government of the time to the idea of international institutions not fully subordinated to the US.
> No, it wasn't; the ICC (which the US had a lead role in negotiating and initially signed despite never ratifying it) was never going to have retroactive authority, and the US knew that was not an issue long before it “unsigned” the Rome Statute.
The ICC was formed out of the ICJ, to tackle matters that rose beyond 'dispute' between states. The ICJ came out of the IMT, which was the Nuremburg trials, which defined war crimes and crimes against humanity for the first time, so it would not have been really retroactive. These things were already crimes, there just wasn't a body capable of prosecuting them.
It was a permanent successor to ad hoc criminal tribunals like the International Military Tribunal, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
> The ICJ came out of the IMT, which was the Nuremburg trials
No, it didn't, it was the UN system's successor to the League of Nations system's Permanent International Court of Justice (the ICJ statute is modelled on that of the PICJ, the PICJ transferred irs assets and archives to the ICJ on its dissolution, the ICJ was headquartered in the Peace Palace that had held the HQ of the PICJ, and the ICJ even adopted the PICJ seal.)
The ICJ—like the PICJ, a court for disputes between nations—was in no respect a successor to International Military Tribunal, which dealt with crimes by individuals (and, indeed had most of its lifespan during that of the ICJ, starting work only a few months before the ICJ.)
Wikipedia says there are 124 states party to the Rome Statute and there are 193 sovereign states that are members of the united nations. Thats 64%, which is most countries.
The State of Palestine is a State Party of the Rome Statute but only a non-member observer state of the UN, so treating the parties to the Rone Statute as a subset of the UN members is not quite right.
I did a quick tally with my calculator and tallied up the population of each country above 10 million which isn’t among the 137 countries which are current signatories to the Rome Statute. My final tally was 4,6 billion which is around 57% of the world, leaving around 43% of the world population living in a country which is at least a signatory to the Rome Statute.
Non-signatories are overwhelmingly represented by a handful of countries with very large populations. None of the 5 most populated countries in the world are signatories, and out of the 10 most populated, only 4 are signatories (Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Mexico). Out of the top 20 most populated countries, 10 are signatories.
Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey have all previously expressed intentions of signing the Rome Statute, if only these countries would do so, it would bring over 60% of the world’s population under it.
>Neither is the US nor most countries in the World.
The standard semantics of ‘most countries’ counts countries, not the people in them. Of course the related claim that the majority of /people/ do not live in state parties to the Rome Statute has different truth conditions.
I genuinely don’t understand this opinion. Israel was viscously attacked unprovoked (regardless what you think of the history of the two orgs) by the organization that governs the province. They’re states goal is to demilitarize the area while their enemy insists on playing out the war in highly populated urban areas.
This isn’t a guerilla war either, it’s the actual official government party. One who has actively promised sequels of the attack.
I don't understand why you say "unprovoked". Gaza has been under occupation for decades (yes, it's technically an occupation, regardless of whether there are settlers or not). It's been periodically bombed, each time with as many victims as an October 7th. It's been under a complete blockade for 16 years. The fact that everything was fine in Israel on October 6th doesn't mean that there was a peace- it just means that they weren't expecting their victims to be able to fight back.
> What would you do in such a situation?
The situation is that Israel is an oppressor and an occupier, so what should it do? Well, first of all it should have made different choices in the past, honest and fair and peaceful choices. Which it didn't make, and it's its fault. But it's never too late. It should have made honest, fair and peaceful choices also in this occasion- mourned its deads, vowed to bring those responsible to justice, and engaged with Palestinian counterparts to withdraw within the 1967 borders and promote the birth of a Palestinian state.
Of course, it didn't do any of those things. It did exactly what Hamas expected.
And, as a result, Hamas has been gone from a rent-extracting governing authority with 16 combat-effective brigades, deep connections to the IRGC, and ongoing funding not just from the Gulf States but from Israel itself(!) to an international pariah with military leadership hiding in tunnels and its last 2 allegedly combat-effective brigades preparing to make a valiant last stand behind a wall of civilian refugees in Rafah.
Yes: Israel did exactly what Hamas expected. The problem for Hamas is twofold:
* Hamas thought the urban combat to root them out of Gaza City and Khan Younis would be a Vietnam-scale bloodbath that would tie the IDF up indefinitely until they were forced to make a truce.
* Hamas's messianic nutbag leader genuinely believed that he was ushering in the end of days, and that the IRGC's other assets would immediately commit to full scale combat operations against the IDF. Instead: Hezbollah noped the hell out, and Iran launched a large scale drone attack that ended up providing a Boeing and Lockheed-style fireworks display in which other Arab states, even as Israel was massacring Palestinian civilians, pitched in to help. Then Iran "declared the matter resolved". Gulp.
Sometimes, if only strategically, it makes sense to do what your enemy wants you to, because your enemy is stupid.
Hamas was designated a terrorist organisation and the Gaza strip was subject to a total blockade since 18 years because of Hamas having won regular elections (at the time). So much for becoming an international pariah.
No, the real news here is of course the news: the ICC seeks to arrest Israeli top leaders as much as the Hamas leaders. The subject that is going from being everyone's darling to international pariah is Israel, absolutely no doubt about this. This is a massive win for Palestine and those who claim to fight for it, including Hamas- with the potential for historical consequences.
My take is that this was the intention behind the October 7th attack- to drive Israel to such a violent retaliation as to force the world to take notice and to condemn Israel. I might be wrong and the victory might be entirely an unintended consequence. However your interpretation essentially requires Hamas to have zero knowledge of the real ratio of military force between Hamas/ Iran and Israel, and zero knowledge of the fact that the US have always been ready to commit their entire military for Israel. And even your imagined "win" scenario for Hamas is Israel committing to "a truce"- which is what they already had before Oct 7.
* Iran's fireworks display is the result of Israel, not Hamas, trying to drag Iran into the war.
> My take is that this was the intention behind the October 7th attack
I see very strong parallels between this and the Dublin 1916 rising. I don't believe the leaders of the Irish rebels could beat the British - it was seen as a "blood sacrifice" and a way to show the world the brutality of British colonial power. The Brits duly obliged and brutally put down the rising and set the wheels of an independent Ireland in motion.
I have to say though, that the 1916 rebels didn't go out of their way to kill civilians like Hamas clearly did on the 7th ...
> Hamas's messianic nutbag leader genuinely believed that he was ushering in the end of days
This is more or less why Israel has so much support between Evangelical Christians. A relatively large number of these people actually want the world to end because they really believe in the Rapture and that they’ll be saved.
People overindex on this. Israel enjoys overwhelming support in both parties, and, for those unfamiliar with US politics, evangelicals belong overwhelmingly to just one of them.
Telling a pollster you support Israel isn't political suicide, and Americans consistently do that. It's political suicide for a politician to oppose Israel, because Americans like Israel.
There’s an immense gap between supporting Israel and a two-state solution and supporting Netanyahu and those positions should be confused. I fully support the two-state solution, but I don’t support Netanyahu and his genocidal policies.
It has not been "technically" occupied. There's no such thing. Either a place is occupied, or it's not, and Gaza was not. What is true is that most in the international community refused to accept Israel's withdrawal from Gaza as the end of Israel's occupation. That's a political statement.
You're missing an important part about tens of thousands of rockets and mortars being fired from Gaza at Israel and terrorism originating from Gaza at Israel. Israel didn't just randomly attack Gaza.
Here's what really happened in Gaza: Israel completely withdrew in 2005 and was not occupying Gaza any more. It handed the entire Gaza strip to the Palestinian Authority. There was even an agreement for safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_freedom_of_movemen...
Not to mention that even before 2005 Israel handed control of most of the Gaza strip to the PA as part of the Oslo accords (and agreement to hand Gaza and Jericho over to the Palestinians predates the Oslo accords).
In 2007 following Palestinian elections Hamas took control of the Gaza strip by force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007) Israel only imposed a full blockade of Gaza as a result of this change because Hamas' stated goal is/was the destruction of Israel. Despite Israel's blockade Gaza has a border with Egypt and had no shortage of goods (and weaponry) through smuggling and other means. There was also plenty of travel in and out of the Gaza strip (both towards Israel and the West Bank and towards Egypt) and there were plenty of good going into Gaza through Israel. Gazans also worked in Israel. Gaza also had a power station and a water desalination plant. It has billions of dollars of aid and investment flowing into it (Ismail Hanyah needs to be a billionaire after all).
So Israel was neither an oppressor nor an occupier in Gaza. It took actions to try and prevent Hamas from arming itself.
The other part wrong with your premise is that Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel within the 1967 borders. They do not. Maybe some of them do. But many do not. When the Oslo peace process was accelerating towards that goal Palestinians started a suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians which results in the killing of Rabin, the rise of the right, and the termination of the peace process.
> It has not been "technically" occupied. There's no such thing. Either a place is occupied, or it's not, and Gaza was not.
Gaza is considered an occupied territory by all international bodies with the power and authority to make such a determination, for excellent reasons that you can look up. End of the story. What you do (and Israel does, for propaganda purposes) is to confuse the civilian settlement with the military occupation, or to pretend that since soldiers are not inside Gaza but just all around its borders, Gaza is free. Which is like saying that a prison camp is free if the guards are all outside the fence.
It's not technically occupied. Israel just controls their border with Gaza. And their coastline. And their airspace, also bombed their airport. Oh and the border to Egypt as nobody can visit Gaza without Israels approval.
Israels continued denial of a Palestinian state and the basic rights of statehood, like the control of their own borders, is what makes it an occupation.
Netanyahu has supported Hamas long before 2005 as part of a divide and conquer strategy. The elections were pushed by Bush at a time when PA were seen as corrupt. When they lost Bush tried to get them to coup and Hamas took over and kicked them out as a reaction to that.
>In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin"
Should tell is everything we need to know about the people in power now.
Maybe the Palestinians were not happy with the deal, them losing their land. Not to forget previous atrocities perpetrated by Jewish terrorists and the nakba.
Israel does not control the Egypt border and almost all of this is opinion through implication not fact. This type of post does not belong on this message board.
This is Egypt's choice. Egypt has the control. If they choose to let Israel have a say it's their choice. Their making an agreement with Israel != Israel controls the border. Plenty of tunnels too but that's besides the point.
> The Nakba was an outcome of Arabs deciding to attack Israel in 1948, they wanted to wipe it off the map, and they lost. They rejected the partition plan.
The "partition plan" was a plan to give part of Palestine to Israel. It's pretty natural that one side refused and the other accepted- the action is the same but the outcome is the opposite for the two parties. Trying to spin it like "they both got the same generous offer" is propaganda.
But even more important is that the partition plan assigned to a "Jewish state" a territory whose population was 45% Palestinian. This means that either
a) they thought it was possible to create a Jewish democratic state with a 45% of the population non-Jewish, or
b) the plan was to enforce apartheid from the beginning, or
c) the plan was ethnic cleansing from the beginning.
And- lo and behold- ethnic cleansing is exactly what happened one minute after the creation of Israel. How convenient that it was the Palestinian's fault.
The problem trying to tie everything back to the Nakba is that the same thing happened in reverse in all the other MENA countries: they ethnically cleansed their Jewish populations in response, which emigrated wholesale to Israel.
I'm not supporting Israel's actions. I think Israel is justified in killing every Hamas member it can get a bead on, but not in inflicting mass civilian casualties on a population that is supermajority too young even to have voted for Hamas in the first place, at least not without extraordinarily clear military proportionality claims (arguably present early on, now clearly absent).
But this "Nakba" stuff appears invariably to be coded appeals to a "one-state solution". Israel is a nuclear-armed state with one of the world's best trained military and a strong economy that, contrary to activist opinion, stands on its own two feet. There is only one outcome in a "one-state solution" and it's not the one you (or I) want.
It's worth pushing back on existential arguments against Israel as it's currently construed. "Mass murder of Israeli civilians is unprovoked because Nakba" is one of those. The correct response is "no, things are much more complicated than that."
As a fairly emotionally disinterested party: greater specificity of strikes, focus on Hamas leadership. It seems to me that Israel (and the west more generally) will be facing a generation of motivated terrorists in about 15-20 years, as the young people who went through this come of age.
People say this a lot, for obvious and fair reasons, but it's worth noting that a rational policy person in Israel could look at Hamas as a distinct and unlikely form of militant nationalism: overtly Islamist, funded and trained by the IRGC, and led (since 2017) by a messianic lunatic.
I've been saying, only kind of jokingly, that a more likely outcome than arrest or Israel-directed assassination of Sinwar is Haniya (or his successor) taking him out to a field to talk about the alfalfa they're going to plant, and how Sinwar will get to feed the rabbits. Sinwar really fucked Hamas over here. Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going! It had tacit Israeli government support and was making a bunch of Hamas people fairly rich.
Anyways, from that point of view: yes, killing tens of thousands of civilians is certainly going to radicalize people and drive them into militant groups. But those groups might look more like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades than the Al-Qassam Brigades.
After having signed the Abraham Accords, Israel could have gone a long way to keeping their hands clean by pursuing Hamas through a joint effort with Egypt, UAE, KSA, and other states in the region. Israel has a long history working with Egypt regarding Gaza. Several actors in the region that already receive tacit US support are opposed to perceived Islamic dictatorships due to various complicated reasons. There are complicated reasons why Israel didn't and continue not to, a lot of which comes down to having a direct line to US support, but this option was something they could have done and chose not to. Though full disclosure, I'm not an unbiased party here, but I can view this situation from a realpolitik lens as well.
I mean, I agree. I'm a 2-stater. Netanyahu and his governing coalition have for a decade now been redlining "culpability" as far as I'm concerned!
(I'll say again though that Hamas in 2018 is a different entity than Hamas in 2016. They're both very bad organizations, but only one of them was literally working to bring about the end of days.)
IMO Israel is digging its own grave in the region by being so unwilling to work with their neighbors. KSA and UAE are brutal to opponents and KSA's own meddling in the region shows that they'd do anything to keep militant Islamism from gaining a larger foothold in the region. All they had to do was to open up a dialogue with their neighbors, it would have stopped Muslims from unifying around this issue, probably normalized relations even further between these states, and would have given Israel significant leverage in the region as a bulwark of diplomatic stewardship. Now even though the US is doing everything they can to tow the line between supporting Israel and stopping a bloodbath, Israel itself has probably lost any and all support from its neighbors sans maybe Egypt, and the US will be hard-pressed to offer support in further instances of aggression against Israel.
I'm less sure. I think the most salient conflict in MENA is between the Arab states and Iran, not Israel and Palestine (look no further than the grim track record of the surrounding states at actually helping Palestinians for evidence).
It's hard to look at October 7th and its aftermath as anything but a setback for literally every party in the region. Even Iran seems to have been caught flat footed.
In one respect, October 7th was a success for Hamas. Before then, it looked likely that most of the Arab countries would have made peace with Israel without Israel having to concede an iota on the Palestinian issue. After the attack and Israel's response, Israel probably has to make visible progress on the issue before the current holdouts would move forward, or at least wait 10, 15 years before everything is forgotten.
It's a victory for militant Islam that didn't need to happen. KSA, UAE, Oman, and Turkey could have been great examples of Muslim countries with high standards of living that engaged in the international diplomatic process, as opposed to the pariah states of Iran and the wartorn Yemen and Syria. Since the decline of ISIL Islamists have achieved little save the Taliban taking Baghdad in Afghanistan. But with this new round of aggression in Palestine, Islamist movements once more have a grievance to look at.
It would end up in a proxy war, surely. Iran would back Hamas and a coalition of KSA, UAE, Egypt, and Israel would spearhead the Gaza situation from the other side. It's still a shitty outcome but IMO a better one. For one, regional actors are incentivized to deal with the situation in a way that spillover doesn't affect them (Lebanon and Egypt have both been vocal about not accepting refugees), but most importantly it wouldn't be as affected by the US political news cycle and the heart-rending imperialism that creates (essentially American domestic interests and politics affecting regional politics in the Middle East, meaning Palestinians have no say over their own politics in any meaningful way, unlike American college students.) The biggest risk would probably be Russian and Chinese interests coming into the region which would surely prompt a US reaction, but I'm not sure how much Russia or China would have to gain here if the US were not involved.
It would have probably ended in a civil war type situation but at least you wouldn't have widespread famine or the bombing of hospitals or further civilian atrocities. Also forcing regional states to allocate their own resources to the conflict means there's a direct incentive to wind it down since their resources are a lot smaller than the resources of the US. Israel would eventually face domestic pushback over wartime spending and the autocratic states in the region would have to balance their funding of the proxy conflict against their own ambitions and budgets. Iran is somewhat democratic and they too could only fund Hamas so far before looking after their own affairs. A civil war would also create a generation fatigued by conflict and more open to compromise. The unilateral nature of this conflict will guarantee that Palestinians and dissidents in the region will hold this as a grudge over Israel and the US for decades and might even open the possibility of further terrorism against the US.
The US's own nation building efforts in the Middle East after 9/11 flagged due to outrageous spending that materialized in minimal results. The same effect with poorer governments would naturally circumscribe the conflict in the area.
> Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going!
Some millions from Qatar with no political engagement towards 2SS isn't good by any measure. It was most certainly good for the Israelis: the Abraham Accords and recognition of the Western Golan Heights + Jerusalem by the US, with practically no opposition.
Sinwar may be a lunatic, but we'd be lunatics just the same to assume Hamas were happy with the status quo. They are not PA for a reason.
> but it's worth noting that a rational policy person in Israel could look at Hamas as a distinct and unlikely form of militant nationalism: overtly Islamist, funded and trained by the IRGC, and led (since 2017) by a messianic lunatic.
Funded and trained by Mossad and others too, at times. In fact, Netanyahu was approving tens of millions a month to Hamas to stay militant and provide a more extremist opposition to Arafat and the PLO who were calming down and more peaceable in their old age.
This is the thing that really gets frustrating.
Israel's hard right is as opposed to a two state system as Hamas is. People point to "from the river to the sea" as "proof" of Hamas' genocidal intent (and I won't pretend they haven't said other things to that end, either), ignoring that it was literally Likud's platform slogan since the 1970s.
The former is the former armed wing of Fatah, the latter of Hamas. Fatah is a (notoriously corrupt) secular nationalist organization. The story goes that Netanyahu tacitly supported and helped fund Hamas for many years as a check against Fatah consolidating power into a coherent Palestinian state.
The first is Fatah/PLO, who are in many ways much closer to, eg, the IRA (also nominally religiously inspired) than what we understand as modern Islamist terrorist groups.
Yea,but the thing that changed was Saudi flipping more western recently. It meant that directionally the region was going have a much bigger problem with this kind of behavior in the future and it seems like (as an amateur) they saw the writing on the wall and thought the more messy the region gets the longer it would take to move toward a capitalist ideals motivated region.
This statement about Israel creating a new generation of terrorists is said a lot but I think we have pretty strong counterexamples. Germans didn't become motivated terrorists after WW-II despite great devastation and killing of civilians by the Allies. Neither did Japan. I'm sure there are similar WW-I examples. One might argue that not fighting this war until the enemy surrenders is a much stronger motivation for terrorism. A more recent example might be Russia's campaign against Chechnya or Sri Lanka's campaign against the Tamil Tigers, both fought until the enemy was crushed and both seemingly have for now resolved the terrorism issue.
With respect to your proposal. Can you be more specific about how Israel is supposed to target Hamas leadership when they are in tunnels underground below civilian populations and holding hostages? That Hamas leadership is not dead is not due to lack of Israel trying to target them specifically. I don't think it's possible to get at Hamas without taking over the entire Gaza strip which leads me to repeat the OP's question of what would you do. Another question is whether you're suggesting to give free pass to the Oct 7'th attackers and kidnappers (which seems to be implied by saying "focus on Hamas leadership").
> Germans didn't become motivated terrorists after WW-II despite great devastation and killing of civilians by the Allies. Neither did Japan. I'm sure there are similar WW-I examples.
Heh this is funny because this was an explicit concern for the US after WWII. This is the reason behind the creation of the Marshal Plan and directly the reason why the US occupied both Germany and Japan and assisted in nation building there. The idea that losing a war leads to radicalism is as old as WWII, but probably even older, as the UK came to a similar conclusion when divesting its colonies in South Asia.
For more recent cases on how political instability and sectarian conflict leads to a rise in terrorism, look at what happened in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the dissolution of the Baathist party.
If you've never seen "Your Job In Germany", bookmark and it and make sure you do at some point. It is pretty unreal.
Of course, the counterpoint here is: the reason we worried about German terrorism but didn't see it is because we trained our forces with videos like this, and we were the nice guys about it compared to the Soviets.
Germans were hung from streetlamps after the war in some places. I think you're referring to after the Germans were defeated? We're not at that stage yet.
Right. But first the Germans were defeated totally. They were forced to surrender. Imagine if the war was halted with massive German casualties but with the Nazis still in power. Which option results in more radicalization?
> Having your parents, or your children, “eradicated” by someone is a powerful motivator
But again, Japanese and Germans aren’t blowing up Americans and Indians aren’t blowing up London. Claiming this will create more terrorists is saying the Palestinians are irredeemably violent. I don’t think that’s right.
Both Japan and Germany were left with their home countries and were given substantial aid to rebuild after the war. That aid was given by their former enemies.
Unfortunately I don't see it as very likely that Israel will give back all the territory in Gaza and provide aid to the Palestinians to rebuild.
But of course the massive mistake was not eradicating the evil terrorist genocidal mentality of its nominal leadership, Hamas. Israel (and the world) shouldn't make that mistake again.
Israel was financing Gaza but not providing Gazan Palestinians political representation. Germans and Japanese were "given" a state where they had full rights as citizens. Political representation is an important way to defuse tensions and provide political legitimacy to a new regime. Even autocratic governments like China or Iran are beholden to the whims of their people, even if they can afford to ignore some. Israelis don't have to care about Palestinians at all. They can turn the strip into a tourist destination and no matter how much the Palestinians protest they have no representation to affect the government's course.
Gazan Palestinians don't even have limited local rule the way Chinese autonomous regions or Puerto Rico do.
Note that despite aid and the occupation, Japan had significant unrest following the war. The Communist Party of Japan's candidate Inejirou Asanuma was assassinated by an imperial revanchist on Oct 12, 1960 [1].
I promise you, Israel does plenty of targeted assassinations in Palestine. For instance [0] (mildly graphic, shots are fired by Israeli assassination squad into car) - stuff like this is very common in WB and now Gaza.
This is not to say that Israel permitted Gaza to have any reasonable sort of economic development (as a simple example, it’s effectively a country with two not-very-open land borders and no port, which surely made trade rather challenging).
If you want an analogy, imagine roughly the population of San Francisco plus San Mateo County, but with under half the land area, hostile relations and extremely limited travel across the land border with Santa Clara County and points South, with no bridges and no port. Throw in a near-complete dependency on Santa Clara for water and electricity, and nowhere near enough agriculture. (At least San Mateo County has a decent amount of farming to the West.) Take out the hot tech scene as well, and the economic situation would not be awesome.
Palestinians in Gaza were not provoked and there were no settlers in the Gaza strip. Not sure about your last statement there, Hamas being propped up by Netanyahu was how Israel provoked them to attack?
What was the total number of Palestinians killed by Settler terrorist attacks in 2022? Do you have that handy? What was the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorist attacks during that time?
Gaza was not under military occupation by any definition. That is a fact that anyone can verify for themselves. Gaza was put under a blockade in 2007 after Hamas came to power (still has a border with Egypt, maybe Egypt is actually occupying Gaza by your definition). A blockade is not an occupation.
Maybe by "is" you mean since Oct 7th. But again that's not provocation, that's after the fact. If you think Gaza was occupied how come the IDF needs to re-occupy it?
I believe we're talking about the provocation for the Oct 7th attacks and you are giving us the outcome of the war that was a result of that attack? Is there time travel involved here?
Israel withdrew from Gaza. Is your proposal that Israel should not have withdrawn to "not create the situation in the first place"? Or re-taken Gaza when Hamas took it over from Fatah by force in 2007 after winning the elections?
The provocation is the continued blockade and military occupation of Gaza, as that is what most consider it to be. With the exception of the US and Israel of course.
Not to mention the continuation of apartheid in Israel itself and expansion of settlements in the west bank.
This situation was created because Netanyahu has supported Hamas for a long time, even before 2005, as a classic divide and conquer strategy, to not allow PA to control both territories. But the US also helped as Bush forced elections early when PA had a reputation of being corrupt, and when they lost the election they tried to get PA to do a coup and Hamas kicked them out from Gaza.
You're mixing stuff up. Why are you looking at "what most consider it to be"? How can you be military occupying a place where your military is not and you are not. There is no way there was a military occupation of Gaza by any normal definition of this term. Gaza was under the authority and control of the government of Hamas. Not of Israel. The rest is politics.
There's no apartheid in Israel itself but let's not get into that.
Expansion of settlements in the west bank. True. I don't understand how that's a provocation to Gazans to rape and murder random Israeli civilians. It's also true that Netanyahu pursued a divide and conquer approach. Again you're trying to claim that Israel's support of Hamas' rule in Gaza is provocation for Hamas to launch attacks on Israel civilians which makes no sense.
EDIT: To be fair the legal question of "when does an occupation end" is complicated. Gaza was occupied from Egypt and Egypt does not want it back. The uni-lateral withdrawal of Israel without a peace agreement left Gaza in a weird legal situation. This is why despite Gaza being under Palestinian control and not occupied the legal state of occupation is perhaps not fully resolved. There's reality on the ground though (not occupied) and international law status (debated).
I mean the UN, Amnesty, other organizations like them. Israel has controlled their land borders, even the one to Egypt, their water and airspace. They control what goes in and out, people and goods. They might have left but Gaza is not free.
The west bank is part of the whole situation, of course it matters to Gaza what happens there. It also shows exactly what would happen if Hamas did not exist, Israel would continue to allow settlers to take land and homes. I'm not saying that Hamas should exist, but its very much a situation created by Israel themselves and Hamas has support from Palestinians because of Israels actions.
>which does not exist, refugees have no right to return after they lost a war
Really? The entire point of the Aliyah for return to Israel is that they lost against Romans, and they expelled them. Or is it selective injustice to the Palestinians?
They killed and raped kids at a concert. If calling that unprovoked terror is too far across the aisle, it’s hard to imagine an intellectually honest conversation, no?
What? They targeted innocents at a music festival, the people you’re talking about are dying during war time in the actual theatre of war. Can you seriously not agree that the target and method of killing is very different?
Thanks for responding. The numbers were halved and the total number dosent account the enlistment age is 15.
Secondarily, what do you when the enemy is using that expectation as piece of leverage to make it practically impossible to strike more surgically.
I’m not the smartest, but I seems like you’re saying that if one side uses their population as attack deterrents and shields that it’s incumbent on the other side to comply?
Perhaps reduce the number of acceptable civilian casualties per target?
It is public info that Israel is fine with killing up to 15-20 civilians for every lowest-ranked Hamas member.
That is a ridiculously high figure in my opinion. I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect to witness something on such scale somewhere in the world during my lifetime, but I certainly didn't expect a modern-day "western" "democracy" to get away with it.
Were you born before the civil war in Syria? (>300k civilian deaths)
Before the war in Yemen? (>300k deaths and I think >20k civilians just from Saudi coalition air strikes)
Before the Russia-Ukraine war? (>25k civilians killed just in the siege of Mariupol according to Ukraine)
Before the US war with Afghanistan? (>46k civilians killed)
There are supposedly 30,000-40,000 Hamas combatants. The IDF said in December that it has killed 8000 Hamas combatants. In February it said 12,000 were killed. I don't know where you're getting your 1:20 ratio. Hamas certainly does not differentiate combatants from other casualties and at any rate you should have zero trust in their numbers. There were probably certain situations where a specific target was attacked with that or even higher ratios but the overall civilian to combatant casualty ratio, while unknown, is almost certainly nothing close to that.
What is your reference to "Israel is fine with killing up to 15-20 civilians for every lowest-ranked Hamas member"? I've never heard of that.
What you said: "It is public info that Israel is fine with killing up to 15-20 civilians for every lowest-ranked Hamas member."
Let's look at the quote from your article: "In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any “collateral damage” during assassinations of low-ranking militants."
There are a few problems here:
- This is not sourced and we shouldn't treat it as fact. If other publications you read repeated that it doesn't change this. It's also not clear for how long this policy was in place if it was.
- This is a question of proportionality in the laws of war sense of the word. I.e. what collateral damage is acceptable when attacking an enemy combatant. If that statement you refer to is factual, which we don't know, it means that strikes against combatants are approved up this threshold.
- It's almost certainly not reflecting the total civilian to combatant ratio. It just says that in certain circumstances a combatant was targeted even if there are civilians present. That's something that happens in all wars. We don't have any information on the totality of strikes and which strikes met this exact threshold. I'm not sure what numbers other western armies use. The quote refers compares with previous situations which were not an outright war (and show that at least in the past Israel was a lot more careful about collateral damage).
Anyways, if you were more precise in your wording I wouldn't take issue, but I think the casual reader can read something different into what you've said. We can debate the morality of any particular collateral damage under conditions of dense urban environment, human shields, major war etc. but this is something that happens in all wars likely with somewhat different numbers.
I didn't say that quote, that was input_sh. Please pay more attention to people, especially if you're going to be calling out sources for information.
> It's also not clear for how long this policy was in place if it was.
It's consistent with what has been observed all throughout this war--Israel has had rather looser rules of engagement than many people would expect, and that has had the rather predictable effect of rather high incidents of accidents, such as Israeli soldiers killing 3 of the hostages or the attack on the aid convoy.
> This is a question of proportionality in the laws of war sense of the word. I.e. what collateral damage is acceptable when attacking an enemy combatant. If that statement you refer to is factual, which we don't know, it means that strikes against combatants are approved up this threshold.
20 civilian combatants for 1 enemy combatant is a pretty high threshold, especially for low-level members. According to an Economist article I read, that's the level the US is comfortable with only for essentially enemy heads of state (think Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden). (Reportedly, Israel feels 1:100 is acceptable in this kind of scenario.)
> It's almost certainly not reflecting the total civilian to combatant ratio.
No, it's not. But it's evidence that Israel isn't doing a good job of minimizing civilian casualties. And the actual numbers we have here aren't good. In the best case scenario (taking Israel's probably somewhat-inflated figures for combatants killed and the lowest numbers of civilians killed), it's about 1 combatant to 2 civilians, roughly comparable to the war in Donbass before Russia invaded Ukraine for reals (we don't have good estimates post 2022 because Russia hasn't released anything in the areas it occupies). I suspect the real numbers are probably closer to 1-to-4. By contrast, the US-led battles of Fallujah and Mosul--both urban fights against terrorist-held cities--had casualty rates around (and perhaps better than) 1-to-1.
I wouldn't be so incensed about this if Israeli generals weren't prancing around boasting that no one has done as good a job as Israel has in minimizing civilian casualties when it is so transparently false.
Apologies for the mis-attribution. Lost the thread there.
When you look at civilian to combatant ratios you have to take into account the battlefield. You can't compare the war in Donbass to the war in Gaza. What's the population density in Donbass? Were combatants fighting in civilian clothes? Was there a human shield strategy at play? Tunnels? Booby traps?
I've heard experts give much higher civilian to casualty ratios than 1:2 for dense urban combat under these conditions. I've heard numbers like 1:8 (which I think is more or less the ratio for the war in Chechnya). I think the battle for Mariupol has fairly high rates if we want to use another comparison. There's this US Urban warfare expert (John Spencer) from West Point that goes around saying how Israel is doing a great job. So I'm not sure I agree with your transparently false observation. We need something more directly comparable. IIRC in the Battle of Mosul most civilians evacuated, also the number for dead civilians in that battle vary widely. Where I would tend to agree is that in the beginning of the war Israel pounded Gaza very heavily and likely at that phase with less care about collateral damage vs. damage to Hamas.
Incidents like friendly fire are fairly common in wars. I don't have any way of gauging how this one compares. Wikipedia says: "accounting for an estimated 2% to 20% of all casualties in battle".
Do you have comparable examples of armies warning civilians to evacuate, by dropping leaflets, sending text messages, and giving them time to do so like the IDF does (maybe not 100% of the time but certainly has done a lot during this war)? I think that's fairly unusual in comparable situations. I don't recall the US ever doing that in its wars.
Could Israel do a better job avoiding civilians. Likely yes. Is it possible to completely eliminate this under the circumstances (30,000 combatants, in civilian clothes, fighting from population centers) - I don't think so. I also agree the "boasting" about avoiding civilians is at the very least in poor taste. We should feel sorry for civilians killed regardless of the "ratio".
No ICC arrest warrants. No encampments. Crickets. How many westerners did ISIS kill? 100? The US, UK, Australia and Russia (+ others?) blitzed the heck out of anything that moved in a place far away that presented no direct existential threat to any of them. Under significantly more favorable conditions on the battlefield than the IDF is facing in Gaza (how many casualties did western powers take in this blitz? zero?)
"In total, these claims allege more than 26,000 non combatant fatalities. Airwars
presently assesses that at a minimum, between 6,300 and 9,700 civilians are likely to have died in Coalition actions overall – approximately 40 percent during the recent battles for Mosul and Raqqa"
"Much of the Old City of Mosul and almost 70% of Raqqa’s entirety have been rendered uninhabitable,
according to the United Nations."
I think, if what you are saying is true, then Israeli leadership can simply explain themselves as such in court (surrender themselves to the ICC warrant) and be proclaimed not guilty.
If Israel's explanations were accepted then there wouldn't be a court case. It's unclear how justice can be done here and what's the standard of evidence. The UN just made a huge change to their accounting blaming "the fog of war" which puts their numbers much more in line with what Israel was saying. There is no independent body reporting numbers, they're either coming from the government of Gaza, i.e. Hamas, or they're coming from Israel. It's just a political circus/war of public opinion.
> If Israel's explanations were accepted then there wouldn't be a court case
The explanations to be accepted by the court would have to be presented as evidence at trial, which would require their to be a court case.
Yes, if their explanations were accepted as conclusive by the prosecutor there wouldn't be a court case, but the prosecutor isn't the final decisionmaker for the court.
> The UN just made a huge change to their accounting blaming "the fog of war" which puts their numbers much more in line with what Israel was saying.
While the details of the charges asked for, beyond their titles, have not been laid out, I don't think the numerical counts that have been adjusted have much bearing on any of them.
> I don't think the numerical counts that have been adjusted have much bearing on any of them.
They totally do. They halved the number of children and women killed which completely changes the combatant/civilian ratio.
> The explanations to be accepted by the court would have to be presented as evidence at trial, which would require their to be a court case.
It's hard to see what sort of evidence will be accepted by the court. Hamas claims every single person killed is a civilian (and their combatants fight in civilian clothes) while Israel claims it's targeting combatants. What sort of Israel do you think Israel can present that will clearly support its case and will be accepted? Is there some sort of uninvolved party that can give us the truth here?
> It's hard to see what sort of evidence will be accepted by the court.
There's quite a history of ICC cases (and they build on a history of ad hoc tribunals like those for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.)
The kinds of evidence that are acceptable are... not particularly mysterious.
> Hamas claims every single person killed is a civilian (and their combatants fight in civilian clothes) while Israel claims it's targeting combatants.
Yeah, if the ICC operated on the level of these kinds of claims it wouldn't take months of evidence gathering before referrals to get to warrants.
> What sort of Israel do you think Israel can present that will clearly support its case and will be accepted?
Once there are actual charges with specifics (right now, we just have the names of crimes for which warrants are being sought, not the specific charges) the kinds of evidence that would tend to disprove the specific charges against specific individuals will be more clear.
All sides in the Bosnian war (3-4 of them) did their best to save the lives of their civilians (not so much the civilians from the other sides, but Bosnia is sparsely populated). Hamas aims to get as many as possible civilians killed.
Don't you think that it's strange that Hamas, aiming to kill as many civilians as possible, on October 7th killed exactly the same proportion of civilians to military as Israel is doing in Gaza?
Those are not the current best estimates. I think you are referring here to last week’s news about OCHA revising their figures and now only reporting half of previous figures. If so than you are talking about 24,686 confirmed dead and fully identified victims of the Israeli military as of April 30th 2024. Of which 14,600 are women, children, or the elderly. The 35,000+ figure is actually 35,562 confirmed dead as of May 20th 2024 (including 10,876 confirmed dead and not yet identified). Yet not included is the 10,000+ believed dead who are missing e.g. under the rubble or in undiscovered mass graves, or unreported burials, etc. This makes the believed total number of victims killed by Israeli aggression in Gaza around 45,000 of which we know 14,000 are woman, children and the elderly.
35,000 civilians is not an unreasonable estimate. I would personally put a lower bound at 60% of 35,000 = 21,000 civilians, which is the assuming every adult man is a combatant (which we know is not true; there are plenty of civilian adult men among the victims) and extrapolating the percentage of fully identified victims to the confirmed death count.
Seems reasonable and worth adding that we've long since blown past any point where the numbers would be tolerable. About the best you can say for Israel is that they're in an extraordinarily bad position (one in part of their own making!) where their only moves involve modern dense urban combat, the worst possible thing.
> we've long since blown past any point where the numbers would be tolerable.
You seem to be doing a good job of trying to understand both sides, so I think it would behoove you compare these casualty rates with other urban wars.
> extraordinarily bad position (one in part of their own making
I was curious about dense urban warfare and three modern battles came to mind. The Siege of Sarajevo 1992-1996, the Siege of Mariupol 2022, and the Battle of Aleppo 2012-2016. I got the numbers from Wikipedia:
Data for Mariupol is the fuzziest with a lower (reliable) estimate of 8000 civilian deaths, but a more realistic estimate of at least 25,000 civilian deaths. The highest estimate for soldiers dead is around 12,000 but 4,000 is more realistic. I’m not gonna compute the proportion here because the estimates are too fuzzy. Mariupol had a pre-war population of about 425,000. The siege of Mariupol is certainly one of the worst human rights disaster of our century, which justifiably put some of the Russian perpetrators on an ICC list of war criminals under investigation. It lasted for almost 3 months and left 90% of Mariupol’s high rise residential housing were damaged or destroyed. I’m sure Russian generals and political leaders have their excuses and reasons for causing this horror. They still belong in the Hague for causing this tragedy.
The Siege of Sarajevo (pre-war population of 525,980 [incl. surrounding area]) has been thoroughly investigated and has much more reliable numbers:
- 5,434 civilians killed
- 5,829 soldiers killed
The horrors of this siege are not to be understated. 40% of the children living in the city were directly shot at by snipers, 51% had seen someone killed, 39% had had at least one family member killed, 73% had their home attacked or shelled. Over 100,000 residential buildings were damaged or destroyed and almost every non-residential building was damaged or destroyed. The horrors lasted 4 years, with the wor The ICC was not shy about prosecuting Serbian (both from Serbia and Srpska) generals and politicians for their crimes against humanity. These generals and politicians all claimed they had their reasons. However, they did not, and were correctly found guilty.
The Battle of Aleppo (pre-war population of about 2.5 million) is probably the closest condition you’ll get to Gaza in terms of urban warfare in a dense civilian area. Like Gaza, Aleppo was the largest city in Syria. The Siege lasted for four years and left at least 31,273 people dead, of which 73% were adult men. 23,604 or 76% of all fatalities were civilians. Almost every neighborhood in Aleppo was targeted with indiscriminate shelling. More than 33,500 damaged residential buildings in the city. Everybody agrees (except maybe Syrian generals and leaders) that the human cost of this 4 year long siege was too great. The UN security council voted for the ICC to investigate the many war crimes committed in the siege but Russia and China vetoed it. History has already condemned them.
The Gaza strip is an urbanized area that fits between Seattle and Tacoma with a pre-war population of 2.4 million. The Gaza Genocide has so far lasted 7 months and no end in sight. 35,000 people are confirmed dead, most of them civilians. Over 90% of all residential housing has been damaged or destroyed in Gaza city. Almost everybody in Gaza knows someone that has died. Nearly everyone in the Gaza strip has been displaced, most people multiple times.
The horrors of Gaza seem no less then those in other examples of dense urban warfare. I know Israeli officials claim they have a reason to cause this horror, however, they do not. And they deserve the Hague as much as the war criminals mentioned above.
This attitude reminds me of the Start Trek: Voyager episode Equinox where Captain Janeway insists that Captain Ransom “leaves her no choice” than to go after the Equinox no matter the cost.
Janeway was wrong, there were other options, and the cost she was willing to pay was too high.
Linking to a TV show does not actually describe other options for Israel.
And I assume you know that TV shows are fictional? First they write the dilemma for Janeway, then they figure out how to get there. In the real world it's the other way around.
Does that make it any better!? That's still comparable to a small town or a large arena completely wiped away from the face of the earth. Not because they were Hamas, but because they were near Hamas.
Reasonable people will point out that this "near Hamas" thing is the result of a deliberate strategy by Hamas to ensure that reprisal strikes preferentially spill the blood of the civilians Hamas ostensibly represents, while shielding and supplying the Hamas combatants who provoked the strikes in the first place.
To me, the more powerful argument is just that any meaningful military purpose to massed attacks in Gaza have now been used up; much of Hamas' infrastructure, along with the majority of their leadership cadre, have been destroyed. Hamas still "exists", and it could re-form, but so could any other militant organization at this point. The losses Hamas have taken probably exceed those of other state military actors who have decisively lost wars in the past.
Further large-scale strikes look increasingly performative. It was hard to justify a lot of what Israel did even when Hamas had 15 combat-ready brigades and was vowing to repeat October 7th. It seems impossible to justify it now.
(People definitely disagree with me on this point! It's what I believe but fuck if I know with any certainty how true it is.)
> Further large-scale strikes look increasingly performative.
Israel is not doing large scale strikes in most of Gaza, except Raffa. It was in the news a few weeks ago that Israel withdrew most of their troops from Gaza.
They have in fact switched to limited strikes. But they're going to finish the job in Raffa first, in particular they want to destroy tunnels - especially tunnels going into Egypt.
After that the PA is going to try to take over. And Israel will "protest" the whole time like the Br'er Rabbit. The PA can't look like Israel helped them take the area. Both the PA and Israel want the PA in Gaza, but neither can say it out loud.
The whole "Israel has no day after plan" thing is just a show. There's a reason Biden stopped complaining about it.
> Israeli bombardment from the air, land, and sea continues to be reported across much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in further civilian casualties, displacement, and destruction of houses and other civilian infrastructure. Ground incursions and heavy fighting also continue to be reported, especially in Jabalya and eastern Rafah.
> The following are among the deadliest incidents reported between 16 and 19 May:
> - On 16 May, at about 14:50, four Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and her unborn baby, were reportedly killed when a house was hit in Jabalya Refugee Camp.
> - On 17 May, at about 0:55, six Palestinians were reportedly killed when a house was hit on Al Falouja Street in Jabalya.
> - On 18 May, at about 10:00, 15 Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured while trying to return to their homes in areas of Jabaliya Refugee Camp from which Israeli forces withdrew.
> - On 18 May, at about 12:30, 28 Palestinians, including ten women and ten children, were reportedly killed and others injured when a residential square was hit in Mashrou’ Beit Lahiya near Kamal Adwan Hospital, in North Gaza.
> - On 18 May, at about 11:00, 12 Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when Iqra’ Library was hit in central Jabalya Refugee Camp.
> - On 18 May, at about 14:00, four Palestinian men were reportedly killed and others injured when a house was hit in Khuza'a area, in Khan Younis.
> - On 19 May, at about 1:00, 31 Palestinians were reportedly killed and others injured when a house was hit in the New Camp of An Nuseirat, in Deir al Balah.
The bombardment is in fact escalating all over the Gaza strip. There may have been more limited strikes in March and April, but the Rafah offensive started, we can no longer claim so. Israel is doing large scale strikes in most of Gaza, including Rafah.
> > The following are among the deadliest incidents reported between 16 and 19 May (emphasis added).
On May 20th Israeli jets struck around 70 targets, according to the Israeli military on Twitter. Their post admitted hitting targets across Gaza, including Jabalia, Central Gaza, and Rafah. At least 85 people were killed and 200 injured in total on May 20th.
If May 20th was a uniquely bad day with noticeably more strikes than before, and wouldn’t be repeated for months, if ever, than you could argue the strikes are limited. However, May 20th was not unique, it followed the same patterns as May 16th, May 17th, May 18th, and May 19th. May 21st looks like it is also gonna have as many strikes, and destruction:
Between midnight on May 21st and 7 AM, reported a residential building in Rafa being destroyed, killing at least 8, and 3 Palestinians being killed in an explosion Jabalia. Jabalia is still under intense shelling, in particular al-Awda Hospital where these 3 were stuck and unable to evacuate. Bait Lahia in Northern Gaza is also under heavy artillery shelling, including the gates of Kamil Adwan Hospital, which was also raided last December. Around 2 PM footage was released of the aftermath of another airstrike in Gaza City, where a residential home belonging to the Shobaki family was targeted and completely destroyed. A child no older than 2 year old was martyred in that airstrike.
No, the strikes are not “limited” by any definition of limited. Yesterday I went on a Wikipedia stroll to see examples of other urban warfare, and nowhere do we see this pattern of dozens of strikes, day after day, with 2-3 mass casualty events every day. Where several houses are leveled every single day. This very much describes e.g. the siege of Aleppo during the worst days of the fighting, in the neighborhoods which were worst affected.
> After that the PA is going to try to take over. And Israel will "protest" the whole time like the Br'er Rabbit. The PA can't look like Israel helped them take the area. Both the PA and Israel want the PA in Gaza, but neither can say it out loud.
If that’s the plan, I can tell you with certainty it won’t work.
Yes, it makes it better. This is a war, I assume you are too young to have experienced any others, but this what war is like. It sucks for everyone, and innocents die.
There isn't any other way to exterminate Hamas which is a goal that helps everyone, including Palestinians.
Indigenous resistance has been used as an excuse for their extermination since 1492. When Israeli leadership says they want Palestinians out of Gaza, we should believe them. The behavior of stripping Palestinians from their land has been consistent since 1947, and has only been escalating in the past decade. For all we know, the Israeli leadership has been waiting for the excuse to conduct these atrocities for a long time.
Israel does not have the right to exterminate Hamas by any means necessary. If Israel is unable to do so without mass atrocities, they simply shouldn’t. There are alternatives to war. The IRA was not eliminated by mass starvation in Northern Ireland. Rather they were given a Political avenue for their fight, and so their tactics changed from terrorism to political advocacy.
And it not just some individual, but a member of the Israeli government. Mind you, this government is under orders from the ICJ to do everything in its power to prevent genocide. A government which allows one of its members to speak like this, and doesn’t kick them out of the government (let alone after repeated offense) is at least sympathetic to this speech. But given that he is by no means the only member of the government which repeatedly incites genocide or ethnic cleansing, I think it is more likely that the whole government supports this speech, and is aiming for these prospects.
Yes, I'm far too young. It's not like I carry the name of my uncle who died in one, or that some of my earliest memories are about sleeping in a bomb shelter, or that I now live in a city that was completely under siege not that long ago.
You're correct, they only killed maybe 10000 children instead of 20000. I guess the bar is at like 15000 children? If Israel goes above that then they are bad, until the goalpost is moved again.
I could see the US pulling back on Israel if it starts to cost them soft power elsewhere, but you're fundamentally correct. Israel is the primary instrument of US hegemony in the middle east, and they aren't going to risk losing that.
Biden has already started drawing lines though. He has been actively been distinguishing between defensive and offensive use cases and basically saying that US aid isn’t for the latter
Likely just political nonsense to help stop the (supposed) bleeding from the swing states. As it stands, if the election were held today polls show a massive loss for him.
What even is his plan anymore? Keep beating the "im better than Trump" drum and hope for the best?
Personally I'm no fan of the two party duopoly and 2020 was my first time voting for a mainstream party in a national election (after decades of voting). Lest we forget, the last Trump term had a paralyzed federal government incapable (unwilling?) to respond to national or international crises, the polar opposite of leadership with the bully pulpit used to divide as if still campaigning, and culminated in an economic catastrophe of massive inflation that we're still reeling from today. And that was all before the chode embraced wholesale-reality-rejecting big lies, and grew a massive chip on his shoulder indicating a desire for straight revenge on his political opponents. So at least to me, affirmatively supporting the conservative option of Biden simply so we continue to have a country to criticize, despite all of the abhorrent status quo military industrial surveillance complex shit continuing to go on, has a pretty strong appeal. If "I'm better than Trump" can't carry the election on its own, then frankly we're doomed.
All of what you said basically indicated your elite status in a country where a majority of people are in so much trouble that they cant scrounge up 500$ for an emergency expense.
There is an argument to be made that the country is not thinking about any of this stuff at all and they will base their vote on how they feel come election time.
On the flipside, there is also evidence to indicate that Trump has completely lost the independent vote which you need to win the election.
You know what would help save the country? If Biden did not seek re-election. After all, he originally called himself a 'transition' president in 2020. His selfish behavior is the reason we are even having a discussion. There still might be time to swap him out at the convention if things get really bad but there is an argument to be made that the large Muslim community in Michigan would rather punish him for Israel/Palestine and accept Trump than give him the satisfaction that he so desires of being a two term president.
Thats all Biden seems to really care about and by making him the president that lost the country to Trump, it will be a greater way to get payback than anything else they can try.
I certainly do understand that dynamic of economic stress causing poor decisions. It's just a terrible setup when a president/party can trash the economy, and then pin the results on their opponent-successor as the effects play out over several years. See also the ongoing Trump income tax increases that were baked into law in 2017. To the extent voters are gullible enough to fall for this, as I said, we're doomed.
In general I don't see why the Israel situation should be laid at Biden's feet specifically, as opposed to the Israeli lobby that has had a stranglehold on US politics for quite some time. Short of waiting for generational change, the only way to sidestep that would be to paralyze the US government's foreign policy, but that also means the end of US hegemony, USD as a reserve currency, and the generally high standard of living we take for granted. Frankly it's odd to attack such conservatism as a "privileged" position, when the fact of the matter is that people with wealth will be generally fine regardless of what happens.
As for Biden, his personal aspirations, and internal party jockeying, I've got little opinion. Swap in another not-Trump candidate and I'll vote for them instead. Personally at this point I'd likely support someone even if they were a blue-flavored extremist, because the incumbent power structure would be inherently set to resist them, whereas at this point a reelection of criminal Trump would essentially be throwing in the towel on our system of government. But obviously another extremist would turn a lot of people off, and let so called "conservatives" maintain their cognitive dissonance that Trumpism is about conserving anything at all.
Ultimately I think if we want to throw off the chains of the military industrial surveillance complex, we've got to take that bottom-up from the grassroots (eg decentralized communications tech) rather than thinking a power vacuum at the top will lead to anything good.
Sitting US officials, up to and including the President, have already strongly condemned the pursuit of the warrants.
> The US has deep political and geopolitical ties with Israel.
Which is fine as a basis for opposing things like this as long as the US doesn't ever want anyone to believe any of its claims that its policies are based on principals beyond bloc interest.
>Statement from President Joe Biden on the Warrant Applications by the International Criminal Court
>The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.
> The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.
This is the hypocrisy of the West, when the same court issued a warrant for Putin, it was praised but when it involves a U.S. ally, it's labeled as "outrageous". This only fuels the sentiment prevalent in many Global South countries about us (the west) "rules for thee but not for me".
Some actors in the "West" might have some credibility but certainly not the USA. In recent decades our state department has been openly Machiavellian, which I wouldn't have minded if they weren't also utterly incompetent.
I think motives matter. Putin and Hamas decided to rape and kill for the sake of it.
Seems unlikely that Israel would be causing this much destruction if the group that they were seeking to retaliate against wasn't using civilians as shields (which is a war crime in itself).
Seems weird to put all responsibility on Israel here.
But in general I agree that a world government criminal court is a political joke that nobody takes seriously
Forgive me if I misremember, but I believe the US refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC over it's own citizens and soldiers, and continues to require that its forces have effective indemnification against actions in economies they are invited into.
They state that actual crimes will be dealt with by JAG, but I think the Okinawan community disputes that they were taken seriously when it comes to domestic violence and sexual assault.
Israel is not, however Palestine - as a UN observer state - is. This was enough for the ICC to declare jurisdiction.
To my knowledge, this is also the grounds on which the US and UK dispute jurisdiction: They say, no country in this conflict that they recognise is ICC signatory, so the ICC does not have jurisdiction.
(Not a lawyer, but this seems a pretty spurious and self-referential legal argument to me and in any case the UN accepted Palestine as an observer state, so I doubt that it would fly.)
> For now, the announcement is largely symbolic. Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction in Israel or Gaza, meaning that Israeli leaders would face no risk of arrest at home.
international law, courts, treaties etc. don't really work like that
Like there is no such thing as a "universal" right, law, lawful action or anything. There is just "agreements/policies" countries enforce by the power of their military/economical/geopolitical might not by jurisdiction, through for practical reasons most times there is a _self imposed_ jurisdiction of some form.
Through in most cases (i.e. not war, special military operation) this "upholding" is limited to their territories.
The jurisdiction the ICC has imposed on themself is, more or less, to judge war crimes and genocide by anyone anywhere internationally.
In practice this means anyone anywhere as long as the power of the ICC member states allow them to do so (in a for the member reasonable way).
Practically the only place in which countries can reliable enforce such things is in their territory/people. E.g. this means they don't enforce it when the person committing the crime is an US Citizen because they are not powerful enough to force the US to allow them to do so.
What that means in this case is, that assuming a warrant is issued, they will be arrested iff they step into member state territory. And even then it might depend on the individual power of the member state and the context under which they stepped into the member state.
Through iff ICC members would be far more powerful and united, things could be very different.
E.g. the US imprisoning no US Citizens arrested outside of US territory in Guantanamo was a case of "having enough power to enforce their rules outside of their territory". (But it's also a terrible example given such arrests in general didn't follow the procedure you would expect from a state of law (or the ICC) and we know today involved more then just one or two innocents. Heck if the ICC had the power they would likely have judged that to be a war crime and issued an arrest for the people responsible for it.)
"More than four months ago, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asked me to assist him with evaluating evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza. I agreed and joined a panel of international legal experts to undertake this task. Together we have engaged in an extensive process of evidence review and legal analysis including at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The Panel and its academic advisers are experts in international law, including international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Two Panel members are appointed as expert 'Special Advisers' by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Two Panel members are former judges at criminal tribunals in The Hague.
Despite our diverse personal backgrounds, our legal findings are unanimous. We have unanimously determined that the Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian nationals. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence. We unanimously conclude that there are raasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have commited war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.
I served on this Panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict. As a human rights laywer, I will never accept that one child's life has less value than another's. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law. So I support the historic step that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has taken to bring justice to victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine.
Today, my colleagues and I have published an oped and a detailed legal report of the Panel's findings. My approach is not to provide a running commentary of my work but to let the work speak for itself. I hope that witnesses will cooperate with the ongoing investigation. And I hope that justice will prevail in a region that has already suffered too much."
The optics of equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion. On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Israel administers multiple territories, some of them democratically (e.g. Israel proper, where Arabs are citizens with equal legal rights), and some of them undemocratically (e.g. the West Bank).
In other words, if by "Israel" you mean only within the borders of its sovereign territory, yes it's a democracy. If by "Israel" you mean all territory controlled by the State of Israel, it's clearly not.
So, they at best get partial credit for being "a democracy". If they wanted to get full credit, they would have to either relinquish control over the West Bank (and Gaza for that matter), or grant the people living there equal citizenship and voting rights.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Nobody has to let foreigners into their country if they don't want to. Israel has every right to limit what goes over their border with Gaza, too. What bothers me is that they also restrict Gaza's territorial waters and airspace (and have been doing so since long before Oct. 7th), which AFAIK Egypt isn't involved in.
> Israel administers multiple territories, some of them democratically (e.g. Israel proper, where Arabs are citizens with equal legal rights), and some of them undemocratically (e.g. the West Bank).
This is one aspect of the whole conflict that has always seriously irked me.
The West effectively treats Israel as if it were the legal guardian of the Palestinians: Israel controls the entire territory, controls the tax revenue, population registry, borders, airspace, energy and water supply, can precisely restrict what (is allowed to) go in and out, can construct or demolish buildings at will, can arrest people at will, or even shoot them, can arbitrarily set the rules for court proceedings, etc. Western and neighbor countries fully support this view, to the point where, if Palestinians import or export goods into their own territories without Israel's authorisation, this is called "smuggling".
Yet at the same time, Israel seems to have no obligation to actually consider or represent the interests of the Palestinians: They are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections; they don't have any representation in the Knesset; laws can be passed that arbitrarily disadvantage them without loss of democratic status; Israeli politicians openly call the Palestinians "our bitter enemies".
In any situation where any individual person were the legal guardian of another person and at the same time called them "their bitter enemy", we'd be deeply alarmed and suspect an abusive relationship. Yet in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, that's "how things are supposed to be" and everyone who tries to change that status quo is the problem.
This feels extremely wrong to me.
(The UN is clearer here: They give Israel the specific legal role of "occupation force" and point to various obligations towards the occupied population that come with that role. However, the western countries somehow both deny that any occupation even takes place and demand that Israel must continue to have full control over the territories - which is contradictory in itself)
Everything you say is true. The only reason Western nations tolerate it, in my view, is because they have witnessed the alternative.
To continue your analogy, Israel tried to "graduate" Gaza to adulthood in 2005. The army removed all Jewish settlers and settlements, and all military presence, and left the Gazans to form their own government. Gaza held elections that were judged to be free and fair by international observers.
Unfortunately, Gazans elected a Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Don't get me wrong, I can understand if Palestinians feel sore about the creation of Israel on some of the land that they desired for an undivided Palestinian state. But 10 million people live there now, including generations of Jews who have no other home, many of whom were expelled from other Arab countries when Israel was founded. A settlement between Israel and Palestinians will require compromise, but Hamas is not interested in compromise. Hamas dedicates every available resource towards an absolutist goal of destroying Israel.
Moreover, Hamas does not see itself as having any responsibility towards the people of Gaza. It builds tunnels to protect its fighters, but considers it the UN's responsibility (through UNRWA) to protect its civilians. In this sense it operates differently from almost any government in the world, in that it is not actually trying to build a society and govern it. In the eyes of Hamas Palestinians are in a war that has been going since 1948, and this war will continue until Israel is destroyed. It considers all of its people refugees and wards of the UN until Israel is destroyed.
I have plenty of criticism for Israel, primarily that it builds settlements in the West Bank, sabotaging prospects for a future Palestinian state. But it's hard for me to fault Israel for acting as the legal guardians of the Palestinians when I witness the Palestinian's disinterest in actually building a state that could coexist with Israel, not to mention the means by which they enact their resistance.
>But it's hard for me to fault Israel for acting as the legal guardians of the Palestinians when I witness the Palestinian's disinterest in actually building a state that could coexist with Israel, not to mention the means by which they enact their resistance.
I suspect this is an aspect of the collapse of support for Israel in the US along demographic lines. For many of young Americans' adult lives, Israel's 'guardianship' has been somewhere between anti-democratic and outright oppressive, and certainly not a context in which a people could be expected to 'build a state' for themselves.
I think this is a great example of what I was talking about upthread.
If your position is that it's Israel's responsibility to protect and value Gaza's civil and religious infrastructure more than Hamas itself does, then you are treating Gaza as a dependent state that needs legal guardianship.
If Israel is expected to work around Hamas's militarizing of civilian infrastructure, that more than justifies Israel's blockade in my mind.
When you call Palestine "Hamas" like this, it becomes obvious what you're doing ideologically. Come on.
>your position is that it's Israel's responsibility to protect and value
What a way to frame "please stop bombing hospitals and churches"
>you are treating Hamas as a dependent state that needs legal guardianship
I am not treating Hamas as a state of any kind, I'm treating them as a hostile political party that currently holds power in a country that has been dealing with a literal genocide for decades.
>A real state would not militarize hospitals and churches
I guess Israel isn't a real state then, giving how they use hospitals and churches as military targets...
>or if it did, it would accept the consequences for having done so.
Oh yeah? Those hospitals were really asking for it by "letting" Hamas operate? That's callous.
> What a way to frame "please stop bombing hospitals and churches"
Hospitals and churches that are militarized. I don't think you are interested in understanding or fairly representing what I'm actually saying, so I'm not interested in discussing this further with you.
> When you call Palestine "Hamas" like this, it becomes obvious what you're doing ideologically. Come on.
That was unintentional actually. I was trying to edit for clarity and conciseness, but this is not what I meant. I changed it to "Gaza's".
The IDF's claims as to the extent to which its targets are "militarized" are of course widely disputed (by journalists, government bodies, NGOs, etc). The raids on Al-Shifa, the bombings of mosques and the destruction of cemeteries most notably.
In this context -- it seems clear enough that the commenter above understands what you're saying, and is not making any distortions of it. They simply do not see any reason accept, at face value, the IDF's attempts to spin and obfuscate these horrific incidents. As seems to be the IDF's expectation from the world at large.
I think young Americans have learned all their lives that ethnostates are bad, especially those based on religion. I think they (we) want a one state solution where Palestinians are full Israeli citizens who can move, work, and vote freely.
This is by far the worst way to think about this conflict. It comes from a good place, but it's advocating for something that is:
1. Not even remotely likely to happen.
2. Not what almost any of the parties on the ground want to happen.
3. If implemented, would almost certainly lead to atrocities.
4. The opposite of what most people who have studied this issue think is a good option.
It is the essence of not being really engaged with the problem, and trying to fit it into a mold that doesn't make any sense, and therefore coming up with solutions that will leave everyone worse off.
I highly suggest that if you want to better the lives of people in the region, especially the Palestinians (since they're currently the worst off), you advocate for some form of 2-state solution, just like almost every other peace advocate in the region.
(I'm happy to elaborate on any of the points above, if you'd like.)
I don't think Hamas wants to be citizens of Israel, the western-style democracy. Its charter (even the softened 2017 version) unambiguously rejects recognition of Israel: "There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity."
Hamas wants an Arab Islamic state to rule Palestine from the river to the sea. It doesn't want equal rights and seats in the Knesset, it wants Arab Muslims to govern the land under Islamic law. This is all spelled out explicitly in their charter.
I don't think Hamas wants to be citizens of Israel, the western-style democracy.
Acknowledged.
[The 2017 charter] unambiguously rejects recognition of Israel: "There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity."
By itself this statement certainly sounds unambiguous. But it comes into clear conflict with the language that immediately follows:
However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
Taken together -- I would not call this an "unambiguous" formulation of their position. There's obviously a very clear surface-level conflict between the two passages.
Holistically -- the most reasonable paraphrase seems to be: "Hamas rejects the moral legitimacy of the Zionist state. However as a practical matter, it will support the 2SS (along June 4 1967 borders) if this is determined the be the national consensus (among Palestinians), and provided the Right of Return is also granted."
The fact that it mentions "borders" is extremely significant, in that this means at least de facto, if not de jure recognition of the State of Israel.
I agree that the 2017 charter hints at acceptance of 1967 borders, and that its formulation is ambiguous in this sense (my "unambiguous" comment was in the context of analyzing whether Hamas would want to be citizens of Israel -- I think their rejection of this idea is unambiguous).
I think your reading is consistent with what the document says. On its face, the document hints at accepting a two-state solution under the 1967 borders. The most charitable interpretation would be that Hamas is willing to consider a two state solution an ultimate settlement of the conflict, with the two states living side-by-side in peace and harmony indefinitely.
However, another possible interpretation is that Hamas is willing to accept 1967 borders in order to secure statehood, but after securing it (including lifting of the blockade, etc) it primarily intends to use its state as a base to attack Israel with more vigor and resources until Israel is destroyed. "As a practical matter" could easily be read as "as a short-term solution."
When I observe Hamas's behavior, the second interpretation seems far more likely to me. Even as the document was announced, they said "We shall not waive an inch of the Palestinian home soil, no matter what the recent pressures are and no matter how long the occupation." The formulation of the document seems designed to legitimize future attacks on Israel once the two states are established. And Hamas shows little interest in developing Gaza as a permanent home for any of its people, as you would expect if they truly see it as a core part of their future state, preferring instead to preserve refugee status for as many people as possible.
I think we're on the same basic page about Hamas. They could very well have ulterior motives, and could just be going along with a 2SS process in order to buy time for future offensive strategies.
My only point is that it's important to come to an objective view of what the language of the document says, on its own terms (even if we suspect it's all on the surface and their real intentions may be entirely different). And even if the language is only surface-level -- it at least opens a door to some kind of a pathway towards a solution based on negotiation and international law, without outside observers and verified inspections of their offensive capabilities, verified elections and national referenda at regular intervals, and so forth.
Which is the only viable route out of the current state of the conflict, in my view.
I appreciate your point of view. I'd be happy to see a "internationalist" future that involves a two-state solution along with verified inspections of militarization, UN governance of Jerusalem, etc.
Unfortunately I don't see a Palestinian state accepting international limitations on its offensive militarization. I imagine they would consider that an unacceptable limit on their sovereignty.
I also think the "right of return" is an unfortunate stumbling block that will prevent this kind of settlement. Palestinians want to turn the clock back to a time before their allies launched a war to destroy Israel, and a time before the Mizrahi were expelled from the Arab world. Practically speaking, it's asking Israel to accept an unspecified number of people who are likely to be hostile to its existence. It's hard to imagine how this doesn't lead to a sharp increase in the amount of terror attacks inside Israel.
I want to believe that you are right, and that recognizing/encouraging small steps towards agreement from both sides will ultimately lead to a lasting peace. But my fear is that it is just a ruse to gain advantage, and that accepting it at face value will lead the West to give concessions that will ultimately aid future wars that seek to destroy Israel.
It's a little odd to see discussions of Hamas centering on the 2017 charter. That document was written by Khaled Mishal, who led the Hamas political wing (the "politburo", I guess?) from Doha. It was announced just as Mishal was forced from power by the hardline Gaza-based Al-Qassam wing of Hamas, which rejects that charter.
People go back and forth on how much evidence there is or isn't for Sinwar and Gaza-based Hamas's rejection of the 2017 charter, but read reporting and analysis from the time, untainted by what happened on October 7, about what the objectives were for updating the charter (significantly: easing Egypt's longstanding blocade of Gaza, repairing political relationships, working around Egypt's post-Arab-Spring, post-Sisi coup suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas's parent organization). Then look what happened on October 7. Like, there isn't much doubt that the 2017 document was unserious at this point?
This is purely a nerd point and not something I expect would change anybody's mind about what's happening in Gaza or what the outcomes should be.
The Charter was at the time meant seriously, at least by a certain faction within Hamas.
But with intervening events -- such as the appallingly harsh response to the 2018-2019 border protests; the storming of Al-Aqsa; and the election of the 37th Government (which brought on board not just an unsavory cast of characters, but specific plans for the continued expansion of the Settlements) -- the view took hold that Israeli society was plainly not interested in such overtures.
So as a result, the Charter got flagged and downvoted.
OK, but the reporting at the time of the charter was that Mishal had lost a power struggle with the hardliners --- these are events that occurred before the 2018 "protest". People wrote about the new charter when it happened! There's a bunch of analysis you can go read. You don't need to axiomatically derive this stuff, including the notion that the Al-Qassam wing rejected the 2017 charter.
Acknowledged that there were additional factors and events involved.
Since you prefer not to be centered on the Charter itself: if we are to understand why the decision was made to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; an in particular how they were able to recruit so many people to agree to what was apparently promised as a suicide mission -- then I submit that is necessary to consider the whole background of events up until that time.
The 2018 "protest"
Can we just acknowledge the cruel and unduly harsh nature of the military response to the protests (which by all accounts did at least start peacefully, and from within sectors of society independent of Hamas) without having to allude to the Israeli government's snide, mocking ("fake protest") narrative of it?
As if these people have nothing to protest or be unhappy about.
Anyways: one such report, about the conference, is via MEMRI. MEMRI is itself not really all that trustworthy! I would steer away from any analytical results! But this piece is largely direct quotes. Maybe they're fabricating them. Seems a little unlikely, though?
Notably, a bunch of more mainstream sources corroborated this report (just Google for the name of the conference). I think it's very likely to be legitimate.
The biggest mistake in the last 20 years was when Hamas took power and Netanyahu took an immediate hardline, imposing a crushing blockade, full demonization propaganda, "mowing the lawn" policy, and refused to even try to work with Hamas from day one. But Netanyahu has never wanted peace.
> Israeli politicians openly call the Palestinians "our bitter enemies" ... This feels extremely wrong to me
Wait till you find how in response to white nationalist attacks, the US political elite instead end up making laws to ban Palestinian groups.
An issue involving 14m peoples shouldn't be this international and should have never shaped the West's domestic policy (let alone foreign policy) as much as it has.
> Yet at the same time, Israel seems to have no obligation to actually consider or represent the interests of the Palestinians: They are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections; they don't have any representation in the Knesset...
Doesn't the US have a bunch of territories that don't have representation? Like Puerto Rico. It seems like this sort of arrangement is not alien even to Western politicians, although the treatment of people certainly differs.
> Israeli politicians openly call the Palestinians "our bitter enemies".
I don't think this is really true or at the very least it's nuanced. There are some extreme right politicians that say very questionable things but Palestinians (including Israeli Arabs, Palestinians in the west bank, and Palestinians in Gaza) are not generally, as a whole, thought of as bitter enemies. The Hamas maybe. People on both sides generally get along in many situations (e.g. Palestinians that are Israeli citizens, Palestinians working in Israel, Israelis shopping in the West Bank, even most settlers in the West Bank with their Palestinian neighbours).
One of those "far right wing" politicians happens to be the President of the country, who has repeatedly claimed that "[Gazans are] an entire nation out there that is responsible… This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved [in the October 7 onslaught] — it's absolutely not true." [0]
Even in his denial that these claims are basically holding all (or at least most) of the people of Gaza responsible for October 7th, he has actually reiterated the same claim:
"But the reality cannot be ignored, a reality which we all saw with our own eyes as published by Hamas on that cursed day, and that was the involvement of many residents of Gaza in the slaughter, in the looting, and in the riots of October 7. How the crowds in Gaza cheered at the sight of Israelis being slaughtered and their bodies mutilated. At the sight of hostages — God knows what they did to them — wounded and bleeding being dragged through the streets. In view of such terrible crimes, it is appropriate that the honorable court investigate them in depth, and not casually in passing."
He then goes on to say that despite this, they are of course not targeting civilians. But it's hard to see any way to interpret both of these statements other than as claims that the people of Gaza, collectively, deeply hate Israelis.
And other figures of power (members of the Knesset certainly, even some minsters I believe) have said much more explicit, and more heinous, things. I can search for quotes if you haven't seen them.
But your quotes do not support your statement. They do not refer to Israeli Arabs which are also Palestinians or to Palestinians in the west bank.
Your statement is incorrect but you're doubling down on it.
I think the sentiment of Gazans towards Israelis is a topic we can look at via surveys if you want to go that way.
It's also a matter of fact that some Gazan civilians were aware and did indeed participate in the Oct 7th attack. The first wave was combatants but random people followed that pillaging, killing, taking hostages. The statement about cheering in Gaza at slaughtered Israelis is also true. Neither of those truths support the idea that in general Israelis view all Gazans or all Palestinians (your original claim) as "bitter enemies". I can find you many quotes of Israelis saying their war is not against all Gazans. Those opinions outnumbers by 2 orders of magnitude. You can't just cherry pick, you need to look at the entire picture. Even Netanyahu clatified many times that Israel's war is not on Gaza's civilians (despite the truth of some of them participating in Oct 7th).
I said nothing about Israeli Arabs or even Palestinians in general (though I'm sure I can find statements about Palestinians in general).
But these are clearly statements about Gazans in general, not some specific subset of Gazans. Mr Herzog is clearly saying, or at the very least heavily implying, that Gazans in general are bitter enemies of Israel. Not every single Gazan, but Gazans in general. He could have said "there was some small group of Gazans that [...]". He could have said "There are some X thousand Gazans that [...]". But he didn't: he chose to say "Gazan civilians", without any other discriminant.
> "Israeli politicians openly call the Palestinians "our bitter enemies"."
As I said the bulk of statements from Israeli military, politicians, and government, in Hebrew and in English say that the war in Gaza is not against civilians but against Hamas. If you insist on cherry picking some statements and building your story on those then I would respectfully ask that you reconsider.
I would also urge you look at surveys and see what Gazans think about Israelis instead of obsessing with the (IMO not true) idea that Israelis consider Gazans their bitter enemy. Find me surveys before Oct 7th that show that Israelis had more negative opinions about Gazans than Gazans held about Israelis overall and I'm open to changing my position. I also urge you to see footage of Oct 7th and ask yourself a question about the mindset towards Israelis leading to these actions.
I did not, that was another poster. I specifically talked about Gazans.
> As I said the bulk of statements from Israeli military, politicians, and government, in Hebrew and in English say that the war in Gaza is not against civilians but against Hamas. If you insist on cherry picking some statements and building your story on those then I would respectfully ask that you reconsider.
They say they are not fighting against the civilians through one corner of their mouth, and say the civilians are bitter monsters that cheered as Israelis were slaughtered (as you are claiming as well) through the other corner of their mouth. In the meantime, their hands are busy destroying hospitals, schools, universities, killing journalists, killing aid workers, killing doctors and nurses, killing children, preventing aid of any kind from entering the country, and so on.
Not to mention, for every video of one Palestinian or Gazan cheering on the Hamas crimes of October 7th you find, I'll find a similar video of an Israeli citizen or soldier cheering when a school is destroyed or a "terrorist" killed. Both are heinous, but a lot of people, like yourself apparently, pretend only Gaza has monsters that take pleasure in the killing of civilians.
And still it must be remembered that Gazans are being actively occupied by Israel, a state which has no intention whatsoever as recognizing them as an independent nation, nor allowing those of them that wish to to return to the homes they had to abandon in the fighting of only a few decades ago. I personally cut oppressed people some small amount of slack when they feel vindicated for their oppressors feeling some amount of the oppression they feel every day, as bad as it is to think like that (note that more than 200 Gazan civilians were being killed per year even before the current slaughter began).
The actions of these politicians are more important than their words.
According to Amnesty International (which has a separate report detailing Palestinian war crimes), the politicians you are defending directly authorized the killing of 10,000’s of children, the maiming of 10,000’s more, torture of civilians (often to death, and including residents of Israel), created a famine that lead to a 93% starvation rate last winter, and also committed systematic violations of LGBTI’s rights in Israel.
There are many, many more war crimes enumerated in the report, and it also documents the connection to top Israeli officials.
The above is indefensible, as are the actions of Hamas.
The UN has revised its estimate of the number of children killed to 7,797 admitting the "fog of war" makes it hard to know how many were killed. The definition of "child" is anyone under 18yo which can include combatants. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-69014893
The UN numbers come from Hamas, there is no independent verification of those numbers and Hamas is a side to the conflict.
Either way, your statement about "authorizing the killing of 10's of thousands of children" is false.
I'm not sure what systemic violation of LGBT right you're referring to. The LGBTQ+ community in Israel has no issues unlike anywhere else in the middle east (for example). Israel ranks above most countries in the world in LGBT legal rights and friendliness: https://www.equaldex.com/equality-index
I don't know what 93% starvation rate you're talking about. This is just an outright lie. Also straight from Hamas. This lie has been repeated endlessly since the war started but somehow the markets are still full of food. People (e.g. Hamas) are also stealing aid and re-selling it.
Everything happening in Gaza is a result of war. Yes, Israeli went to war after Oct 7th, which Israel's government has authorized. The goal of the war is to destroy Hamas something that is within Israel's legitimate right to self defense. These outcomes you're describing including civilian casualties, hunger, etc. are not just a function of Israel's decision, they're also a function of Hamas' decision to hold onto its hostages and continue fighting. The reason for the war is Hamas attacking Israel. Hamas, the government of Gaza, is responsible for the condition of the people it governs.
> The UN numbers come from Hamas, there is no independent verification of those numbers and Hamas is a side to the conflict.
There are no other numbers for Palestinian casulaties. The Israeli state and military have continuously and vehemently refused to provide any numbers of their own (recently in a very embarrassing way on Piers Morgan's show, of all people). In contrast, the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers are considered very high quality by the UN and by all humanitarian organizations working in the region, and have been consistently confirmed for years. Sure, the ministry of health is run by Hamas, but that is only because they are the official ruling party in Gaza. Its not like trusting numbers reported by Al Quaida or ISIS.
Not to mention, those numbers represent a significant undercount of casulaties, since they only count confirmed deaths of people whom the health ministry could specifically identify. People lost in the rubble, small communities that were killed or starved and were not reported, etc are all not counted in these numbers. You can go and check the name and address of each and every one of those 7,797 children, and confirm that they are indeed dead.
Edit: If the IDF or Israel want to refute those numbers, it is extremely easy to do so: they can provide their own numbers, their own methodology, and allow independent experts to study them, like the ministry of health has. "Mysteriously", they have entirely failed to do so, just like they have failed to price that the hospitals they were bombing were Hamas control centers, and many other bogus claims they are making.
I would disagree with you. Those numbers are exactly like numbers that would come from ISIS or Al Qaeda. Hamas uses violence including torture and summary executions to force compliance in Gaza. Nobody in Gaza will work against Hamas or disobey an order from Hamas. There is no "independent health department" as some would like to portray. No such thing. The same methods are used towards UN or humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza and the people employed by those organizations are mostly Gazans.
Even according to Hamas officials many of the the casualties are based on "self reporting" and/or so called "media reports". Even they do not claim that the count is as accurate as you claim.
Nobody can check the "names and addresses" of those Hamas declared to be dead. For one thing there has been huge movement of people and even Hamas doesn't know who is where, for another there's no way for anyone to independently check on this.
The IDF released plenty of evidence of fighting Hamas in hospitals by the way. It also released interrogation videos where Hamas operatives describe their use of hospitals. Probably not in the news you choose to consume.
I think the IDF simply does not know. I think Netanyahu said something like 14,000 combatants and 16,000 civilians is the estimate.
The numbers were as accurate as I stated for the beginning of the war. It's true that as Israel kept destroying all of Gaza's civilian infrastructure (hospitals, power, government offices, everything), they have started relying on less reliable sources, which they fully discuss, and clearly estimate how many numbers are directly known and how many are more complex estimates. I was a little vague perhaps in not going into all of these details. The fact remains that all international organizations view these numbers as highly reliable, including the UN, WHO, Human Rights Watch, and many parts of the US government (despite Biden publically claiming these numbers are not refutable).
And in fact Netanyahu has all but confirmed these numbers himself. The "about 30,000" number, with no other details about provenance, accuracy, methodology, etc, is basically an excellent confirmation of the Hamas numbers.
> The IDF released plenty of evidence of fighting Hamas in hospitals by the way. It also released interrogation videos where Hamas operatives describe their use of hospitals. Probably not in the news you choose to consume.
They staged a few photo shoots of weapons they "found in the hospital", and showed some tunnels under one of the hospitals that Ehud Barak himself confirmed live in an interview with Christiane Amanpoor were actually built by Israel back when it controlled Gaza. So, no, they have not actually presented any evidence whatsoever, anymore than Avengers was evidence of an alien invasion in NYC. No journalists were ever allowed to investigate this evidence on their own, nor have any other kind of investigators.
> I think the IDF simply does not know. I think Netanyahu said something like 14,000 combatants and 16,000 civilians is the estimate.
Than it should shut up immediately about (1) the "Hamas" numbers that they just confirmed being "inaccurate", and (2) any pretense that they care about not slaughtering civilians, if they don't even know how many they are murdering.
It's more complicated than that. Israel did not administer Gaza nor does it administer PA controlled territories in the West Bank.
Last I checked the question of democracy didn't expand to occupied territories. When the US occupied Afghanistan or Iraq (or German or Japan) those countries did not get a vote in the US elections. Puerto Rico also don't get a vote in the US?
Handing over the west bank to Palestinians isn't an option because: a) the world would not recognize that as the end of Israel's occupation just like it didn't accept Israel's handing Gaza over as the end of the occupation. b) That area would be taken over by Hamas just like Gaza was taken over and would be staging ground for launching attacks into Israel just like Oct 7th or the rocket barrages that came from Gaza over the years since Israel's withdrawal. The West Bank has a significantly longer border with Israel which would put most major Israeli cities minutes of driving and within rocket/mortar range. c) The option of annexing the West Bank and Gaza and making everyone citizens is also not acceptable to either the Palestinians or the international community.
This really answers your unasked question of why is this area under military occupation for so long (IIRC Germany and Japan were also controlled for a pretty long time but anyways). Initially Israel needed the area so Arab armies aren't sitting 10 minutes from its population centers (when the entire Arab world was still at war with Israel). Now that there's peace with Jordan and Egypt it's more of a Palestinians aren't willing to make peace in exchange for this land, they don't want to become Israelis, and there's no realistic option that ensures both the safety of Israelis and their rights and the rights of Palestinians.
After all this you might be right to complain about e.g. settlements in the west bank. And there I'd finally agree with you. Israel should not allow Israelis to live in the west bank before it's final status is determined. That said, it wouldn't really make the problem that easier to solve, if anything it is taking us closer to a day where that area is annexed and Palestinians do become Israeli citizens.
Israel has had complete control over Gaza's borders, even the Egyptian border side. And that's since the 1980s, before Hamas even was a thing. That means that Israel either was blockading or "administrated" the border if we want to sugarcoat it. I'm not sure about you but that sure sounds like either an act of war, or occupation.
Also, settlers in the west bank aren't just a "that sucks" type of thing. It shows exactly the intentions of Israel once any territory is pacified. Which is exactly what happened to the west bank since they stopped fighting back.
Egypt is a sovereign nation with control over their borders. It is entirely within their power to facilitate as many border crossings as they see fit. The Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing is staffed by the Egyptian Border Guard Corps. The Philadephi Corridor is demilitarized as per the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty and is controlled by the Egyptian Border Guard Corps. Egypt has chosen to cooperate with Israel on the security arrangements at the border, largely because the Egyptian government regards Israel as an ally and Hamas as a hostile power.
This is either not true or misleading. Palestinians can't move without Israeli consent. It doesn't matter that what the egyptians have chosen voluntarily (they haven't), when every other path in and out of Gaza is controlled by Israel and subject to force and threat of death. For any other territory or nation that would be considered a threat of war.
>Under the Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing, part of the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) of 15 November 2005, EUBAM was responsible for monitoring the Border Crossing. The agreement ensured Israel authority to dispute entrance by any person.[14]
This was in 2005, before Hamas. Now if you can't get to Gaza from the sea, because of Israel. Or from Egypt, because of Israel. Or from Israel itself...
Again, any territory or nation would consider something like this as an act of war, or if we don't see them as nation then apartheid. But no, the Gaza strip was completely free otherwise I guess?
Well, Hamas and Israel are at war, and have been at war since Hamas came to power, so not sure why "act of war" matters here. Firing rockets at Israel surely is an act of war.
If Israel has such good control over the Egypt-Gaza border how do Hamas fighters get to train in Iran?
How did they get all the rocket manufacturing technology? Weapons?
This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing says:
"It is located on the Egypt–Palestine border. Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval."
There is no mention of controlling movement of people. Anyways, this is something Egypt agreed to and it's sovereign and free to agree to anything it wants to. What do you mean "Egypt has no chosen voluntarily"?
Do you have a reference to your claim that Palestinians can't move without Israel consent?
This was before Hamas took power. That's why I said 2005.
And yes, so between 2005 and 2007 Israel already had control over the border. That's before Hamas. Once Hamas got into power, Israel restricted the border policy even more, but Egypt just basically closed theirs.
I mean I'm not sure what's the debate here. Even Israel is very clear that they issue visas for entry to Gaza. That sure sounds like administering a border to me. In the west bank, they completely control every border point. In Gaza, it's de facto the same thing as Egypt doesn't open theirs for most of the year as they consider Israel the administrative authority that deals with Gaza borders. Which is something Israel acknowledges. Does your country emit visas for territories it doesn't administer?
Edit: as for Egyptian control of the border, here's a source that explains how it's in many ways nominal only, with a tacit agreement between Israel and Egypt about dual use materials.
Which I guess can make sense considering Hamas. But then one has to remember that this has been the case before Hamas took power too. So that catch all excuse doesn't hold water.
The debate is about the false claim that Israel has control over all of Gazas borders. Egypt has control over one border. That is a matter of fact. The Anti-Israeli crowd refuses to deal with facts.
Israel administers it's border with Gaza. That's not the debate.
Israel requires people to get a permit to enter Gaza from Israel. It does not control who goes into Gaza from Egypt.
Your claim: "Does your country emit visas for territories it doesn't administer?" is nonsense and factually incorrect.
So Israel does not administer the emission of visas? And does not have a gray list with Egypt on the Palestinian border? And there were no border agreements in the context of camp David and other related agreements with Egypt?
Israel has shown itself to basically have 0 regard for international law. It's not like they haven't shown that they will attack any way to cross the border that they don't have some sort of control on. I mean, why would they attack the Gaza flotilla and enforce a maritime blockade on Gaza if the border with Egypt was already "free" from their control?
Generally speaking, do you agree or disagree with the fact that enforcing a maritime blockade is usually an act of war and grounds for retaliation? Btw, you still haven't shown me a single example of a country that emits a visa of entry for a territory that isn't under occupation (or under blockade).
But sure, I guess Egypt totally has control over the crossing that is within shelling range from Israeli military outposts, in an area that they did shell in the past too.
So if we ignore the soft military threat on Egypt, the choking out of the border crossing opposite of the Egyptian side, the lists of goods that can't make it through due to israeli graylists, the fact that every other border crossing is controlled by Israel, and that they did control human passage before Hamas even at Rafah until 2007... oh and also the fact that Gaza has no rights to maritime traffic or air traffic.... then yes sure you're completely right.
I'm sure Palestinians should be glad that Israel gives them the privilege of being a notch more "open" than Warsaw ghettos. The few weeks per decade when Rafah is actually open, that is.
Gaza was under Israeli control until 2005. The Agreement on Movement and Access was made between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as part of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. That agreement collapsed in 2006 when Hamas took power. The PA had fled Gaza and were no longer able to uphold their side of the agreement; Hamas did not recognise the agreement and were unwilling to negotiate with the PA, Egypt or Israel on border security arrangements.
Egypt lost the six-day war and had to sign the Camp David accords and peace treaty to regain the Sinai peninsula. In return it gave up upon part of its sovereignty needing consent of Israel on topics like arming of the border guard or wares that are allowed the crossing.
Israel had no control of the Egyptian border to Gaza since it withdrew in 2005. That is a fact.
You got the settler vs. Palestinian violence in exactly the wrong order. Before the first Intifadah there were hardly any settlers in the west bank. The settlement movement is a response to Palestinian violence, not something that happened because the violence stopped. Palestinian violence against Israelis and Jews predates 1967 (when the west bank was occupied from Jordan) and predates 1948 (When the state of Israel was created).
> Before the first Intifadah there were hardly any settlers in the west bank. The settlement movement is a response to Palestinian violence, not something that happened because the violence stopped.
Even if this is true, all it demonstrates is that Israel is willing to take any measure necessary to avoid giving Palestinians in the West Bank full legal and political rights. Mere military occupation was met with violence, so instead of taking it as a sign that they weren't welcome and letting the population govern itself, they resorted to civilian settlement on top of that to solidify their hold.
Many (IMO most) Palestinians don't want to govern themselves. They want Israel erased. Israel tried "govern themselves" in Gaza.
There is nobody representing Palestinians that will accept resolving the conflict in return to control over the west bank and Gaza. This is true in multiple ways, firstly the Palestinians are fractured and have no one representative. None of the different factions would accept this either. Find me one Palestinian leader that says that.
It's super naive (sorry) to think that this conflict would be over as soon as Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza. Ariel Sharon wanted to withdraw from the West Bank if the withdrawal from Gaza proved successful. Most Israelis do not sympathize with the settlers (at least that's the way it used to be, public opinion shifted a lot with all the violence). What would happen is that Hamas would take over, just like it did in Gaza. The PA is relies on Israel's support right now which prevents that from happening. Then all of Israel would be bombarded with rockets, mortars, etc.
The Palestinians demand the right of return, that is any refugee from the war of 1948 and all their descendants should be allowed to return to Israel. This is a non-starter for Israel and something without precedent in any other war in history. What this means in practice is the destruction of Israel by killing or expelling all Israelis. The other point of contention is Jerusalem. Israeli maintains freedom of religion and access to all religions. When Jerusalem was under Jordanian control Jordan did not. It's unlikely that Jerusalem under Hamas control would maintain free access. Jersualem is the holiest city for Jews.
Oslo (which never included a firm promise of a Palestinian state in the first place, or even an end to the settlements) was sabotaged by the extremist fringe on both sides. If there is ever to be peace, those fringes can't be allowed to have a veto over the process. As for Camp David: https://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/fmr_israeli_foreign_m...
> Israel tried "govern themselves" in Gaza.
To be specific, Israel tried "govern themselves, but also help fund and bolster Hamas terrorists. And blockade Gaza by land, air, and sea (including bombing out their airport) so their economy has no possibility of ever growing. And shoot to kill civilians in wheelchairs if they dare protest this state of affairs." That's what the situation in Gaza has been for the past two decades. Any nation—any nation—subjected to such treatment for such a span of time would consider it casus belli.
> the Palestinians are fractured and have no one representative.
Barghouti perhaps could be a unifying figure if released, though maybe that wouldn't be a good thing… In any case, lack of unity between Gaza and the West Bank is no excuse to block work towards peace and ending the occupation in either locale. Israel could make separate deals with both factions.
> The Palestinians demand the right of return
They demand that RoR be acknowledged. In practice, their negotiators have admitted on several occasions that all of them returning would be impracticable. Instead, Israel could let only a small percentage in, and financially compensate the rest as restitution.
> Israeli maintains freedom of religion
Eh, they are trying to destroy the Armenian Christian quarter. But mostly true
Yes and Israeli violence against Palestinians also dates from 1948. In fact the Israelis killed much more Palestinians than the reverse.
Also I don't get your point. So they started settling because of the intifada? That doesn't make sense, and I've never seen settlers claim that it was related to anything expect that they see it as their god given land regardless of what happens to those who live there already.
I mean it's pretty simple, when the Fath ceased armed combat, the settlers came and Israel did nothing expect provide IDF protection to them. That's what the Palestinians got for trying to actually normalize the situation and create the PA and even fight their own little civil war against extremists (Fath vs Hamas): unrelenting settlement.
I'm sure the settlers wouldn't be so brazen if Hamas was also on the west bank. Funnily enough though, Israel ministers were also openly discussing allowing settlements again in last year in Gaza.
Still, it's very weird to see settlement as a "oh well that sucks but what can we do" when Israel could stop it any moment they want like they did in 2005. Oddly enough, only Israel gets to have literal conquest and blatant disregard for international law and even their allies marked as an oopsie.
The Israeli right wing is supports (to some extent) settlement in the west bank and the rise of the Israeli right is related to Palestinian violence. That's the correlation/connection. Israel's left wing, that used to support a two state solution and peace, has ceased to exist as a direct result of Palestinian terrorism.
You story doesn't jive with the facts. The period between 1967 and the mid eighties was the least violent period in the west bank. Palestinians worked in Israel. Israelies shopped in the west bank. That period also had virtually no settlement activity in the west bank.
The extreme right in Israel sees settlement as the "proper" answer to Palestinian violence. That's another thread connecting these things. But the government that enables this was literally brought into power by Hamas.
When did Fatah cease armed combat exactly according to you? Are you talking about the Oslo agreements and the return of Arafat to Ramallah? I'm not following you (and I used to live in Israel during those times so I'm not making stuff up).
Hamas is also in the west bank so your other statement doesn't compute either.
Israel has dismantled settlements in Sinai, and in Gaza, as part of an agreement. During the Oslo process there was support in Israel to dismantle those as part of a peace agreement. The Palestinians didn't want peace (Arafat thought he'd be murdered if he makes peace with the Israelis and anyways Hamas and the PIJ wouldn't abide which makes the whole thing moot).
Hamas is in the west bank? I'm sure they have a few militants but they literally are hunted down and killed by the Fatah. Also, I really wonder what happened in the 1980s that lead to more violence. Could it be that the IDF enabled and even caused the massacre of 3000 Palestinians in Lebanon?
I'm not sure I'm following though. You are saying that Palestinian terrorism caused the right wing to come in power and disregard international law. Sure, okay. I hope you realize that in the 1980s, most of said terrorism was happening in areas that Israel was already occupying. Also, again, you seem to imply that Israel's left wing actually gave the Palestinians more than apartheid and at best, a ghetto to live in semi undisturbed. That has never happened. Again, the poster child for that was 2005. What the Palestinians got was a a completely choked out, blockaded strip of land.
Like were the Palestinians supposed to be grateful and just accept that they will have to live in a state of semi servitude and protectorate because at least it wasn't the right wing in power? That's just completely irrelevant from the Palestinians pov. Again, who cares about the political climate of Israel as if it's some sort of actual excuse for settling and stealing land at gun point? Again, there's an incredible double standard here.
Palestinian motives and goals and politics don't matter, but Israel is always justified because it could've done worse. I mean sure? It reminds of Russian propaganda for the war: they have really tried to stay peaceful but NATO FORCED them to invade and steal land. It could've been worse though! They could've used nukes.
Yes, Israel wasn't doing settlement back then. But that's the point now isn't it? Back then, they already occupied the west bank. And the extremism and fascist inspired ideology of settlers didn't emerge yet. On both sides, extremism was less prominent. But again, the double standard is to excuse the Israeli settlers and their batshit insane ideology.
> if anything it is taking us closer to a day where that area is annexed and Palestinians do become Israeli citizens
I doubt the current state of Israel would ever make the Palestinians full Israeli citizens, because then Israel would no longer be majority Jewish. Being known as the Jewish homeland is very important to Israel.
They would. Even with the current numbers Israel still maintains Jewish majority and also the proponents of this annexation also say it'll come hand in hand with a "de-radicalization" program. There are other tools Israel can leverage (e.g. a constitution) to ensure Israel remains the Jewish homeland while making Palestinians full citizens. These don't have to contradict. Either way the Palestinians have no interest in being equal citizens in the country of Israel so it's more or less a moot point, for now.
Previous negotiations like the 2000 Camp David Summit have failed because (among other points) the right of return:
> Almost all Israeli Jews oppose a literal right of return for Palestinian refugees on the grounds that allowing such an influx of Palestinians would render Jews a minority in Israel, thus transforming Israel into an Arab-Muslim state. In addition to the right-wing and center, a majority of the Israeli left, including the far-left, opposes the right of return on these grounds.
> equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court
War crimes are war crimes, and these were committed in the same war. This is like complaining a corporation and an employee were charged in the same press release. They’re different, but not in the respect of the alleged crimes.
> why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Refusing refugees isn’t a war crime and isn’t—to my knowledge—under the ICC’s jurisdiction.
An interesting comparison. If they took in every Jew in Germany they would have been accomplices to an ethnic cleansing but would effectively have prevented an ethnic extermination. So while technically the answer would have been yes in that case it might have been a good thing anyways.
But the analogy breaks down here because (1) the UK and USA had strongly antisemitic attitudes at the time and imposed very small quotas on the number of Jews they accepted as refugees and (2) it appears that Israel is not pursuing extermination of Palestinians.
The US and UK have a checkered record with respect to accepting people fleeing the Holocaust [1].
Saving them was not an objective of the war effort and was opposed by many due to domestic anti-Semitism and ethno-nationalism (Nazism had significant open sympathy in the US at the time).
Until the political tides changed in the US/UK, both countries definitely wasted time during which many perished in the Holocaust. Mostly people watched as the Nazis killed millions. There was no public uproar to intervene while the events were happening.
It's also not clear that either country would have ever accepted millions of Holocaust refugees, even though the US certainly had the space. The creation of the state of Israel after the war in a way helped them not have to face that question.
My reading of the history is that a not insignificant fraction of early Western support for Zionism was explicitly to avoid Jewish immigration to Western nations.
That was among the secular/ethno-nationalist rationales.
But there is also a religious rationale. In fundamentalist Christianity, the re-establishment of the state of Israel to its biblically described borders is a precondition for the return of the Messiah and Judgement Day, when the same Jewish people will supposedly be given a last chance to convert ... or else. So the policy is in part rooted in the anti-Semitism of Christian eschatology.
Those ideas had strong appeal after WW2, and they are a major policy motivator of the Christian religious right-wing in the US today.
Just one minor note: these are parts of American Protestant fundamentalist Christianity, I don't think similar concepts can be found in even the more fundamentalist factions of Catholic, Orthodox, Calvinist, Lutheran, or Ethiopian Christian sects.
Yes, I don't generally include Catholicism, Orthodox, and several other Christian sects when I use the term fundamentalist Christianity (although I'm sure fundamentalists exist in any sect of any religion).
I suppose a better term would be "evangelical protestant fundamentalist Christianity", although I suspect that even there, some small number of them are not focused on politicizing Christian eschatology.
It's not a war crime but it is against the 1951 and 1967 refugee conventions, both of which Egypt is a signatory to. I wish more time was spent lambasting them for that.
That cannot be true based on any logical thinking. It would be amazing if that were the case. That people fleeing in Nakba all said “we will go anywhere but the remaining unoccupied Palestinian territory”
That's absolutely false. Yes, there were Palestinians in Gaza before the Nakba, but the reason there are refugee camps and the reason UNWRA exists is to provide for the Palestinian refugees from the Nakba.
Palestine using human shields are not Israel's war crimes. They are Palestine's war crimes.
Israel is not at fault for trying to recover hostages from a population aiding and abetting terrorists. Have you even seen footage of a Hamas member in uniform being killed? They dress as civilians so their rightful killing is interpreted as "war crimes" by gullible American students.
The prosecutors at the ICC are neither gullible nor American.
> Palestine using human shields are not Israel's war crimes
Starvation as a war tactic ... can't be human shields? Dropping a bomb every 50secs for the first 2 weeks and now again in the past week killing 15k+ can't be human shields? Withholding aid, inciting genocide, destroying large swathes of infrastructure isn't merely human shields.
There are many, many pieces of evidence I could cite to refute this argument, but the one I find the most compelling is the situation in the West Bank. Hamas does not control that area, there are no "human shields" there. And yet the IDF kills civilians and commits crimes there regularly (with reams of documentation from organizations like https://www.btselem.org/ and https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/). Why should I trust the IDF to be any less criminal in Gaza?
> gullible American students
I know one such student quite well. They are Jewish, right-wing, and all their life were taught (at the Jewish school they attended, and by their family) to support Israel. Then they went out into the world, and met some Palestinians. Now they are leading protests against the war
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion
The Panel's report is not based on "far fetched assumptions." It names the explicit acts that Israel is known to have committed (eg: mass starvation via blockade of food and shelter):
"based on a review of material presented by the Prosecutor, the Panel assesses that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant formed a common plan, together with others, to jointly perpetrate the crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. The Panel has concluded that the acts through which this war crime was committed include a siege on the Gaza Strip and the closure of border crossings; arbitrary restrictions on entry and distribution of essential supplies; cutting off supplies of electricity and water, and severely restricting food, medicine and fuel supplies. This deprivation of objects indispensable to civilians’ survival took place in the context of attacks on facilities that produce food and clean water, attacks against civilians attempting to obtain relief supplies and attacks directed against humanitarian workers and convoys delivering relief supplies, despite the deconfliction and coordination by humanitarian agencies with Israel Defence Forces. These acts took place with full knowledge of the extent of Gazans’ reliance on Israel for essential supplies, and the adverse and inevitable consequences of such acts in terms of human suffering and deaths for the civilian population."
Not sure if this is what OP was saying, but evidence of orders to directly target civilians would be an open and shut case.
The starvation charge could at least in theory fail (e.g., along the lines of intent - although Gallant's words in the beginning of the war certainly do not help Israel's case).
Juxtaposition and equation are different. The press release makes very clear which charges apply to which parties—the charges against the Hamasnikim are quite different from those against Israeli leaders. It also makes clear that the principle of subsidiarity of course applies.
If you think the prima facie case against Bibi and Gallant is convincing, the Israeli AG is quite plausibly doing so little that subsidiarity is no longer engaged. If you think it is unconvincing, as you say, the problem is not some inappropriately symmetric ignoring of subsidiarity but that the charges themselves are unconvincing.
A final point is that the Rome Statute does not prohibit merely ‘orders of directly targeting civilians’, and so other potential crimes must be considered. These include ‘cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i); [e]xtermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity; [and o]ther inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k)’. Of course, you may think that Khan has jumped the gun on each of these in that each of these charges is also implausible, but that is a stronger position than doubting that there were orders to directly target civilians.
(edit: I should add that Khan [I imagine] and I would say that while subsidiarity may not preclude proceedings against Israeli officials because of Israeli inaction, Hamasnikim are not subject to anything that remotely resembles a judicial system worth the name, so there is nothing comparable to even fail to act.)
I realize that the charges are different and clearly attributed to each party they are brought against. The optics of this will still practically lead to people equating both parties and the charges. An alternative (ie seeking both warrants separated by time (ie a week) and space (different press releases)) would have been better.
Again I'm all for investigating whether war crimes have been committed by Israel. It's going to be a nuanced argument in any case to prove so that will probably involve how many civilian casualties are acceptable to achieve legitimate military aims.
The contrast must be pointed out by all who want nations and non state actors to be accountable for their actions.
The crux of the matter is not the casualties inflicted by Israel, not directly. If it were just numbers of casualties, then Hamas's horrific attack wouldn't even register at this point (2000 victims compared to 35000). Even if it were about percebtages, Hamas's brutal attack on October 7th wouldn't be far from Israel's operation (about 25-35% of the victims of Hamas's attack were IDF personnel, if I recall the numbers correctly; IDF is not giving any numbers about their Hamas VS civilian calculations, but comparing their published numbers of killed militants with the available casualty numbers suggests at best a 50% rate, though likely much worse).
Instead, the case is mostly about intent, and that can be gaged from public declarations and actions outside of mere combat. The case against Hamas is clear, they attacked in secret, with quite likely no military targets at all, and with a clear history of anti-civilian sentiments and declarations.
The case against Israel is also relatively simple from this point of view: numerous Israeli leaders, from the president to ministers to members of the Knesset have given public declarations about the collective guilt of Gaza's civilian population, and their actions in preventing aid from entering Gaza, attacking refugees, attacking journalists and international aid workers have been thoroughly documented.
If people are stupid enough to misread the current press release, they are stupid enough to misread two press releases separated by a week as if they were one press release.
I assumed the ICC named the two opposed leaders in the same press release because the ICC had concerns about both, and it is a politically charged situation.
(If they had named only one leader in that press release, perhaps quietly expecting to name the other later, I would think that would appear to be a judgment of the multiple obvious potential concerns, and a taking of sides.)
And cut off water supplies and electricity, and killed international aid workers, and rained hellfire on hospitals, and killed workers from the UN, and wiped out entire Palestinian families, and razed Gaza to such an extent that it changed the colour of it as seen from space, and plunged Gaza into famine in the worst drop in nutritional status in recorded history.
How exactly do you expect a war in a dense urban area, where the enemy is not uniformed and is directly embedded in and under civilian populations, to transpire?
Not by targeting and intentionally murdering hundreds of entire extended families in their sleep during the night, just because they live in the same 3 story building as some low-level fighter?
That's why you see reports of 600 extended families being completely erased, just because they lived together. It's not random civilians here and there.
You didn't answer the question at all: how do you prosecute a war when all the combatants are embedded in a dense urban civilian population? Are you going to send your soldiers into buildings door to door to face whatever booby traps and horrors the terrorists placed for them? Systematically using civilians as human shields is a war crime for precisely this reason, because it exposes civilians to a great deal of danger.
Actually I did. By excluding one particular category of things. I can provide many other exclusions. General exclusions + some obligations is pretty much how laws of warfare are defined. Which is how nations agreed to wage wars more "humanely" in the past, including Israel.
And I think Israel should not wage its extermination campaign at all, btw. So I simply don't agree with the premise of your question, personally.
Well the Israel does have a history of door to door killings, please reference the 1948 Nakba massacres and Deir Yassin atrocities. IDF used Palestinians as literal human shield. No amount of whataboutery could erase the horrors IDF has committed in Gaza. Have you seen the videos IDF personnel posted themselves, looting homes, bombing any stone that is standing? Digging graves on cemetery? Mass graves around Al Shifa?
Not to mention that Israel is practically recruiting for Hamas since Oct. 7th. I don't know where the 40,000 number comes from, but if it's from before the war, I have to guess that the needle probably hasn't moved much, even if the # of Hamas killed are accurate.
> The optics of equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
They aren't being equated by the fact that people associated with each are having charges sought. The five individuals charged are in the same press release because it is the outcome of one investigation of the conflict by the prosecutor's office.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because, even if that were to constitute a crime within the general subject matter jurisdiction of the court, that's not an crime that took place on the territory of Palestine or any other State Party to the Rome Statute, or by nationals of Palestine or any other State Party to the Rome Statute, so the ICC, under Article 12 of the Rome Statute, lacks the ability to exercise jurisdiction over them.
The better comparison is between Hamas and the current Israeli executive branch, not the state of Israel per se. Even so, I see no equating the two. The ICC is implicating both parties with war crimes, not claiming they are equal
The US fought in urban settings in Iraq without putting civilian populations under siege and starvation. By all appearances, Israel isn't even trying to conduct a lawful urban war.
Israel started by dropping bombs on hundreds of sleeping families, leveling entire neighborhoods and after a month of that, started fighting some ragtag scavenger fighters (non-state actor), who have almost no external support, while continuing to level everything remotely related to governance, culture, or other social institutions that came in their path for seemingly no reason but the desire to completely erase possiblity for Palestinians to live in Gaza.
Seems more like an extermination campaign, and no, you can't fight that lawfully.
> that seems to be the biggest, intellectually honest hole in the ICC's warrants.
No warrants have been issued nor have the specifics of any of the charges sought, beyond the names of the crimes, been made public. No oene can talk about what the holes in the charges that might ne issued in the future are, only of strawman charges that they have invented to argue against.
> a democratic state with functioning judicial system
The "functioning judicial system" is only relevant here if that judicial system is actively investigating the crimes that the ICC is looking into. If Gallant and Netanyahu were on trial inside Israel for war crimes, then the ICC would step back. But that's not the case.
I won't get into whether Israel is really democratic, given that it rules over several million non-citizens in the occupied territories, whom it deprives of even the most basic rights.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
In Gaza, the IDF has targeted nearly every civilian apartment building, nearly every hospital, nearly every school, in fact nearly every building period. The IDF knows that civilians live in apartment buildings. It knows that hospitals are full of sick and wounded civilians, as well as medical staff, families of patients, and people seeking shelter from the bombing. When Israel decides to bomb a civilian apartment building or a civilian hospital, it is intentionally targeting civilians. Israel can claim that it is just going after Hamas operatives in a highly selective fashion, but that is implausible given the scale of the bombing campaign. It is also contradicted by leaks from inside the IDF, which show that Israel is intentionally targeting the personal homes of anyone suspected by an AI system of being connected to Hamas, and that the IDF is willing to kill up to hundreds of civilians just to hit one Hamas member.[0,1]
If this was October 2023, sure. I'd agree with you. The problem is that, as the war has continued, Israel has engaged in a number of actions that, depending on how you spin it, are either catastrophic fuck-ups or deliberate attempts to starve out Gaza, including bombing a humanitarian aid convoy.
Furthermore, there's no way in hell Netanyahu gets his endgame (wiping Hamas off the face of the planet) without either exterminating all Palestinians in Gaza (which absolutely is a war crime, orders or no) or significantly backing down on several of the things Israel does to Palestine to make it mad. He also has no reason to simply snipe some of the higher-ups, patch up the holes in the Iron Dome, and declare victory. Netanyahu needs the war to continue so he can continue delaying his corruption trial long enough to declare himself above the law with a judicial reform.
To be clear, yes, Israel is more western and more liberal than Palestine, but that gap is closing faster than I think anyone would like to admit.
>In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because countries do not recognize migration as a human right. If the ICC did this and was consistent about it, they'd have to challenge basically every restrictive immigration policy ever. I'd personally love that, but given how many countries in the EU are making handbrake turns to the right wing specifically so they never have to take in another refugee ever again[2], the EU would rather just invade the Hague like Bush threatened to.
Furthermore, (one of) the reason(s) why the 'three state solution'[3] never really panned out is because Egypt and Jordan don't want to become hosts for further revaunchism. Hamas will set up shop in their new home and Israel will just invade them - like they did in the Yom Kippur War. For similar reasons Israel has never wanted to entertain the 'one state solution'[1] that would also have solved this conflict decades ago, because they (mostly correctly) think Hamas will never be satisfied until Palestine extends from the border to the sea and all the Jews have been deported.
[1] Just abolish the Palestine/Israel border and let people live and work wherever
[2] Which, to be clear, is also a travesty.
[3] Move Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan and let Israel take over the rest of the land
The Israeli defense minister went on TV on 9 October 2023 [0] and declared that he was going to starve Gaza:
"We are imposing a complete siege on the city of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly."
I assume that this explicit admission of guilt is why he has been charged.
The Geneva Convention specifically has a section regarding this[0] - the occupying force is required to allow in relief supplies. ICC is accusing Bibi and Gantz of specifically using starvation as a tactic, which is a war crime.
>legal. Israel is not responsible for feeding Gaza.
With all due respect, no asked them to. Its about letting the aid from those are feeding. And maybe not raze the grain silos and farms? And not bulldozing the olive farms, both by the military and its citizens?
Whenever people say, "But the Allies did X in WWII," I wonder if they realize that a lot of international law was established specifically to make things that were done in WWII illegal.
> A blockade is completely legal. Israel is not responsible for feeding Gaza. Do you think the Allies fed the Nazis?
Okay. Sure. The Israeli navy has blockaded Gazan ports since 2007, not since October. It bombed the control tower of the airport in 1999 and bulldozed the runways in 2002.
And it told Gaza any attempt to build an airport would have the same happen to it.
Israel is not responsible for feeding Gaza. But with closed land border, and those blockades, it is responsible for some of the results.
> He's referring to Hamas and those are the nicest words said about them.
Why did Netanyahu give them billions over the last couple of decades, these human animals?
> Furthermore, there's no way in hell Netanyahu gets his endgame (wiping Hamas off the face of the planet)
Citation needed. When the PLO and Arafat were becoming less militant, and more diplomatic, that's when Netanyahu and Mossad started sending tens of millions a month to Hamas, to keep it as the "public enemy number one". But if Hamas goes away, then Netanyahu has to explain why he won't support a two party state (because "from the river to the sea" has also been Likud's platform and policy).
Aid money to Palestine is only "donations to Hamas" when it's politically convenient, apparently. I've heard many justify the bombing of convoys because the food would feed Hamas people.
They tried to walk through a militarized border fence, which will get you shot. If they had got to the homes they meant to reclaim the 'march' would have been anything but peaceful.
Egypt may well believe that (and others have rightfully pointed out that not following UN conventions for refugees is outside of the jurisdiction of the ICC), but I don't think there is a plausible case to be made that refusing to help people wanting to flee from armed conflict can be considering "supporting ethnic cleansing".
It's an interesting question. Even if you believe Netanyahu is guilty he was elected in a functional democracy. His ruling coalition is tenuous but legal. But if the ICC is trying to prevent atrocities then the size of the constituency behind an atrocity is irrelevant. At least to the mission. It does make enforcement seem kinda impossible. The best outcome they can hope for is shaming the Israeli electorate into doing something different.
> The optics of equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
I don't think anyone is actually doing that, though. The leader of a terrorist group and the leader of a democratic state can both commit war crimes. We need not compare them directly or try to say which one of them is worse in order to acknowledge that fact. Putting them in the same press release (this isn't a press release, though; this is a CNN article) seems fairly natural to me, since both are actors in the same conflict, regardless of how it started.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
You don't need direct orders to target civilians. You merely need negligence or a lack of care that causes civilian deaths in excess of what is "necessary" (ugh) to achieve the military objectives. I personally believe that Israeli forces have been indiscriminately killing civilians in Gaza in a way that would constitute war crimes, and apparently that just means I'm in agreement with the ICC.
> On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
Again, it is perfectly possible to acknowledge that two different parties have committed war crimes, even though they've done so in completely different ways, and the organizations they represent are completely different.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because that's not against international law. Even if it was, your question here is just whataboutism.
You are using characterisations there rather than facts. Or irrelevant facts, such as how the leader was elected. Think about who else in history has been democratically elected.
Courts can only deal in facts otherwise they are ineffective.
Courts that care about “optics” are ineffective. And there are no optics here that will please everyone. So just follow law.
A terrorist organisation is what typically a government stamp on that group for using terror to gain political advantages, those against it. Such government may use terror tactics which it would stamp as national security, preemptive actions, necessary interventions, collateral damage. Anything to justify what could be qualified as brutal unjust "terrorism".
On that basis all of the targets of the ICC are leaders of terrorist organisations. Hamas is considered terrorist organisation by certain authorities, you bet the Israeli government is considered terrorist by other authorities.
The ICC is meant to act on the evidence of war crimes. The definition of war crimes is far more formal than the qualification of terrorism. Consider giving a definition of terrorism, you will find that any arm belligerent who happen to cause civilian casualties can be categorized as such.
Finally, it is also worth noting the french resistance to the country's occupation and Nazism was considered led by terrorist groups. Those did employ sabotage, kidnapping, bombing, instill terrors. The collaborating french authorities and the Wermacht put those resistants on their terrorists lists, back then.
The ICC is surely meant to be above the arguments in the lines "these terrorists and those aren't", or politically and some government's biases as arguments. It would look into the evidence and prosecute based on these.
> The optics of equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
What's pretty bad is attempts to discredit the ICC by those who oppose it's decisions.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion. On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
No you are not; Your pro-genocide stance is nauseating.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Whataboutism and deflection from the issue at hand must not and will not be tolerated.
This is a fairly charged analogy which plays into the presentation of the sides and not the facts.
What if it turns out the Wealthy Businessman has been steadily murdering and Drug Addict's family, taking their land, and forcing them into such distress that they become addicted to a simple chemical escape?
Wearing a suit doesn't make you respectable. Hell, these days it's a cause for suspicion.
Yes, exactly! Our bias might be in favor of Israel because they have familiar-looking uniforms, tanks, etc. and the Palestinians are unshaven and often have a haunted look in their eyes. But not all is at it seems, and that's why the court shouldn't treat Netanyahu with kid gloves just because he looks clean.
Huh? Your comment is frankly non-sensical. Witnesses/victims that appear in court are doing so on behalf of the prosecution, they aren't charged with any crime.
Those are technicalities, but jupp0r was talking about how the public is going to perceive this action by the ICC. jupp0r was concerned that the ICC was equating the two sides, my point is that yes, they're being equated, in the sense that both sides are human. In other words, I don't think this is going to make people think, "huh, I guess both sides are equally guilty," I think it'll make people think, "huh, I guess both sides are being held to the same standard of justice." That's a good thing.
Which means that they were questionably democracies. Would China become a democracy if the Politburo standing committee reached decisions based on a vote of its members?
> Would China become a democracy if the Politburo standing committee reached decisions based on a vote of its members?
No, that’s oligarchy.
These questions have been debated for a long time. There is a No True Scotsman nature to the project, given the very nature of citizenship and polity means there are always demarcations between who can and cannot vote. But the difference is in degrees, and it should be obvious that there is a difference in kind between twenty-five people in a multi-billion-person nation and millions in a millions-more territory.
> if only 10% of the population (modern estimate for ancient Athens) can vote, you are an oligarchy as well?
Athens is classically considered a democracy. Partly because democracy means more than just suffrage.
> perhaps we should say majoritarian democracy is the criteria we are interested in
This is fair. Though Israel proper still satisfies the criterion. (I wouldn’t demote Britain from a democracy while it was administering occupied Germany, nor even necessarily its colonies. Same for ancient Rome.)
> Though Israel proper still satisfies the criterion. (I wouldn’t demote Britain from a democracy while it was administering occupied Germany, nor even necessarily its colonies. Same for ancient Rome.)
Your argument is more akin to calling South Africa a majoritarian democracy after it passed the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act, imo. By the rules of the 1948 partition (prior to 1948 which side you are living on determines your citizenship), close to a majority of people today living in Gaza or West Bank would be Israeli-side citizens. Post-facto stripping of the partition rights so that only a minority are considered citizens does not make you a majoritarian democracy.
I'm aware that Athens is classically considered a democracy, I just think that view should be complicated from a modern perspective (and even contemporaries described Athens as a democracy in name only).
> Which means that they were questionably democracies.
Ironically Socrates and Plato would say this is exactly what democracies are like. The difference is that you take democracies as positive and they did not. Anyway, calling Athens democracy (they are the OG democracy and the founder of the word itself) not the real thing made me chuckle. If only all that is at stake was a definition disagreement.
Everyone knows that Athens is considered the 'OG democracy', your comment reads as condescending.
If you continue learning about history, you might happen to notice that there appear to be gaps between how societies self-describe and the actual values they live by. This was well-known by contemporaries at the time, as Athens was described "in name a democracy but in fact governed by its first citizen."
More recent than the 18th century. Black people didn't get the right to vote in all of the US until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
It would be completely reasonable to say that the US (or at least the southern states) was not a democracy in the modern sense of the word until that happened.
> would be completely reasonable to say that the US (or at least the southern states) was not a democracy in the modern sense of the word until that happened
That’s redefining democracy to the extent it excludes Athens. The term you may be looking for is a liberal democracy, or more precisely universal suffrage.
If a country were run like ancient Athens today, nobody would consider it a democracy. We are talking about "democracy" in its modern meaning, not the regimes that used that term in a completely different way thousands of years ago.
> We are talking about "democracy" in its modern meaning
You are. That’s a redefinition. It neuters the term of its millennia-old moral weight.
Sure, I’ll agree Israel isn’t a democracy per whatever definition you’re using. It isn’t a “real”country per others’. At that point, however, you’re just expressing a personal dislike. Nothing foundational.
I think you have to take under consideration that Hamas has been attacking Israel for decades with little repercussions. I think they crossed a redline and convinced Israel much worse than a few rockets being lobbed over the wall was the future and Israel answered them with the only thing that Hamas understands, annihilation. I'm still convinced that Israel does not want civilian casualties of regular, non Hamas aligned Palestinians, because they absolutely would be killing a lot more of them if that was the case. War is hell and the West has forgotten that since WW2.
Why do you think Hamas has been involved in fighting against Israel? Just because they're evil? They're an oppressed people fighting an occupier. The massacres by the hands of the Isaeli far outnumber those by Hamas. From the 400k displaced people in the six day war, to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, to the regular "mowing the lawn" operations in gaza (that's what Israel dubbed their bombing campaigns in Gaza in the past couple decades), to the violent israeli response to the peaceful march of return protest, to the current ongoing genocide, Israel is not "defending" itself. There is no defensive genocide, there is no defensive apartheid. The idea that Hamas is not itself an answer to the continued ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Israel is a joke.
If Israel wanted to genocide Palestinians they would all be dead tomorrow or in prison-like re-educations camps. I do not agree with the way they are handling it, it could be done like the way US took Fallujah for example, section by section, conquer-and-hold and work more with the locals, especially basic needs, without turning everything into rubble and telling the Palestinians they're on their own for food and supplies. That sucks, and it's wrong, and Biden has been doing his best to tell them to stop that shit. it's not genocide though. Hamas is the target that is to be destroyed, not Gazans (who aren't Hamas). Sure they can't stop the movement 100% but they can kill or imprison the bulk of the current practitioners depending on if they want to surrender or not
By this argument, since there's still Jewish people around, the holocaust was not a genocide, which I find a completely unacceptable conclusion.
> if this were a genocide, they'd be in camps
Gaza has been described and essentially functions as a concentration camp. 2.5 million people in an area the size of Rotterdam, no going in or out, all borders, shores, airspace controlled by Israel, food, electricity, water supply controlled (and heavily restricted) by Israel. By your argument it is in fact a genocide, and I'm inclined to agree.
Whether Israel is an apartheid state or not is a controversial topic and far from settled. Palestinians are not getting the same rights as Israeli citizens because they don't have Israeli citizenship, just like in any other country. The discrimination is based on citizenship status and not on race. Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jewish Israelis.
If you take over some territory and rule it permanently, and then define the pre-existing population there as non-citizens with no way to change their status, you do not get to count as a democracy. This is what Israel has done in the West Bank.
> The discrimination is based on citizenship status and not on race. Arab Israelis have the same rights as Jewish Israelis.
It is based indirectly on race (inasmuch as "Jewish" is a race; maybe "cultural group" would be more accurate), because any Jewish person in the world can become an Israeli citizen, whereas most Arabs have no way to become citizens unless they are in Israel proper, the Golan Heights, or East Jerusalem. I.e. for people who live in the West Bank (outside East Jerusalem), whether they are Israeli citizens is entirely determined by whether they are Jewish.
> If you take over some territory and rule it permanently, and then define the pre-existing population there as non-citizens with no way to change their status, you do not get to count as a democracy
On some timeline this is every population on the planet.
I’m not defending the Nakba. But it’s not a commonly-used exclusionary rule for democracies. If it were, there has never been a democracy on Earth. (And never can be. Everyone lives on territory once occupied by another people.)
I’m not talking about the Nakba, I’m talking about the situation in the West Bank today.
It’s horrible that so many Palestinians had to leave during the Nakba, but since the ones who stayed were eventually granted citizenship and legal equality, I think it’s fair to say that Israel proper is administered democratically today — similar to the situation of Native Americans in the U.S.
But people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have no way to become Israeli citizens (unless they are Jewish), despite those territories being controlled by Israel, probably permanently. That is clearly undemocratic.
>But people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have no way to become Israeli citizens (unless they are Jewish)
>That is clearly undemocratic
Not only undemocratic, but it is running an apartheid. Not to mention the complete denial of right to return for displaced Palestinians, not even acknowledging it.
> don't see how there is a meaningful difference "administers large chunks of territory undemocratically" and "is not a democracy" in practice
The Federalist Papers are the deep dive. The Wikipedia article is a good start [1].
If you’re excluding classic members of a set with your measure, your measure is inconsistent with the classic set. You may argue Athens wasn’t a true democracy, but that obviously puts your definition of a true democracy in a special bucket.
> South Africa has been a democracy since the end of apartheid in 1994.
People in the present day use the word "democracy" in a way that would exclude either ancient Athens or the Jim Crow-era US. You are the one who's insisting on an unusual definition from thousands of years ago; my definition is the mainstream one. Furthermore, your "classical" definition is irrelevant, since we're talking about Israel the modern state in 2024 which should be judged by present-day standards.
South African apartheid specifically utilized this distinction of citizenship. The de facto state, to which all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are subjects, is Israel. This has been true for generations, and it’s going to remain true indefinitely. Keeping those Palestinians stateless doesn’t detract from the comparison to apartheid, it reinforces it.
At least until 2006 or so it was legal to deny Arab citizens entry to your community or permission to live, provided it was covered by the Admission Committee Law (most communities in Israel are).
Never mind the explicit ethnic-based right of return, land ownership rules, etc. By their own admission, the state frequently makes decisions prioritizing communities of the dominant ethnic group, see for instance 'National Priority Area's.
Honestly, the ethnic favoritism in Israel's government is so widespread and blatant I could just keep listing examples on and on.
This is incorrect. They very comfortably fall within the definitions set out by ICSPCA, as detailed for example in the famous 280 page Amnesty intenational report, and also the B'Tselem rapport. This is not a matter of opinion, this is a matter of definition.
There are many other reports of similar length and rigor that argue otherwise. In the end none of these reports are 100% impartial. The definitions set out by ICSPCA are not 100% precise and leave much room for interpretation. Did you actually read Amnesty International report in full or are you just citing it because it's supporting "your" side?
>The optics of equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
It's obvious to all that the warrants for the Hamas leaders only exist in order to justify the warrants against Netanyahu and co.
I find it meaningful that they're mentioned in the same document/release. Newspeople will obviously shorten that gap even further and put them in the same sentence, separated only by comma (like the CNN article currently linked).
If that doesn't say "your're no better than the other side", I don't know what would. It might be especially disrespectful to the Israeli, who usually play moral high ground, but it's probably also true the other way around.
You find it meaningful, I find it disgusting, and furthermore it calls the entire "court" into question. It's pretty obvious this is not a real court, and it should be ignored by all.
Why did they wait 7 months?
If the Netherlands had any morals they would have ejected these clowns long ago.
> ...and furthermore it calls the entire "court" into question. It's pretty obvious this is not a real court, and it should be ignored by all.
Yeah, it's not a real court, it's just a bunch of "transnational" bureaucrats imitating the forms of a court, without the foundational basis [1], and at great remove from whatever situations they're pretending to judge. At best, it's a political prop.
[1] Which would include things like de-facto power over its claimed jurisdiction, and having law known and respected by the people there.
The ICC document describes Israel as a "territory" and Palestine as a "State" (capitalised).
Their political bias couldn't be any more obvious.
Among the G20, countries like China and Russia consider Palestine as a "state" but the UK, US, Germany, France, Canada and others do not. Make of that what you will.
> The ICC document describes Israel as a "territory" and Palestine as a "State" (capitalised).
"...the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine" - the word and appears after the word territory. It means the territory of both. It is not just talking about the territory of Israel.
Also it refers to the names these countries use for themselves and which the UN uses as well. The official names of the countries are Israel and the State of Palestine. If Israel wants to be called the State of Israel as its official country name it would have to change its name to such, it has not.
> Among the G20, countries like China and Russia consider Palestine as a "state" but the UK, US, Germany, France, Canada and others do not.
143 countries recognize the State of Palestine. The State of Palestine is recognized by China and Russia along with other G20 members like Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey. Most of the countries in the world recognize the State of Palestine, the ones who don't are mainly in western Europe like the UK, Germany and France. As you say, make of that what you will.
I, for one, realized quite soon that this is well out of International Color Consortium‘s jurisdiction and capacity (however non-compliant the color profile implementations in Gaza might be).
> The decision puts Netanyahu in the company of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over Moscow’s war on Ukraine
How's that working out? Until proven otherwise, my assumption is the outcome will be roughly the same in most of these cases, especially for Netanyahu and Sinwar.
> Khan’s office risks attracting criticism that it places a terror organization and an elected government on an equivalent footing
thats the point isnt it?
edit: although ICC has had plenty of opportunities to punish war crimes from various states in the past, wonder why they decided to make a move now. because of the scale?
War criminal is war criminal. Nothing else factors in. And that they point both out at the same time makes it easier for them to avoid being seen one sided.
Ongoing attempted starvation of 2.4 million captive population and creation of conditions for famine. Attempted destruction of all means of civilized life for the entire population. I don't think there's been anything like that anytime since ICC was established. Pretty egregious.
This is an opportunity for Israel to reverse course. They can blame everything on Netanyahu, throw him out of office, stop all attacks into Gaza, stop depriving Gaza of food and water, and start deliberately working with respected members of the Gaza community to help build local businesses. They can make an international call to all successful Palestinians around the world to bring their business back to Gaza. Make it like when Israel was formed--a call to build something good for their ethnicity.
Honestly this could be a really great thing for the region. It could be an opportunity to shift blame from an entire ethnicity, the Jews, onto a single member of that ethnicity, in order to let the Jews and Palestinians be at peace with each other.
* There isn't blame on an entire ethnicity regardless of the outcome of this case. I don't think you want to open that pandora box.
* Ironically, Bibi will be temporarily strengthened. No sane Israeli leader would want to depose him and risk being seen as collaborating with the warrant or risk getting a warrant too later on. Over time Bibi will still inevitably be replaced (too many reasons for Israelis to hate him), but this may stretch to 2025.
* Israel allowed aid since the beginning and especially recently. Warrants will help focus the mind here.
> The U.N. says at least 500 trucks a day of aid and commercial goods need to enter Gaza. In April, an average of 189 trucks entered a day - the highest since the war started.[0]
There's no right for 'commercial goods'. The only issue in question is food, and trucks with food going in are twice the prewar level (the rest was mostly construction goods used for we know what exactly - that's not gonna go in).
What would clothes be categorised? Medical supplies? Only food? Sanitary napkins? Shoes? Israel doesn't need to provide this, just let what is needed for 2 million people to live given by the whole world.
Yeah, of course medical supplies count, I'm just saying there's no right for commercial traffic per se - the prewar count had a lot of stuff that's not relevant. The typical procedure is that Israel inspects the cargo and allows stuff not in a dual use list.
Who writes the list? Can their definition of dual use be relied upon to not be self serving?
Given the people in question are the ones with a vested interest in stamping out as much life as possible, I find it difficult to believe that this is even a tenable stop point for cognitive processing for anyone but someone who couldn't be bothered one way or the other.
I'm not sure that'd be enough to shift the blame from all members of the state of Israel to only the PM. There's just way too many videos floating around the social media of IDF soldiers actively and happily celebrating the genocide in a playful and careless manner, and Israeli civilians wishing only more starvation and pain upon the already starving residents of Gaza.
There were some suggestions in the past that the US’s unbridled support for Israel is harmful to the long term interests of Israel. Over the years I’ve seen less and less intelligent arguments coming from Israeli leadership, particularly in a world where smartphones can turn any citizen into a reporter.
Some days it is apparent that the wrath meted upon the Palestinians has turned into bloodlust. While I understand the grief and anger following such a massacre, there has long been a pattern of wilfully misplaced reaction against stone throwing kids and targeting of journalists and their families. These cannot be attributed to Oct 7.
Now with Israeli funds making its way back to US politics, the crazier the politician the better his chances. With time, the benevolence of the US will be questioned by their allies and make the world a less predictable place.
>Now with Israeli funds making its way back to US politics, the crazier the politician the better his chances. With time, the benevolence of the US will be questioned by their allies and make the world a less predictable place.
What alternative do these other "partners" have? The Ukraine war has exposed how badly atrophied all their military might has become and lets be honest, post Ukraine, its clear that is the most important thing.
The EU still isn't meeting their minimum NATO commitments despite how far behind they are. It would take a massive amount of pain that the EU populations would have to bear in order to turn this around. I suspect all of a sudden EU population will become like the US population caring only about their own short term self interests more than what is "morally right". So the partnerships with the US will stay until the EU is willing to make that painful sacrifice to build out an alternative to the US military.
A war only happens when the chances of winning or losing is indeterminate. Ukraine would have achieved a sane political outcome without loss of blood and treasure if the Russians managed to roll in their tanks and replaced the government with a Russian leaning one. This may sound unpalatable it would have restored status quo to the pre-western-funded coup against the Russian-friendly government that was in place.
Geopolitically, the NATO was heading towards obsolescence as Germany and Russian integrated their economies and achieve a lasting peace in the region. The US meddling in Ukraine weakens Europe and maintains the US status as the global hegemon.
and maintains the US status as the global hegemon.
The post-1945 globe evidently demands a hegemon. Which would you prefer, the US and its allies, or Russia and China? Those are your options. "None of the above" is not among them.
It's called United Nations Organization. Although it hasn't been fully implemented. It was planned to have nuclear weapon monopoly and strong joint military forces to stop any aggression. Why didn't that happen? Because it's the US that gained the benefits out of both world wars. And its allies aren't allies but minions. Remember what happened to Charles de Gaulle?
Also note that no one has ever declared a war legally since WW II. Because of the UN and international conventions.
I'd also add that it's not entirely correct to consider countries equal top level actors in the historical process now and in the past. Nowadays so called political nations are technically subjects of international right, of course. But, for instance, in pre-Westphalian world that wasn't the case and these days there is plenty of evidence of transnational actors' influence. For example, Vatican dates back to that era I mentioned. And also who owns most the land in Europe? And how come these von Something German nazis avoided The Nuremberg Trials and ended up as board members in big industrial companies?
So no, the world doesn't need a hegemon in your sense. Taking into account the paralysis of the UN since 1991 it's more likely there will be another take on the ruins that.
Maybe so, maybe not, whatever. None of that changes my point: you'll get a 'hegemon' whether you want one or not, and no, it won't be the UN. It will either be a US-led alliance or one led by China. The world is becoming more polarized, not less, and I don't see how that trend can be reversed.
By the same token, at the national level, it's possible that dictatorship will emerge as the only stable model of governance. People everywhere seem to want it. The only principle that actually matters in politics turns out to be "Screw the other guy," and dictators are the best at that. If so, the US's ability to protest and resist its central government will turn out to be maladaptive, giving the advantage to the China-Russia alliance in the long run.
As for the church, they still own the land but not the hearts and minds. Or the nukes. Religion is irrelevant at the international scope. But of course it's still as useful to the rulers of individual nations as ever, because you can't maintain a cult of personality without exploiting the same mental bug that the church originally stumbled across.
I believe that US has been an essential partner for a very long time. It demands great leadership but it is something sorely lacking over the past couple of decades.
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact could also be considered an integration of German and Russian geo-political interests to achieve a lasting peace in the region. Just surrender.
The eastern bloc countries suffered badly under soviet rule. When the Ukraine war started, I’m as eager as anyone to see that the Russians were dealt a black eye.
In retrospect, given the gas shortages that occurred in Europe, and the destruction of the German economy; the large number of deaths that occurred on both sides, and the war zone being turned into a weapons testing ground, I am left wondering who are the real winners and losers?
As of Iraq and Afghanistan, the USA doesn't recognize the ICC, so as long as Bush and Cheney stay in the US it doesn't matter if there are any arrest warrants.
The problem with holding the US accountable is that they have a law that'll let their president invade any country that arrests American citizens.
Large military powers such as China, Russia, and perhaps India, could try to put out warrants, but most ICC signatories would end up having an aircraft carrier parked in front of their capital.
I agree that the American war crimes should be treated the same as the Israeli war crimes and the Hamas terrorist attacks, but realistically, this will never happen. The same way the ICC won't ever get their hands on Putin for the invasion of Ukraine, or Xi Jing Ping for the Uyghur genocide.
If Israel had nukes and a top-five worldwide military presence, any attempts to go after Netanyahu would be as futile as attempts to convict Bush. The unfortunate fact is that the people with the biggest guns are rarely kept to the same standards as everyone else.
Though I did misremember, it's specifically about international courts prosecuting service members and officials. Which, or course, in this case would certainly apply.
>It does
Interesting, I did not know that. In that case it does surprise me that the ICC went ahead and tried to take action against Israel.
Perhaps the fact that Israel has very few allies and too many enemies to use them against most ICC members helps.
>One thing has been very clear during the last couple of years with Russia-Ukraine war and now this genocide: the world doesn't buy Western sht anymore.
Does it actually matter though? Much of the world hasn't bought western sht for decades and it hasn't really made a dent in any of the west's operations or goals.
China has proven they are just another sh*tty wannabe knockoff of the west (see BRICS and when countries default). They aren't any better.
I think we are about to see a change in that. If a country like Niger can say f* off to US military presence in the country we're seeing a shift in world geopolitics.
I've posted about this several times and will try to find some of those links for you, but the short version is that posts on all sides of this topic get flagged quickly (by users), and mods turn off the flags on limited occasions—mostly when some significant new information arises and there's at least some chance of a substantive discussion about it. The current story clears both of those bars, so I've turned off the flags on it.
It's pretty important that most stories about this conflict and similar current affairs get flagged, because otherwise HN's front page would consist of little else, and that's not the purpose of the site. But it's also important the the topics not be ignored completely, even though they're painful. There's no happy medium here, unfortunately.
Edit: here are some links to previous explanations. If you (or anyone, of course) have a look at these and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Do you have specific evidence of this? Such as some sort of meta analysis that shows more pro-Israel stories making it through, and more pro-Palestine stories getting buried? Such an analysis would also need to account for differing quality as well. That is, you could say "100 pro-Palestine stories were banned, but only 10 pro-Israel stories were banned in this time period", but if 90 of those banned pro-Palestine stories were of the form "Israel sucks and Israeli citizens should all die", then I don't think that statistic would make your case.
These threads are absolutely cursed. They get vicious quickly. The patterns set up quick as Loctite glue, excluding all but dedicated partisans (and a few weirdos like me), forming little anaerobic pockets of lactic acid poisoning any bud of curiosity, the core purpose of the site. And the threads go on for-ev-er. We had one run for over a week.
I'm not happy with this outcome. I could enjoy nerding out on the politics and diplomacy of the ICC. I think lots of people here have useful things to say about what's happening here. But I sure as shit flagged this story, because none of that will happen. It'll just be people yelling at each other endlessly.
There are other venues to have this conversation in. Doesn't have to be here.
"forming little anaerobic pockets of lactic acid poison"
Aerobic metabolism is actually worse than anaerobic metabolism.
Anaerobic conditions tend to result in fermentation by fungi and other incomplete metabolism by bacteria. We even recycle lactic acid because it is energy rich.
Aerobic metabolism has "toxic" results= CO2, Sulfur gases, Urea, phosphorous compounds. Very energy depleted molecules that only specialized organism can process.
For anaerobic bacteria, Bacteroides and Clostridium come to mind. Everything else I can think of CAN thrive in aerobic conditions: Mycobacterium, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Escherichia , Salmonella...
It's really interesting you're willing to and do preemptively apply guilt by association to everyone (by flagging) instead of downvoting/flagging specific comments, suppressing the whole conversations.
It's Minority Report you're engaging in, no?
Have you thought about this before? Do you apply guilt by association in your thinking in other places in your life?
I'm seriously curious if you've self-reflected on this - and it's not intended as an attack or putdown of any sort.
Why not allow the "lots of people here have useful things to say about what's happening here" and allow the "low quality" comments be suppressed-flagged?
One problem though is we have people who apply guilt by association to everyone downvoting anything they interpret however they likely with bias interpret - but you believe you're competent enough to make that judgement call, to be "judge, jury and execution" instead of perhaps just not engaging in threads that bother you too much to filter through?
That's why I flag em. They never lead to fruitful discussion even though I wish it would! I think though it's possible it would require way too much moderation- the juice ain't worth the squeeze.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
That's fair, but there's a difference between 1) accusing the specific person you're responding to of being a shill or that everyone advocating a given position is a shill and 2) suggesting that HN as a forum in general is likely the target of influence campaigns that impact the quality of discussion
dang, I think perhaps a rule should be added for users to not engage in "guilt by association", e.g. tptacek elsewhere made a comment that they flag posts simply because they're afraid there will be low quality comments in them, rather than discerning. Good idea, bad idea, maybe idea?
It answers your question, which has come up many times before, directly. If you feel otherwise, email hn@ycombinator.com --- "@dang" (or equivalents) isn't a thing here, even in replies.
dang has that username because it's a rarely used word.
And no, it doesn't answer my question - you seem to make assumptions a lot that people should be able to interpret things exactly how you expect them to; and you have the polar opposite behaviour as well of assuming what others mean when you're potentially wrongly interpreting. It's quite fascinating - and you'll assume I'm just wrong without caring to put effort into seeing if I have a valid point or not that could lead to growth.
It's not an insinuation it's an obvious fact of the world we live in. It's obvious to anyone who has used this site, or any other site, for any period of time.
Of course I'm worried about abuse, as this site clearly has the ability to influence people, not just politically, but technically and socially as well.
As I stated, just emailing you and hoping for the best is an entirely broken model which leaves users with no ability to detect this and quantify it for themselves or to share that information with the public who uses this site. HN itself offers no reports, no data, and no summaries about these actions or their outcomes.
I'm genuinely surprised you thought this was a worthwhile response to the broader problem of user trust on public forums, or would waste a minute pretending that HN uniquely doesn't share in them.
>It's not an insinuation it's an obvious fact of the world we live in. It's obvious to anyone who has used this site, or any other site, for any period of time.
I think it's very easy to feel it as an obvious fact, it's not that easy to really know that it's going down.
Allow me to externalize the subject to avoid involving HN on the matter: Reddit. Reddit has had astroturfing campaigns, of this I'm completely sure because I've seen it go down and get caught and everything. Here is an example about a year ago on r/programming: https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddi...
My problem is: say I have opinion A that is opposite to opinion B. When seeing a lot of this second (totally terrible, incomprehensible) opinion, how do I properly infer what is actually happening rather than just accusing that side of being bots? It really doesn't seem like a simple thing.
Shhhhhhh -- the first rule of the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus is you don't talk about the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus! The second rule is..
Does that mean you don't think shills are a significant-serious problem, or because you don't believe you can do anything about it then it's not important to you?
E.g. If you consider it to be a problem, and there were possible solutions to shills on HN (and elsewhere), would you be interested in seeing those solutions implemented and/or tested?
I think you're downplaying-minimizing your importance as an individual, and I'm not sure why you'd do that. Does downplaying it enable or justify it to yourself for what could be considered abdicating responsibility, so you can quell stress that otherwise would be felt if you took it seriously as a problem you would take on to help solving?
Because it is a very difficult problem to solve for, and to some degree you're right, you as an individual - "just a guy on HN" - can't do much about it; and such conversations are essentially ban-heavily frowned upon on HN, e.g. not talking about downvotes, etc; because that discussion rarely happens in any deep and serious way on - like perhaps an annual topic posted and pinned by dang to get a deep dive to offer a chance to present their deep dive essays and concerns and perhaps proposed solutions, to perhaps help others understand the severity and seriousness of shills gaming our communication systems-channels and their effects on the development of society? And where such a planned annual event may create a beautiful frenzy to help tech people and others refine their understanding and proposed solutions?
You can make that claim about Reddit or other social networks but.. just read through this thread? It's pretty clear that this is just random people's uninformed opinions, fears and speculations. I don't see a single good argument besides the very easy to make and modest opinion that we're not sure what's going to happen exactly now, but it sure is interesting.
That's… A good reminder, actually. At best it's just some random guy. At worst it's a three letter agency's botnet. Maybe influence ops would be less realistic of a concern if we all put somewhat less stock in social media.
I flag both sides of these because Hacker News has no unique perspective to add to any of these conversations. There's a million places to have these conversations. If anything, dodging them is the challenge.
Basically, if the resulting HN news discussion is indistinguishable from an X thread except that the post size limit is larger, there's no reason for it to be here.
And my pre-emptive response to pretty much every "but" is you've already got millions of places to have this conversation. Nobody's getting squelched, no solution is being missed because nobody here has the solution, no unique insight is being missed.
There's very little HN has a unique perspective to add to. Tech, science, and startup topics can be discussed just as easily on Reddit or lobsters.
While I generally don't like political discourse here, I do think that there are differences in the way the discussions generally go. There are clear biases from the kind of people who are attracted to HN that are different from other forums.
I agree with your "no unique perspective" point, but I don't think that's, well, the point. I would rather have a discussion about nearly any topic on HN than in most/all other places. I think the quality of discussion here is generally much higher than most/all other places.
Your reference to X/Twitter is in a way the point for me: I never really enjoyed Twitter when it was Twitter, and since the Musk acquisition I actively avoid it like the plague (I've deleted the app off my phone, and have signed out on the web to raise the barrier for me). I don't want to have conversations there, ever, really. I don't agree that resulting HN discussion on a topic like this would be indistinguishable from a discussion on X; I still believe the quality here will be higher.
I do agree that HN isn't for every single topic under the sun. But I hope we can both agree that there's no absolute arbiter of what should and shouldn't be here. It's ultimately a matter of subjective opinion, and even the people who run the site aren't going to be absolutist about it in most cases. I think in general there's a decent balance struck: while an article like this might not be completely on topic for HN, it's not completely off topic either, as long as articles about this topic don't dominate the front page, and we mostly only see articles with new information, and not just re-hashes of stuff that's already been reported on (and discussed here) for days/weeks/months.
You're usually not lazy in your replies - maybe you're projecting and actually proved his point but are on his side?
It's him and commenters like you who are doing being lazy and feeling impulsive to post immature flamewar level comments.
Do you care his responses included ad hominem, straw mans, and don't actually counter my arguments but talk around them?
I wonder how biased you are around the topic.
And care to actually respond to support your claim by referencing his unsupported claims, and pull in the specifics from my comment that somehow support his claims? Don't think you can.
I consider your post a prime example of what I'm talking about rather than an astonishing refutation. A bog standard, off-the-shelf "how dare you not turn every single conversation on the internet to this important issue" reply. I could have written that in my sleep, and about any number of issues. How dare you try to turn the conversation away from whatever my opinion is about the Ukraine to distract us with this Israel stuff? I can reel off a dozen issues that I could copy and paste your message about with just a bit of string replacement.
There is no value offered by the HN community itself to argue about this. Such value as the HN community offers is precisely when it is not discussing the same things as everyone else.
It also has a false premise; the prosecutor has not, per the announcement, sought genocide charges (under Article 6 of the Rome Statute) against any of the named individuals, but instead Article 7 (crimes against humanity) and Article 8 (war crimes) charges.
It's ad hominem while him being egotistical at the same time - him claiming it's low effort-value, etc.
He also didn't counter any arguments of mine specifically.
What exactly was rude with it? I'm shocked to see these quick comments by you. Cite specifically what was rude that I said.
His ad hominem was certainly "rude" - but I'm curious what you think I said was rude, or if in fact you're coddling him who willingly engaged - and claimed what I said was lazy-so easy that he could do it in his sleep; he's claiming he can crank out what I said as if it's nothing, so what does or could that insinuate in your eyes?
I look forward to seeing what language you consider rude.
"HN has nothing unique to add to this conversation" is the opposite of any sort of claim of HN exceptionalism. It is you who are insisting that there must be some sort of amazing special unique perspective that means we must discuss on HN despite it generally being off topic.
The rhetoric and general level of insulting insinuation and personal attacks being deployed in this thread continues to demonstrate my claims that there is nothing special HN has to offer, not even so much as "a generally higher level of respect" or anything like that. There's no difference to a conversation here than anywhere else, which means you may as well have that conversation in the thousands or millions of other places to have it.
Also, I'm out. I've made my point here. Feel free to continue lobbing accusations and insinuations at me to continue proving my point.
> There is no value offered by the HN community itself to argue about this.
The HN community is a very nerdy bunch. There are lawyers among us, experts or knowledgeable enthusiasts in International Humanitarian Law. I mean I don’t think it is unlikely that someone here works (or has worked) for a firm or an institution which was consulted before this warrant was recommended.
The ongoing genocide is also highly relevant to the HN as much of the tech use in our job or hobbies, and even contribute to, is being used as a weapon in the ongoing genocide.
There has also been news of tech workers being specifically targeted in the ongoing genocide, our industrial comrades who may no longer be with us, some of which no doubt had HN accounts. When this news was submitted, it too was flagged (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39738469)
The censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus is still powerful and distributed, and will continue to try to move the narrative to support the beliefs they've been deeply engrained with over multiple generations. The war for free speech and countering suppression is arguably only just beginning.
And as Jordan Peterson said in his Beyond Order book - "intelligent ideologues are the most dangerous because they've really convinced themselves they're right."
Most of the mainstream platforms have been captured and heavily influenced due to outweighed power that only a handful of users can apply to manipulate how much exposure certain content and comments get; Twitter-X being in Elon Musk's hands at least have stopped fascists governments from the world in at least an incognito fashion censoring-suppression certain narratives of truth they don't want the population becoming the wiser on.
From the site guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
Larger than that: HN is for curious, thoughtful discussion. This topic is not going to give rise to a curious, thoughtful conversation. So, no matter how much you want to discuss it, this isn't the place.
I disagree: for many of these topics, hackernews is, to me, a source of more level headed discussion and an opportunity to see both sides in a reasonable way. Yes, the quality does go down a lot, but it's still better than in the other sites I read.
Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship.
Just because the Current Thing is the Most Important Thing That Ever Happened, it doesn't make it an appropriate topic for HN. There's always something historically important going on. Anyone can go on to one of the hundreds of places not dedicated to tech news and entrepreneurship, of which there is effectively one on the Internet.
>I'm afraid the answer is boringly straightforward: users flagged those articles, and either we didn't see them or we chose not to turn off the flags. Most likely we didn't see them.
The usual pattern is that flags come from a 'coalition' of users: some because they hold opposing views, while others just think the story doesn't belong on HN. Maybe they think it's off-topic or otherwise against the site guidelines, or they think the story has already been covered a lot recently, or who knows what.
"Sir, this is a Wendy's" is unrelated to ordering off-menu. It's a response where someone delivers an overly detailed or unrelated speech in a setting where it is entirely inappropriate—such as a fast-food restaurant like Wendy's. It's a brusque reminder to someone that their current behavior or conversation is out of place and irrelevant to the current context. It is often used when someone is being overly dramatic, off-topic, or unnecessarily complex in a simple or straightforward situation.
>Can HN moderators explain why and how the majority of anti Israel posts get flagged quickly ? If HN is pro israel, moderators should update the website guidelines to explicitly say that.
This is not about this story. It asserts that dang is "pro-Israel" and that HN has a group of Zionists that flag anything anti-Israel. dang stated why these stories get flagged and generally by whom, which had a banal answer. There's not a conspiracy against anti-Israel posts, there's a group of people that want certain hysterical people to stop polluting the commons with their off-topic divisive and histrionic screeds.
Probably best to avoid charged words like 'cabal' on this of all topics.
I haven't seen any evidence that the flags aren't in good faith, including from users who feel the most passionately, and there are many of those on both sides.
Substantive stories are allowed on HN - therefore it's not against the site guidelines, unless you think genocide/war crime charges being levied against Israel and Hamas' leaders is common run-of-the-mill, not once-in-a-lifetime politics?
>Substantive stories are allowed on HN - therefore it's not against the site guidelines, unless you think [...] is common run-of-the-mill, not once-in-a-lifetime politics?
This is the rhetorical frame that has been used for the last decade to justify diluting topical spaces with thinly veiled culture warring by the extremely online for whom every new media cycle is another entirely new Armageddon.
I respectfully disagree with the notion that every current outrage or controversy should be treated as the paramount issue necessitating everyone's unquestioning attention in unrelated spaces.
Participation in culture war skirmishes is not mandatory - I don't read the vast majority of links or discussions posted to HN.
Ironically, preemptively preventing any discussion on topics you don't like on ideological grounds, by means of flagging is partaking in the culture wars.
because users with enough reputation can flag things
And one hand sadly even now there are way to many people (e.g. politicians in the country I live) which prefer keep their simple black/white/good/evil world view wear blinders and label anything against Israel as anti driven by antisemitism. That Israel did so themself to doge criticism doesn't help here either. Nor does it help that a lot of antisemitic people do take advantage of this situation to spread their propaganda, sometimes hidden behind a layer of seemingly reasonable arguments.
On the other hand there are enough people which do have a mindset that because what Hamas did the actions by Israel might not be okay but tolerable. I mean especial in more fascist leaning circles you will find a lot of moralistically praising "acting with a iron fist" weather that's in child education, fighting crime or retaliatory military action.
Honestly the situation is a scary mess, with no good way to fix it and where right and wrong become increasingly meaningless in face of a potentially never ending cycle of violence.
My point of view is that censorship is still censorship no matter what it tries to hide. If today we accept to censor posts about war crimes, anything can be censored tomorrow. I don't think creating value for the americain tech industry can thrive under censorship.
Yeah I wasn't trying to endorse that position or anything. More pointing out that this website is somewhere between trade mag, promotional publication, and propaganda arm of a US tech venture capital firm.
It's not so much censoring posts about war crimes in the traditional sense as taking the editorial stance that some war crimes are beneficial for the entity it represents.
It's not anti Israel, ICC targets individuals not nations. Also, being pro Israeli doesn't equal supporting genocide, supporting the two states solution doesn't equal supporting Hamas.
I felt that it was pretty obvious, once one was read up on the law, that this would be the result. I'd expected arrest warrants for a larger group (maybe 10-16 people, thereabout), but I wasn't surprised by that it was a small group either.
I, for one, did not expect the rumoured arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Indicting a government coalition made up of several political parties is quite different from indicting a specific prime minister. I think just about everyone expected the ICC to condemn both Hamas and the Israeli government, but I would've only expected warrants out for the Hamas members (as they're classified as terrorists rather than politicians by just about everyone).
In the same vein, I would expect "China/Russia/America found guilty of war crimes" but not "arrest warrant out for Biden/Putin/Xi".
Rules of engagement or not, the American invasion caused plenty of unnecessary civilian deaths. In this case, I think the comparison between Bush and Netanyahu is quite apt, though Bush was smart enough not to use as much incindiary language while the people serving his country hurt so many people. The October attacks and the following excessive military response was not unlike what happened after 9/11.
Though there's hardly any concensus (partially because the ICC doesn't use the American court system, and therefore isn't supported by many American legal professionals), American scholars have written about how Bush would be accountable under international law. Nothing has ever come of it as far as I know, but I believe that's only the case because no country dares risk the political war with one of the world's leading military and political powers.
> Its not that there is a war, its how its conducted.
The shitshow that happened after 9/11 ended up with war crimes committed in a war fought over invented weapons if mass destruction. I would argue that the war being there can be reason enough to hold people accountable.
At some point, this sort of thing deserves to be mocked. Look, if civilian deaths are not allowed in war at all (like all are intolerable to the point where pacifism is the only option), then we must condemn the Allies in World War II, who caused untold civilian deaths. Are you ready to go there?
The solution to belligerence cannot be wishful thinking and unicorn farts
Some of the things the allies did in the second world war were horrific. Overall, beating the nazis was a good thing, but both sides committed war crimes out of bloodlust and revenge.
If you allow yourself to execute carpet bombings on civilians "for the good cause", don't be surprised when the enemy does the same. 9/11 caused a fraction of the destruction and innocent deaths of bombings in either side, yet we don't (and shouldn't) accept that as some side effect of fighting "the enemy".
War crimes are a fact of just about every military conflict, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't convict those that commit them.
> War crimes are a fact of just about every military conflict, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't convict those that commit them.
This encourages total war. After all, if every war is subject to the scrutiny of ever changing standards, what's the point in even paying them any attention? Might as well just win and so terrorize everyone that everyone's too scared to do anything.
At the end of the day, this is obviously a ridiculous standard. Civilian deaths in war are to be expected, which is why we should generally only fight wars that are truly justified. I can't think of a more justified war than Israel and Gaza, especially given Israel's constant warning of civilians to leave areas they're going to attack. I think it's really telling that despite being so obviously justified, Israel has faced more scrutiny than almost any other country. Ukraine is currently locked into a similar war and has also killed Russian civilians.
> If you allow yourself to execute carpet bombings on civilians "for the good cause", don't be surprised when the enemy does the same.
I'm not surprised. That's why I think if we're going to bomb, it better be decisive and we better have damn good defenses. That's why I generally oppose war, but obviously Israel had no choice here really. Hamas is committed to their destruction and has shown able to breach defenses. They're still not gone.
Israel is vastly superior in a military sense, and could stop at any moment with no real negative consequences to itself.
The reason why Hamas was able to breach Israel's defenses on 7 October was because Israel had moved most of its troops into the West Bank, where it is busy repressing the Palestinian population, and because Israel ignored repeated warnings about an upcoming Hamas attack.
But stepping back, the reason this conflict exists in the first place is that Israel refuses to leave the occupied Palestinian territories. It is building illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and it holds Gaza under a crippling blockade that makes life miserable there. The Palestinians have been subjected to what may be the longest military occupation in modern history, and they will continue to resist until Israel gives them their freedom.
The Palestinian territories were (a) conquered by Israel after they won an unprovoked war and (b) only exist because Israel surrendered them partially. In no sense is it an occupation. Gaza, for example, was once part of Israel but it was only through Western interference that they were made to give it up, with now-known-to-be disastrous consequences.
The fact that they were conquered does not make them not occupied. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. In the post-WWII era, territory cannot be acquired through conquest.
> an unprovoked war
Israel initiated the 1967 war with a surprise attack on Egypt. They claimed it was preemptive, though whether Egypt was really going to attack Israel is very much in doubt. Israel itself played a major role in the tensions that led up to the war, and was constantly launching attacks into neighboring Arab territories.
> In no sense is it an occupation
Pretty much every expert in international law, international body, and country disagrees with you.
> Gaza, for example, was once part of Israel
Gaza has never been part of Israel. It wasn't even part of the biblical Israel (which has nothing to do with the modern state of Israel, anyways).
> only through Western interference that they were made to give it up
I can't even imagine what you're referencing here. No such thing happened.
>No state has gone out of their way to avoid civilian casualties to the extent that Israel has.
So, Tel Aviv is not to blame for the famine in Gaza?
And Professor John Mearsheimer is wrong during the 3.5 minutes following this next timestamp when he says that Tel Aviv is currently trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza, meaning they're trying to make Gazans flee Gaza by making it untenable for them to stay?
> If the ICC existed during WWII, their illogic would lead them to put out arrest warrants for Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshal, Eisenhower, and all the other allied leaders
It’s tacitly accepted that the Allies committed war crimes to defeat the Nazis.
If they also do putin, hamas (included), Xia etc … it is all good. But if it is just another one sided attack, then no.
The question really is … whilst it is not totally useless, is it more to demo how weak this is and so dictator can free to do as they are dare. Like bombing other people places or even yours (per claim) and flattening them; would it be more war crime than war fighting in disputed land.
While it mostly useless to actally prevent war crimes this hurt dictators freedom of movement as majority of countries in the world would arrest by warrant of ICC. E.g Putin dont really travel abroad much after getting his warrant.
Though Putin's warrant isn't for common war crimes, but for deporting / indoctrination of children as it's something that is super easy to prove.
Most interesting part is that Putin on that list for “kidnapping” children, while in fact just providing a temporary refuge.
While Netanyahu bombed and killed like 15,000 children and it’s not a war crime for some reason, huh.
The ICC just gave Netanyahu more strength. Israelis would likely rally around their leader. Netanyahu will be emboldened to do maximum damage on his way out. What more does he have to lose at this point?
Besides, the U.S. government is on Netanyahu's side, so he will never be arrested.
> The ICC just gave Netanyahu more strength. Israelis would likely rally around their leader. Netanyahu will be emboldened to do maximum damage on his way out. What more does he have to lose at this point?
His support is waning on both sides of the political spectrum. Gantz is threatening to quit the war cabinet. I don't think the ICC decision will give Netanyahu much of a boost. If he goes crazy, the Knesset could oust him.
> Besides, the U.S. government is on Netanyahu's side, so he will never be arrested.
I don't think the US has that much influence in this case. They would have to push hard to threaten the Israeli president, and even then I am not sure what would happen. Netanyahu will not be arrested because he will just stay in Israel. Israel will probably not extradite him, even if they agree with the arguments, simply because it would look bad to allow an international court to arrest a former president. However, he could be arrested on corruption or other charges if he loses his position.
Unfortunately I think this is correct. All the people cited in this warrant request are fully guilty of the crimes of which they are accused—but a peace deal that lets the murderers off scot-free is preferable to more endless war.
The reputational damage to Israel, from being put on the same level as Putin, is significant though.
There's tonnes of video evidence that Apartheid Israel is carrying out war crimes and genocide. Intentionally targeting and killing civilian groups and infrastructure, starving the population; the IDF hasn't allowed the aid trucks through and soldiers stand by as Israelis destroy the truck contents, doctors having to do amputations of multiple limbs without anaesthesia, 25 000 women and children killed; 10 000 unaccounted for. They targeted all infrastructure needed to live, be it hospitals, universities. Apartheid Israel is ethnically cleansing Gaza and the West Bank through terror.
Hamas would exist if not for the occupation. Or else there will inevitably be a Hamas 2.0
This is exactly like uMkhonto we Sizwe in Apartheid in South Africa, it doesn't exist without Apartheid. Or like Hamas isn't the West Bank.
Treat people like human animals, imprison them, occupy them and expect any other outcome is foolish. Apartheid Israel needs to make the first move that doesn't include killing civilians and stealing land.
The optics of equating a resistance organization on the one hand with a colonial and apartheid state with dysfunctional judicial system and no accountability for any crimes committed by settlers or its military on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Palestinian resistance, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians, indiscriminately bombing schools and hospitals.
In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into US and Germany conduct of delivering weapons enabling the genocide?
For comparison, the French resistance was called a terrorist organisation by the Germans, as Algerian FLN was called terrorist organisation by the French… etc. History would be kind of funny if it wasn’t tragic.
And this whole “terrorist” word was jeopardised by Bush. There’s no “terrorism” per se as an emanation of evil.
It’s just an asymmetrical and violent extension of political expression, where dialogue failed to reach a settlement.
Otherwise you’d need to explain the ideological similarities between Al Qaeda and eg. ETA.
These aren't verdicts, so it goes to court-trial, and arguments will then be put forth.
We have the Nuremberg Code now, where people including propagandists were hung simply because they should have known better - even though there weren't yet specific laws in place yet.
It's been fascinating to see how fascism can rise so quickly, hidden by the veil of propaganda, different countries around the world at different stages of capture - some where turnkey authoritarianism has recently been executed on like in Canada, policies and infrastructure put in place that allows top down control so easily with so many succumbing to the fear mongering in part due to deep seeded programming.
The NaZi Germans were eventually suppressed, and with the internet this next attempt will hopefully be quickly stopped in its tracks globally - however there are arguably $ trillions in the war chest of the bad actors in the global establishment toeing the same line, of which people like Catherine Austin Fitts have been sounding the alarm for years now - who saw behind the scenes the financial markets et al aligning for this. Unfortunately because so many systems are centralized at the moment, it only takes a very small amount of people to cause chaos and mass destruction-death - whether that's manufacturing consent for people to believe power outages aren't planned and "out of our control - give us $ trillions to upgrade infrastructure [which actually will mostly go to our friends while we continue suffocate society financially and extract as much of the value of your labor-productivity as we can manufacture consent to get from you]" etc.
I hope, pray, that RFK in the US will win the next election - and that Pierre in Canada wins, and pray God is ready to cut the shit of these tyrant wannabes with totalitarian wet dreams - and will prevent their assassinations, etc; else the floodgates of hell are seemingly near ready to be unlatched.
The ICC is seeking arrest warrants from the ICC for people who don't care what the ICC says, and one of them isn't even in a country that's a member of the ICC?
What exactly are they going to be able to do once they manage to grant themselves these warrants?
Mere existence of arrest warrants for war crimes against a serving Israeli prime minister has great symbolic value. This will have big impact on media discourse not controlled by the Israeli lobby.
Also, one does not have to choose sides. We can condemn both sides as barbaric.
I agree entirely but I'm not really trying to make any political statement here. I'm purely interested in the mechanical aspect of how this court works and how it can manage to accomplish anything in this situation. It seems to me that this story isn't much worth following, because nothing of consequence will happen if these warrants end up being served.
It makes the people with arrest warrants much less welcome to visit other countries. While they still may not actually arrest a leader of state many countries would say no to a visit to not risk a media scandal by having an accused war criminal visit.
> It makes the people with arrest warrants much less welcome to visit other countries
Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm just kind of unimpressed that that's the worst punishment something called the "International Criminal Court" can inflict on leaders that they've judged to be war criminals.
Since this is an actual court, I’d say it’s important to differentiate between “has judged as being war criminals” and “has charged with being war criminals”. There are hopefully more penalties for someone who has been tried and found guilty.
I don't understand what you are looking for. There is no unified world government. There is no sovereign entity that controls all nations. That means any and all international interaction is roughly consensual.
If the US genocides a significant portion of their own populace, and nobody could muster up an army large enough to physically stop them, and nobody could blockade their trade enough to hurt them, then why would the US stop?
Accountability requires someone to execute the "punishment" or whatever. If you want international accountability, you REQUIRE an independent entity which all nations treat as a global government, one which as the ability to militarily slap anyone who doesn't fall in line. The UN isn't that, on purpose.
First problem: Where is the office for that world government? There is largely no land that is "outside" other countries.
The US literally experienced this "How do you get fiefdoms to cede their power to a common government" problem in 1787, and overcoming it took promising slave owners that they wouldn't outlaw slavery for at least 20 years, and hand out a massive power structure benefit to the states that had significant slavery. Of course the invention of the cotton gin just a few years later would destroy that possible outcome and set us on the path for the civil war.
If you invent a world government that could punish a country that was unruly, how do you convince the US or China to submit to it ENTIRELY? How do yo prevent this world government from simply being a tool of the US or China?
This is a hot take these days. The world seems to need to take a side on everything and most of the Palestine supporters fail to condemn Hamas and the Israel supporters don't tend to criticize Israel.
Broadly I think Israel has the right ambition (the destruction of Hamas) but are going about it in a terrible manner and it will now backfire on them spectacularly.
The trouble is that Israel government does not really have the ambition to destroy Hamas. Their ambition under ultra conservative lobby is to grab more Palestinian land, using inevitable backlash as an excuse to dismiss any complaints.
If the whole world stepped in, captured every Hamas militant and left, it wouldn't take more than a couple of years and somebody else would take up the arms against the Israeli occupants.
We'd have to do that AND then protect the Palestinians from militant Zionists for half a century at least to actually have any chance to solve the situation.
And since EU doesn't give a shit, US is unable to stand up to antidefamation league, rest of the Islamic countries enjoys blaming Israel but don't actually do anything, Palestinians are good as dead.
> Broadly I think Israel has the right ambition (the destruction of Hamas)
Well a few months ago Netanyahu sent the head of the Mossad to Qatar asking them to fund Hamas ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... ). So these endless massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israel (and effectively by the USA too) are happening for a pretty capricious reason, if that even is the reason, and I think it isn't.
Counterterrorism is necessarily a difficult and fraught process. Ultimately, it's political; military force is useful only so far as it can convince people there is no better way than your political aims.
Looking at the example of successful counterterrorism conclusions, such as The Troubles in Northern Ireland or Colombia's efforts against FARC, the general pathway to success is to build up successful alternative political institutions that have the legitimacy to disarm the terrorist groups, which also means to a degree making some concessions towards the political aims of terrorists, and perhaps also requires co-opting the more moderate terrorists into legitimate political parties.
Notably not on that list is such things as targeting enemy leaders with artillery rounds. Indiscriminate damage is one of the best ways to fuel an upsurge in terrorist violence; what Israel is doing now looks in many ways like what the British did in Northern Ireland to start The Troubles rather than what it did to end them.
I agree that Northern Ireland and Colombia v. FARC are useful examples. However, they both share one key property that the Israel-Hamas conflict does not have: the international community fully supports the existence of both the UK and Colombia as legitimate nation-states. That is not true for Israel; there is a large and vocal segment of the international community that does not want Israel to exist, and that segment has enough political clout that it cannot be ignored.
The segment of the international community that matters is fully on board with Israel's existence. The largest country to not formally recognize Israel is Indonesia. Largely only Iran is intransigent about Israel's nonexistence; the Arab countries have in the recent past explicitly endorsed proposals to recognize Israel in exchange for durable progress on Palestinian statehood.
(Which, really, is one of the principal causes of the current situation: Netanyahu has in the past sought to undermine the ability of the Palestinian Authority to effectively govern Palestine--including covert support for Hamas--so as to be able to claim that there's no partner for peace to avoid having to make any progress on the statehood issue.)
> The segment of the international community that matters is fully on board with Israel's existence.
I disagree. US policy in this area, for instance, is being significantly influenced by the fact that there are protests at major universities in support of Hamas, and elected politicians who are advocating the same thing. (And by that I mean explicitly supporting the Hamas objective of destroying Israel.)
> the Arab countries have in the recent past explicitly endorsed proposals to recognize Israel
In other words, they don't currently support Israel's existence, but they might decide to if enough of their demands are met. Which concedes my point.
The reason this matters is that the UK and Colombia were only able to even consider the options they ended up taking to resolve their conflicts because they knew that no matter what, their existence as nation states was not in question. Israel does not have that assurance, and that means they do not feel able to consider those kinds of options.
Or, to put it another way, as I have said in several other posts elsewhere in this discussion, this conflict is an existential conflict for Israel. Northern Ireland was not an existential conflict for the UK, and FARC was not an existential conflict for Colombia. That makes a huge difference.
> US policy in this area, for instance, is being significantly influenced by the fact that there are protests at major universities
I'm sorry, but no. These protests have only reached salience in the news because of overreaction from a few university presidents who sent in the police to (in the event) violently break up the protest. I assert there is no influence on the policy being done by these protests. The general stance by the administration has remained the same--the Biden administration remains firmly pro-Israel--and to the extent that it's changed, it's been prompted by frustration with the continued inability of the current Israeli government to actually listen to the administration's points about "what the hell is your day-after plan?"
> in support of Hamas, and elected politicians who are advocating the same thing. (And by that I mean explicitly supporting the Hamas objective of destroying Israel.)
I'm not going to deny that there are people among the protestors who support Hamas and maybe even want to see Israel cease to exist. But it's definitely far from the majority of the protestors, and I've never actually seen any statement by anybody involved that would place them in that category.
The thing is, there's this persistent tendency I've seen where people try to twist any criticism of Israel or its government into support for Israel's nonexistence. No major world power today has disestablishment of Israel a policy goal, nor is any of them close to having that policy. But I do worry that if Israel continues on this path, then it may in a few decades' time become a murderous genocidal state... and that very well could have the superpowers pushing for Israel's destruction.
Even though Israel is unarguably the state that faces the greatest existential threat, it's policies can still be (and indeed probably are) counterproductive to combating that.
Like you would any other crime. Investigate, insert moles, offer "extremely large" bounties + protection for arrests leading to conviction, and so on. The current situation is not only an ineffective means of combating Hamas, but is likely growing their numbers. The reason these sort of conflicts never end is because each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies.
The criminal model does not work for war. This is a war.
> each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies.
So when Hamas fires rockets into Israel, killing innocents, or sends a terror squad into Israel, killing innocents (and kidnapping others), it makes more Hamas enemies. Yes, indeed.
These same proposals were given decades ago when it was the PLO Israel was having to deal with. Israel followed them, at the behest of the international community. They didn't work--we know this because it's now decades later and the same problems still exist. Isn't the classic definition of insanity trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results?
It's pretty well established that tactics that produce widespread civilian casualties just create the next generation of insurgents. In that respect, Israel's current actions seem to match the definition of insanity.
In the sense that Israel failed to reach a stable endpoint to this conflict once before, in 2009, yes, I suppose this is true. They should have destroyed Hamas then, and they didn't. Which would suggest that Israel should finish the job this time.
I mean they're all terrible at this point, but Israel has been digging this hole for a while, it's not going to be easy to get out. Doesn't mean it's not worth trying to stop digging.
No, Israel has been trying to defend itself against Hamas, a terrorist organization which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel. What options does it have to do that that would meet with your approval, or even grudging acquiescence?
There is no stable middle ground here. That's what much of the commentary on this situation seems to be missing. This is an existential conflict between Israel and Hamas (note that I said "Hamas", not "the Palestinians"--they're not the same): the only stable endpoint is that one or the other ceases to exist. And Hamas is the side that chose to make it that way. So I'm really struggling to see what possible options Israel has other than what they are doing.
That would be the end of Israel as a functioning state (Jewish or not)
You really think a country can double it's population overnight bringing even more division without it crumbling? You'll just end up with another Lebanon.
A two state solution is the only thing that can make sense short/medium term. Longer term after decades of peace you can open the borders and create perhaps a union of sort.
A one state solution is detached - it's just not a viable option, and even if you believe it's the right thing to do it just doesn't seem wise.
A single state solution is the only long term solution. Unless we accept that ethnostates are good for everyone. Israel will have a hard time bringing in the Palestinians, but the US created reservations and the native American population isn't trying to kill everyone else. Israel needs to learn by doing it that diversity is their strength.
Prosperity can do a lot towards killing the shared stories that cause people to want to go kill the people in the neighboring country. Grandpa's story about losing his home won't be as stirring when you're not being bombed and starved by the same group of people who stole Grandpa's home. Especially when they give back Grandpa's home.
I'm all for prosperity, which is why I think trying to merge two cultures over overnight will just result in chaos and violence. Especially since the groups are around the same size and the territory is tiny - if you actually think about the practically of such a solution you'll realize it's not viable.
Do you really think the new nation wouldn't just delve into chaos Lebanon style? Might as well just sentence everyone to eternal conflict.
How is starting with two states and later on creating a union type entity not better for everyone?
Let's say you had to approach this as an engineering problem of merging two very different branches/companies/etc, how would you approach it?
And re US, they basically committed genocide and ended up absorbing a minority, the situation in Israel is different as it's similar sized populations on a fraction of the land.
> which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel
This is not a serious argument. Israel has arguably the strongest military in ME. Forget the ragtag Hamas, no country in ME - including Turkey - can destroy Israel. Israel has nukes and Hamas has hand gliders for airforce. Hamas rockets are like glorified firecrackers.
There are crazies all over the world with all kinds of crazy manifestos. That is not a license to kill and starve civilians en masse.
Oct 7 was a serious security lapse on the part of Israel. It is clear that the guilty are busy distracting the population from an objective investigation and trials to punish people who are responsible for the lapses, just like what happened after 9-11. Doing that improves Israel’s long term security. But it is unlikely to happen.
Which genocide? The one that parts of Israel, mostly Likud, wants and isn't doing a very good job of (I was told millions would have starved by now), or the one that Hamas emphatically wants, and is supported by the vast majority of Palestinians, but they are technologically incapable of performing?
Plenty Israelis want a two state solution where Palestinians are not harmed. How many Palestinians want a two state solution where Jews live free? Why don't Palestinians get visibly upset when a Hamas rocket meant for Israel blows up Palestinians?
Bibi should rot in prison. So should the leader of Hamas. But who is willing to run Palestine without shooting rockets at Israel, and how long will they stay in power before they are overthrown by people who want to go back to shooting rockets at Israel?
There can't be a peace as long as Palestinians want the eradication of Israel, much as there can't be peace as long as Likud wants to eradicate Palestine. But if we tell Israel it can't do anything, but do not limit Hamas in the same way, all you are doing is allowing Israelis to die for the convenience of ignoring an actually difficult geopolitical problem.
"Just stop shooting at Palestinians" will certainly end the suffering of Palestinians, but is objectively trading 30k Palestinians dead now with a few Israelis dead every year.
And this isn't even getting to the insane levels of Anti-semitism that hide themselves under a cloak of "just supporting Palestinians". If you know any jewish people who aren't evenly Israeli, ask them how safe they feel nowadays.
> "Just stop shooting at Palestinians" will certainly end the suffering of Palestinians, but is objectively trading 30k Palestinians dead now with a few Israelis dead every year.
There's shooting and there's shooting. 30k Palestinians in Gaza Strip are in the war zone so in a way it's not a much surprise they're dying, but there are Palestiniani on the West Bank, who are being murdered by Israeli (settlers backed by IDF). Last I checked the death toll is around 500 (https://apnews.com/article/settler-attack-palestinians-west-...), which puts it within the ballpark of 7 October Hamas' strike.
I will remember the small town next door that put out a star of david to celebrate Hanukkah and got a pile of death threats for supporting Israel.
Do you remember the teens at a concert for peace for Palestine that died on Oct 7th? IE, people who literally were pushing for Israel to unilaterally get it's hands out of Palestine, the exact thing people are marching all over the world for.
Hamas literally targeted them. Why? Why kill the people doing exactly what you claim to want them to do? Their deaths and rapes were intentional.
I want to make it very clear that I hold no qualms or malice towards people who want a unilateral ceasefire from Israel and damn the consequences of that. Hell, even a lot of Israelis seem to hold that opinion!
But I only want to ask: how many Israeli people have to die before that is obviously not a solution? How many Israeli deaths per year before "okay maybe going to war with Palestine" becomes acceptable?
that's right! Hamas broke the ceasefire on October 7th, and if the Israelis laid down their weapons, they would be slaughtered. they can't afford to leave Hamas in charge. they don't want control of gaza, but it doesn't seem like there's any alternative to military occupation if they want to stop the incursions for good.
I agree that Israel is going about it in a terrible manner but I also do not think that the destruction of Hamas is a reasonable goal. How can you do that without genocide?
Okay, say Israel enters Rafah, do whatever they want in there. Say they do a whole another pass over Gaza.
Do you think the rest of the population just stands by? You can't treat people like Israel treats Palestinians and not have terrorism. It's really that simple. Any serious plan by Israel to achieve peace of any sort with Palestinians involves massive concessions compared to the actual state of things and I can't imagine for a second anything like that would happen.
It's almost like we're stumbling into how this is one of the trickiest geopolitical issues in the last hundred years...
There's an inverse to what you're saying (which I don't disagree with) which is that if Israel does nothing in response to Hamas aggression, and just lets Hamas + it's allies keep bulling, Israeli's will die and their citizenry will be radicalized to do something in response.
This has been the pattern in this region since literally day 1 of Israel being acknowledged as a country. It's two irreconcilable groups locked into a situation where neither can meaningfully (or "safely") de-escalate; a clean solution is really unlikely to emerge.
But you have to acknowledge, if these actions are not actually going to fix the problem, then they are actually psychopathic in nature. The "Well I have to do SOMETHING" rationale works when the "something" doesn't involve killing tens of thousands.
Also, it's not like the other option is "doing nothing", but acknowledging that a way must be found to return to the pre-2005 state of things. There must be a Palestinian governance with a degree of sovereignty and the settlements have to be removed. These are evident steps towards deradicalization but steps that the Israeli right in general is not keen on, in fact they would rather do the complete opposite.
What they "have to do SOMETHING" about is deal with a threat that aims to kill tens of thousands (more if hamas had their way) of their own, so I don't think you can just say that doesn't apply here.
It would be nice if one side could break the cycle of responding to violence with more violence, but that seems unlikely to happen, especially when one side is essentially defined by their intent of violence towards the other.
Israel backing out (removing settlements) and allowing for Palestine self governance isn't going to magically make hamas be nice. Israel would only agree to that kind of measure if they got to maintain some amount of influence over the region so that they could have some reasonable confidence that they can at least assess active threats against them. And suddenly we're back to 2005 Israeli disengagement, where they did withdraw their settlements in gaza and reduced their physical presence instead opting for trying to influence "remotely" while allowing Palestine to self-assemble it's governance. Turns out doing that is actually really hard, hamas took over anyway, and it landed everyone in the current mess.
Suggesting that they just do it again but trust me bro this time it'll work, or suggesting that what they really need to do is also relinquish any influence they have over the region is just not an idea that is going to make it off the ground. Some compromise related to it is probably what will happen, and we can all set our watches for the next iteration.
Again, it's almost like we're stumbling into how this is one of the trickiest geopolitical issues in the last hundred years
>And suddenly we're back to 2005 Israeli disengagement, where they did withdraw their settlements in gaza and reduced their physical presence instead opting for trying to influence "remotely" while allowing Palestine to self-assemble it's governance. Turns out doing that is actually really hard, hamas took over anyway, and it landed everyone in the current mess.
Yes, because Israel delivered the entire region to Hamas on a silver platter, having absolutely no coordination whatsoever with Palestinian authorities. This was in a time in which the majority of the population there supported a peaceful relationship with Israel. A massive blunder that Israel seems content with paying in Palestinian blood but not concessions of their own, it's insane to me that this ever became a talking point to defend Israel's actions.
>Suggesting that they just do it again but trust me bro this time it'll work, or suggesting that what they really need to do is also relinquish any influence they have over the region is just not an idea that is going to make it off the ground. Some compromise related to it is probably what will happen, and we can all set our watches for the next iteration.
>Again, it's almost like we're stumbling into how this is one of the trickiest geopolitical issues in the last hundred years
Sure, it's incredibly complex and yeah, I hope that's what happens in the end, thing is for all the deep this hole is, Israel doesn't seem interested in stopping digging, from their actions the trajectory seems set towards escalating the conflict up to a breakpoint in which they can end up better off, since they are very clearly in the more powerful position.
The Palestinian authorities were in the midst of an election, and the coordination with them that took place was in the form of US/Israel interference of the election to try and prevent Hamas from winning. Hamas won anyway. Fatah resisted in Gaza, and Hamas ended up taking over by force anyway.
So what should Israel have done to not hand control over to Hamas on a "silver platter"? They + the US tried to keep Fatah in power, that was everyone's preferred outcome where some stability could've emerged. That failed due to real Palestinian support of Hamas, as well as Hamas' military force.
Israel's options were basically to intervene militarily, overriding the results of the election; or "accept" the results and deal with/ reduce Hamas' military ambitions (which is what they've tried to do ever since). Both options put Israel in a losing situation. Override the will of Palestinian elections and you're denying them their sovereignty, interfere with the obvious military threat, and you're doing apartheid. Lose lose.
> Override the will of Palestinian elections and you're denying them their sovereignty, interfere with the obvious military threat, and you're doing apartheid.
So it is decided that it will do both. Maybe, just maybe, reconcile? No. Acknowledge the right to return and pay reparations? No. We will run apartheid and blockade sea, air and land. And the Egypt border will be controlled by way of a trilateral treaty. Increase illegal and immoral settlements in West Bank? Yes. Shield and promote settler terrorism? Yes.
Brother, how and why are you trolling around this thread 3 days after the link was posted?
In lieu of just matching snark with snark, I'll just suggest you take 5 minutes of self reflection to ask yourself if you're maybe being over-reductive of the situation, if you're really considering what reconciliation (+ it's risks) means to people who live in Israel/Palestine, and what a practical solution might actually look like.
Hey there! I'm really sorry if that came as snarky, but didn't mean that way. But you have to see that most of the comments are just plain disinformation and just could not let them hang in a no-way-out situation. I hope there would be a way out, without harming the people born into it. But I believe that has to come without this overpowering and dehumanising by those who definitely have the upper hand. This place does have all it takes to be a unifying idea for the vast majority of the world, and I sincerely hope peace prevails. You have a nice day too!
So what should Israel have done to not hand control over to Hamas on a "silver platter"?
In terms of preventing the Hamas-Fatah war and the initial takeover of the Strip -- there probably wasn't very much it could have done.
But after that juncture -- perhaps if the Prime Minister did not have an explicit policy of keeping them in power for 14 years (in order to "smash the vision Palestinian state into two pieces" as he would boast of his genius plan), backed by allowing $1.8 billion in transfers of Qatari cash from 2012 to 2018 -- that might have helped turn the tide.
That's a fact that's backed up by multiple polls and occurrences of what I describe. I didn't use any slurs. Can you please explain what is wrong with this so I can follow the rules better in the future? Thanks.
do you know of any protracted war where this hasn't been the case? or even any urban war where the ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is as low as this current war?
The two of you got into just the sort of flamewar that commenters are asked to avoid here, and most of all on a divisive topic like the OP. We have to ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing more than once before, btw.
The two of you got into just the sort of flamewar that commenters are asked to avoid here, and most of all on a divisive topic like the OP. We have to ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it again.
> The ICC is seeking arrest warrants from the ICC for people who don't care what the ICC says, and one of them isn't even in a country that's a member of the ICC?
Neither Galant nor Netanyahu is currently in an ICC state, but that's not entirely novel territory for international criminal tribunals.
> What exactly are they going to be able to do once they manage to grant themselves these warrants?
If the judges of the court grant the prosecutor’s application, the court will issue warrants and seek cooperation of its 124 member states and any willing cooperating states in enforcing them.
Any countries part of the ICC then have the ability to arrest anyone with warrants.
Whether those countries will do the arrests or not will be up to whomever is in political power and if they are toeing the same line or not. Those with arrest warrants then would have to risk traveling.
Not anyone. As long as he’s in power he’s protected by diplomatic protocol. No one is going to break international law and risk their reputation and ability to host diplomats for an ICC warrant. Just makes his predicament more desperate long term though.
This is also what I thought when they issued the warrant against Putin, but it does not seem to be the case. There's a lot of inscrutable legal precedent regarding diplomatic immunity and high crimes, of which there is none higher than genocide. This is exactly why Putin did not make a personal appearance in South Africa for the BRICS summit. South Africa felt that they would be legally obligated to arrest him due to the ICC warrant, and that was all over a far lesser charge of unlawfully deporting children.
The ICC claims jurisdiction [1], which is enough for it to issue warrants and hold trials and issue judgements. The question is always if the warrants will be executed and the judgements enforced, as the ICC cannot enforce its rulings itself.
At the time of the declaration accepting jursdiction of the ICC by the State of Palestine[2], there was a unity government of Palestine, so it feels like maybe.
In April 2012, the ICC declined to assert jurisdiction over Palestine, as it was not recognized as a State by the UN [3], but in November 2012, Palestine was granted the status of a non-member observer State, which seems to satisfy the ICC.
At some point the claim of jurisdiction has to be adjudicated, as it states here:
"The Chamber provided a legal answer
based on the strict interpretation of the Rome Statute. It emphasised that the issue of the territorial jurisdiction of the Court would have
to be further examined when the Prosecutor submits an application for the issuance of a warrant of arrest or summons to appear. The
Chamber declined to address the arguments regarding the Oslo Accords in the context of the present proceedings and indicated that
these issues may be raised at a later stage of the proceedings."
Did the legal government of Palestine do the initial request in 2015? That would have been Hamas, since Hamas was the last elected government of Palestine. I would be surprised if Hamas acceded to the ICC's jurisdiction.
Can a non-state actor be accorded the same rights as a state under the Rome accords? Is the "government of Palestine" an actual entity?
If an entity other than the authorized government accepts jurisdiction of the ICC, does that count?
I mean, this isn't even getting the actual meat of the case and it's already a mess.
At the time of the letter, Hamas and Fatah were in a unity government [1], although that's maybe disputable too. If Wikipedia is accurate and complete, Hamas claimed at the end of November 2014, that the unity government had expired; but then in June 2015, Hamas rejected the dissolution of the unity government.
But yeah, you're right, my summary was overly brief --- the earlier ruling was more that there's a reasonable question of if they have jurisdiction, so investigations can proceed. As opposed to before where the court ruled that it didn't have jurisdiction, and couldn't proceed.
"Like the former emergency governments after June 2007, which were installed by presidential decree, this unity government was in fact illegal, as it was not approved by the Legislative Council.[2][3] Without the cooperation of all parties, however, it was not possible to get the necessary quorum to put a vote.[20]"
IMHO, it's pretty hard to tell what's legal and not, when all of the elected officials are way past their elected terms, and the bodies are not in session.
Article 43 seems to give pretty wide berth for the President to operate when the Legislative Council is not in session, and if the Legislative Council is never expected to be in session, there's no mechanism to reign that in.
> Article (43) The President of the National Authority shall have the right in exceptional cases, which can not be delayed, and while the Legislative Council is not in session, to issue decisions and decrees that have the power of law. However, the decisions issued shall be presented to the Legislative Council in the first session convened after their issuance, otherwise they will cease to have the power of law. If these decisions were presented as mentioned above, but were not approved, then they shall cease to have the power of law.
To be honest, not a lot of countries have laws that contemplate continuance of government in case elections are not held.
> My understanding is that the ICC is only supposed to do this for countries/areas without a functioning and functionally independent judicial system.
That seems to be a misunderstanding based on an improper generalization of Article 17 of the Rome Statute: the kind of inadmissibility you refer to applies not based on general capacity of the state but of action in the specific case:
---[Art 17]
1. Having regard to paragraph 10 of the Preamble and article 1, the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where:
(a) The case is being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution;
(b) The case has been investigated by a State which has jurisdiction over it and the State has decided not to prosecute the person concerned, unless the decision resulted from the unwillingness or inability of the State genuinely to prosecute;
(c) The person concerned has already been tried for conduct which is the subject of the complaint, and a trial by the Court is not permitted under article 20, paragraph 3;
(d) The case is not of sufficient gravity to justify further action by the Court.
2. In order to determine unwillingness in a particular case, the Court shall consider, having regard to the principles of due process recognized by international law, whether one or more of the following exist, as applicable:
(a) The proceedings were or are being undertaken or the national decision was made for the purpose of shielding the person concerned from criminal responsibility for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court referred to in article 5;
(b) There has been an unjustified delay in the proceedings which in the circumstances is inconsistent with an intent to bring the person concerned to justice;
(c) The proceedings were not or are not being conducted independently or impartially, and they were or are being conducted in a manner which, in the circumstances, is inconsistent with an intent to bring the person concerned to justice.
3. In order to determine inability in a particular case, the Court shall consider whether, due to a total or substantial collapse or unavailability of its national judicial system, the State is unable to obtain the accused or the necessary evidence and testimony or otherwise unable to carry out its proceedings.
The ICC is not doing that. A prosecutor is requesting the court to approve them.
Now, why is the court accepting legal challenges on legal issues, and independently of the merits of those issues, from countries like South Africa, who publicly said they would not arrest Putin, who actually DOES have an ICC arrest mandate against him?
> from countries like South Africa, who publicly said they would not arrest Putin,
I thought they either outright said they would arrest Putin, or at least equivocated just enough to convince Putin to not want to find out if they would or not?
"...South Africa has issued blanket diplomatic immunity to all leaders attending an August summit, meaning Vladimir Putin might be able to travel to Johannesburg and not fear the country acting on an international criminal court warrant for his arrest..."
It's the ultimate hypocrisy on South Africa to undermine the same court where is currently arguing, and a major legal failure on the court to accept South Africa claims.
Where are the charges against the tribes of Gaza for committing the most savage acts of terrorism imaginable against men, women and children, including babies? All hostilities followed the acts of October 7th. The ICC could have chosen many issues to address but picked this one. For this reason, it cannot be considered a legitimate institution.
>Khan said the ICC’s prosecution team is also seeking warrants for Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders — Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades who is better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.
That is it..? Hamas has thousands of militants and hundreds of officials in Gaza and Qatar. At minimum the ICC should be issuing warrants for every Hamas member of al-qassam (their military wing) and Hamas core leadership.
3k Hamas fighters attacked Israel and posted it openly on social media. Half of those died in the initial attack and lots have surely died in the war since but there is no reason not to get arrest warrants for these war criminals who directly posted their war crimes to the internet.
Are they also supposed to submit arrest warrants for all the IDF soldiers who committed war crimes and shared them on social media? It's the job of the political/government/military leaders to keep their soldiers in check, and the job of the ICC to keep the leaders in check. (In theory at least)
"Respectful" here means respectful to the people who are wrong (in your view) and most respectful to the people who are most wrong (in your view). If you can't do that, that's ok, but please don't post until you can. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Hellish flamewars in deep subthreads are not ok. I'm going to lower the bar for banning accounts that do this, so please don't do this. If you're hotly indignant, step away from the keyboard until that changes. Nobody 'wins' on the internet anyway, and it's not worth destroying this community for. Not to mention your heart.