(before you jump into discussion, remember that this only about these two individuals)
ICC and the prosecutor are on very solid ground here.
The prosecutor asked opinions from a impartial panel of experts in international law. The panel included people like Theodor Meron (former Legal adviser for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Helene Kennedy, Adrian Fulford.
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant provided plenty of evidence of the intent. Did they really think that when they talk Hebrew to their audience, rest of the world does not hear them. Case like this would be harder to prosecute without evidence of intent.
> Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported that Israeli officials supported Khan’s candidacy behind the scenes, and consider him a pragmatist who shies away from politicization.
Also note that the US imposed heavy sanctions on Ethopia and Eritrea’s entire government party, head of state, spouses and businesses under the exact same observations of provoking famine and starvation
I would like to see the same standard applied by the US, or demonstrate that the US has far more options than its tacit consent, I would like the US to be completely uninvolved, and point out how the US’ leverage in the situation doesn’t involve Congress just the stroke of a pen from any President, leading the Office of Foreign Assets Control
since it would simultaneously be “anti-Semitic” to do this or avoid doing this by assuming cutting Israelis off from the global financial system to be uniquely debilitating, we could find out which view has a kernel of truth attached, and it shouldn’t be a problem at all
If you do speak Hebrew, you would know that Netanyahu and Gallant have been heavily attacked by the extreme right specifically because they have been refusing to cut off food.
> Gallant provided plenty of evidence of the intent. Did they really think that when they talk Hebrew to their audience, rest of the world does not hear them.
Absolutely, I can not find the BBC or most other major news networks broadcasting and translating any of that.
> Did they really think that when they talk Hebrew to their audience, rest of the world does not hear them. Case like this would be harder to prosecute without evidence of intent.
Since there are not many Hebrew books written over the centuries (for obvious reasons), modern literature is heavily relying on religious texts for metaphors and analogues.
The 188th commandment says to wipe out Amalek completely, male and female, young and old, sparing none, since evil has no future. Livestock too.
Maimonides elaborates that when the Jewish people wage war against Amalek, they must request the Amalekites to accept the Seven Laws of Noah and pay a tax to the Jewish kingdom. If they refuse, they are to be executed.
There are more moderate interpretations, but this discussion is about Ashkenazi fundamentalists.
Sure but this sounds exactly like the original definition of jihad or even “from the river to the sea” but people will get very upset if you suggest they mean they want to commit genocide when they chant it. I don’t think an argument over the meaning of ancient words is relevant or helpful here
> While Israel isn't entirely innocent here, most of their problems stem from their hostility towards their neighbor.
Do you happen to know why that hostility exists and on what the hatred-filled propaganda that Palestinian civilians are subjected is based? Maybe there is something historic there?
And in the same way that we can and do blame Hamas for their brutal atrocities, and the propaganda of hate the people acting in their name doesn't excuse their acts but merely explain it... we can blame Israel for their brutal atrocities, and its army members and commanders for committing them. Your enemy hating you because of 80 years of near constant conflict and antagonism isn't an excuse to starve his children, especially when that enemy is a literal terrorist group.
> Because the region tried to implement a form of Arab nationalism where Jews were suppressed. That would have happened if they didn't fight for their independence
The Jewish settlers in the region were overwhelmingly newcomers that came in the early 1900s. Of course Arabs considered them as outsiders trying to displace them, and in hindsight they were absolutely right.
My question, though, is does pushing these kinds of toothless resolutions make any difference beyond showing that the ICC essentially has no power to enforce its warrants?
It's clear that the most powerful militaries in the world (US, Russia, essentially China too) have declared the "rules-based world order" dead. Does it do anyone any good to pretend this hasn't happened? It reminded me of the post Elizabeth Warren put out complaining that Trump was breaking the law because he didn't sign some ethics pledge: https://x.com/SenWarren/status/1856046118322188573. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. All Warren was doing was showing how pointless these laws are when there are no consequences for breaking them.
The rules-based world order was always a bit of convenient fiction, but I'm afraid it's a fiction that a large part of the world no longer believes in anymore.
> My question, though, is does pushing these kinds of toothless resolutions make any difference beyond showing that the ICC essentially has no power to enforce its warrants?
Absolutely this matters.
This effectively limits where Netanyahu and Gallant can travel to. That's a big deal for a head of state. It sends a signal to all of Europe to be wary of doing business with Israel, which is a big deal.
We also don't know if there are any hidden warrants for other Israelis, and more importantly, if this is a precedent for future warrants. If the court starts issuing warrants for other IDF military personnel, that becomes a huge negative for Israelis.
At some point Netanyahu will be out of power. He's been voted out of office before. He's in trouble politically. He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead. The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.
But I think some of your analysis is really incorrect, unfortunately.
> He's been voted out of office before.
Yes, he was out of power for about a year of the last 15 or so years, and got back into power.
> He's in trouble politically.
True, and I hope it stays that way. However the elections are still two years away, there doesn't seem to be any pathway to forcing the elections to happen sooner, and he is gaining ground, not losing it. It is very much a possibility that he holds on to power.
> He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead.
I'm not sure he actually promised a short war. That said, the war against Lebanon is probably the most successful thing he's done in terms of restoring his power. It's entirely possible that acting more aggressively against more enemies is a winning strategy for him.
> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.
This basically reads as completely wrong to me. Almost every politician on every side of the aisle in Israel has condenmed the ICC. The intrusion into Israeli sovereignity is a big blow to Israel, implying that Israel's democracy isn't trusted to hold people accountable by ourselves.
Even if privately opposition leaders would want Netanyahu gone, giving him up would be suicide politically.
> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.
That seems very unlikely. If the next gov really hates him they might prosecute him domestically (the things he is accused of are all illegal under israeli law), but i can't imagine they would hand him to the icc.
Not just because that would look bad, but also because icc is supposed to be a court of last resort only to be used where domestic courts fail.
There was already a cold war with Iran before Oct 7, and many warned it could pop any moment. It could be said to the detriment of Netanyahu that he ignored that and didn't want this on his watch. Iran was priming and planning for a moment where a joint Hezbollah-Hamas ground invasion would have put the Israeli military to a stress beyond its means, and with many thousands casualties on the first day. It would have happened sooner or later if it wasn't for the Hamas independent action.
Also, on Oct 2023 he and other officials said it is going to be a long battle from the beginning. He never once promised this to be short. And also, a clear victory from a long war gets him more electorates, so he aligns his own victory with Israel's.
It will not happen to that next administration would turn over Netanyahu to the ICC. Even if they wanted to, he would seek asylum in the U.S. Embassy and he would certainly be granted asylum.
One thing I've learned these past 20 years: when an awful political leader seems to obviously be undergoing a downfall and on their way out of power, you can be sure they'll be there 20 years later. And they'll outlive all of us too, even if they're already geriatric.
> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC
The next person to win a fight for a most exclusive position may decide it should be of substantially less value.. But usually only as a tactic to get the position.
International crime or not, the long war with Iran like the long war with Russia is not a choice by Biden/netanyahu. It is always Iran here … can Iran promise a short one. Russia will as well. Just no Isreal or Ukraine.
I have no idea how to resolve this. It is a mess. But one side needs to be PC and the other side was constrained to do this and that. When is icc warrant on putin and get him really arrested.
We hope for peace, rule based … but that is hope. One side disarming will not help.
> We also don't know if there are any hidden warrants for other Israelis
Honest question, are "hidden" warrants a thing at the ICC? Seems like it would be difficult, as the ICC doesn't have an enforcement arm of its own, so I would think warrant information would need to be circulated to all the treaty signers, at which case it would be pretty impossible to keep hidden. I tried searching but couldn't find anything - all the results were just about this Netanyahu situation.
>What this really does is remove the ICC's authority.
Not yet. The UK and Italy both declared that they would be legally obligated to abide by the decision, which is unprecendented and historic in itself. Sure, Netanyahu could call their bluff and go to these places, and if they backpedal, then it would undermine the ICC's authority like you said. But Netanyahu would have to call their bluff for that to happen, or they would have to do an about-face before he arrives.
But until then, I would suggest that even the fact that just two well known western democracies quickly backed the ICC's authority (regardless of what they thought of the ruling) just gave the ICC more authority than it ever had before.
> It sends a signal to all of Europe to be wary of doing business with Israel, which is a big deal.
They can resume business once Netanyahu is gone.
In fact Viktor Orban has already invited him to Hungary to the dismay of EU officials. His plane would need permission to fly in other countries' airspace anyway so it would be qiite a risky stunt.
I'd argue that the "rules-based world order" as most people perceive it never really existed. Some will say that it existed for a brief moment in the 90s-2000s. Back then, most countries played nice with the international treaties even if there were no penalties for noncompliance, right? No - it just appeared that way. The 90s and 2000s were a unipolar world, the peak of the American Empire, and America made it eminently clear what would happen if you didn't get in line. If you're a small irrelevant country you would comply with the Treaty on Migratory Slugs or the Convention on Widgets not because of any written penalties, but because to not comply would be to reject the single world power and bear its wrath.
Now we're back to the state of the world as it has always been - multipolar - and it has once more become obvious that things only matter when backed up by force, leverage, and incentives. Look at things with teeth behind them - NATO borders, export controls and ASML, artificial islands in the South China Sea, control of Hong Kong, Russia in Syria or any of the other treaties with military bases. There are papers and laws and declarations on both sides of all of those things, but real-world control always follows force, leverage and incentives.
The UN mediation and general work in Palestine was objectively a failure.
Korea... it preserved South Korea's dictator in power, which allowed for a modern democratic and prosperous South Korea to happen. Back then it was little more than protecting the US-backed dictator against the Soviets-backed one. Both were pretty terrible and murderous.
In regard to Korea -- it was also about the principle of maintaining recognized borders, and their involiability. The UN was also instrumental in bringing the conflict to an end (along with Stalin's death and the general state of exhaustion on both sides -- but nonetheless, it was instrumental). And yes, they were both awful dictatorships at the time (and the South would continue to be, for decades to come) -- but's also not like there isn't a considerable difference between the two societies, now, generations later.
Palestine - many failures, but there've also been many important resolutions that have kept the conflict (at least somewhat) framed in terms of the RBWO and the rights of the region's indigenous inhabitants.
We also have the Geneva Conventions, etc.
So in sum - yes, many failures, but on balance I see the glass as more half-full than half-empty, on this issue.
The Nuremberg Trials were backed by the most force the world had ever known! And even then, the Allies wiped their ass with the rules (that they mostly made up ex post facto) and grabbed any Nazis that were useful and plenty that were not. Even putting aside all the Paperclip scientists, who absolutely knew what they were involved with, the US took plenty of SS officers - Otto von Bolschwing, Klaus Barbie, Alois Brunner, etc. Everyone violated their own “rules” left and right and occasionally, if they could be bothered, made up justifications later. This is not a controversial view: in fact the contemporary British opinion was that you can’t make up laws ex post facto and the Nazis should just be executed. The Soviets anticipated a show trial and their “judges” did nothing before phoning Moscow first. The Nuremberg trials were the 1940s legal equivalent of Calvinball.
To the mediators, I’m unsure why that would be an example. We’ve had mediators for a very long time and UN mediation is only the latest flavor of that.
I mean a tiny proportion of nazi war criminals were ever prosecuted and the (covertly pro-nazi) West German government pardoned pretty much everyone who weren’t executed in a handful of years.
Also the Soviets (and even the Allies) continued doing whatever they wanted with no consequences.
Of course at least establishing a clear precedent was a huge achievement.
> I'd argue that the "rules-based world order" as most people perceive it never really existed. Some will say that it existed for a brief moment in the 90s-2000s. Back then, most countries played nice with the international treaties even if there were no penalties for noncompliance
The utter disrespect for the CFE treaty during that period is exactly what got us the Ukraine war right now.
No, Putin's decision to launch the full-scale invasion in 2022 is what "got us" the war in Ukraine right now.
None of his claimed grievances in regard to the CFE Treaty amount to casus belli, by any rational metric. And they certainly weren't the core of what ultimately moved him to make that decision. They were just another part of his giant smokescreen, basically.
As his Deputy Foreign Minister put the matter, quite succinctly:
Bondarev also recalled that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov screamed at US officials, including First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, stating that ”[Russia] needs Ukraine” and that Russia will not ”go anywhere without Ukraine” during a dinner amidst the bilateral US-Russian strategic stability talks in Geneva on January 10, 2022.[67] Bondarev added that Rybakov vulgarly demanded that the US delegation ”get out with [their] belongings [to the 1997 borders]” as US officials called for negotiations.
Justice is self hypnosis and self idealization that settles in when there is plenty to go around. If there isn't its just a threatening word , whose values is mostly "we get you all when the good times roll back around ." Which they usually don't do unless there are major scientific breakthroughs generating surplus and a amnesty after armistice.
Reflecting on these words, it’s clear that many people take a “realist” perspective on power in and between human societies, and see no reason at all to strive to create better conditions for all or even most humans.
My take: it’s a luxury position that probably only makes sense if you’ve been a winner in the birth lottery of the global elite. They are the enablers of power-for-power’s sake populists and dead-eyed bureaucrats because they are certain, at least until too late, that bad things won’t happen to them of their loved ones.
"The ICJ is at least holding out against that future."
ICJ? Are you implying that what I said, implied or inferred was against the ICC?
Let me be clear, I nether said, meant nor inferred any of those things. In fact I'm in favor of the ICC despite the fact it's a paper tiger in areas where it's most needed.
Edit: that said, like many, I've some criticisms all of which other comments have echoed. Like most things the ICC is a compromise in an imperfect world, it's better than nothing though.
"Justice has to be declared as an essential principle of human organisation."
Rereading your post days later perhaps I should have added to mine that justice has long been essential for the proper functioning of society.
Likely the quintessential example of just how long justice has been considered important to societies comes from a text written over two millennia ago—Plato's Republic.
Plato considers justice so significant that he begins in Book I to ask 'What is Justice?' and then goes on to explain why it is so important to society. Therein, he constructs one of the most satisfying and logical debates ever written.
Plato pits the sophist Thrasymachus up against the philosopher Socrates in a battle of wits. Thrasymachus opens with a salvo of reasons why justice is everyman for himself and bit by bit Socrates systematically demolishes Thrasymachus' arguments and rebuilds them into the notion that justice is much broader and more important concept—a matter for society as a whole to embrace rather than the sophist's narrow, selfish view which only has self-interest in mind.
This is a wonderful dialogue and I've read it many times since I first learned about it in philosophy decades ago. And I'd posit that it has survived for so long throughout the ages because so many consider what it has to say about justice as being too important for it to be lost.
Not only do I consider Plato's take on justice just as important now as when it was written but also this cleverly constructed dialogue ought to be taken as a template for how political debate should be conducted both on and off the internet instead of the disorganized rabblerousing where only the loudest and outrageous are heard, as is so often the case nowadays.
There are many copies of the Republic in English on the internet, perhaps the best known is Benjamin Jowett's translation/revision of 1888 (it's the version I learned from). Here's a link to that copy on Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55201/55201-h/55201-h.htm
Edit: this MIT version is better formatted for smartphones and other mobile devices but it's sans intro (Gutenberg and the MIT download versions do have the full intro, foreword etc., but that's not necessary except for diehards and students):
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.2.i.html
If they just wanted to hop on a regular commercial flight to the US that might be a problem, but I'd expect they would fly on military aircraft.
Instead of taking the most direct route which would fly over Europe they could stay over the Mediterranean until they reach the Atlantic and then head straight to the US.
That adds about 500 miles or so to the trip which probably isn't a big deal on a trip that long.
Now I'm wondering if airspace spreads out horizontally from the coast the same way that shipping rights do.
I'd assume so, but a quick skim-read didn't tell me either way.
If it does, then they'd pick between going through Spanish or Moroccan airspace, because the straights of Gibraltar are narrow enough you can see Africa from Gibraltar.
From what I've read, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea when you have things like that strait where it is the only reasonable route between two bodies of international water ships and planes that are traveling between those two bodies have the right to pass through unimpeded.
If you want to do something other than just a continuous and expeditious passage through the strait than you do need permission from the bordering countries and have to obey their rules. But if you are just going straight (no pun intended) through then it legally counts as being on the high seas all the way through.
Presumably if they get invited to Europe it will be with assurance from the state that nothing happens to them. And traveling uninvited is probably a bad move anyway. So not much difference.
If you mean to imply that Europe is somehow going to shoot down their planes if they fly over that’s obviously absurd.
Specially when half the Israeli population hates your guts (probably a higher proportion among secular Israelis who are likely over-represented among aircraft maintenance personnel) and could accidentally on purpose forget a spanner in the jet engine...
From what I've read the Strait of Gibraltar is covered by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea which guarantees ships and planes that are just traveling through to get from one area of international waters to another area of international waters the right to do so without interference.
You will find that you'll get much better discussions if you do some introspection on how you might misinterpret someone when you think someone says something that you think is 'obviously absurd'. Why would they say something that is obviously absurd?
Maybe it is more revealing that you jump to the obviously absurd interpretation rather than the even more obvious, and not absurd one?
Putin went to Mongolia, which is a signatory to the Rome statute establishing the ICC, without being arrested.
President Orbán of Hungary also extended an open invitation to Netanyahu despite the ICC arrest warrant, but he isnt' exactly known for being a stickler for the rule of law.
"Invitations" for government officials are pretty much invitations in name only.
Many of the emails of Assad and his government have been leaked and show in great detail how various governments interact with each other. And how Assad ran his country by forwarding NYT articles...
Should Russia’s military really be included among the most powerful in the world? They haven’t been able to defeat Ukraine which is much smaller and weaker. On paper Russia is a dominant military power but in reality their equipment is poorly maintained, their training seems limited, and the leadership full of nepotism or incompetence.
China likely has a much better army, but it’s hard to say without a large scale conflict. Hopefully we won’t find out.
Lots of things that have a real effect in the world are a convenient fiction. The fact that most people on the planet believe that the small paper rectangles printed by the US government have some value, is a consensual belief simultaneously held but no less a fiction.
The rules based order of the world was once something people believed in, and therefore expected others to conform to. Until they didn’t (for lots of reasons all of which cumulatively perturbed the system such that it’s flipped from a stable state and into a meta-stable state).
There are a finite amount of the small paper rectangles available (yes the supply is increasing, but it is finite at any moment) AND these small paper rectangles are required in order for US residents/citizens that earn income in any currency in order to stay out of prison. So, in other words, not a fiction.
And yet not all pieces of paper are believed to be equal. Some pieces of paper will buy you a loaf of bread and others will buy you a tank full of gas. The difference lies in the magic squiggles printed on the pieces of paper. In other words, the belief that a certain number value equals a fair exchange for a physical good or service. This is a consensual belief. If an extra 0 appeared magically overnight on every piece of paper, what has changed? People will believe they have “more” than they did before. If instead of magic, the government announced a policy of reissuing recycled bits of paper that have had an extra zero printed on them, would people believe they had “more”?
Bear in mind that most of the time, sanctions not only prevent you from doing business with the sanctioned entity, but also with any other entity that's doing business with them.
It definitely does; my point is that sanctions aren't very granular (essentially like surgery with a spade), and make life miserable for a whole bunch of people and companies that you didn't want to sanction. Of course, you inflict a lot of damage to yourself as well, as we're experiencing in Europe currently.
But the whole bureaucratic issues are not to be underestimated. At some point, the US eased the sanctions on Iran a bit (under Obama I think), and my former colleague tells me that quite a few European companies were up for doing business with Iran (related to your regular old passenger cars in that case). At some point the sanctions got reinstated, and several German and French companies were threatened with sanctions if not outright sanctioned. My former employer (before my time there) had 2 projects worth ~$5M (of 2010s US dollars, not the monopoly money I earn now) total with some of these companies, and both were axed, even though the company itself had absolutely nothing to do with Iran. They got some compensation, but like not even 10%. Apparently, the whole sanctions thing is considered a "special case" in contracts.
It does, actually. Secondary sanctions are an impediment to free trade and frequently argued to contravene against international law as a result. You could take it up at the WTO if the US didn't just destroy it a couple years ago.
I think you are agreeing with that. There is not some international law that says countries must deal.with countries they don't want to. It's a national thing.
The rules-based order was always a fiction; international law is a tool used solely against America’s enemies.
This arrest warrant could be executed in a day if the US would stop supporting this genocide, but that won’t happen. They will sooner invite Netanyahu back to the UN to order more air strikes on refugees.
The standard isn't harm, it's war crimes. There is clear evidence that Israel deliberately withheld food and medicine from civilians in a calculated manner, which is a war crime that no one is alleging in the fight against ISIS.
There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States. If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries. Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.
> If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries.
It could possibly conquer many countries by largely destroying them as was done to Germany and Japan, but since the US is a democracy and a sizable portion of its people have morals and aren't sociopaths, it's politically impossible to fight a war this way in the modern era without some kind of extreme provocation. Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.
And even back when America did pretty well take the gloves off, doing nearly everything it could short of nuclear weapons in Korea and Vietnam, it still couldn't win. So I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that any decent-sized country could be conquered easily even if the 'will' was there.
Fair enough. I guess my point is that even if military and political leaders did want to take this approach, they'd face massive popular resistance. So it kind of depends on what you mean when you say a country 'wants' something.
To wit, some ~60% of Americans currently oppose offensive arms sales to Israel[1], and yet it continues. Would you say America wants this to happen?
<< There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States.
Yes. However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working. Now even that pretense is gone.
<< Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.
Eh. No. I am not sure where the concept this weird concept of 'bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from. I accept your premise that some of it is the question of will, but you have to admit that two decades with nothing to show for it is not.. great.
> bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from.
To be clear, bombing is not colonizing. Colonizing entails undoing the current culture and replacing it with your own. You don't replace culture with bombs, but rather by taking the young people, educating them in America, and then shipping them back a la Britain (among other things). You have to do this for several decades, or maybe even a century, maybe multiple centuries.
This is a weirdly interesting distinction. Can you elaborate a little on this point? I am not sure what I think yet, but I am curious what you think could have been done differently in Iraq ( or Vietnam for that matter ).
I mean, nobody really knows until the trial (if one ever happens). Its easy to be convincing when you are just listening to the prosecution - it gets harder once the defense has the opportunity to poke holes.
Keep in mind the conviction rate at ICC is pretty low.
> The prosecutor asked opinions from a impartial panel of experts in international law.
The court already disagreed with said panel on one of the charges (crime of extermination) and we aren't even at the stage yet where they need proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Netanyahu and Gallant should certainly be quite worried (if they somehow find themselves in icc custody which seems unlikely) but we are still very far away from a conviction. Its not a foregone conclusion.
Your dark humor made me chuckle. Thanks for that in this dire world.
May the persecution of all innocent Jews, Palestinians, Ukrainians, and Africans (e.g. Ugandans) end and a world of peace and justice be established, for one and all.
The double edged sword is that proving an ongoing crime maybe stops it from unfolding but anything other than a conviction is presented as an endorsement and encouragement to continue. That could be fine if there's really no crime, not so fine if the crime just couldn't be proven.
Considering here the old adage that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. They both lead to the same verdict from a court of public opinion point of view, and realistically the same consequences from a court of justice.
This is why, if Israel and USA and other world powers' governments, and the UN, functioned correctly and for the good of the people, then...
- Britain would never have ruled over Palestine
- Israel would have never been established in the middle of Palestine
- There would never have been a civil war in the area
- We wouldn't be using it as a vehicle for continuing to undermine democratic movements and unification in the Middle East
- We wouldn't be partnering with Mossad (and thus excusing their own activities) to entrap and spy on politicians and activists
- Women and babies wouldn't be dying
- Entire family trees wouldn't be wiped out
Additionally, anti-peace sentiment from Netanyahu would have been rooted out early on, and he would have been replaced with more stable leadership via fair anarchistic or democratic means.
Instead, our governments and their NGO partners tirelessly work to hoodwink and undereducate their populaces, precisely so that the upper class can continue unsustainably exploiting resources from artificially poor countries, while also benefiting from corpgov partnerships with artificially rich dictators to establish regulated access energy and natural resources.
This is all an extension of neoliberal policy, controlling energy and growth of both foreign and domestic demographics in order to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle of a relatively small amount of people in the upper class, and to a lesser extent (in order to incentivize obedience) the middle class.
Everyone else suffers. Either a slow death by a thousand cuts, or a swift death from above. We are witnessing increasingly horrific acts borne from poisoned authoritarian minds under the justification of juicing this shitshow for just a little bit longer, and typically, for millennia now, wrapped in religious justification, since religion has long been an effective medium of control for an undereducated populace.
It didn't have to be this way, and if these systems were actually working for us, it would be a cinch to expel this sort of perverted leadership before it has the chance to carry out unspeakable horrors.
Multiple active genocides aside, eventually these people die and we inherit a boiling planet with broken social systems, generational traumas preventing unification, fragile supply chains, depleted energy reserves, and severely impacted ecosystems and life-sustaining biogeochemical cycles.
It's ultimately up to us to organize and demand better for ourselves and of ourselves.
What problem would this solve? The Zionist movement began under the Ottoman Empire and was well underway by the time of the British Mandate, and the British were overall not entirely pleased with it. Indeed British restrictions on Zionism (by e.g., limiting Jewish migration to Palestine) was one of the major reasons the Israelis began a terror campaign against the British, culminating in the King David Hotel bombing. If not for the British Mandate's restrictions, the Zionist movement would have been in an even stronger position to seize control. Zionist political influence in Britain, and the Balfour Declaration, were obviously bad, but the outcome without them would have been the same; the Balfour Declaration only came about because of the already-existing movement.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the direct result of political Zionism and the resulting mass migration of Jewish peoples into Palestine in the late 1800s-early 1900s, it would not have mattered who was in charge of administering the area, unless they were prepared to have a zero-immigration policy in the face of enormous pressure otherwise.
> Keep in mind the conviction rate at ICC is pretty low.
My understanding is that's because it's usually difficult to show intent. However, in this case, not only do we have an incredible amount of video evidence of war crimes, but we also have a huge catalogue of Israeli politicians explicitly calling for the genocide of Gaza.
My biggest concern over this is what the US and/or Mossad will do...
Usually when people say that they are talking about genocide. War crimes and crimes against humanity may have some intent requirements but they don't have the double intent that genocide has, which is the part that is super difficult to prove.
To over simplify (also ianal) with genocide you basically have to prove that the only possible rationale for the action was to try and destroy the protected group and that there is no other plausible explanation. With normal war crimes its more just proving the act wasn't done accidentally. [This is a gross oversimplification]
> but we also have a huge catalogue of Israeli politicians explicitly calling for the genocide of Gaza.
I don't think that is relavent here, as genocide is not one of the charges. Additionally, that would probably be more relavent to state responsibility for genocide (what the icj decides) and not personal responsibility (what icc has juridsication over). Even for state responsibility, its a bit iffy how much those statements matter if they aren't said by people who have the power to issue orders to the military (they of course matter a lot if the charge is failing to suppress incitement of genocide). I'm not saying its totally irrelavent, it is probably a bit relavent to the prosecution charge, but largely it matters more what the individuals themselves have said as they are being charged in an individual capacity not as agents of the state.
Basically the ICC and ICJ are different and what you are saying is more applicable to the ICJ case not the ICC case.
That higher standard sounds similar to "Double reasonableness" from British tax law.
"Double reasonableness" is used to delete tax advantages for certain things which you say were correctly exempt from taxation or attracted significant tax advantages but the government alleges you were in fact just generally avoiding paying tax and whatever you were doing doesn't count. It's not a crime to have mistakenly believed you didn't owe tax, but, if a court finds against you, you would now owe the back tax, plus potentially penalties.
The "double" comes from a requirement that not only can the reasonable person (say, a juror) not think of any way that what you're doing isn't just avoiding tax, but they can't even imagine any other reasonable person who thinks what you were doing made sense for another reason beside avoiding taxes either.
The idea is this only triggers for people who are very obviously dodging tax, so that their scheme sounds completely ludicrous unless it is explained that they hoped to avoid taxation, rather than just being a slightly eccentric thing to do which happened to have tax benefits when they did it.
"I buy and sell used cars" makes you a used car dealer. No reason you shouldn't take advantage of used car tax treatments which are a significant benefit.
"I let somebody else do all the buying and selling" OK, I guess you just own the business? Nothing wrong with that, small business, entrepreneurship, excellent.
"I don't own the business or anything, I just get the advantageous tax treatment". Huh, well it's very good of the people actually doing the transactions to let you benefit while they go without, very generous indeed, but at least you're ensuring a healthy market in used cars.
"Oh, there's just one car. That car is just bought and sold over and over again to make up the amount of money I requested". See, now that's ludicrous, why would anybody believe you had some reason to do this except to avoid paying taxes?
I think they only need to show intent if they are being charged with genocide, however, I think in this case they are being charged with using starvation as a weapon, hindering aid, and targeting hospitals. I think the recommendation also included extermination, which is similar to genocide, but also does not require intent, but I think the voted against that.
I think the evidence for the charges which were actually brought forward are pretty strong. I mean we have Gallant on video stating explicitly a policy of starvation, a policy which we have been seeing in action, also on video.
> I think the recommendation also included extermination, which is similar to genocide, but also does not require intent, but I think the voted against that.
Persecution is the charge probably most similar to genocide minus a lot of the intent requirements (which was granted). The requirements for extermination (which was rejected) is basically they have to be resposible for > 50 illegal deaths (not sure on the exact number, but somewhere in the double digits). The icc granted the murder charge, which is the lesser version of exterminatin when it is only < 50 ish deaths.
I wonder why they didn’t go forward with the extermination charges then. It shouldn’t be to hard to find evidence of hundreds of illegal deaths. I mean the flour massacre alone has 118+ confirmed deaths back in February.
Did the prosecutor simply fail to put forward good enough evidence to convince the judges?
Not that it matters the most, the charges they did bring are serious enough.
I guess its impossible to know given the warrant proceedings are secret. However it seems like the prosecutor was solely presenting deaths related to siege tactics, so essentially deaths by starvation or malnutrition that can be attributed to israeli conduct. It could also simply be what evidence the prosecutor had available to them when they started this process which was a while ago.
> I mean the flour massacre alone has 118+ confirmed deaths back in February.
These probably wouldn't count as it would be hard to argue that these were directly ordered by the defendents (unless there is evidence of that).
Additionally, they maybe also wanted to go with a clear cut case. Israel is claiming that there was a riot and their troops fired only to protect themselves. Even if you find that unconvincing, when this goes to trial the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that version of events is false. Maybe the prosecutor doesn't think there is enough evidence to get to "beyond a reasonable doubt". There is a requirement that "the perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of or intended the conduct to be part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population." So you do need to prove that there was intent to do the killings which might require having evidence it was premeditated (i'm not sure tbh).
The effectiveness, and moreover the underlying sincerity of these "warnings" have been widely and severely criticized. Meanwhile, the IDF has gone right on bombing people even when they went to areas they were told would be "safe". At the end of the day -- they're just lip service, basically.
I understand where you're coming from, and the need to put pieces together so that the image of oneself or their identity is acceptable.
However, while doing that, you're just ignoring the number of killed people. Unfortunately, there's no way to assemble that kind of image of Israel in this situation, where it's not red in blood of Palestinian civilians. Not to say that it's any different on the other side, and not engaging with any justifications for either side - just pointing out that you're ignoring some large and ugly parts of reality in how you represented your view of the situation.
We could discuss lack of protests for those countries at length and conclude it's wrong - but how does that change what I said, or what is happening in your country? It's a rather weak deflection...
If you're open to being self-inquisitive, notice that I have not taken any side, and have clearly said that it's no different for the other side - so I'm not attacking your identity or country, or you - yet you replied by deflection / offense.
To clarify, my goal was to, as a well-intentioned fellow HN dweller, point out that your theoretical justification for actions of Israeli military is not taking into account glaring parts of reality, and it might be good to re-evaluate solely from the perspective of improving one's critical thinking and objectivity.
The icc warrant claims it is an international armed conflict.
This is important, because palestine did not ratify the amendment to the rome statue criminalizing starvation in non-international armed conflict, so that charge goes away if it is just an internal thing as opposed to an international war.
The charges in question are that of targeting hospitals and hindering aid from reaching Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are being charged with the policy of targeting hospitals and hindering aid. The videos we have of people dying are only related to the crime if they show how hospitals or aid convoys were targeted. Of which we have plenty. For example the flour massacre is only one of many instances of aid being targeted which resulted in hundreds of civilians dying. And the fact the the four massacre was not an isolated incident, but followed a pattern of other links in the aid chain being targeted or otherwise prevented from being delivered to civilians is a very good argument for that this is actually a policy, of which Netanyahu and Gallant are guilty.
The charges are not of war crimes, but of crimes against humanity. A war crime is an event which individual soldiers or commanders, or generals are guilty of. Crimes agains humanity is criminal policy which politicians are charged for.
> The charges in question are that of targeting hospitals
Is it? All they say that seem relavent to that is two instances of an attack directed at a civilian object (and not from a policy perspective but more from a failing to punish a subordinate perspective). The ICC has not specified if this is about a hospital or not.
> The charges are not of war crimes, but of crimes against humanity.
Some of the charges are war crimes, others are crimes against humanity. In particular, the use of starvation as a method of war is a war crime not a crime against humanity.
> A war crime is an event which individual soldiers or commanders, or generals are guilty of. Crimes agains humanity is criminal policy which politicians are charged for.
This is incorrect, civilians who can give orders to the military (e.g. minister of defence or the PM) can be guilty of war crimes. It is also possible for soldiers & generals to commit crimes against humanity.
More children have been killed in Gaza than all conflicts combined from the previous 4 years. That's not even touching all of the Palestinians that Israel has murdered prior to Oct 7th.
I don't know why you think that. I have a feeling that you live far from war.
For what it's worth, quite a few children that I know or whose parents I know were murdered on October 7. Two of them were babies, burned alive, one of those babies was an infant. And a child in my daughter's class was murdered, along with both his sisters (and both parents, too). Shall I go on?
No, the Israeli military was destroying materiel stored in civilian homes. Unfortunately people lost their homes when that materiel was destroyed.
Who do you blame: Israel for destroying the rockets before Hamas shoots them, or Hamas for storing them in civilian infrastructure?
I will remind you that Hamas has been shooting these rockets continually at Israel for over a decade. And Israel rarely took the initiative to proactively destroy the rockets stored in homes until this war started.
It's nice that you believe that people in Gaza are living with rockets in their living rooms. I imagine that must make it easier to come to terms with what Israel has done.
> I disagree that there is an incredible amount of video evidence of war crimes that are relevant here.
You can disagree with the facts all you like; it won't change them. Those videos and statements exist, whether you believe in them or not. You can see them on Twitter, on TikTok, on Instagram, or YouTube.
Even France admits it might not arrest Netanyahu. From an NPR article:
“And in France, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said the country would act "in line with the ICC's statutes," but as to whether it would arrest Netanyahu if he entered France, the question was "legally complex."
I had a look at the democrats who support the recent "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act". I had a look at 10 of them. 7 of them had substantial donations from AIPAC. The others were soon up for re-election.
I am not American, but why oh why are you not rooting in the streets? That is just soooo effed up. This is just one of so many issues, and AIPAC is a just a part of the problem. It is just so obvious that U.S. politicians are up for purchase.
> I am not American, but why oh why are you not rooting in the streets?
Fatigue and feelings of impotence, mostly. I don't think public protests are going to kick off campaign finance reform. And most people in the US feel that they have worse problems, and ignore the possibility that fixing campaign finance rules might cause us to end up with politicians who represent our interests better.
For instance if it is easy to mooch off public funds you will have people run for office just to get money to pay their friends who will owe them favors. If it is not easy to mooch off public funds than it won't be inclusive.
We saw a similar scenario scenario play out in 2016 when most of the Republican candidates were attending meetings with donors who were willing to shower them with money to promote conservative ideas so long as they kissed the ring and signed up to the same list of positions on an array of issues. Some of these positions were popular (with the base and the general electorate) and others were less so, it was a hodge-podge and not a package of issues designed to win a campaign. Notably the issue of immigration was left off the table because many elite Republicans are farmowners who have a choice between hiring local young people who think it's a dead end job and would rather earn a few $ an hour less working at Burger King because its an easier job or hiring a Mexican who wants to save money to buy a farm of his own and thinks the same way the owner does.
Trump didn't go that route and he picked a package of issues which were largely popular, adding the immigration issue which was highly salient in 2016 for the Republican base and that has become salient for the general electorate in 2024 since the lid blew off in Latinoamerica and Africa.
Had the Republicans had fewer candidates one of them might have been able to stand out against Trump but too much funding can mean too many candidates and no differentiation and you lose. The candidates are fine though because they got the cash and they got some visibility. (Would be worth doing just for the cash)
Democrats have the opposite problem that because billionaires don't fund left-wing candidates they don't have enough candidates entering in the primaries.
---
I'm skeptical of other kinds of reform such as tricky voting systems because the electoral college is bad enough and if people can't understand how the vote was counted it damages legitimacy. Also systems like that have all kinds of tricky situations where the outcome of your choices often isn't what you think. (If I had to thing about Arrow's Theorem all the time I would be depressed all the time)
<< I am not American, but why oh why are you not rooting in the streets? That is just soooo effed up
US has a lot of issues. Some of those issues are obvious. Some of those issues are not obvious. Some have solutions. Some really do not have solutions that do not include changes that would make US fall apart as a result of those changes. Some of those issues have business interests ensuring those issues stay exactly as they are..
All this is also happening against conscious propaganda apparatus ensuring an individual stays separated from otherwise normal bonds. Entire communities are atomized to ensure they do not pose a threat of banding together. And this does not even begin to touch the social fabric.
Some of the stuff is fucked up, but one has to pick battles. Things are bad, but not bad enough in many people's view. Naturally, that can change. And since are we raised to believe in 'the economy', it only takes another 2008 to have Americans reconsider their current social agreement.
Israel was massively radicalized by October 7th. Prior to October 7th, a lot of Israelis believed that if Palestinians had a better economy and could afford a comfortable life, peace would be possible. October 7th was not just a surprise to many Israelis, but also the atrocities were so horrible that it radically changed how Israelis view the situation. This is hard to grasp, but a lot of people don't really understand what happened on October 7th, because this was stuff was obviously not shown on mainstream media.
The entire situation is very tragic. But ultimately, October 7th killed any chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, for a long long time. The current population in Israel will never forget October 7th, there are some seriously cannot-be-unseen NSFL atrocities.
Israel had been locking Gaza in a total blockade for 17 years (with talk of "keeping them on a diet"), plus had bombed Gaza multiple times resulting in more than 5000 deaths (= 5 October 7ths- they called this "mowing the lawn". During these bombing campaigns we have pictures of Israelis enjoying the show from afar from observation points with food and drinks).
In the meanwhile they enforced an apartheid regime in the West Bank, building new settlements for hundreds of thousands of residents, and launching pogroms to drive away the Palestinian population.
It is telling that you also mention "better economy" and "comfortable life", but not "equal rights" or "self-government" or any such thing. Even with animals in the zoo one doesn't think that all they need is being well-fed.
This talk of "better economy" and "comfortable life" is pure self-deception on the part of Israelis. They liked to think that they would like peace with the Palestinians, while at the same time making no significant objection to their country implementing an apartheid regime and building settlements and imprisoning millions under an airtight blockade.
Such is the level of self-deception that they are genuinely surprised and angry each time the Palestinians hit back- they see these as unprovoked- worse, ungrateful- attacks.
Myself, I have no sense of what it's like in Israel right now, but I have noted several times that the October 7th attack was proportionally worse to Israel than 9/11 was to the US, so I can easily believe that this had a similar impact on the national psyche.
That said, I do often read comments and news articles claiming that Netanyahu's government is unpopular within Israel, and that he only maintains his position by the support of the… well, there's not a polite way to describe the attitudes of the settlers who take land that isn't in Israel and then demand Israel defend them, nor those who demand violence while claiming their religious beliefs prohibit serving in the armed forces even though everyone else has conscription.
Not confident of that popularity though, as Googling gets me an extraordinarily broad range of popularity scores.
That said:
> But ultimately, October 7th killed any chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, for a long long time.
I agree that what the IDF is doing to Palestinians, now and for a long time is very tragic, and it's also tragic how many of their own people and fellow soldiers they (IDF) killed on Oct 7th.
You can't post like this here, and you've been breaking the site guidelines in other places too. If this keeps up, we're going to have to ban your account. If you'd please review https:///newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Which atrocities? What wasn't shown on mainstream media?
In my experience, most of what mainstream media claimed initially around atrocities was proven to be categorically false - up to and including the president of the USA going on live TV and lying about having seen evidence of baby killing, with staffers having to sheepishly and quietly release a "that didn't happen" statement later.
Of course these retractions happened later, and Israel's explicit and planned messaging of atrocities, inhuman animal behavior, etc had its desired effect of riling people up to support a genocidal assault after a single successful counterattack from an impoverished people at war for generations.
I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but drawing any conclusions from random people on Twitter seems like a mistake. They might not be human, they might not be Israeli, and they might not be representative of Israel's 9 million people. I wouldn't want anybody to judge me based on how English-speaking Twitter accounts behave.
Definitely valid to see what people you know are thinking (that's the whole point of the site), I just don't like the idea of believing you can see "what most Israelis are thinking".
You call it "looking away" (if I understand what that word means).
I think that's incredibly wrong, actually. The army is part of Israeli society in a way that is very different to bigger countries. Some of these software developers are themselves reservists going into Gaza. Certainly 100% of them personally know people who are reservists involved in the war in some way.
So I think it's much more accurate to say that the average Israeli is far more informed than the average non-Israeli about what is happening and how the army behaves.
That shouldn't mean you automatically trust whatever Israelis say. But when you personally know dozens of people who tell you what the war is like, what the situation in Gaza is like, and most of whom come down on the side of "look, it's horrible, war is horrible, but the IDF is doing its best to protect civilians and not hurt civilains, and Hamas is doing its best to put civilians in the line of fire", or statements to that effect - when you personally know many people who say that, that counts for a lot in most Israeli's eyes.
(Though I'll note, since the thread we're on is about the ICC warrant - one of the allegations is against witholding of aid, which is something that isn't specifically part of how the IDF is conducting the war.)
> but the IDF is doing its best to protect civilians and not hurt civilains
I (and most people) do not believe this at all. I've seen hundreds of images the IDF have taken themselves of war crimes including an entire genre of dressing up in the lingerie of murdered and displaced women. It's the engineers in the IDF that I'm most uncomfortable with!
I understand. But you yourself I believe have mentioned just how strong the IDF is compared to Hamas - it could easily (in terms of force) inflict 100x the damage, at far lower cost to itself.
> I've seen hundreds of images the IDF have taken themselves of war crimes including an entire genre of dressing up in the lingerie of murdered and displaced women.
While this is unprofessional and disgusting behavior, it does not come close to intentionally targeting civilians or not protecting civilians.
My morals aren't up for litigation. What I've seen people support is far beyond my limit and what I'm willing to accept. Looting civilians is a war crime btw.
I have a general rule that I don't trust people's self-evaluation of morality. It's been my experience that even objectively very bad people will say that they are good people forced to do bad because of bad conditions. Nonetheless good people are forced to do bad things by bad conditions. Whether it is one or the other isn't usually determinable from the point of view of the participants.
That's fair, and an outside view is usually a good idea.
But I also have a general rule that you should never judge a whole group of people as inherently evil or immoral, without attempting to understand them on their own terms, see them as they see themselves. Very rarely, if ever, are large groups of people immoral or evil. (Though societies themselves can certainly immoral collectively.)
And Israel is a Western society, mostly. Its values are largely the same values as the US or Europe. If people with those values self-reflect and decide they are not acting immorally on the whole, then it's worth at least considering that they might just have more knowledge and context about what's happening than outsiders.
> And Israel is a Western society, mostly. Its values are largely the same values as the US or Europe.
So you don't think it's indigenous to the Middle East? Israel shares values with no one. I've never seen dozens of US soldiers dress up in the lingerie of murdered women.
Israel isn't "indigenous" or not, it's a country. I think the same as the historical consensus - there was a state called Israel where the Jews lived, they were ethnically cleansed by the Roman Empire. Call it whatever you want.
> Israel shares values with no one. I've never seen dozens of US soldiers dress up in the lingerie of murdered women.
Have you seen the pictures of US soldiers at Abu Ghraib? It's not hard to find pictures of some US soldiers doing bad things. Not that that excuses what the IDF soldiers did.
So when you say that Israel shares western values what you mean is the desire to commit sadistic torture and violate human rights? I don't disagree at all actually that the US also does not practice what it preaches.
What I'm saying is that to the extent you can infer from Abu Ghraib that "Western values are to commit sadistic torture", then you can infer Israeli values by pictures of IDF soldiers doing whatever.
I think that extent is very small. If you think otherwise, then you're not really claiming Israel is worse so much as that all Western countries are terrible. (I disagree but that's your logic.)
> most Israelis would completely disagree with you that genocide is happening in Gaza
Then my opinion is that at best they're ignorant or have fallen prey to propaganda and misinformation, and at worst they're liars who are ok with what is happening.
Either way, not a good look.
Beyond that, I think we need to stop getting so hung up on the term "genocide". Regardless of whether or not what's happening in Gaza satisfies the legal definition of genocide, we should not be ok with what Israel is doing there.
(And to avoid the usual knee-jerk troll responses: no, we should not be ok with what Hamas has done either.)
> You should also leave room for the possibility that the Israeli public is actually more informed than you are.
Was the Nazi public more informed than the rest of the world? Just as Germany today isn't an "expert" in genocide because they committed it, Israelis don't "know more", they are the perpetrators of many historic crimes. They're literally living on stolen, ethnically cleansed land.
> Was the Nazi public more informed than the rest of the world?
Yes, actually. I believe many Nazis knew more about what was going on during the Holocaust than most of the world did - the world only really understood what was happening after WW2.
> Just as Germany today isn't an "expert" in genocide because they committed it,
We're not talking about Israel 70 years from now. I'm talking about people who are there right now and tell us, in real time, what is happening.
> They're literally living on stolen, ethnically cleansed land.
The land wasn't "stolen". As for whether there was ethnic cleansing, that's a much debated topic. It is also, unfortunately, the sad reality is that about 100 million people worldwide have been ethnically cleansed since WW2, many of them (though certainly not all) in the aftermath of WW2.
In fairness to Israel, they have a peace movement and human rights movement and so on. It’s just that even before October 7th, they were getting increasingly outnumbered.
The situation is very heterogeneous: not all Israelis are okay with what their government does, and are increasingly outspoken against it.
Not all Israelis are Jewish: note also that substantial numbers of Israelis are of Arab background, some with relatives (or fellow Muslims) in Palestine. Most of non-Jewish Israelis oppose the military measures. (But there are even a few that are upset that they cannot serve in the IDF because Arab Israeli citizens are not trusted enough to serve in Israel's military - in violation of equal treatment of cizitens.)
Not all Jews are in favor of Israels military action: in particular among the most religious people, there is a division between those disgusted by Israel's own military action (c.f. Rabbi David Weiss at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtMV2i8-8 ) and those right-wingers that even volunteer to become settlers in areas cleared by bulldozers from Palestinian homes in violation of the law (UN resolution 2334, Fourth Geneva Convention).
What is clear and undisputable is the power asymmetry between Israel and Palestine.
I've also struggled with looking at the tweets of the investors of our startup. When they were denying the first (of many) hospital bombings, I started thinking about finding a new job.
> You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.
Is what he said to Lebanon, where he threatened to do similar things to another country.
If you're going to try and argue semantics when there is literal evidence of him following through then there isn't really any point.
It's reported he said it, there is no denial that he said it, and then he delivered on what he said. There is a reason there is an arrest warrant out for war crimes.
Of course it's not against the Palestinians, per se.
It's a war against their continued presence on portions of Greater Israel that his party and his people would like to further colonize.
There's also the current operation involving his former "asset" and strategic partner, Hamas. With whom it seems he's had a falling out of sorts, and as a result, his people got massacred. But that's just a sideshow against the backdrop of this far broader, deeper, decades-long conflict.
Tell us about the West Bank, then. What is happening there right now and how it relates to Hamas?
I do think there's evidence, plenty of, that Israel is doing its best to expel the Palestinians.
I don't pretend to understand how it's to be a country surround by enemies, and there's a lot of history there that explain all of this. But the current facts - all the destruction in Gaza - can't be justified, ever.
You say that ICC has no investigative power. But ONU has people on the ground and has been denouncing Israel for months...
> The majority of Israeli would like to find some sort of win win solution where everyone can live in peace. The majority of Palestinians don't see any solution that includes Jewish people living in the region.
[citation needed] Because your equivalent on the other side would say it is exactly the other way around, and both of you would feel unarguably right. So unless you base your claim here on a neutral trusted source I would file that away as someone's gut feeling that may be part of a political bubble.
Your palestinian counterpart could point out the same, as far as I know more than three quarters of the palestinians alive today did not vote for Hamas, since they were kids when that vote took place in 2006. Your Palestinian counterpart could point to the fact that their people are unarguably more restricted than an Israeli citizen living in the same area or to the fact that their territories got smaller over the decades which is surprising given your statement about a lack of Isreali ambition to drive them away — did the Palestinians voluntarily gift that land away or how did that happen?
Now sure, in reality this conflict is much more complex, and the history of the Palestinian territories has to do with repression, terrorist responses, constant military intervention, settler ambition and so on. But if — in effect — you drive the other people out, even if "you don't want to", you are driving them out, period. And for that you just have to look at a timeline of the border over the history of the region, without bothering yourself about all complexity, which in this conflict is abused by both sides as an excuse.
Todays younger generations in the West perceive Israel as the stronger force (and it is) and as such feel that Isreal has a moral duty to de-escalate the conflict. Now that 80% of the Gaza strips population is displaced and this is the conflict with the most dead children than any other recent conflict¹, taking about not wanting to drive them away seams a tad bit cynical — one could infer from that they are not to be driven away, but to be erradicated.
In any way this will mark the sad point in history where the decline of support for Isreals ambitions in the West started and Isreal won't even see it coming, since their own perspective on the conflict is skewed by their own propaganda. A support Isreal both needs and given its early history also deserved. But taking it too far has consequences.
And as someone who grew up with 3 brothers: It is for the stronger one to stop the conflict and act with controlled force. And Isreal is the stronger one and right now it is beating the smaller brother into a bloody bulp in stupid rage as the rest of the world watches in absolute horror.
This is Corey, the guy who does this project where he asks random Israelis and Palestinians questions, being interviewed. I highly recommend his channel to anyone who wants a better understanding of the conflict. He's not taking sides and he asks difficult questions (coming from his viewers) about the conflict to both. If you pursue this you will certainly find out how much you do not know about this conflict.
To some of your other points since I'm revisiting:
- There are dead children because Gaza is extremely dense and half the population are children. That said the blank statement is not useful because the Palestinians counts are iffy, one example is that they include combatants who are under 18yo, and it deflects blame from Hamas from operating under the cover of children and not providing for their safety. This is not to say we should not feel sorry for dead children. Most critics of Israel are unable to offer an alternative way for Israel to defend its citizens given the specific circumstances. If Israel had a magic weapon that only killed Hamas militants I'm sure they'd use it. If you're asking Israel to send soldiers into an urban environment to ensure no uninvolved are killed instead of dropping a bomb on the enemy, I'd say, within reason, go with the bomb. That's what any military would do, what the US and its allies did against ISIS and in other places. That's how wars are fought. Nobody puts their own soldiers lives at risk to protect civilians the other side puts at risk by their actions.
- The argument that Palestinians didn't get to vote since 2006 is also pretty weak. One reason they didn't get to vote is that the PA didn't hold a vote because Hamas would win. Polls show broad support for Hamas amongst Palestinians. Either way, they are the government of Gaza whether they enjoy support or do not. When non-democratic countries go to war their citizens suffer consequences whether they got to elect their government or not. We should feel for the unfathomable numbers of young Russians that have died in Putin's crazy war on Ukraine. Does that mean that Ukraine should surrender because those Russians didn't vote for Putin in a free and democratic elections? No.
- Israel has to, under international law, ask civilians to evacuate and indeed facilitate their evacuation from combat areas. That's exactly what it did. Now the West attacks Israel for doing exactly that. I would say there's nothing Israel can do that's right. If you can suggest a reasonable path for Israel to protect its citizens from Hamas and earn the support of the critics I'm all ears.
- I'd love for there to be a way for Israel to de-escalate the conflict. I lived in Israel during the suicide attack campaign that Hamas waged on Israel as Israel was trying to make peace with the Palestinians and get to a two state solution (circa 2000). The failure of that process and the failure of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza proves there is no partner for any sort of de-escalation. Again, go check out some of those videos. The escalation came from the Palestinians (and Iran) and Israel has no practical way to de-escalate.
I also grew up in Israel at a time where Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza had complete freedom of movement in and out of Israel. Israelis shopped in the west bank and Gaza. Palestinians worked in Israel. There were essentially zero settlements and zero settlers. The PLO (backed by the surrounding Arab countries) murdered Israeli civilians left right and center. Not because of the settlements, not because of road blocks, not because of settlers attacking Palestinians. Just because Israel exists. The Palestine they want to liberate is and has been all of Israel. This is not about the individual freedoms of the individual Palestinian and how Israel "oppresses" them. A by the way is that when Israel took Gaza from Egypt in the 6-day war many Gazans were extremely happy to not be under Egyptian rule. The Egyptian and Jordanians, prior to 1967, didn't consider for a microsecond giving the Palestinians their own country over those areas that they controlled. But both are happy to ask Israel to do that now.
It's not serious to suggest that Israel did not supply any food or water to the Palestinians when in fact it supplied plenty. Why didn't Egypt supply food and water to the Palestinians? (Before Israel took the border corridor).
What other war can you provide me as an example where a the opposing side provided supplies to its enemy? Does Russia supply Ukraine with food and water? Does Ukraine supply Russia? Did the allies supply the citizens of the Islamic State with food and water? Yes- The Gazans depended on Israel in many ways before they started this war, most of them by their own choice. Did the Germans deliver food and water to the UK during WW-II? Do the Turkish give the Kurds food and water as they bomb them? If the government of Gaza, Hamas, has stocks of food and water, and it does not disburse those to the population, and even steals aid from the population, why is this Israel's problem?
Those organizations you're referring to are anti-Israeli and their statements are political.
The US, who has closer knowledge of what's going on on the ground, says Israel has not committed war crimes.
Part of the political circus here is around the definition of occupation. The ICC essentially claims that Gaza has always been and is currently occupied. The ground truth is that Gaza stopped being occupied when Israel withdrew in 2005 and that Israel at this time is not actually occupying most of Gaza. It is occupying portions of it and blockading other parts.
The argument is more or less around: "In international law, occupation is when a foreign power gains effective control over a territory during an armed conflict, even without armed resistance. The territory under control is called occupied territory, and the foreign power is called the occupant." and whether Israel is in effective control of all of Gaza or not. I think a reasonable person who sees the actual reality would conclude that Israel does not have effective control over the entirety of the Gaza strip. Therefore Israel does not bear the responsibility of the occupying power according to international law. The claims that Israel does occupy Gaza are political in nature, not factual.
> I think a reasonable person who sees the actual reality would conclude that Israel does not have effective control over the entirety of the Gaza strip.
This is not a precondition to being an occupying force and by arguing this way you really do not show good faith, but rather a desire to cloud the discourse with a discussion about definitions.
Don't worry, you could show the world just how unoccupied Gaza is by traveling there without interacting with either the Isreali side or some other Western military. But that is not going to happen for some reason. And that reason is that Isreal is occupying the territory and you can't go there (or leave from there) without interacting with them.
Part of the political circus here is around the definition of occupation.
Not just the ICC but the UN as a whole, and the EU consider Gaza to be occupied due to the fact that it controls air and maritime space, along with all 7 border crossings, along with its oft-exercised ability to enter the strip forcibly at will, which take precedence over the 2005 withdrawal of permanent internal forces.
To the extent that there's a "circus", it's in the minds of those who prefer to allow themselves to be soothed and distracted by the government's narrative of the situation.
> "In international law, occupation is when a foreign power gains effective control over a territory during an armed conflict, even without armed resistance. The territory under control is called occupied territory, and the foreign power is called the occupant."
Where did you get that definition? The source your parent gave you has a completely different definition (which cites the original Hague Convention of 1907 [Part IV article 42]):
> Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised
Wikipedia has a similar definition:
> temporary hostile control exerted by a ruling power's military apparatus over a sovereign territory that is outside of the legal boundaries of that ruling power's own sovereign territory
Nowhere in current international law does occupation require an active armed conflict. And your definition even contradicts it self when it states “even without armed resistance”. How can it be during an armed conflict when there is not armed resistance?
I suspect this definition has been Frankensteined from the original Hague Conference of 1907 which defines occupation (as cited above) and later additions from the Fourth Geneva convention of 1949 (Article 2):
> The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.
Then your definition sort of sandwiched an additional requirement of “during and armed conflict” seemingly from thin air. I can’t find this requirement in any treaties of intentional law.
I don't believe international law effectively solves the problems it is intended to solve, but if we are discussing whether a country was acting the right or wrong way how do you suggest we judge that?
Right of the strongest? Follow the opinion of the warlord of the day? Follow our gut? Be so kind and bless us with your maxime that should guide the day in your opinion.
Sure many people are blindingly naive about the geopolitical realities involved, but that does mean only thinking about what is is sufficent. If we want to improve things there needs to be some ruler to measure the conduct of nations.
It's not serious to suggest that Israel did not supply any food or water to the Palestinians when in fact it supplied plenty.
After sufficient arm-twisting from the Biden administration, it did.
But until that point - it withheld. And quite intentionally and forthrightly so:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
I don't think so. A siege is not prohibited under international law. The Palestinians at that point had plenty of water and food. The bar, to me, would be at the point where they're actually starving, i.e. they have used up the entirety of the stuff they stocked up, including Hamas' stocks in the tunnels, and were starving/had nothing to drink, and Israel at that point refused to let any provisions through. This is actually starving the population. You can lay a temporary siege that's well below that bar.
Again, a siege is not prohibited under international law. The civilian population being to leave would be one example. Allowing humanitarian relief would be another. Along the lines of what I said above, the question of humanitarian relief only arises later into the siege when there is actually a humanitarian problem. And Israel reversed course on some decisions and allowed aid even before that. Gallant did not say Israel would prevent Gazan civilians from leaving to Egypt (e.g.).
This was said at the heat of the moment. I do realize it's hard for random people on the Internet to understand the shock Israel was under at that time. It's also fair to expect the minister of defense to moderate what they say. It's also still very much a cherry pick reduced to a propaganda line item.
Lo and behold -- unfortunately not quite all, but certainly a lot of the provocative / uncompromising language he Palestinian side is, in essence, coming from a place of anger or other distressful emotional states as well.
Why would every major humanitarian organization be anti-Israel? It doesn't make any sense.
Besides, it's a straw man to say the claim is that no food or water is being supplied.
The accusation is not that no supplies are provided. The accusation is that Israel obstructs supplies.
> The US, who has closer knowledge of what's going on on the ground, says Israel has not committed war crimes.
There are many actors with knowledge of what happens on the ground. Taking Israels closest ally to be the final judge of this claim is ridiculous.
For context, this is only possible because the state of Palestine pushed hard and persisted for years to become an ICC member and thus give the ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian territory, whether by Israel or by Palestinian factions. The USA is still mad at them for doing it.
The full account is worth reading, it includes considerations by the various resistance factions that they’d also be subject to ICC jurisdiction and realized threats of punitive measures by the USA and Israel if they continued to push for ICC membership: https://palepedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court%27s_...
And in that time, Israel spied, hacked and intimidated ICC officials. They knew recognition of Palestinian rights would open the door to criminal cases like this, so they’ve been working for almost a decade to discredit the International Criminal Court.
It's a country that was stolen, gutted and defaced when Israel was created. So yeah, i'm not surprised people like you still think Palestine is not a state...
The scale of torture and killing perpetrated by the IDF and illegal settlers inside Palestinian territory is several orders of magnitude larger, and the right of an occupied people to resist violently is protected by international law.
If you're going to go back to 1967 to explain the WB occupation, then you have to go back to the war of 1948 whereby Israeli Jews took over Palestine to begin with as the British withdrew, resulting in over 700,000 Palestinians fleeing their homes or being expelled (read up on the Nakba). That's the root cause of why the WB and Gaza are occupied and the ongoing conflict.
> Calling it occupied is like calling parts of Poland and France occupied because Germany started a war in 1967 and lost, losing territory.
Britain partitioning Palestine into Jordan, the Arab state and the Jewish state is universally accepted history. You can confirm it at any source you like.
The Arab league attacking Israel in 1948 is also universally accepted matter of history. You can also confirm it from any source you like.
- Lancets July estimate was 200k dead. If 17k Hamas have died AND we exclude all civilians that have been killed since July, that's still 10 dead civilians for every legitimate target - horrible and despicable
Israel has not applied to be a member of the ICC so anything Israel does or does not do is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the ICC should admit or have admitted anyone else.
PS: I don't understand why this is controversial (which I infer that it is watching its points rapidly fluctuate).
The ICC exists to enforce certain international criminal law.
Someone suggested that intending to abide by those laws should be a requirement for admissions to the ICC. This seems like a pretty common sense approach. They also pointed out that the leaders in Gaza do not abide by those laws, and that this would have been a good reason for the ICC to not accept their application for admission.
Several people then pointed out that Israel also does not abide by those laws. My point is that this is a reason to reject Israel if they ever apply to join the ICC. When anyone applies to join the ICC it should be what they do that matters, not what others do.
You asked, referring to Palestine's admission to the ICC:
> good for them; is there some reason they shouldn't have?
Their point is that the ICC should only be admitting those who intend to abide by the rules that ICC exists to enforce. Since it was Palestine's admission you asked about their answer referred to Palestine leaders' intentions with regard to those rules.
That Israel also doesn't abide by those rules is not relevant to the question you asked. It would be relevant if the question was whether or not Israel should be admitted to the ICC (and Palestinian lack of abiding by those rules would be irrelevant to that question).
> For context, this is only possible because the state of Palestine pushed hard and persisted for years to become an ICC member and thus give the ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed on Palestinian territory, whether by Israel or by Palestinian factions. The USA is still mad at them for doing it.
That sounds biased.
Why -shouldn't- Palestine be able to be a member of the ICC? Your verbiage makes it sounds like they basically bullied the ICC into membership.
And frankly, so what if the US is still mad at them for it? The US won't join organizations like this because it'd rather protect people like Kissinger who openly committed war crimes (and wants the freedom to be able to do whatever it wants, wherever, without consequence).
I think the GP intended to congratulate the Palestinians for their digged resilience in pursuing this, despite the extraordinary opposition they faced. I think they were using this language specifically to suggest how hard the fight was, not to imply that it was a bad thing.
The whole "The Muslims/Muslim countries won't do X, and therefore why should we?" argument is funny and depressing to me. Why won't they do X? Because maybe in your mind you think they're savages/less civilized. Less, that is, compared to you/your community's (in whatever scale: nation, race, hemisphere). But if you're saying "If they don't do X, we can behave the same", isn't that a call for you/your community to abandon your civilization and embrace the "equal" savagery?
How is it a winning argument? "In our eyes we're civilized and they're savages, and if they don't act civilized we're also free to abandon or civilized ways and act the way we condemn...".
I would say that when you are being treated poorly in a way where laws exist protecting your right to demand better and realistically should be able to expect better, then using those laws is using them as intended. Sure it is to your advantage, however, the way you say it implies it is an unfair advantage, rather than simply trying to remove an unfairly applied disadvantage/detriment.
Are you suggesting they should not try to use laws to protect themselves from genocide/displacement?
This is not about genocide/displacement, this is about two attacks that have been assessed as targeting civilians or some such.
Yes, I'd say a side that starts a conflict with an egregious assault on civilians should be limited in its right to use international law to stop a similarly or less illegal counterattack. In other words, if you attack someone with a knife you shouldn't be able to press charges for punches flying back.
Or, at the very lease, not until the organizers and perpetrators of the initial atrocity are surrendered to that same court they are appealing to.
You really think this protest exists in a vacuum, totally detached and isolated from the context of the broader Israeli led genocide against Palestinians? Ok.
Using it to describe Israels effort to provide infrastructure, jobs, healthcare etc in the preceding decades is just insultingly wrong.
No contradiction there.
It's perfectly possible for the State of Israel to be nakedly and unapologetically engaging in a long-term campaign of ethnic cleansing (in the West Bank) and somewhat more convertly/discreetly so (in Gaza), while also, occasionally providing some measure of benefits to the affected population in certain narrow contexts.
In fact, this is exactly how colonial occupations work.
Or as Captain Willard put it (starting around 5:15):
"It was a way we had over here of living with ourselves. We'd cut them in half with a machine gun, and then give them a Band-Aid. It was a lie."
> Israel has had the means of destroying all of Gaza and bulldozing the debris into the sea for decades.
This is a really weak argument. Just because you have the means of a greater damage, that doesn’t absolve you of the damage you did cause. If I punch you in the face, I won’t be found not-guilty just because there was a fire extinguisher near by and in theory I could have caused a much greater harm.
This argument is doubly bad because Israel has destroyed all of Gaza. Almost everybody who lives there has been displaced. Most of everyone’s house is damaged or destroyed, almost everybody know somebody that has died, or is seriously wounded. The entire health care system has collapsed, the entire public order has collapsed, and people are constantly hungry. This is a textbook example of the destruction of a place.
> Even in this campaign they've been objectively trying to reduce civilian casualties despite it's detrimental effect on their military objective.
They have not. There are evidence of a pattern of conduct of civilians being targeted and killed on a regular basis by the IDF. This includes x-rays of photos of children’s skulls that have been shot in the head by an Israeli sniper, the share number of civilians killed and the statistical unlikelyhood that all these civilians were killed merely by accident, the previously mentioned destruction of the healthcare system and public order, etc. All of this combined is more than enough evidence that Israel is intending to bring about the destruction of Gaza in order to make civilian life impossible.
Using the word Genocide in the context is very appropriate and is being done by most experts on the matter, human rights organizations, international organizations, governments, etc.
> Even in this campaign they've been objectively trying to reduce civilian casualties despite it's detrimental effect on their military objective.
Puh-lease..! The ones wanting the genocide (yeah I say this deliberately) to end don't see it that way. At best you're delusional if you think they Israeli army benevolently cares, at worst you know this is a lie and you cynically don't care.
Like you cynically just sum up overall casualty numbers as "just 1 year's worth of population growth". The official number is 40000. AFAIK that's the number of directly killed by American/European bombs dropped by the IDF, bullets or by a building collapsing on them because a bomb dropped nearby. The unofficial number (killed by lack of food, housing, sanitation) is a lot higher, e.g. 186000 up to July (1). That's 186000 seeds of future terrorists avowing revenge (hey if you, as someone of the pro-genocide camp, are "lucky", maybe entire communities get wiped out that no one is left to fester anger about their community members' unjust death. And somewhere in there is probably the genocide-doers' unsaid justification about killing babies (14 pages of the list of names and ages of victims of this war have the number "0" for their age, but hey "just 1 year's worth of population growth!") - the freshly born Palestinians "deserve" to be killed, because otherwise they are going to grow up hating the nation that killed 186000 members of their community anyway and bombed their country into the middle ages, why not kill them now?).
One can quibble about the technical definition of genocide, or the degree of intent on the part of the perpetrators.
But I don't see how one can say that 40,000+ largely civilian deaths (including around 15k women, minors and elderly) -- likely to eventually grow to easily 3x that amount (even if the war were to stop today) due to the long-term health impacts of the overall situation, according to people who study these things -- isn't "making a dent" in the population.
Unless one implicitly considers that population to be, well, kind of not really human to begin with.
Just imagine someone saying: "The Oct 7th attack was kind of messy I guess, but really, you can't say it was genocidal -- after all, it didn't even make a dent in Jewish population."
As a commander in chief of the IDF, what would have you done differently?
Publically resign, denouncing my government's decades of bungling, hardheadedness and general heartlessness in the face of the situation that it has, in the scheme of things, largely created for itself. Ideally, also transferring as many incriminating documents, images/videos and datasets as possible to the ICC/ICJ and/or respected journalists as would be appropriate and helpful to the broader cause of building a just and lasting peace in the region.
The essence of civility is having the means, motive, and opportunity to delete someone/something from the calculus of life with violence, and choosing not to do so.
That is to say, anyone slaughtering one another have abandoned all pretense of civility.
raising a valid and logically sound critique of an argument is not like deflection at all, in fact it doesn't even come close to being similar, they're directly addressing the core argument. I think you might benefit from some time with a dictionary.
The New York Times and Haaretz reported in the summer and autumn of last year (just prior to the current flareup), Netanyahu had sent the Mossad head to Qatar in order to convince them to send money to prop up the Hamas government in Gaza. As Netanyahu said publicly in 2012, he wanted Hamas strong and the Palestinian Authority and Fatah weak, as the PA was pursuing measures at the United Nations.
You're pointing the finger at the State of Palestine and "any Muslim country", when the real supporters of Hamas for years has been Israel and Netanyahu.
The person you are replying to didn't imply that it was military aid. They said it was to strengthen Hamas and weaken the Palestinian Authority. I have no idea if that's true or not, but it's a different claim than you are challenging.
The PA routinely arrests Hamas members. On the daily. Locks them up or hands them over to Israel to lock them up for years. Isn't that already evidence?
Yes, that absolutely serves as evidence. I don't think what was written in the comment I replied to serves as evidence by itself though, which is all I was pointing out.
To be fair, the GP comment asked what one thinks about the possibility, and the parent comment provided some limited grounding. It’s a bit difficult to provide concrete evidence for a hypothetical.
Haniyeh was a noncombatant and a political leader, living in a US-allied country with the blessing of the USA (and now the other political leaders have just moved to Turkey, a NATO member to boot). Being a noncombatant affiliated with a group that your country has deemed a terror organization does not, under international law, give you carte Blanche to assassinate them.
Israel has been oppressing Palestinians for decades so it’s not really surprising that some portions of the Palestinian population is going to be ‘belligerent’ and commit horrific atrocities
Of course when we talk about Hamas we also have to talk about how Israel encourage and supported it’s creation so that it would undermine Fatah
There are people committing crimes against humanity on both sides, unfortunately it’s the innocents of the Palestinian population who bear most of the price (and of course those Israeli’s who were victims of Hamas on Oct 7th)
Terrorism is defined as the use of violence in the pursuit of political aims.
By that definition, the American founding fathers were terrorists. Hell, Jewish military & paramilitary groups like Irgun, Tzahal, Stern gang and Palmach were all terrorist gangs using force to establish the Jewish State and expel Palestinians from their homes.
By that logic, America's drone strikes that killed hundreds of innocent bystanders in the Middle East were acts of terror.
> Terrorism is defined as the use of violence in the pursuit of political aims.
Using this definition, all war is terrorism. No one defines terrorism this broadly!
> Hell, Jewish military & paramilitary groups like Irgun, Tzahal, Stern gang and Palmach were all terrorist gangs using force to establish the Jewish State and expel Palestinians from their homes.
The Jewish paramilitary groups were terrorists! They staged terrorist attacks (i.e. against noncombatants).
"The Chamber therefore found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare."
Whats perhaps interesting to note is that this charge was made for "just" 41 [1] confirmed starvation deaths among a population of 2,141,643 people [2].
Of course every death caused by intentional starvation is a severe crime and must be punished, but in the context of the victim numbers that most past crimes against humanity have had, it sets a relatively low new bar.
This is common and expected. Even when a serial killer suspected of 20 murder is apprehended, arrest is often made based on one or two confirmed cases, more charges are later added as investigation deepens.
Also, keep in mind foreign journalists are completely banned by Israel from entering Gaza- complicating evidence gathering.
This is not how the ICC conducts its investigations. The "41+" figure is from a Wikipedia article that is undergoing an edit war. The very source it is citing actually says 63k
As I understand it 41 is the number of starvations recorded in hospitals. 63k is a highly theoretical "estimate" based on the IPC scale and data from food insecurity in other parts of the world. It seems absurd on its face, since it would imply that an absurdly small fraction of starvations were recorded in hospitals.
I walked past the offices of Medcins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) incidentally across the road from the very good new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, with posters in the windows imploring “no bombardment of hospitals in Gaza”.
The numbers are absurdly small, if hospitals were still operational, their employees not subject to extrajudicial killing from the occupation authorities and the facilities themselves not subject to bombardment.
Data from these killing fields is probably going to be far, far worse than we believe, once the dust has settled.
This doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The 63k "expected" starvations are spread out over a period beginning Nov 24, 2023 [1].
Over that period, something like 30k deaths have been recorded in hospitals and morgues. The 63k starvations claim would suggest that roughly 2/3 of all deaths were due to starvation, but somehow they were only ~0.1% of the cases that hospitals and morgues saw.
So Gazans are something like ~500x more likely to enter a hospital or morgue for wounds (or other ailments) than for starvation? How do you explain that?
About 2% of Gazans have died from the war (including militants etc), so that could maybe explain a 2% difference, like perhaps there was a 42nd person who was going to die of starvation but was bombed first. I don't see how it would explain more than that, and 42 is still quite far from 63k.
Israel does take selected journalists into Gaza on trips organised by the military. The issue is that journalists cannot make themselves an independent picture of the situation in Gaza.
The Gaza ministry that would have counted the deaths was also destroyed several months ago, which is why news media have been reporting the same death total of 40,000 for several months.
This is wrong. They are still reporting daily deaths counts, that counts have been going up. The Grauniad is good about collecting the reports (but bad about other unrelated things).
The Gaza heath ministry's figures remain the best (and basically only) source of casualties to date. While they're no longer able to record many deaths in hospitals or morgues, they've adapted by collecting casualty reports from other sources like a Google form (which makes the data a bit iffy, but better than nothing).
It wasn't "widely criticized", it's taking into account the starvation, attacks on hospitals... estimating how many people are going to die is important work.
How do they enter now? An American journalist was jailed in Israel as well for a video showing the Iranian missiles struck near military targets and Mossad headquarters, where the official line was they were targeting civilians.
Given that the accused is currently in control of the crime scene, it's not surprising that the prosecution chose to prioritise the crimes that are easiest to prove.
The ICC does not state only 41 deaths ocurred. GP is pulling that number from an unrelated Wikipedia article that is undergoing an edit war. It went from "63k" to "41+". None of the commentors here justifying the low number realize its completely made up and unrelated to the ICC
> One of the key agreements was that certain corridors would be “open,” allowing Allied airmen to fly through, with the promise from the Germans that they would not be fired upon by AAA. This promise, and the fact that the planes would be flying at 400 feet or below (for the safety of the parcels) certainly gave much for the crewmen to be worried about.
> Israel got the food to the ruling government in Gaza.
Israel is killing every representative of that ruling government they can find in Gaza. (Which is good, but presents a severe logistical challenge for your claim.)
> do you genuinely believe that this can be agreed upon with hamas
The Nazis weren't exactly notoriously friendly folks.
> that they will somehow spare those particular Jews that bring food to keep their human shields alive?
Perhaps this basic misconception explains a lot... Israelis aren't driving the aid trucks into/through Gaza. That's handled by NGOs; the UN, World Central Kitchen (when they're not being blown up by Israeli strikes, at least; https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-an-aid-convoy-in-gaza...), etc. Israel screens the trucks (slowly, if they feel like it) and sends them through.
> anyway your example shows the allies helping the allies
> do you genuinely believe that this can be agreed upon with hamas, and that they will somehow spare those particular Jews that bring food to keep their human shields alive?
Charity workers and UN staff workers were killed by Israel, not by Hamas
Article 55 of the 4th Geneva convention (to which Israel agreed [0]) obliges occupying powers to provide civilians with food and medical supplies [1]. Note that this does not mean simply allowing food past a border checkpoint, but extends to ensuring that it reaches the civilians in need [2].
You've ignored 3/3 of my questions in a row so far, as well as the initial point you responded to, which is sufficient evidence you will continue to do so. Until you do, I don't see any reason to further engage in such a 1-sided conversation. Have a nice day!
Sinwar had the stolen passport of a UN employee on him. if his body couldn't have been identified, you would have been providing support for hamas claiming that Israel was shooting school teachers. You think I'm the troll?
I don't disregard civilian lives - I want the war to be over asap. but ceasefire means both sides stop firing - not just the Jews.
what I don't understand is why so many people in the west today desperately want to believe every lie told by hamas/hezbollah/Iran. do you also believe Israel fired on Italian UN soldiers in Lebanon? because it turns out it was hezbollah who fired on them.
sealioning? is that projection? why do you ignore what i already wrote?
> At the risk of getting killed by Hamas? I don't think Israel has enough control of Gaza yet for this to apply.
Why are we primed to see things "Irans" way (nice ad hominem btw)? This is because we see Israel as an illegal, criminal and genocidal state which has existed as a way for Europe to exile an ethnic group that they were too hateful to accept at home. Europe, not just Nazis, have been terribly antisemitic. The healthy response to exclusive ethnic enclaves in Europe was assimilation and creation of an inclusive and robust European identity. European ethnostates instead wielded xenophobia to create a fascist state to hold Jews hostage in a middle eastern ghetto and serve as a beachhead for the west's thirst for oil which was discovered mere months before the plan to resettle Israel. I think Israel threatens our politicians livelihoods in all senses of the word and in return gets universal support for both major parties. It's not obvious to you?
"confirmed" data from Gaza at the moment is unreliable. The people who were doing the counting have either been killed or cleansed from the area. The official death toll is still around 40k despite the reality being closer to 100-200k.
Regardless, total deaths don't matter, only deaths that were the result of crimes matter, in this context.
Some of those deaths are going to be legal targets killed during combat, which is not evidence of a war crime. You have to split things out for the numbers to mean anything.
But the problem is that Israel's style of warfare is (intentionally or not) blurring the distinction between those numbers, by using methods of combat that have exceptionally high rates of collateral damage.
The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.
You might hit a lot of legitimate targets with this, but it's also guaranteed you will impact all the civilians in the area.
Generally, in this entire war (and also long before), Israel is far too quick with the "Human shields"/"collateral damage" argument to my liking, and using it as an excuse to basically disregard considerations for civilians at all.
(It's also instructive to see how different the hostages and palestinian civilians are treated in IDF considerations, despite both groups technically being "human shields")
> But the problem is that Israel's style of warfare is (intentionally or not) blurring the distinction between those numbers, by using methods of combat that have exceptionally high rates of collateral damage.
I'm not sure that is true. Urban combat is notoriously bloody, and other conflicts of this nature have seen similar orders of magnitude deaths.
Additionally, civilian deaths are not neccesarily indicative of war crimes. Certain types of collateral damage are allowed where others are not (rules are complex and quite frankly oblivious), so you would also have to separate the legal collateral damage from the illegal collateral damage.
> The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.
Well that allegation is the main basis for this warrant. However so far it seems like only a very small porportion of the deaths are attributable to that practise. To the point where so far the icc found that there wasnt enough evidence for a charge of extermination. I think about roughly 15 people have to die for it to be considered extermination. So it seems like so far there isn't evidence that a significant number of deaths in this conflict are related to that method of war. Of course new evidence can always come to light later. (Its important to note that siege warfare is still a warcrime even if nobody dies. The counter side is israel would probably try and argue (for the recent activity at least) that they gave civilians an opportunity to evacuate and thus it wasn't directed at civilians).
> the problem is that Israel's style of warfare ... The most extreme instances
Yep. The complication is, the Strip is close to being totally dependent on Israel, and yet chose war. I doubt any other country ruled by right-wingers, with that much power over their already (diplomatically, economically, socially) cornered enemy, would have acted any differently. I guess, the sequence of events reeks of desperation & despair from all sides and has ended up exposing one & all.
It's not as if life was particularly pleasant there before the war. Israel was already before restricting the maximally attainable quality of life. Or as if the Palestinian control group in the West Bank who had chosen cooperation was faring any better.
Also that stuff is exactly what international humanitarian law is supposed to prevent. Obligations of the occupying power and all.
You're describing conditions that occur in many asymmetric/guerilla wars. None of these are novel tactics whose acceptability must be evaluated from first principles now.
Further, none of these should come as surprises to Israeli commanders, who will have seen these tactics from Hamas in the past.
The bottom line is that any military can only control its own conduct as it represents its citizens in battle.
> You're describing conditions that occur in many asymmetric/guerilla wars. None of these are novel tactics whose acceptability must be evaluated from first principles now.
Some of those conditions are similar, some aren't. In most cases, the group doing guerilla warfare isn't actively trying to get their own citizens killed, or if you want to be generous, simply doesn't care if they get killed or not.
That said, you're partially right that these conditions have occurred before. That's why many military experts make comparisons to similar situations, like parts of the Iraq war or even closer, fighting against ISIS.
In most of these analyses I've seen, they claim that the IDF performs as well as the US army did in similar situations in terms of protection of civilians, civilian to combatant killed ratios, etc.
> Further, none of these should come as surprises to Israeli commanders, who will have seen these tactics from Hamas in the past.
I don't think anyone is surprised by how Hamas is acting, except much of the international community who simply refuses to accept how Hamas is acting.
> The bottom line is that any military can only control its own conduct as it represents its citizens in battle.
Yes, but if there are legitimate military goals to achieve - and there certainly were legitimate goals to achieve in the beginning of the war - then the military has to fight the battle its enemy is giving it. There simply isn't a way to fight Hamas without inflicting civilian casualties, because of the way it fights. You can choose not to fight it at all, but that wasn't really a choice that was available to Israel on October 7th. (Whether the war should've continued for so long is a different matter.)
The ICC doesn't claim 41 deaths were the result of war crimes. That claim is made by an irrelevant Wikipedia article that is undergoing an edit war. It was recently switched from "62,413 conservative estimate" to "41+"
ICC doesn't claim how many deaths are due to war crimes. GP is purposefully sowing misinformation
GP is not citing the ICC. The ICC never claims 41 deaths are confirmed. GP is citing a Wikipedia article which is undergoing an edit war. The Wikipedia page had cited 62,413 deaths and then was switched to a pro-Israel source that instead says "41+"
>unless something is documented in a very specific gate-keeper approved way
Using strict process and critical methodology is the only want to approximate truth.
> observable reality right before our own eyes.
We don't observe reality correctly with our eyes. We (including you and me) are naked monkeys. Petty, vindictive, and biased. Palestinians and Israeli Jews are just like us but
live in a cesspool of religion, anger and violent history.
Pretty sure even Israel has said the Gaza health ministry’s numbers are usually correct. They have also been found to be generally correct in the past.
Lastly the lower death count is the official health ministry number but the higher estimates are from others, e.g. The Lancet.
> Abraham Wyner, a Pennsylvania professor of statistics, wrote in Tablet that the GHM casualty figures were "faked".[68] Wyner's article was analyzed by professor Joshua Loftus of the London School of Economics, who concluded Wyner's article was "one of the worst abuses of statistics I’ve ever seen".
Do you need one when that ministry reports casualties exactly to single digits within minutes of any incident? Like "567 killed in Israeli attack on Gaza hospital", just look down at your keyboard to see where that number came from.
This is completely false. Gaza Health Ministry provides the most accurate data. You could also just go on X or TikTok and see dozens of Palestinians murdered by the IDF every single day.
Is Israel defending itself when it creates settlements in land it doesn't own (and that even its allies do not consider to be Israel's) and publicly says that it will not stop doing it in the west bank? Or is that not aggression when Israel does it?
They are one and the same. There's no separation for Palestinians, they are a single nation. And Israel has shown that the only way to stop settlements is through armed combat, which is why they have stopped settling in Gaza and done the opposite by institutionalizing colonization and settlement in the west bank the moment the west bank laid down the arms and stopped the armed resistance.
They have also blockaded Gaza since before Hamas so again, that's an act of aggression by definition. You can't just blockade (to the point of attacking any ship trying to make it to gaza) another territory and claim that it is aggression when they attack you.
Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, including forcefully ejecting Israeli settlers, as a show of good will for future lasting peace negotiations, however shortly afterwards Hamas was elected and seized control, hence the blockade since it is a massive security problem for Israel.
Are you saying that Israel wasn't controlling the seaways of Gaza between 2005-2008?
And yes that's my point. Gaza hasn't seen any more settlement since, because it has never stopped armed resistance. What has Israel done to the west bank when it stopped fighting and kicked out armed groups? Pushed for tens of thousands of settlements per year, in complete disregard of international law and with 0 consequences.
Regardless, Israel was actually discussing resuming settlement even in Gaza before the October attacks, as Netanyahu's voter base adores settlement. And I'm not sure why you'd think that not settling in Gaza somehow makes up for the constant territorial theft in the west bank. Again, Palestinians see themselves as one nation. It's like saying that Russia only stole territory from the Donbass, not from west Ukraine so somehow that's a show of good faith lol
Comparison with Ukraine breaks down because Russia didn’t occupy west not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t, whereas with Israel and Gaza the power asymmetry is insane.
And yes, Gaza and West Bank are separate entities with very different realities, both in terms of day to day life and political landscape.
Israel listened to the worlds advice by retreating voluntarily(!) from Gaza, and in return has only received more criticism, of course that fuels resentment inside of Israel, rightfully so I must add. And since October 7th we can throw out all of that out of the window, past reality no longer applies and Israel is no longer letting cowardly UN dictate its demise, plain and simple.
I don’t think West Bank settlements are a good idea, but I also don’t know a way out of it now, since everything that has been done in the past year is further prove to the Jews that they need Israel. I live in Europe, and I feel significantly less safe when traveling further west(thankfully we have negligible Muslim population here in Baltics).
Regardless of what you are saying, Palestinians do not see themselves as separate entities. Saying otherwise does not make it less true
>since October 7th we can throw out all of that out of the window, past reality no longer applies and Israel is no longer letting cowardly UN dictate its demise, plain and simple.
Ha, that's funny because that's true but not for Israel. Israel has shown what it does to groups who try to stop fighting and engage in a dialogue(west bank militant groups). They get absolutely trashed, and have to watch as they see their land stolen by settlers and treated like vermin in the land they used to live in (because the settlers have complete IDF backing). That's why they won't make that mistake again, Israel has shown what it does to groups who stop fighting
>I don’t think West Bank settlements are a good idea, but I also don’t know a way out of it now, since everything that has been done in the past year is further prove to the Jews that they need Israel.
Extremely tired trope that is used to justify everything Israel does. The only issue with that is that Israel has had complete, full backing of every western nation materially, diplomatically, and strategically. On the other hand, Palestinians have had no real support from any country of importance, while their land has been slowly shrinking in full view because of Israel's illegal settlements. But yeah, it's truly Israel that's alone in the world lol.
Civilians in Ukraine are normally evacuated to safer parts of Ukraine or other European countries. Unfortunately Gaza is tiny and no countries are accepting war refugees.
Yeah, I've heard all those official talking points a thousand times.
I've also seen Israeli officials openly dehumanizing and calling for the mass murder of Palestinians, and theft of their land. And I've seen the graphic results.
There's an undeniable reality here and sadly it doesn't align with your official government talking points.
Otherwise, one has to reckon with the fact that Netanyahu's party's founding document doesn't look great, either, as it uses "from the river to the sea", which we're now told is a genocidal saying.
> Whats perhaps interesting to note is that this charge was made for "just" 41 [1] confirmed starvation deaths among a population of 2,141,643 people [2].
IANAL but this is probably incorrect i think - the starvation charge is related to allegations of intentionally restricting neccesities of life. Whether anyone dies as a result is irrelavent to that charge. The murder charge is for the people who actually allegedly died as a result (of the starvation that is. To be clear, the death has to illegal for it to be the war crime of murder. Normal combat death is not murder).
“No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.” Bezalel Smotrich
> Researchers at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimated deaths from starvation to be 62,413 between October 2023 and September 2024.
> but in the context of the victim numbers that most past crimes against humanity have had, it sets a relatively low new bar.
Which context is this? If you mean the context of past ICC indictments that isn't true. There are multiple other examples of people indicted for specific acts that resulted in the deaths of a 2 digit numbers of people.
The bar for "war crimes" or "crimes against humanity" isn't the number of people you kill. Though in this case, plenty have been killed, this case is about what can be proved conclusively ebough given who it is against.
We can compare the rate to countries in more.. stable situations[0]. They'll have a very difficult time getting anywhere with that rate. But we'll see. The world would be better off with all these individuals having no power at all.
This comment is just pure misinformation. Nobody is claiming only 41 deaths.
You're citing an irrelevant Wikipedia page as a source that has a crazy edit history going back and forth between "41+" and "62,413 conservative estimated" deaths
The crimes have a definition with requisite elements in the rome statue.
While many of them do require a certain gravity, viewing international crimes like a more serious version of a normal crime is probably the wrong way of doing it. Some war crimes do not require anyone to die. In other cases thousands could die and it wouldn't be a war crime or crime against humanity because the elements aren't met.
In particular, starvation doesn't require anyone to have died, and it covers more things than just food. Keep in mind its a relatively new crime in international law, it was only made illegal in 1977 (for example during ww2, the nuremburg trials explicitly ruled that sieges were legal). As far as i know nobody has ever been persecuted for it, so the case law doesn't exist, so its a bit unknown.
2. Due to (1), and clear & consistent messaging by Israeli officials on Gaza resettlement as a goal, Egypt understands that “temporary” refugees will be unable to return - i.e., a repeat of 1948 and 1967.
I find it difficult to ignore the not so distant start to this current situation. Not even a hundred years ago foreigners showed up and said this is our place now. Now after decades of oppression, with both sides unhappy with the you get 5% of the land you used live on deal, the party with 95% of the land proposes a new deal, we get 100% of the land and you get uh .. to live somewhere else.
As a comparison saying "Both native Americans and European settlers are complicit in the violence that occurred between them" is technically correct but hardly paints a representative picture. Personally I don't like the both did violence so both are wrong narrative.
Yes. Also, the society that breeds this sort of narrative intentionally obfuscates the difference between oppressive and liberational violence. Even though the Palestinians employ violence no intellectually honest person can call the act the same as the violence perpetrated against them by the maintenance of an apartheid state. A lot of people on HN should read Fanon.
Well put. It’s also quite ironic how the violent struggle for liberation is encouraged in the world of fiction - from Star Wars to Hunger Games - but is emphatically denounced as soon as it bleeds out into the real world.
Funnily enough, I just finished reading The Wretched of the Earth :)
Correct. The first citation is from when Egypt and Palestinians controlled the border, the second is from later on when Israel controlled the Gaza side of the border. Egypt still controls the Egypt side of the border, regardless whether Israel or Palestine controls the Gaza side.
If the US, or any European country, started letting Palestinian refugees in en masse, a lot of them would manage to get there. Egypt’s culpability here is the most salient because they’re physically closest; but I don’t see how that makes the country uniquely culpable for failing to prevent a preventable situation.
If the US decided to let all Palestinian refugees in -- This obviously wouldn't happen, but if -- we could definitely get boats with capacity for thousands of people a day to a pier that we built [0], get them to somewhere where they could buy flights or have people donate to a fund to pay for them, etc.
> The Chamber issued warrants of arrest for two individuals, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024
And things got much worse in the latter part of 2024. Even if the court didn't take into account facts after 20 May 2024, ample evidence already existing by then was already enough to issue the warrants. When it takes more evidence into account I bet more warrants will be issued.
It is indeed ridiculous that Lebanon didn’t join the ICC, one has to imagine that Hezbollah played a role in that decision. Which is funny because all the Palestinian resistance factions actually pushed for ICC jurisdiction to the extent that they called for it to apply to them and Israel equally! The hoops the Palestinians had to jump through to join the ICC were crazy, including (reified) threats of heavy punishments from the US if they did.
Actually, most reports are that the US is the one that pressured Lebanon not to join the ICC, to prevent the ICC from having jursidiction over warcrimes the IDF comits in Lebanon/
You think Hezbollah would care about ICC consequences? They've been violating the UN resolution calling for them to withdraw north, disarm, and stop attacking Israel for years. Their stated (short term) goal is to disallow anyone in northern Israel to live in peace. (Their long term goal of course is to destroy Israel completely.)
> The Chamber also noted that decisions allowing or increasing humanitarian assistance into Gaza were often conditional. They were not made to fulfil Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law or to ensure that the civilian population in Gaza would be adequately supplied with goods in need. In fact, they were a response to the pressure of the international community or requests by the United States of America. In any event, the increases in humanitarian assistance were not sufficient to improve the population’s access to essential goods.
I don't understand why this would matter. Does it matter the rationale for increasing aid? I would think the only thing that should matter would be weather the aid was sufficient or not. (I appreciate in the end icc pretrial felt it wasn't enough , but i think that is the only thing that should matter)
Like if someone is accused of murder, but doesn't because a friend told them not to, we don't throw them in jail because they decided not to murder for the wrong reasons.
I think it does matter, because it's another indicator for intent.
If the starvation is a "simple" side-effect of the combat situation, but you're working actively to alleviate it on your own volition (by doing your best to let in aid organizations, etc) then it's obvious to see there is no intent to it.
If, on the other hand, you have to be pressured by the international community, including your closest allies for every tiny step in the direction of letting in aid, and you will immediately jump two steps back as soon as the pressure eases slightly, then it can be inferred that you really really want the starvation to happen and your only problem with the situation is getting away with it.
(Not even starting with all the government officials who spelled out the whole intent explicitly in public, documented quotes)
> Like if someone is accused of murder, but doesn't because a friend told them not to, we don't throw them in jail because they decided not to murder for the wrong reasons.
The problem is that the murder is happening here and the friend is trying - badly - to convince the person to pull out the knife.
Israel was expected, under international law, to unconditionally allow aid for the civilians. Israel used it as a bargaining chip, effectively holding civilians hostage.
>decisions allowing or increasing humanitarian assistance into Gaza were often conditional.
I may be misinterpreting legal jargon, but "conditional" implies Israel often didn't want to allow humanitarian assistance unless Israel received something. This isn't allowed under international law. Relevant excerpt from the announcement:
>This finding is based on the role of Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant in impeding humanitarian aid in violation of international humanitarian law and their failure to facilitate relief by all means at its disposal.
Parties to conflict are expected to facilitate aid, not just allow it, and definitely not set conditions.
Hmm, good point. I'm not 100% sure i agree - i think it depends on what the conditions were, there could be non-bargaining conditions, but you've convinced me that is a plausible way to read it.
> Parties to conflict are expected to facilitate aid, not just allow it, and definitely not set conditions.
I think they are allowed to set some conditions, they just can't be arbitrary or prevent aid. Like they can set conditions around checkpoints, inspections, where aid can enter the country, as long as it isn't arbitrary or impedes the aid. (Obviously the ICC is implying something much different than those types of conditions)
The rationale for supplying aid might not matter when the aid is sufficient. Although, coercive aid might still be a problem; I'm unfamiliar with international law on this.
But when aid is not sufficient, I think rationale/intent makes more of a difference. If you're doing it for the right reasons and putting in a good effort, sufficiency may not be acheivable and it may not be right to charge you with not acheiving it. If you're only doing it to keep your friends happy, and it's insufficient, maybe there was more you could have done.
The word intent is oftentimes used in The judicial system to measure culpability and punishment:
whether somebody accidentally stabbed a person 90 times or intentionally stabbed the person 90 times, for instance, is captured via the concept of intent.
> Like if someone is accused of murder, but doesn't because a friend told them not to, we don't throw them in jail because they decided not to murder for the wrong reasons.
If they did not carry out any action then this holds true. But there were actions carried out that amounts to assault and attempted murder.
Even still,in this analogy, the rationale for why they chose not to murder wouldn't really speak to their intent in relation to other crimes.
Like if someone assualted someone but did not murder them because a friend asked them not to, we treat that exactly the same as if they assualted them but stopped before murdering because they thought murder was wrong.
>In his first response to the ICC issuing a warrant for his arrest on allegations of war crimes, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has described the ruling as “absurd and false lies” and said the decision is “antisemitic.”
If Netanyahu and Gallant really think they are innocent, and the allegations are absurd and false, they should cooperate with the ICC. Have your day in court and show how absurd the accusations are. If you're not willing to do that, it seems reasonable for the public to draw a proverbial negative inference.
You are assuming the court isn't a political thing that is trying to get him regardless of evidence. The court is at least partially political, and Netanyahu will tell you this is entirely political and he wouldn't get a fair trail.
Courts are political entities but this is one that Israel chose to accept and recognize the authority of. It has a history of being very transparent in its decisions and is widely recognized as being neutral and fair in their decision making process.
Of course the person charged and found guilty of a crime will argue against the court. Disagreement, even if valid, doesn't change the recognized authority of this court even if the "teeth" are extremely limited.
> Courts are political entities but this is one that Israel chose to accept
For what it’s worth, Israel signed the Rome Statute establishing the court in 2000 but declared in 2002 it no longer intends to ratify it[1]. (Which, I guess, is marginally better than the US, which has threatened The Hague with military invasion in case any arrests are made[2]. But not by much.) TFA specifically points out that “States are not entitled to challenge the Court’s jurisdiction under article 19(2) prior to the issuance of a warrant of arrest.”
If we are going to discuss the diplomatic and international implications of the ICC, it is important to note that the security—and even the continued existence as independent, sovereign entities—of the countries supporting the court is overwhelmingly reliant on the U.S. military umbrella. Without this protection, their sovereignty would quickly be at risk.
I'm not sure you are right. Take a look at this map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court . I don't think "overwhelmingly reliant on the US" is an accurate description of the green countries on that map. Partially reliant sure. But not overwhelmingly.
You don't? I suggest you look at the figures for who is providing aid to Ukraine and ask yourself why the green nations in Europe are paying so much less than the US to fight Russia.
This is why Trump won again, by the way. Because Europe expected the US to fund their defense in this war, and people who do not live in cities with access to the global market see no benefit to aiding Europe and voted that Europe should pay for its own defense.
I guess now we'll get to see what happens when the US lets those European nations that are shaded green defend themselves without us.
> ask yourself why the green nations in Europe are paying so much less than the US to fight Russia
Oh, this is simple. Ukraine would be able to defend itself if it kept nuclear weapons. However they signed a treaty with USA, UK and Russia and gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for some security guarantees. Russia did not honor that agreement. If USA and UK fail to provide adequate support, nobody will sign such treaties again. What’s even worse, nuclear arms are becoming the only real security guarantee, so the fate of Ukraine defines the fate of nuclear non-proliferation.
Ukraine couldn't have kept nuclear weapons. It needs a lot of technical expertise to do that, particularly in today's world where you only test them in simulation which means you need great ability to trust your simulations. Ukraine didn't even have the keys to use the weapons they had (Russia did) which means they needed to first rebuild each with new keys. Not that Ukraine couldn't do all that, but they just don't have the money to do that and everything else they also need to do. Nuclear weapons are an obvious first thing to go because they are only useful in a situation where you want to end the world. In almost all cases it is better to be able to defend yourself without ending the world.
North Korea is poorer country with less resources, yet they manage to work on their own nuclear program. It is not impossible task, just a matter of priorities. And it’s a really good deterrent.
No countries in Africa and Latin America would enforce the ICC arrest request for Putin. Concerning the rest of Europe, with the exception of the only military power left: France, are you arguing they could defend their sovereignty without the USA military big stick?
Who does Europe need to defend itself against? Russia can't invade Ukraine, and it has 1/10 the population (less?) and arms that are leftovers from European armories (and US armories). Is China going to roll troops across a continent?
Also worth mentioning that without the United States the present continental European militaries would struggle even against the battered ground forces of Russia. Can't really fight back with GDP of your service economy alone.
North Korea is being being paid by Russia to supply troops. Russia cannot afford Chinese troops. And even if they could afford them, China is throwing its weight around Asia and wants its military intact there.
Sure, and North Korea wants to man its border for the eventuality of war with the South. At least that's what everyone would have said before it happened. NK troops in Ukraine weren't on anyone's bingo card.
North Korea is involved in it for the same reason countries send military observers to conflicts.
It hasn't fought a war in decades, and it needs to figure out whether or not any of its shit/doctrines/etc works. It doesn't actually give a rat's ass about Crimea or Ukraine or Russian claims.
It fully relies on friendly logistics to participate in the conflict.
Absolutely not. North Korea is essentially selling mercenary services to Russia. They're the only country that will really do that, and they will have to rely on the pretty broken Russian supply lines to do so. And Russia probably won't even be able to afford to pay for a second wave from North Korea.
What the war in Ukraine is showing is that Russia is capable of running a wartime economy, cranking out artillery shells etc at replacement rates, while Europe, so far, has not demonstrated the ability to do so, which is why supplies are dwindling - you can only run so far on existing stocks.
It should also be noted that Ukraine has been preparing for this exact scenario since 2014, building massive fortifications in the east (which is precisely why the Russian advance there has always been such a grind).
In the event of an open confrontation between Russia and European countries currently backing Ukraine, it's not at all a given that the latter can hold significantly better than Ukraine does today, without American help. European armed forces are generally in a pathetic shape, grossly undermanned and underfunded, and would simply run out of materiel before Russia runs out of bodies to throw at them.
Russia's economy is tanking fast. Their wartime economy, in addition to crushing the civilian economy, has already hit it's peak. Russia is pretty much running low on bodies just in Ukraine. They've already emptied the jails.
Europe doesn't produce artillery shells because NATO (even NATO minus US) can drop bombs after air superiority instead.
Most importantly, Ukraine is doing this well with politically imposed limits on what they can do with those weapons. In a Russia vs. NATO minus US war, Russia will have to defend against deep strikes on critical infrastructure.
The problem with all this stuff is that we've heard "Russia's economy is tanking fast" already during the first year of the war, and yet...
As far as "running out of bodies", the more accurate statement would be "running out of volunteers". While much has been made of Russia emptying its prisons, this ignores the fact that the majority of its fighting force are people who come to fight willingly, largely because of pay. Ukraine, on the other hand, has to rely on forced mobilization. At some point, Russia will do the same if needed - and yes, the regime doesn't want to do it because of political cost associated with it, but they absolutely can pull that off if and when they needed.
The notion that you can "just drop bombs after air superiority" hinges on the ability to establish said air superiority. US might be able to pull that off against Russia, but I very much doubt that Europe can. Not to mention that bombs also run out.
Obviously bombs can run out. But that's why major NATO countries have stockpiles of bombs and the ability to produce them. The fact that they didn't maintain large scale artillery shell production isn't relevant to whether they maintained bomb production. I would guess that European NATO could maintain air superiority. The Ukrainians seem to have denied Russia air superiority without the benefit of anywhere near as large an air force.
Russia has been importing soldiers from third-party countries. It does not speak well for the state of your armed forces if every growing percentages of your troops aren't even your own citizens.
Meanwhile, Russia's economy has been collapsing over the past two years. Their central bank has a 21% interest rate, there a million jobs they cannot fill because those people are off fighting a war (it may only be 500,000 jobs, accounts differ). It's backstopped by being a petrostate so they have oil money as a country, but that only papers over things for so long.
Like I said, we've heard "Russia's economy is collapsing" for 3 years straight now. I even believed it myself for the first year, but I have relatives actually living there - who aren't even pro-war - and the picture painted in the Western press has little to do with realities on the ground. Right now the economy is booming as far as most people are concerned. How sustainable it all is, is a good question, but given that the same people making the doom and gloom predictions long ago, I don't see why I should continue listening to them.
As far as Ukraine being able to deny Russian air superiority, that is evidence towards my point that Russia would similarly be able to deny air superiority to any European force. Westerners are way too used to fighting colonial wars against people whose best AA weapon is an old Stinger, but these things work very differently against a more or less modern power.
The lack of manpower is, again, for political reasons. Mobilization wouldn't be any more popular in Russia than it is in Ukraine. So they want to avoid it if they can by hiring mercs as replacement troops, whether from the heretofore neglected Russian province or from abroad like with NK forces. But make no mistake, Russia can do mobilization if it needs to, and they have more enforcement mechanisms for it compared to Ukraine, not to mention larger reserves. This is partly why the higher-ups are okay with such high losses, and it takes truly massive screw-ups for generals to get kicked out - the government doesn't see those losses as unsustainable.
You're making two arguments it seems,
1. Who is enforcing the arrest warrant against Putin, which I don't get, how should Europe or an African or Latin American country enforce the warrant enforce the warrant without Putin travelling there? I seriously doubt Putin would travel to a country where risks arrest. Or are you suggesting countries should invade Russia to arrest Putin. I don't see anyone including the US (thankfully) doing that. AFAIK that would also constitute a violation of international law (mind you many western countries really only care as long as it suits them, the whole Israel situation being a clear example).
2. The question if Europe could defend itself against invasion without the US. Defend against whom I have to ask, the only possible aggressor would be Russia, but Russia is struggling with their Ukraine invasion, a much smaller, less trained, less equipped force than Nato even without the US. The suggestion that Russia is in any position to threaten Europe is absolutely laughable. The only way that would happen is using nuclear weapons, and once we go down that path the whole world is f*ckd.
> South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has asked permission from the International Criminal Court not to arrest Russia's Vladimir Putin, because to do so would amount to a declaration of war, a local court submission published on Tuesday showed.
> On Saturday, while in India for a Group of 20 nations meeting, Lula told a local interviewer that there was "no way" Putin would be arrested if he attended next year's summit, which is due to be held in Rio de Janeiro.
So it's not "No countries in Latin America", then.
And if we're going to use your dataset to extrapolate anything: probably half of them will enforce the warrant.
More substantially: I don't see where you're going with these objections. It's not like I think the warrant will be hugely successful. But it has to be issued and -- until Putin shows a significant readiness to bend -- it has to be kept in place. And it will have some effect. The exact percentage of countries that can be counted on to enforce it on continent X is obviously irrelvant.
I only jumped in because of the obviously vacuous, extremified formulation ("No country will ..."). Obviously they didn't mean it literally, but to underscore their point; but still -- it's a weird habit people unfortunately have on HN.
> And if we're going to use your dataset to extrapolate anything: probably half of them will enforce the warrant.
Even Chile's stated willingness is probably a bit like "if I were a billionaire I'd do <great things>" - easy to say when it's not an actual decision ready to be made.
I like being pedantic as much as the next person, but "small developing countries don't love pissing off big angry ones with nukes" isn't the outrageous conclusion you're portraying it as.
As a follow-up to [2], even more interesting is the text of covered persons:
"military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand"
It’s both, effectively, but the GP is quoting the correct copy of the list.
The prohibition you mention is in 22 USC 7426:
> (a) PROHIBITION OF MILITARY ASSISTANCE.—Subject to subsections (b) and (c), and effective 1 year after the date on which the Rome Statute enters into force pursuant to Article 126 of the Rome Statute, no United States military assistance may be provided to the government of a country that is a party to the International Criminal Court.
> [...]
> (d) EXEMPTION.—The prohibition of subsection (a) shall not
apply to the government of—
> (1) a NATO member country;
> (2) a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand); or
> (3) Taiwan.
The threat I was talking about is in 22 USC 7427:
> (a) AUTHORITY.—The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.
> (b) PERSONS AUTHORIZED TO BE FREED.—The authority of sub-section (a) shall extend to the following persons:
> (1) Covered United States persons.
> (2) Covered allied persons.
> (3) Individuals detained or imprisoned for official actions taken while the individual was a covered United States person or a covered allied person, and in the case of a covered allied person, upon the request of such government.
> [...]
with “covered persons” defined in 22 USC 7432 by essentially the same list as above, as long as those countries do not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC:
> [...]
> (3) COVERED ALLIED PERSONS.—The term “covered allied persons” means military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), or Taiwan, for so long as that government is not a party to the International Criminal Court and wishes its officials and other persons working on its behalf to be exempted from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
> (4) COVERED UNITED STATES PERSONS.—The term “covered United States persons” means members of the Armed Forces of the United States, elected or appointed officials of the United States Government, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the United States Government, for so long as the United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court.
Israel don't recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court. Palestine, however, does, and therefore the ICC consider these allegations within their jurisdiction. A relevant point is that the UK (under the previous Conservative party government) requested the opportunity to dispute the allegations of war crimes based on this complication, but the new British government did not choose to continue with the objection. No other countries have made objections.
The challenge wasn't based on exactly that, they were trying to argue that a treaty palestine signed with israel precluded palestine from giving icc juridsiction that it didn't have itself.
That said, if it ever gets to trial, the defendants will almost certainly try to challenge it on that basis.
Realistically though i think the chance of that type of challenge succeding is unlikely. International courts generally are above domestic law. They probably have a better chance of convincing the court that palestine isn't a state and thus cannot sign the rome statue (which is also a long shot imo)
> Courts are political entities but this is one that Israel chose to accept and recognize the authority of.
They were replying to this part of the comment which was factually incorrect (Israel did not recognize ICC authority) not on what the challenge on jurisdiction was
Good thing that's not how laws are formed - "your" not recognizing authority doesn't mean "you" haven't committed the war crimes or other illegal act that international organization has charged you with; so far it's worked that veto power can immediately suppress action even when the rest of the organized-civilized world is against you, where so far most international organizations have been for theatre - but where we have an opportunity for them to finally have teeth.
> Germany, the second biggest sponsor of mass slaughter (presently and historically) also claims to be bound by this court, but for some reason ignores it when it is in Israeli interests to do so.
When has germany ever ignored the ICC? I dont think there is a single instance of that, whether involving israel or otherwise.
The government of Germany clearly prefer to side with Israel on any matter related to Palestine (or Lebanon for that matter), but in fairness it has taken this long for the ICC's prosecutor to bring a case. The real tests will begin if, for instance, Netanyahu visits Germany, because that will trigger an obligation for Germany to arrest him. There may of course already be domestic German laws which arms sales to Israel may be breaking, but as far as I'm aware Germany has only had a duty to cooperate with the ICC since the warrant was issued earlier today.
Nicaragua had a go at the German government in March 2024 re. arms sales and could not prevail [0]. I just read an article that claims they have already made a new attempt, which could be more successful in the current situation [1 - in German, sorry]
> Courts are political entities but this is one that Israel chose to accept and recognize the authority of
As far as i am aware, this is a false statement. Israel has been opposed to the ICC since its inception (originally because the first version had a judge selection mechanism they thought was biased against them, although i am sure there are other reasons they object, especially relating to their settlements).
Perhaps you are confusing the ICC with the ICJ, which are totally different things.
Neither Israel nor the de-facto government of Gaza they are fighting ever accepted the authority of the ICC; neither has signed the Rome Treaty.
The ICC authority is being derived from the Palestinian Authority applying for membership and the Court deciding earlier in a 2-1 decision that Palestine is a state, the PA is the legitimate government of Palestine, and that Gaza is territory under its jurisdiction.
> Court deciding earlier in a 2-1 decision that Palestine is a state, the PA is the legitimate government of Palestine, and that Gaza is territory under its jurisdiction.
I think you are overstating it. They made a provisional decision, but just for the purpose of if the investigation can go forward. The decision does not decide whether or not palestine is a state in general, and if this ever goes to trial the defendants can still challenge this decision.
This case was not filed by any country, it was directly filed by Karim Khan, an employee of the ICC.
The court that requires a country to file is the ICJ. Iran is already a signatory to the ICJ and there is nothing that would legally prevent them from filing a case if they wanted to.
I was also curious about parent's claim so I did some searching of my own. The claim is from a report published a few days ago called 'South Africa, Hamas, Iran, and Qatar: The Hijacking of the ANC and the International Court of Justice':
Its author, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, is ostensibly American, although I can find no indication of its incorporation in the USA. The Israeli government is the largest donor to the organization according to 'The Forward', which is a newspaper incorporated as a non-profit charity in the USA.
political is..sorta true. the point of these international legal bodies was to maintain and enforce a world order dominated by western powers. it was not about promoting justice (albeit sometimes that happened.) the selective application of enforcement and investigation have reduced the ICC to little more than a tool of neocolonial rule.
the rome statute itself contains provisions that limit its reach. article 98 precludes extradition, which has been abused by the US to prevent US nationals from being tried.
in short the ICC is allowed to go after western geopolitical rivals, however going after an ally whos committing genocide is a bridge too far; they will be shielded. for example: the US pressured its allies to refuse to refer any activities in Afghanistan to the ICC and largely succeeded as its allies form the dominant half of the UN Security council. whats interesting here is the US seems so isolated this time as to have lost the ability to block the referral. perhaps a first in history.
I once had the honor to attend a lecture by a prosecutor of the ICC.
Out of all lawyers/attorneys/prosecutors/judges that I met in my life, that one was the one that I would judge to bet he most idealistic and justice motivated (admittedly based on my gut instinct); a very rare breed.
It's good that there are such institutions with a good purpose, staffed with good people. Bad faith actors - including war criminals - will of course claim agendas (other than bringing justice), deny jurisdiction etc. but it is a good
starting point to have them. The next step is to strive to give these organizations enough "teeth" to execute.
The "individual bully" problem needs some addressing, a solution to that remains outstanding.
There is indeed, as you state, political influence being exerted on courts. Most of that influence is in support of Israel and Netanyahu — do you really think there is significant political power and influence upon the ICC from Palestine or Hamas? Look at the amount AIPAC has contributed to pro-Israel politicians. It’s quite frankly absurd such a political organization exists under the guise of representing American Jews yet pretty much lobbies solely for Israeli geopolitical issues. Kennedy even tried to get it to register as a foreign agent. The fact that these warrants were issued despite the influence and leverage of Israel is a hint at how egregious the crimes are.
Antisemitism is a form of bigotry, no more or less special than other forms of bigotry and racism.
If you read any significant amount of history you'd know that already, and you wouldn't need to prove that Antisemitism is real. Of course it is. So is anti-[insert religious or ethnic group]
Them turning any criticism of Israels actions into antisemitism is making the word worthless, it's almost a badge of honor at this point. And ironically their genocide is creating real antisemitism.
Well, it seems that at least in the case of Palestine, antisemites haven't been able to stop the ICC from addressing the real apartheid, war crimes, and even genocide that Israel is currently conducting in Gaza.
And the only counterweight for a person accused of genocide who is claiming they haven't committed war crimes or genocide, while they call this action "antisemetic" - the only way to determine if they are being genuine in claim it is antisemitism or political-manipulation (demonization) tool is to go to court and see all of the evidence presented.
Either 40,000+ people dead or seemingly nearly all Palestinian's civilian infrastructure being destroyed, both warrant being witnessed and investigated by the international community with a fine tooth comb, no?
The ICC isn't some amateur city court in some backwaters country, it is the current epitome and evolutionary state from effort and passion of humanity towards holding the line for justice.
> And the only counterweight for a person accused of genocide
The ICC has not accused anyone of genocide. It does have juridsiction over personal criminal responsibility for gdnocide, but so far, nothing on that front has been mentioned.
South africa is suing israel at the icj alleging state responsibility for genocide, however that is different from personal responsibility, and different standards of evidence and procedures apply. Its also a totally separate court system.
Straw man argument. I didn't make the claim the ICC accused the ICC of genocide, however Netanyahu is now at minimum now officially wanted for war crimes.
Well when you say "person accused of genocide" in the context of a warrant from a court that has juridsiction over personal responsibility for genocide, its not a leap to assume that is what you meant.
However if you didn't mean that, what did you mean by "person accused of genocide"? Who is accusing them? You personally?
Interesting turn of phrase you used - it is in fact a leap, as you're making assumption you put forward as fact in your mind; how often do you do that?
Countless people are accusing him of genocide, including the ICC, and it certainly looks like a genocide by me; the problem with this discussion is no one defending the side accused of genocide will actually get into details of defining what could actually constitute genocide - so keeping it up in the air vague, which then allows them to not actually stand for it or against it - because there's nothing defined; most people have a wrong legal definition in their head for what constitutes genocide as well.
Personally yes, from what I have seen, the rhetoric from high up Israeli politicians and government officials, I would argue it's genocide.
The ICF has concluded officially as well that it is apartheid - and that those itnernational rules apply to Israel.
> Interesting turn of phrase you used - it is in fact a leap, as you're making assumption you put forward as fact in your mind; how often do you do that?
Well if you wrote clearly we wouldn't have this issue.
> Countless people are accusing him of genocide, including the ICC
The ICC explicitly have not. Perhaps they might in the future, but genocide was not one of the charges. If the icc prosecutor believes he has evidence of genocide occuring he has the authority to request a warrant for it (or request the existing warrant be amended)
As for others, well the icc is basically the only court with competent juridsiction (technically a domestic israel court would also, but it seems pretty unlikely at this point that the israeli gov would arrest their own PM for genocide). I dont find random people very meaningful compared to charges at court where evidence actually has to be presented.
> the problem with this discussion is no one defending the side accused of genocide will actually get into details of defining what could actually constitute genocide
The rome statue defines genocide which would be the definition used by the ICC. It is the same as how the genocide convention defines it which is essentially the official definition.
There is case law on how to specificly interpret the definition. Genocide is not a new concept at this point, and there exists people who have been tried for genocide in the past which has generated case law.
> most people have a wrong legal definition in their head for what constitutes genocide as well.
Yes, i agree that is an issue. However just because people have wrong beliefs does not mean the crime is undefined.
> The ICF has concluded officially as well that it is apartheid
I assume you mean ICJ here? They did not conclude that. They concluded that israel violated "Article 3 of CERD". Article 3 includes apartheid but it also includes other things. The ICJ did not specify which part of article 3 israel violated. (Obviously pretty bad either way)
I'm trying to assert that neither Netanyahu or Gallant are currently facing charges of genocide. They have not been charged with this crime by the ICC or any other court.
Genocide is a major crime. Whether or not someone is facing charges for it is a big deal. The facts matter.
Can't you place that exact same argument on the side of the Palestinians, and add more weight to their claim - where the international community so far has allowed this, due to reason (whether money involved in politicians toeing a line or not), and so the courts decisions and political bias are more likely to favour Netanyahu over the Palestinians?
There never seems to be much critical thinking on the quick one-liners that on the surface appear to often be one-liner propaganda talking points used for deflection, to give an easy memorable line for an otherwise ideological mob to learn-train them with to then parrot.
You can claim anything, but i don't think it means much if you don't back it up with some arguments.
Like this is basically only the second time that a sitting head of state of a functioning country has had a warrant issued against them. Its fairly unprecedented. I don't agree with the claims the icc is biased against israel, but the fact they are acting at all certainly shows they aren't biased for them.
The proof you provide is very shallow, and with no real relevance or weight as an argument point - when it's known that the US and Israel have veto powers, as an example, that most international organizations currently are theatre without teeth - and so that's essentially why it's "fairly unprecedented."
Now Netanyahu has done enough blatantly, what's argued by some to be the most video/photographed-recorded genocide in history, the hierarchy and people resource hierarchy of the ICC hasn't fallen to Israeli political pressure (or whatever other tactics Mossad is known to use to try to get their way).
Once again, your final point is more neutral - where you could only really honestly say that if in a vacuum, if you're not looking behind the scenes with how much pressure Israel has put publicly and privately on members of the ICC to not file nor then issue charges, etc.
> when it's known that the US and Israel have veto powers, as an example,
They don't have veto powers of the ICC. Neither are even members.
However if your point is that both are powerful political actors, i think that speaks to a lack of pro-israel bias since they are going ahead with the charges despite the objections (and down right threats) from both countries which are super powerful actors.
> Now Netanyahu has done enough blatantly, what's argued by some to be the most video/photographed-recorded genocide in history,
It should be noted that genocide is not one of the charges. The ICC has juridsiction over genocide, but the ICC prosecuter has not accused israel of genocide thus far.
> If Netanyahu and Gallant really think they are innocent, and the allegations are absurd and false, they should cooperate with the ICC. Have your day in court and show how absurd the accusations are.
I don't know if I agree with this.
If the ICC is an honest organization that stands for individual rights, liberty and justice then sure.
If, on the other hand, the ICC is a corrupt organization that invites the worst of the worst in terms of rights-violating countries and dictatorial regimes to the table, then no way. In any compromise between right and wrong, good and evil, the wrong has everything to gain and the good has everything to lose.
In other words, I don't have all of the facts when it comes to the ICC and its history. I know that it is separate from the UN, but I don't know very much about it. Therefore I don't know which alternative I ultimately land on.
But in general and in principle, when it comes to those that are objectively and morally wrong, there is every reason to not grant them legitimacy through recognition or participation.
> I don't have all of the facts when it comes to the ICC and its history. I know that it is separate from the UN, but I don't know very much about it. Therefore I don't know which alternative I ultimately land on.
If you can put in the time & effort required to make an empirical assessment of the ICC, go ahead and do so; then come back here and enlighten us all. Otherwise, this is just more of the same kind of denialism & deflection we're all too familiar with post WW2 from the many (and vocal) mass crime apologists.
> what do you mean by 'invite to the table'? it's a criminal court, so it's going to deal with criminals
"Criminals" in this context is meaningless. Please hear me out.
We're dealing with the concept of "International Law", which is largely understood as agreements / treaties amongst different countries.
This means that those agreements are no more valid or better or righteous than the countries that enter into them. If the nations involved share certain basic principles and make an agreement that aligns with those principles, the enforcement of these "laws" would come from those nations that are party to the treaty.
BUT - if one nation changes its mind, or changes its internal laws or decides "nah, no thanks" then how do you enforce these so-called "laws"? Do the other nations declare war on this nation?
It gets even worse than that. Because the very concept of "International Law" contains a logical contradiction.
The idea is that we are going make war (force, violence, death, destruction, conflict) subject to some kind of rules. The problem is, you can't. You can have two parties to a conflict agree to certain things: like not to murder civilians, or prisoners etc. if it can be helped. But at the end of the day it's an agreement that doesn't have any kind of binding power or significance because the idea of war means that two groups have decided that they can't reach any kind of rational agreement and so they have resorted to violent conflict.
War, by definition, is the absence of law. The absence of reason. The breakdown of civilization. It comes about when two groups cannot reason with one another; cannot agree with one another on what the rules ought to be.
Law is not a concept that comes out of nowhere. It is the idea that in order to protect individual rights and liberty, the element of force and violence is going to be taken out of civil existence and placed into the hands of a monopoly: the government, which sets the rules and enforcement mechanisms around when force is and is not justifiable within their respective operating jurisdictions.
When you have multiple nations that operate independently, each with their own laws and rules, all you can do is get them to agree to certain things, as long as they have some basis upon which to enter into an agreement.
My thesis is that a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights. That the dictatorship has everything to gain by getting the free nation to agree to what its evil desires want, while the free nation has only things to lose (through compromise, which is part and parcel of coming to terms).
> a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement [between any two or more states] with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights.
Wikipedia quote:
"States and non-state actors may choose to not abide by international law, and even to breach a treaty but such violations, particularly of peremptory norms, can be met with disapproval by others and in some cases coercive action ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to war."
I think isolating bad actors can be a limited solution to the absence of physical power/not wanting to start a way, which ultimately as you rightly state corresponds to a situation of absence/breakdown of law that is best avoided.
I'm using "criminals" as a short-hand for "the worst of the worst in terms of rights-violating countries and dictatorial regimes" which is what you initially said.
If there is no such thing as international law, then what "rights" are these countries violating?
> When you have multiple nations that operate independently, each with their own laws and rules, all you can do is get them to agree to certain things, as long as they have some basis upon which to enter into an agreement.
It sounds like you do think all countries should be 'invited to the table' unless they fail to meet a standard which you yourself don't think exists. Confusing.
> We're dealing with the concept of "International Law", which is largely understood as agreements / treaties amongst different countries.
Well this is true of a lot of international law, it doesn't apply here. The ICC largely deals with things that are preemptory norms which apply regardless of if you sign the treaty.
> The ICC largely deals with things that are preemptory norms which apply regardless of if you sign the treaty.
That's irrelevant. Anyone can form an independent organization and proclaim that nations of the world are subject to the rules set forth by that independent organization.
The point is that they have no intrinsic authority.
Authority comes from either moral sanction (of the people, by the people / consent of the governed) or through force.
In other words, the enforcement mechanism has to come from those that opt-in to that organization. i.e: through mutual agreement.
Which means that any "violator" nation can then say "GTFO and I dare you to come at me and see the full force of my police (if you try to arrest my citizens) or my military (if the participating nations declare war on me in an attempt to enforce these 'laws')."
So it still can only come about through mutual agreements between nations. Otherwise it is nothing more than a rogue body that sends armed thugs to try and enforce its rules while nations get to say "We neither recognize nor agree to those rules, nor do we recognize your authority to enforce them. However, you are subject to our laws while you are trying to execute your 'warrants' on our soil. And we will arrest YOU and throw you in our jails if you interfere with the rights of any one of our citizens."
> In other words, the enforcement mechanism has to come from those that opt-in to that organization. i.e: through mutual agreement.
Tell that to the germans who were hanged at the nuremburg trials. They certainly didn't consent.
You are right to a certain extent, that enforcement requires agreement or force, but at the same time the general rules and procedures of international law do have some force to them. They have this force because they are widely agreed on. This includes Israel which broadly agree all these things are illegal, they just take issue with that specific court. However their donestic courts recognize all the things the icc prosecutes as crimes locally broadly speaking. (Well there is some dispute over what forced population transfer means, but that isn't one of the crimes in question for this warrant)
Is it any data point at all to you that ICC exists and functions in many ways because of the literal Holocaust that happened during WWII? Like the same genocide that also catalyzed Israel's existence? Or is it still important, in your mind, to do our own work investigating the ICC before we think anything?
Im just saying, its important to be skeptical I guess, but all these comments being like "well who are these ICC people anyway?" can't help but be a little (darkly) funny to me. Like is this really the point where everyone just stops pretending to be good guys about this? Its like being a teenager and being angry at your mother for birthing you because she caught you doing something bad.
Imagine the US having to face consequences for Iraq. One of the most fucked up collection of war crimes and violations of laws of war in the 21st century. The average American now thinks "we shouldn't have gone into Iraq" but has no idea the reputation the US has in the rest of the world because of this act
I think you are correct that the US service members committed some fucked up war crimes in Iraq. But many service members faced justice in the US for those crimes. And I'm not persuaded that those crimes were widespread, relative to the scale of the military engagement.
Your statement seems to imply that the Iraq War was unusually bad in terms of war crimes. If so, you should be able to give several examples of 21st century conflicts which you're confident had fewer war crimes committed per capita. Can you do so?
The way I see it, there are two rough hypotheses here:
Hypothesis 1: The US is an unusually evil country which has a harmful effect on world affairs. Its actions in Iraq exemplify this. The recent trend towards US isolationism is good, since isolationism will diminish its pernicious effects on world affairs.
Hypothesis 2: War crimes and violations of the laws of war are ubiquitous in conflict. The international treaties prohibiting them were well-intentioned but largely fruitless. The psychology of war drives soldiers to commit war crimes, and/or the incentives to commit war crimes are too strong. The US has a free press, and has systems in place to prosecute service members who commit war crimes, so you hear more about war crimes committed by the US than by other countries. But the per capita rate of the US committing war crimes may actually be lower than average.
What evidence is available that lets us differentiate between these hypotheses?
>But many service members faced justice in the US for those crimes.
Never forget the CIA employee who killed a random guy in a car crash in the UK by driving on the wrong side of the road (who the fuck does this accidentally?), then got promptly evacuated back to the US, so that the family seeking justice could be told "get fucked, she's important, you are not". Anne Sacoolas. I really think this says a lot about how the US treats the idea of justice.
That is, unfortunately, a norm in diplomatic persons. Erdogan's bodyguards savagely beat up protestors on American soil and nothing will ever come of it.
That's not some meaningful example of the US being especially bad in international relations, and certainly not evidence of the US being especially bad at committing war crimes.
> But many service members faced justice in the US for those crimes
Did they now? How many of the guilty went to prison for Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Bagram torture? The kidnapping of random civilians to get tortured is some heinous shit, yet very few people were convicted of it, let alone served any time even remotely worth of the crime. The worst I can find for Abu Ghraib in particular is 6 years, which is laughable; and all of the convicted were the service members perpetrating their crimes, none of their commanders were also convicted. Let alone the people who allowed torture as an "interrogation technique".
Can you provide a citation for the claim that these were literally random civilians (as opposed to people suspected of committing a crime or plotting to commit a crime)?
>very few people were convicted of it
The obvious possibility is that few were convicted because it wasn't widespread.
---
As an American, I think you are correct that these incidents may constitute evidence of institutional rot in our armed forces. I'm thinking maybe I should vote for politicians who will withdraw the US from NATO, so that the US will be involved in fewer wars in the future, and there will be fewer opportunities for American soldiers to commit war crimes. Do you support this?
Your own source states that Dilawar was arrested by an Afghan and turned over to the US as a suspect in a rocket attack. Just read the NY Times article as excerpted by Wikipedia.
Looks much more like a case of a guilty Afghan framing an innocent Afghan for a crime, than a case of the US flipping coins in order to kidnap civilians 'at random'.
This article doesn't appear to substantiate the claim that anyone was kidnapped solely for owning a Casio. Can you quote the specific excerpt that you believe substantiates this claim?
What fraction of watches worldwide would you estimate are Casio F-91W wristwatches? Supposing we know that Al Qaeda trainees are issued this specific make and model of watch. (The Guardian: "The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bomb-making training courses in Afghanistan...") Are you familiar with the concept of a likelihood ratio? Can you estimate the likelihood ratio for someone being an Al Qaeda trainee given that they possess this specific make and model of watch? Do you understand how a sequence of likelihood ratios (pieces of evidence) can be multiplied together to get a posterior likelihood ratio, from which you can derive a probability estimate that e.g. someone is a terrorist?
>There was also another one who had the misfortune of sharing his name with a man accused of terrorism.
Suppose you learn that your local police department has arrested a man who shares the name of a man on your country's "most wanted" list. What would be an appropriate response? Fire the person who arrested him and everyone in the chain of command? Or accept that mistakes are made, and arresting innocent people is an inevitable part of having a justice system?
Now (as in the Dilwar case) imagine that your local police department is operating in a warzone, does not speak the local language, experienced an attack on their police building this morning, and are trained to fight wars as opposed to administer justice. What result do you expect?
I asked whether the people involved were "literally random civilians" vs "people suspected of committing a crime or plotting to commit a crime". All of your examples appear to be people suspected of crime, in some cases for good reason. So -- thanks for answering my question, I guess?
(To clarify, I agree that the US made serious mistakes in Iraq/Afghanistan, and Dilawar's story is incredibly sad and tragic. However, I think my original point about the comparative per-capita rate basically stands. Israel recently got hit by a large terrorist attack, akin to Sept 11, and I would argue their response has been far more indiscriminate and vindictive than the US's: https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1859069963132432562#m No one has provided any comparative data re: 21st century conflicts where we can be confident fewer war crimes were committed per capita, as I requested.)
>Considering the well known and documented facts around Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, that's obvious not possible and not true.
Given your very creative interpretation of the sources you've shared so far, where arresting someone who shares the name of a suspect is basically the same as arresting someone 'at random', I reckon there's a decent chance that this claim of yours is also based on a creative interpretation of some kind.
>NATO being a defensive alliance, your last point has no merit.
Are you sure we can trust the US to keep it a defensive alliance? Perhaps they will provoke the alliance into a conflict.
Perhaps it's best for the US to withdraw from the alliance so it stays defensive. That's safer for other NATO members, because it will prevent them from becoming entangled in conflicts that are provoked by the US.
Even if fighting a defensive war, the US will likely commit war crimes. They committed war crimes in Iraq, and also in Europe as part of WW2. (Along with ~every nation that participated in WW2, I believe.)
---
I just want you to take a consistent position here!
One consistent position is that we should think of war crimes as being sort of like regular crimes. If you picked up a newspaper and saw that someone committed a murder in your country, would you view it as a reflection on the millions of people who live in your country? Or as a reflection on that individual? Or somewhere in between?
Alternatively, if you actually believe your own arguments, that the US is a uniquely evil country, then you should accept the straightforward implications of that. You should wish to diplomatically disentangle the US from your own country, which means you should praise US withdrawal from NATO. If the US is evil, you shouldn't wish to be allied with it, same way you wouldn't wish to be allied with Nazi Germany -- even as part of a "defensive alliance".
Again, I just what you to take a consistent position. I don't particularly care so much what it is. I just want you to accept the very straightforward implications of the claims that you yourself are making!
Why should my tax dollars pay to defend your country, if my country will inevitably end up committing war crimes in the process, and open us up to accusations that we are all monsters, like the accusations you're making in this thread? This just seems like a lose-lose proposition to me, as a US citizen. It seems better to just not have this arrangement, and withdraw from NATO.
How would you feel if you were in my position? Can you see how absurd this conversation feels to me?
Looks much more like a case of a guilty Afghan framing an innocent Afghan for a crime, than a case of the US flipping coins in order to kidnap civilians 'at random'.
You're being far too charitable to the occupying forces.
Remember, they tortured the guy to death. Whether their own people picked the guy up off the street, or they outsourced the task to their local proxy forces (likely offering cash incentives, thus more or less guaranteeing that exactly this sort of thing would happpen), ultimately doesn't matter too much. If at all.
This article doesn't appear to substantiate the claim that anyone was kidnapped solely for owning a Casio. Can you quote the specific excerpt that you believe substantiates this claim?
More than a dozen detainees were cited for owning cheap digital watches, particularly "the infamous Casio watch of the type used by Al Qaeda members for bomb detonators."
>You're being far too charitable to the occupying forces.
I was responding to the specific claim: "The kidnapping of random civilians to get tortured". This claim seems to be clear hyperbole.
>they outsourced the task to their local proxy forces (likely offering cash incentives, thus more or less guaranteeing that exactly this sort of thing would happpen)
It says right there in the Dilawar article that the Afghan who framed him is suspected of being responsible for the rocket attack. But yes, I suppose this was all secretly orchestrated by the US somehow...
A pattern I'm seeing in this thread: Someone makes a hyperbolic "America is evil" claim. I spend, like, 60 seconds investigating. The claim doesn't appear to hold up.
It seems clear to me that you, and others, love to exaggerate how evil the US is, regardless of the facts. And you haven't given a historical example of a country that did a good job of addressing counterinsurgency/counterterrorism with belligerents who hide in a civilian popuation. For example, perhaps you think that China's method in Xinjiang represents a superior approach? Please, provide a model that you think worked well!
I just want you to do one of two things: (a) admit you/others in this thread might be exaggerating a smidge, or (b) embrace the logical implication of your position, that the US should withdraw from NATO.
I don't care which of those you do -- I just want you to be consistent!
As an American, I personally have become more and more convinced that the US should withdraw from NATO, with every comment that's left in this thread. It just isn't worth the risk that something like this will happen again in the future, should the US become involved in another major war.
And, I don't think Americans should die for people who love to exaggerate how evil we are. That's absurd, frankly.
I'll cop to (a), but only out of laziness, not for any of the broader motives you are attempting to impute. And definitely not to (b), which definitely does not follow from what you (falsely) think to be my position, at all.
Frankly -- to every extent you think we're busily trying to "dial up" America's innate evilness, it seems you're definitely trying to divert/deflect blame for its actions, also. For example, spinning the torture/murder of Dilawar as a matter of his being framed by locals (as if that were the primary cause of what happened to him); without focusing on the infinitely bigger circumstances behind his death, which is the simple fact of the occupying soldiers choosing to beat the guy to a bloody pulp in the first place.
There's also the weird way you describe his death as "sad and tragic", as if it were a car accident, or something similar fateful. It was nothing of the sort of course - it was a war crime, straight up.
Someone makes a hyperbolic "America is evil" claim.
They said nothing of the sort. The initial commenter made some serious (and in my view perfectly justified) criticisms of the fact that the US never seems to have undergone a genuine moral reckoning for the moral disaster that was the 2003 Iraq invasion.
But this is very different from an essentializing, moralistic statement like "America is evil". So for all your concerns about hyperbolicizing over small details such as why exactly so-and-so got picked up before they were tortured, you're clearly doing some serious hyperbolicizing yourself in this case, and in a much intentional, top-down way.
>not for any of the broader motives you are attempting to impute
Why do the errors of your "laziness" all point in the same direction? Motivated reasoning is the obvious explanation.
>spinning the torture/murder of Dilawar as a matter of his being framed by locals (as if that were the primary cause of what happened to him)
Yet again I will emphasize that I was responding to the claim "The kidnapping of random civilians to get tortured". Way up in this thread I stated:
>Can you provide a citation for the claim that these were literally random civilians (as opposed to people suspected of committing a crime or plotting to commit a crime)?
Perhaps you were too lazy to read that part?
The question here is not how gruesome the crime is. Repeating myself yet again: The question is the degree to which this crime reflects on the entire US nation, vs specific culpable individuals. Insofar as it reflects on the entire US nation, that's where the implication that we should withdraw from NATO is straightforward.
>There's also the weird way you describe his death as "sad and tragic", as if it were a car accident, or something similar fateful. It was nothing of the sort of course - it was a war crime, straight up.
I already stated in this thread: "I think you are correct that the US service members committed some fucked up war crimes in Iraq."
I won't respond to you further in this thread. It's increasingly clear based on your responses that you simply aren't reading what I'm writing, and aren't thinking very hard about this topic.
And, I don't think my nation should be defending yours. You're not an ally. An "alliance" means mutual benefit. But there's no benefit to me from partnering with you. Defending you is charity, and considered as charity, it is frankly terrible. I don't believe in charity for wealthy, self-righteous, entitled, smug, thankless people -- especially not when it entails significant personal risk.
You haven't remotely justified why my tax dollars should pay for your defense, given the risk of US service members committing more gruesome war crimes in the course of defending you, same way they did in WW2.
But there's no benefit to me from partnering with -you-. Defending you is charity, and considered as charity, it is frankly terrible. I don't believe in charity for wealthy, entitled, smug, thankless people.
The extent to which you're going out of your way to launch an all-out, gratuitously personalized and caustic attack like this (based on fully imagined attributes, such as how "wealthy" you think I am, or what kind of passport you think I hold) -- is really quite bizarre.
> Why should my tax dollars pay to defend your country, if my country will inevitably end up committing war crimes in the process, and open us up to accusations that we are all monsters, like the accusations you're making in this thread? This just seems like a lose-lose proposition to me, as a US citizen. It seems better to just not have this arrangement, and withdraw from NATO.
You seem to be making a number of assumptions, all of which are wrong.
Your tax dollars are defending your country and its interests, and it just so happens that defending other countries is in your country's interests. The US doesn't keep NATO existing out of the goodness of its heart, it's a geopolitical tool. The US wants to combat Russian and Chinese influence and prevent them extending it, so it has various alliances and similar deals (like in Korea, Japan, the weirdness with Taiwan).
Second, that war crimes are an inevitable fact of life and nothing can be done. This is bullshit. War crimes can be committed in "the heat of the moment", but if properly dealt with (punished), will not be a frequent thing.
Third, that an army which has committed war crimes is automatically "all monsters". Only if it refuses to deal with its war criminals and they're in sufficient numbers, yes, but neither of those are facts of life. Had the US executed the people responsible for torturing civilians to death, nobody would be saying that the US ignores its war criminals; it did nothing, so everyone is right to say it.
As for the rest, you're trying to deflect based on technicalities. It doesn't matter if the US or allied militias did the kidnapping, US service members tortured those people to death with zero due diligence. They were tortured to death for the sadistic pleasure of groups of people in individual locations that could have been dealt with.... But not in Guantanamo. There the torture was the result of an official policy, implicating multiple high level officials, so the rot ran very high.
Fun fact: do you know what the Arbeit Macht Frei of Guantanamo is? "Honor bound to defend freedom". Can't make this shit up, perfect for an illegal in existence, no evidence required, torture to death/vegetable status unlimited detention camp.
>Your tax dollars are defending your country and its interests, and it just so happens that defending other countries is in your country's interests.
So you will have no objection if we reassess our interests and decide that defending you no longer aligns with them? Because that's what many Americans, including me, are starting to think. I don't want conflict with Russia or China. As an American, that's not in my interest! And, I have no desire to partner with a country full of dishonest, self-righteous individuals such as yourself. That's not in my interest, either. Nor is it in my interest to risk a conflict on your behalf which could result in US soldiers committing more war crimes!
"Helping me is in your interest, buddy..." I know a con when I see one.
I'm hoping with Trump's election, the US will act as more of a neutral and peaceful arbitrator, instead of automatically taking the side of "allies" like you for some bizarre reason.
>will not be a frequent thing
You still haven't even attempted to address the key question of whether the per capita rate of war crimes in Iraq was notably high.
War crimes are wrong. I condemn them. I support more US-internal war crime investigations. But you've persistently failed to even address the question of whether US war crimes make it unusual.
Where are the executions? I suppose the Ukrainian military is all monsters?
Can you even give a single historical incidence of a country dealing with war criminals on its own side in a way you consider acceptable?
How about for your own country?
>No investigation; No prosecutions. Major-general Christopher Vokes commander of the Canadian 4th Armoured Division freely admitted ordering the action, commenting in his autobiography that he had "No feeling of remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe."
You are making more straightforward exaggerations, trivially falsified with 60 seconds on Wikipedia. "Nothing" is what Canada did in response to its WW2 crimes.
I'm done. There's no point in continuing with someone who delights in dishonesty.
> You still haven't even attempted to address the key question of whether the per capita rate of war crimes in Iraq was notably high.
What? So war crimes only matter if there were a lot of them? I've only skimmed the Geneva convention but don't recall seeing that part. In any case, you'd struggle to find a developed country in the past few decades with anything resembling the US war crime rate, and torture of civilians rate. So yes, obviously.
And there's a legitimate case to be made that ISIS and their crimes are the direct result of American incompetent handling of Iraq post the toppling of Saddam. So we can add some more to the pile.
> I'm hoping with Trump's election, the US will act as more of a neutral and peaceful arbitrator, instead of automatically taking the side of "allies" like you for some bizarre reason
You seem to have misconceptions about US foreign policy and what it means to be a US ally, and, hell, what Trump is and what he stands for (money). Check out what the US did to France with the Australian submarine deal, is that the an ally siding? With Trump in charge, his favourite dictators will do whatever they want.
In any case, good riddance. A few countries will be screwed through no fault of their own (Ukraine, Taiwan), being surrendered to a despotic regime. It's unfortunate, but it's clear that a lot of Americans cannot tell right from wrong, so it is what it is. The rest of the world can't force the US to continue in the role it took itself as the world police at least paying lip service to freedom and morality and what not. (More often than not this was propping up fascists and similar against anything left of Franco, but still, in some cases like Taiwan and Ukraine, something good came out of it)
But the EU will take the opportunity to stand up and become more autonomous, fully taking in on how unreliable the US is. The world will be better off, on average. It's just horrible how many people will have to suffer to get there.
US citizens/nationals/residents have rights that would be violated by an international court. For example, you can't have due process (as required by US law), a speedy trial, or a jury trial at the ICC. This makes the idea of handing people over to the ICC not only forbidden but wrong for obvious reasons.
Surely you don't expect people to give up these very fundamental rights so they could be tried in an international court?
yeah, the accused has no right to a jury trial with the ICC
with the 6th amendment, signing the rome statute into law would be both unconstitutional and effectively subjecting US soldiers to a kangaroo court (in the eyes of the US)
True, and this more than highlights the great divide across the globe on the matter, it screams it out. One can only guess what the ramifications will be.
If you think it's a sham, why would you participate in the process? I don't agree that it is a sham, but it's an absurd principle to think that they'd have any interest in doing so.
Israel already participates in the process. That's why they file documents with the court. Claims from two of those the pre-trial chamber rejected today, prior to issuing the warrants.
Re response: your claim was participation not jurisdiction, shift goalposts however you like
Disputing jurisdiction is submitting oneself to the court, so that the court may decide the issue of jurisdiction. If you submit such a jurisdictional dispute to the court for judgement, you tacitly agree to abide by the court's judgement in the dispute.
Here, the court made such a decision, Israel is just upset they didn't prevail. If Israel didn't think the court was allowed to rule on jurisdiction, Israel would not have submitted a petition for the court to do exactly that.
The Israeli will not recognize the authority of this ICC bench, because it's a politically motivated prosecution. They've lost before the trial even began.
I first thought you were going to point out how the misuse of the word "antisemitic" is especially problematic here:
Do the vast majority of people not understand correlation vs. causation? Because Netanyahu is Jewish does not mean an action against him is because he's Jewish.
That they are willing to use such "cry wolf" tactics, abusing it, dilutes their credibility at minimum - and then should bring their integrity into question, just for this misrepresentation of calling this action antisemitic.
I would say it’s clear that Israel draws a lot more criticism than other countries seem to for their bad actions. Whether this is antisemitism or not is up to interpretation but I can see why they might consider it so.
Regardless of whether a group of politicians use it maliciously or not - Antisemitism exists and happens all the time. It has not "lost its value", and if it has then so has western society.
Is this real equivalence? Over 40,000 people have been killed by Israel since October 7th 2023. Israel has one of the most advanced militaries in the world! They are Goliath.
The UN could only definitively say that about 14,because Israel wouldn't allow the UN to perform a full investigation.
No conspiracy is needed: we have several statements from IDF members about the Hannibal Directive being used, and about the types and quantities of munitions being used; we know the IDF destroyed hundreds of vehicles.
Of course, if you define "credible sources" as the western main stream media, nobody will put it all together like this.
That's quite far from being a credible source. The author is being investigated by Met police for encouragement of terrorism, I would guess for his promotion of propaganda from Hezbollah and other terrorist orgs. At least on EI he's willing to write "Israel", rather than "the Jewish Nazi entity" as he says on social media.
Yes, critics of Israel are being silenced in the UK. Several journalists have been raided and/or arrested, as well as several citizens because of anti-Israel content online. A 77 year old woman reportedly had her house raided last night for sharing her views on Twitter.
Antisemitic. Every time I hear this word, I can’t help but think of its irony—a term used exclusively for describing discrimination against one community, as if prejudice against them carries more weight than against any other. Perhaps, though, it serves as the best reflection of our hypocrisy.
It's incredible that a term was coined in the 19th Century to describe demonstrable hatred toward Jews, that the term was happily adopted and popularized by people who hated Jews, and now over 150 years later the term itself is pointed to as "proof" of Jewish privilege or conspiracy, perpetuating the cycle of ignorance and hatred under a new guise.
The word has never, in its history, been used for anything other than racism against Jews. There are Semitic languages, not people.
> Due to the root word Semite, the term is prone to being invoked as a misnomer by those who incorrectly assert (in an etymological fallacy) that it refers to racist hatred directed at "Semitic people" in spite of the fact that this grouping is an obsolete historical race concept. Likewise, such usage is erroneous; the compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass (lit. 'Jew-hatred'), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone
The Romani people for example (derogatorily called "gypsies". The term "gyp"—to scam—derives from stereotypes of Romani people) faced some of the most gruesome programs in history before facing the Romani Genocide in WW2. Yet we rarely talk about antiziganism the way we talk about antisemitism and people still casually throw around terms like "gyp"
The term doesn't imply that, but yes antisemitism has historically been more prolific than most other forms of discrimination. Even if we ignore the Holocaust and focus on recent incidents, Jewish victims are very disproportionately represented in hate crime statistics, for example.
Why would it matter? I don't think we should ever justify Islamophobia based on the actions of Islamic states or other Islamic groups; by the same token we should never justify antisemitic hate crimes regardless of our views on Israel.
> The compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass (lit. 'Jew-hatred'), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone
It's not a special term to make Jews special, it's a special term to make Jew hate normalized.
How could that possibly be true when the only people perpetuating this word are groups like the ADL, Israel... If what you said was true, all of these Zionist institutions wouldn't be promoting it.
I checked wikipedia, and actually it states the same as the parent comment. That sentence has five references. It doesn't shock me, given the era, but rather than speculate and squabble, someone could check the references and see if they really do support the statement in the wiki.
I assume hardly anyone remembered, or payed much mind, to the origin of that word by the 1920s. I don't know who coined 'homophobia' or 'feminism' or many other concepts; they're just common words we use.
And I would complain about the false accusation if that was the case. As it stands "antisemitism" is what's being used to label people who oppose Zionism. It's just like how "communism" was used during McCarthyism.
I think the accusations are sometimes unfair, and other times accurate. I wouldn't like for the world just to dismiss hatred towards Jews, or any other group, out-of-hand. More than anything, I would like to see measured and humane discussion in the media about the Middle East; but sadly I don't expect that will happen.
The amount of unfair accusations dwarfs any real ones. For instance many in the VC world have accused Paul Graham of being antisemitic for simply showing concern about Palestinians. To be clear no critique of Israel including that you don't think it has a right to exist is "antisemitic". Israel is a state not an ethnicity and it was formed under what most consider to be illegal and unethical circumstances and it grew through ethnic cleansing. It's official religion is of no consequence when judging its actions.
One way to address that is to become cynical about 'antisemitism', but I hope that doesn't become prevalent. We've already entered an era in which majority groups resent minority grievances. Seems like that could lead to a lot of backwardness.
I alluded to this already, but it's so rare to hear public figures discuss Israel/Palestine without distorting and filtering what they say to promote one or the other side, it makes resolving things impossible.
I think the only backwardness we're going to see is censorship and accusations of "antisemitism" to quiet criticism of Israel. The US House of Representatives literally passed a bill last night equating criticism of Israel with "antisemitism". If people want that word to mean something, the need to start using it for a purpose other than silencing critics.
The fact that people use 'think of the children' as justification to pass terrible bills doesn't mean we should take issues affecting children lightly, right?
A bad bill that weaponises 'antisemitism' is a good reason to oppose the bill's authors and supporters. It is a bad reason to minimise actual cases of antisemitism directed at people who had no involvement with the bill.
No one is minimizing antisemitism though, we're saying that it's being used, often and illegitimately to censor people standing against apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. I'm genuinely curious if you think there's any antisemitism in this thread, because I don't think there is.
Apologies if I worded things poorly in my previous comment.
What I was driving at is that it's easy for a society, once there are widespread complaints about the weaponisation of some problem to slip into dismissing actual occurrences of the problem.
I can promise you that "the ADL and Israel and the Zionist institutions" are not the only ones using the term "antisemitism". I'd personally prefer that it'd be called anti Jewish racism.
Especially when you consider "semites" are a member of an ancient or modern people from southwestern Asia, such as the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, or Arabs. It can also refer to a descendant of these peoples.
So, many Palestinians are Semites as well. And one may conclude when Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, says:
“It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable. The Lord shall return the Arab’s deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world.”*
That this is "Anti-Semitic" speech as well.
It's amazing how buying off 98% of US Representatives can change a cultural and media narrative.
The thing is, the term "Semite" is (except in very archaic contexts) pretty much dictionary-only.
It exists, and has semantic validity. But it does not in any way describe a group that has ever had any kind of common identity. Or as Wikipedia (itself a kind of a dictionary) puts it:
The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.
Yes, if there is any moral norm that anyone, especially any parent would accept - as closely to universal as possible, perhaps - it is that killing children is evil.
The working definition of the IHRA[0] is truly awful.
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
A certain perception?
The original meaning when the term was coined in the 19th century[1] was that of a racial or ethnic hatred of Jews, as "Semite" is a racial or ethnic category. This is more sensible. It can also be distinguished from anti-Jewishness as a rejection of or hostility toward Judaism as a matter of religious belief, culture, or ethos (which better characterizes historical negative attitudes; the test of this is the acceptance of authentic converts, something the Nazis would never recognize, as their hatred was racial in nature).
It's completely reasonable to exterminate an entire ants colony if 5 ants bite you, or at least that's their logic here, including the "ants" part. But of course we know the "self-defense" part is just a cover for the underlying desire to destroy the colony to build a nice villa.
Also it goes much deeper than that. They were many masscres in Palestine before october 7th, and in Israel as well... A solution would necessarily involves less violence, not more, and at this very instant Israel is the one doing most of it.
> then both the assilant and me are both guilty for criminal assault
War is hell. But this war could have been conducted better. Yes, aid was being diverted by Hamas. But that doesn't mean you stop providing it, it means you do what you must to take control on the ground. The deaths from bombings, et cetera have not been found to be war crimes. The starvation, which was and continues to be avoidable, is.
It's morally justified for a bullied kid to punch back (and punch hard). It's not morally justified for a bullied kid to chain the doors closed and set fire to the bully's apartment building.
"A controversial Amnesty International report asserted that Ukrainian military tactics put civilians in danger. Video footage has since been published suggesting that Ukrainian troops may have executed surrendering Russian officers in the town of Makiivka. Back in 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) determined that Ukrainian forces committed possible war crimes against Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine.
To be clear: none of these allegations draws moral or legal equivalency between the acts of Ukrainian and Russian forces. Any alleged crimes committed by Ukrainian officers pale in comparison to the aggression and barbarity Russian forces have demonstrated in Ukraine. But all atrocities must be accounted for, not just those of one’s enemies."
By the way. Crimes agains humanity/war crimes are on different scale. Like perpetrating genocide, stealing children, etc.
Individual crimes are prosecuted as well, but Zelensky hasn't much to do with regular war crap, if it is not systemic and/or basically formalized and encouraged, as is the case in russia.
Russian playbook includes in every occupied town to set up torture/rape station where they put anyone suspicious. You can guess what happens next.
Crimes against humanity/war crimes are on different scale.
You're getting way too cerebral for this thread. The people who say "they're all equally guilty" don't care about such considerations. They're just trying to make a blanket moral relativism argument.
Which basically goes: "They're all bad to some degree, therefore they're all equally bad, or at least we can stop focusing on the one that's obviously much worse than the others."
It's not an argument at all really, but more like an emotional appeal.
No but this opinion is unjustifiably considered antisemitic and you couuld potentially have unwanted repercussions e.g. lose your job if you make it public. Such are the times we live in.
For context, I'm not American and I would have trouble understanding how this could be conceived as antisemitic??
Also mentioned in another comment I do believe Isreal has a right to defend itself but not to commit war crimes against civilians... that seems to be the issue here.
> A warrant was also issued for [Hamas military commander] Mohammed Deif, although the Israeli military has said he was killed in an air strike in Gaza in July.
Most news reports are treating this as a single story, but posting the original source seems a good idea in this case; it just happens to be split across two URLs.
How about Mahmoud Abbas, head of PA, who funds the Palestinian Authority Martyrs Fund which in turn gives money or incentives to unlawful combatants that had targeted civilians?
I doubt there will be actual arrests, but there will be and there are already consequences. I just saw France and Netherlands announced they will obey the warrants, thus Netanyahu can no longer travel there. Presumably the whole of EU is off limits (I am unaware which countries recognize the court).
Current opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who will probably win the snap elections in February, has even before the court ordered the warrant called for Germany not to obey it. But of course, it's easier to take strong stances when you're not part of that government that has to act on them yet. We'll see.
Well there are competing forces pulling in different directions. So yes, but... at the same times at least officially, the rules are the rules for Germans. In reality what I learned from them living in Germany is that they will do their best to honor the letter of the law, by effectively doing the opposite. But at least on paper they will follow the rules.
He will never leave Israel again. He is 75 and doesn't have many years ahead of him anyway. At some point soon he will either be voted out or kicked out through regular knessent machinations and spend his remaining years writing his memoris in hebrew only.
According to Israel at least, all the ones that the warrants were requested for are now dead. Perhaps new warrants will be issued, but simply taking on the mantle of Hamas leadership will not make someone retroactively culpable for the crimes of October 7th. Culpability at this level is personal, not collective. So even though anyone who becomes the next leader of Hamas will be, by this act itself, a terrible human seeking to advance some horrible ideals, that will not make them culpable for everything Hamas has already done.
Reading the comments in this thread and reflecting on history a bit, the thought that comes to mind is that this is less a trial for the defendants and more a trial of the ICC and more broadly international institutions and their true independence, effectiveness and ultimately, relevance.
If you think that trying some head of a small thuggish state, founded by its unilateral declaration of sovereignty over someone else's land, while already cleansing it of unruly natives, and terrorizing British officials for years both in Palestine and internationally (like with assassination campaigns and embassy bombings), that dug its own hole over decades into ethno-supremacy based and messianically driven conflict with Palestinians, will in any way degrade legitimacy of a court and treaty joined by 125 sovereign states (with almost all "western" ones included), then you're deluding yourself.
Especially when he's being explicitly tried for his role in ensuring that children have to suffer amputations and women get c-sections without anesthesia (among other things), which has nothing to do with defense of Israel.
If anything ICC standing rose a bit in many people's eyes today, slightly above the "court for african warmongers only", where it was previously.
There is definitely an argument that the ICC's actions showed independence. I was trying to imply that in what I wrote. Maybe I need to be a little more clear. If nothing happens, these warrants go away, no sort of trial happens, etc etc, then it is likely that the ICC will be seen as increasingly irrelevant and ineffective. It is still likely to be viewed that way even if a trial does actually go forward but definitely if this just dies away quietly I suspect many will see the organization as nothing but a tool that some governments get to use when they want, and not an impartial check on international actions. I tried not to imply anything about the warrants, the people they are for or the events they are in response to because my discussion point was about the ICC and not the defendants.
The ICC is not under the US control and thus the US sees it as a potentially dangerous organization and the fact that it is in Europe (an influential entity) doesn't make things any better. The US turned a blind eye on the ICC because it used to prosecute its enemies. Now that it's touching its agenda, it makes sense that they do not like it.
Replying to the "dead" comment below (I wish HN killed only spam comments):
> Mainly because i feel the rest of the world lives in a Disneyland like state of fake security that is guaranteed by the United States and never has to contend with the actual reality of the world.
> The actual realities of statehood say the ICC is a joke.
> As for your contention of thuggery.. again, referencing my Disneyland allegation... Thuggery is the basis of statehood and if that makes you uncomfortable, it's because you've been raised in Pax Americana.
> It's really time most countries started paying tribute to the United States, but I do understand the strategic benefit of magnanimity.
I get this viewpoint.
Basically, the idea is that humans can only exist as a society of thugs, and everything else is just fairy tales. In that theory, the best possible outcome is achieved when one of the thugs is much more powerfull than all others, thus enforcing "some" order. Therefore, we should all pay tribute to it.
I have issues with that theory though.
Firstly, I do not believe it. Secondly, even if I did I would consider it a moral duty to still fight it for the small chance it's false. A finally, it does not say what to do in a situation like today when the former bigger thug is becoming weaker and is challenged by the competition. Are we supposed to wait patiently underground the next 20 years until the next contender takes the throne?
There is another theory, according to which human societies _evolve_ as any organism do. It can actually be shown that humans did tame themselves, and became less aggressive/more cooperative after tens of thousands of years of living cooperatively, first in small scale then in larger and larger scale. I take everyone's repulsion against the current state of affairs, or against any sociopathic bahavior for that matter, as another hint of this.
We _did_ evolve out of a primitive condition where there was no conceivable human made law or justice into a society where the rule of law was just a trick, into a condition where the rule of law was desirable, and possibly one day into a condition where the rule of law appears natural.
I believe the cynical viewpoint that you expressed, and that I share sometimes when my mood is low, is actually the fantasy.
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and deported by the government of Yugoslavia after him. Of course, under immense pressure from the west. My preference would be that we tried him under our courts and sent him to jail in Yugoslavia/Serbia.
Now, imposing "justice" obviously only works when you do it to small nations like Yugoslavia or Rwanda. Of course it will not apply to the Israel leader, let alone to somebody from even more powerful nation.
further gives Germany a reason to crack down on pro-Palestinian protestors. Although supporters of the Palestinians have not staged international attacks for a long time the history of this in the 1970s explains why my Uni suddenly instituted a clear bag policy at sports games a few weeks after the lid blew off in Gaza last year. (When I started doing sports photography at the beginning of the semester I could pack a big camera bag and even take extra lenses)
Also Israel has a high GDP and involvement in international trade, academia, etc. Israel has 50x the GDP per head of Rwanda so they have a large impact in terms of Intel's Haifa office, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sodastream, etc. My thesis advisor traveled to Tel Aviv a lot to work with collaborators.
Not to mention Israel has been receiving absolutely immense amounts of financial, military and political support from the USA for decades, to the tunes of billions.
Israel fought and won 3-5 wars (depending how you count them) without US military aid, and it seems that Egypt, Jordan and Syria no longer have any interest in prosecuting further wars against them.
They started getting military aid from the US after all those wars, and it seems that the only reason they still get it is for political reasons. I don’t think any military analyst believes they actually need that aid to survive.
It goes both ways, but I'd say it is more driven by the value of Israel's economy rather than the other way around. Of course you have to consider that Israel's defense sector is also part of their economic dynamism.
Big picture here is my take. Since 1948 there have been conservatives in Israel such as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu who have had a policy of ethnic cleansing in that they cannot tolerate there being a non-Jewish part of the polity which is large enough to have political power. The plan has elements such as (a) dividing the population into different fragments such as the West Bank, Gaza and Arab Israelis that don't work together, (b) developing occasional crises that result in the killing or expulsion of large numbers of Palestinians, (c) most of all making sure that the Palestinians do not develop effective leadership, economic connections, soft power, etc. The destruction of academic organizations is critical to this plan because they don't want Palestinians to succeed the way that Jewish people have, instead they want ignorant stupid and desperate Palestinians to make bad moves such as the attacks last year, Munich, numerous 1970s airplane hijackings, the attempt to take over Jordan and such which justifies their persecution in the minds of Israelis and many others
I had a harrowing conversation with a Jewish mathematician about 15 years ago where he explained that it wasn't genocide because the Palestinians were not "a people" which at the time my answer was "boy you sure sound like the leader of Germany from 1933 to 1945" but I've chewed on and have an interpretation of:
Say the remnants of the Iroquois contacted aliens or got some machine like Drexler talked about and decided, now that they had the means, they wanted to take back New York. Are the people who live in the boundaries of New York really a "people" or "nation" or they are just people who live in a certain boundary? (Certainly you find every kind of white, black, Asian and indigenous person from absolutely everywhere here.)
The Ottoman empire despite claiming to be a Caliphate was actually very cosmopolitan and all sorts of people could live everywhere in much of the middle east (a Jewish friend had family that came from Iraq!) so they can make the case that the pre 1948 population of Palestine was just a bunch of randos like us New Yorkers.
Genocide is a crime on top of mass murder because of not just the harm to those killed or the trauma to the survivors and children of the survivors who recapitulate the crime 80 years later, but also the the whole world in the sense that the extinction of a species is a loss to the whole world. Germany is worse off today because of the holocaust because of all the things that aren't there and all of the richness that Jewish people brought to Germany that was lost. (20 years ago I could not find a good bagel shop wherever I went in Germany!)
It's a technicality whether it is genocide or just mass murder in my mind, but it's a good line to get into mind of people like Netanyahu who are thinking ahead hundreds or thousands of years with events like
as clear in their minds as if they happened yesterday. On a bad day I think the polities of liberal democracies are like children in the hands of gods when it comes to facing those kind of people as our politicians often seem to be thinking two or three days ahead, at most to the next election and we are so self-centered and focused on stupid little things like the price of eggs that they can do what they want with us.
On the other hand there are so many positive things about Israel and Israelis but they cannot find it within themselves to constrain Netanyahu and they are paying a price for it now and will continue to pay a price for it. It is likely that if Netanyahu's program succeeds they'll face a crisis of meaning when they no longer have an enemy and they might lose their culture in just a few generations and at best continue start the cycle of losing their way and getting dispossessed which is repeated several times in the Old Testament and in history.
Wearing one of my hats I see a good analysis of that kind of situation to be a political analysis and not a moral analysis. I think most people are looking for a moral analysis and I don't find people get a lot of satisfaction out of political analysis.
I have access to a lot of public opinion data at work and have a brief spiel about public opinion on transgender issues backed by citations that I've market tested in person with a few people who all hated it precisely because they interpreted my lack of moral judgement as a moral judgement. (pro and anti hated it and don't care hated it because they don't want to hear about it) From my point of view it is deliciously ambiguous and it drives morally oriented people crazy.
I haven't written it up though because I expect to just get trouble out of it and I hate the online discourse (pro and anti) about the subject and don't want to add to it.
They’re a western bastion in very close proximity to the Middle East, with a cultural and religious tie to a not insignificant number of Americans. It’s also a wealthy country.
I see what you mean, but I'm not sure that's such an easy question?
Imagine if Israel, the US and UK hadn't funded and spread ISIS and Al-Qaeda throughout the region. Look back at how Iran was before the West decided a pliable dictator would be preferable. Look at how Syria was before the west decided they wanted that oil. Look at what Gaddafi was trying to achieve in Libya before the west decided they didn't want that. Lebanon somehow remains quite western.
My point is that a lot of the Middle East is the way it is because of the West and our destructive behaviours.
> don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics
The simple reason is that global politics (at the UN) led to the partition of the Mandate, against the will of entire regions, which, right now, represent 30% of world's population. Besides, anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism always rears its very ugly head during this conflict, especially in the US.
Subsequently, the lack of stability in the Middle East did Israel no favours in how it is perceived, even if it may not be solely its fault (it isn't).
Plus, the silencing of voices (particularly against patently unfounded claims such as, "the most moral army", "anti-Israelism is anti-Semitism", "the only democracy in the middle east") themselves come with their own Streisand Effect.
Also, socio-culturally, after Tibet & Cuba, it is one of the last/few remaining geo-political global movements with the added disadvantage of cutting through all 3 major Abrahamic religions.
> The simple reason is that global politics (at the UN) led to the partition of the Mandate
That was a piece of paper which changed nothing.
The Arab and Jewish populations had been in an escalating conflict for years, culminating in an all-out civil war. The Israeli population would have declared independence as soon as the British left regardless of what the UN said. Similarly the Arab states had no intention of letting Israel exist, and attacked as soon as the British left.
> I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics.
Here are some of my favorite sources on that! These are all leftist and pro-Palestinian sources, but they are academic and studied. These are about why Israel is important to the "interests of the USA" (ie, what those with power to decide national interests think).
* The first chapter of "Palestine: A Socialist Introduction", “How Israel Became the Watchdog State: US Imperialism and the Middle East" by Shireen Akram-Boshar. The publisher Haymarket is giving away the ebook for free. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1558-palestine-a-social...
(Odd to me that I'm getting downvoted for suggesting the US support for Israel has to do with US interests, and providing sources going into detail on that, and people are getting upvoted for saying it's because Jews have a lot of influence! It's really not mostly because Jews have a lot of influence.)
Sorry, but it's really, really hard to read anything about US politics and not to think "wow, Jews really do have an enormous amount of power".
From the lobbies (e.g. AIPAC), to the actual members of the government and leading institutions, to the CEOs of the biggest companies and chiefs of financial institutions, to the media and newspapers, to Hollywood, etc...
Not saying they don't deserve it, but still, just to think how over-represented they are...
Most Jews are white people. There are more Jews in certain industries, but in general disproportinate representation is not as great if you compare to other white people in general. Not saying there still isn't some in some places, which I can't totally explain. (Also why are so many doctors from the Indian subcontinent right? Why are black women over-represented in home health care and latino men in kitchens? Anyway, this is now just an offensive stand-up routine) White people have a lot of power in the USA, wealthy white people have most of the power for sure.
On the issue of foreign policy towards Israel specifically, rather than sociological mysteries in general, I posted articles (from Palestinian and Arab scholars and activists sympathetic toward Palestinians!) making solid arguments for why this is not the explanation of US foreign policy towards the mid-east, and thinking it does is a distraction from what's really going on and how to change it (which I want to as well).
> in general the over-representation is less compared to other white people in general.
Genuinely curious about this. It would basically mean that Jews are under-represented among white people, and this sounds... well, implausible. Jews are about 2% of the US population, can you name any high-profile position in which less than 2% of the total white representation is Jewish?
For example, in the current US cabinet there are 26 members, of which about 13/14 are arguably white, more or less in line with the percentage of whites in the general population (between 60 and 70%). Of these, half (7) are of Jewish descent. That's a ~15x over-representation.
Many scholars argue that the US uses Israel to destabilize the region so that all other countries besides Israel are unable to form a bloc and resist US hegemony, but perhaps that's what you meant by "keep the region in check".
"We're also going to discuss the iron-clad commitment-- and this is-- I'll say this 5,000 times in my career, the iron-clad commitment the United States has to Israel based on our principles, our ideas, our values. They're the same values. And I've often said, Mr. President, if there were not an Israel, we'd have to invent one."
Added emphasis to clarify the context of the quote.
> Iran and basically the rest of the Middle East, US needs an ally to keep the region in check.
The US (and also UK/France/Germany) have been bending over backwards to prop up Israel since LONG before Iran switched to an anti-US theocratic government.
Think about the crusader states[!] and Taiwan. You'll see a pattern there. Israel was important for the British, now the Americans and will be important for the next hegemon. It's a very old strategy used by empires to control whole regions. Having a whole "country" beats having a military base or an air-craft carrier by orders of magnitudes.
According to Sachs, Israel has masterfully manipulated US influence to extend its global reach, primarily through AIPAC's incredibly efficient lobbying - spending just hundreds of millions to secure billions in aid and trillions in military spending. Netanyahu's strategy has been particularly clever, pushing the US to overthrow Middle Eastern governments that oppose Israeli policies, as seen with Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Through campaign financing, Israel has basically bought out Congress for surprisingly little money, ensuring the US consistently backs them internationally - like vetoing UN resolutions that favor Palestinians. This US shield is so strong that when the UN voted on Palestinian self-determination, only the US, Israel, and a couple other countries opposed it. Even when Biden sets boundaries for Israeli actions, they just ignore them without consequences. The whole system's genius lies in how Israel's managed to maintain its policies despite global opposition, though Sachs thinks this might backfire by making Israel too isolated and blocking any chance of a two-state solution.
It might have been wise if Netanyahu hadn't propped up Hamas in the interests of keeping the Palestinian Authority from managing Gaza as well as the West Bank.
It might also have been wise for Israel to abandon the policy of settling the West Bank by force.
As you say, it takes two parties with a real interest in peace to achieve a two-state solution. Right now I'm not sure we even have one.
Equating GDP per capita with the quality of humans is... a tad inhumane. Individual influence to GDP per capita is non-existant for the vast majority of people, even in the richest countries.
Israel is a colony of US imperialism and functions as the US attack dog in the middle east, taking actions and expressing rhetoric in support of US hegemony that are politically infeasible.
From my weak understanding, it’s the only ally the west (USA) has in the Middle East, so they’re important strategically - for military bases and other reasons I don’t really understand, and so are propped up by financial aid and weapons and other help (intelligence etc?) beyond what would normally happen to a similar country.
The US has several allies in the middle east. Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar all have major non-NATO ally status with the US, the same status as Israel. Jordan in particular is a very close US partner.
I should add, none of these countries are treaty allies of the US, i.e. none of them have a mutual defense treaty with the US. The one country that is a treaty ally of the US in the region is Turkey, though that relationship has been strained in the last couple of decades
Given Israel is the motherland for many Jewish people, plus almost 2.5% of the USA is Jewish, plus there are almost 16 million Jewish people globally, I would imagine that.
> When was the last time a head of state was arrested by the ICC?
It also acts as a deterrent as much of the world will now likely be out of bounds for travel for either the Israelis or Hamas leadership who were issued warrants.
Wow, this took a long time to come after the application for the warrants. 185 days compared to 23 days for Putin's arrest warrant — but then again, one was against the wishes of the USA and the west while the other was at their behest.
I wouldn't say "and the west" without more qualifications. The USA and Germany are solidly behind whatever the Israeli government does. England a bit less so and the rest of "the west" (however you want to define it) is more ambivalent. My point is that if only two countries (the USA and Germany) would make their support more conditional (conditional on the israeli government not commiting war crimes for example), then things could change a lot
You’re right, there are notable exceptions in the form of western nations that have backed the enforcement of international law to put an end to the mass killings and starvation taking place in Gaza. Ireland, Spain, Norway, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Denmark, and Belgium come to mind, ranging from “supporting the independence of the ICC and not commenting on proceedings” to “welcoming the investigation and the end of the killings.”
But while the US (not an ICC member) simply insulted the court and the notion of holding an Israeli leader accountable, it was the UK that demanded hearings on the legality of pursuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. Aside from Germany’s staunch and unconditional support for Israel, other Western countries that heavily criticized the decision included Hungary, Austria, Czechia, Canada, Australia, and Italy - important to note that some of which also mentioned that despite their long list of misgivings and outrages they nevertheless respected the independence of the court.
The difference is that "America" has no other meaning (in English, that is. In some other languages it means the landmass we call "the Americas"). Whereas "England" means something different from the UK.
If you make a court under the UN and you trail US' adversaries' (Serbia) leaders (Milosovic), WHILE the US (who we know --thanks Snowden and Assange-- commits plenty of war crimes) does not recognize it: that is the definition of a kangaroo court.
Just for show. Just to provide some veil of legitimacy for the US actions to evil does without the US itself being held to the same standards.
My guess is that it's simply a matter of how difficult it is to prove the issue. The Putin case was very simply because there is an official state program to do things that are considered genocide. Israel is at least pretending they are letting aid in.
Israel is not pretending. They've let in tons of aid, that is stolen by Hamans constantly. I want to remind you that an American soldier has died during the built of a humanitarian port by the US navy.
But that's what the court itself is for! You get plausibly charged with a crime, you go to court, and the case is determined one way or the other.
What happened in this case is that Israel beseeched its allies to lobby the court not to look into what was happening [0]. And the UK demanded hearings to impede the ICC warrants from being issued (purely politically, as this was done under Sunak and then Starmer/Lammy dropped the objection, but the delays were already underway).
A whole cladde of people here who collectively decided that the politics of the outside and the ugly that came from it does not matter anymore, specialising in the interior design of society with the most horrid weapon being a social ostracizing. The idea that building could pancake under artillery fire from the vacuum just is not part of reality and now papertiger hissy fits from the windows .
There's a large attempt to pin all of this on Netanyahu and his closest cabinet but what he's saying is pretty much supported by nearly all of Israeli society down to individual citizens. I encourage everyone to find people who live in Israel on X and translate their tweets so they can see for themselves.
It's utterly appalling, and the main reason I tend to think the end of apartheid in Israel will look substantially different than the end of apartheid in South Africa.
Liberal Zionists like to pretend Gallant was the "moderate one" but in reality there is essentially no moderate in current Israeli society, there is only the secular far right and the messianic further right. The two differ only in small derails of their preferred strategy when using the military to ethnically cleanse Gaza. There is no significant coalition that recognizes basic human rights for Palestinians.
He is a member of Netanyahu's party, which is a right-wing party (though not far-right in terms of Israeli politics).
He is certainly not a moderate, but he is far more trusted than Netanyahu and is considered a moderating and opposing influence on him by many people. Mostly representing the interested of the defence establishment, as opposed to purely political interests (or, if you ask me, as opposed to Netanyahu's only real interest, which is himself).
He's said this "many" times? Can you show some other times he's said this?
This clip is IIRC from about 3 days after Hamas invaded Israel and massacred civilians. He announced an utterly immoral siege policy, but abandoned it almost immediately.
And while you can certainly cherry-pick some awful statements from Gallant, he's also made many statements that make it clear that Israel is not targeting civilians.
Being the minister of defense gives you culpability for the military actions the ICC has decided are war crimes, I'd think? But I am not an expert in international law, just don't find it surprising.
Yep, commanders are responsible for the actions undertaken by their troops.
It's called Command responsibility or sometimes the Yamashita principle/doctrine, after a Japanese general who was executed for horrific crimes committed by troops not even under his command, but in his area of responsibility (they were naval troops in the Philippines, he was commander of the Philippines, the navy and the army hated each other; he pulled out of Manilla in order to wage war in favourable terrain, the naval infantry commander refused to follow him and fought a brutal urban battle that destroyed the city, and on purpose killed more than a hundred thousand civilians).
Some Japanese officers take responsibility very seriously.
>Hitoshi Imamura was a Japanese general who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, and was subsequently convicted of war crimes. Finding his punishment to be too light, Imamura built a replica of his prison in his garden and confined himself there until his death.
He's the minister of defense (not anymore but was at the time). If the allegations are true, then as minister of defense he probably ordered the things in question (or failed to stop them)
that is a good question. we've seen folks from the Biden/Harris admin resign over military aid to Israel, and it appears the admin indeed was in violation of US law when said aid was given. could they face criminal charges for complicity? i find it hard to believe they had no idea what was going on.
another question i have regards the future: it appears the US is working on even more aid for Israel, see Bernie's latest attempt to prevent that. now that leadership in Israel has warrants out for them, will the US aid continue? certainly would be a bad look to continue aiding Israel at this point i reckon.
what an absolute tragic mess all around. i'm ashamed of our complicity, and sadly will not be surprised one bit if we continue giving them aid despite it all.
Biden/Harris, Starmer, Scholz and Macron have all been supplying Israel with arms, all whole knowing they are carrying out a genocide. The US has also had boots on the ground, and the UK has flown hundreds of spy and missions over Gaza. Meanwhile, they all give near carbon-copy press statements that read like they came straight from Israeli Hasbara.
They have knowingly supported and aided Israel, and I hope more warrants are forthcoming.
Come to think of it, plenty of journalists and media orgs are complicit too, such as the BBC.
I wish. The US government has been an absolute disgrace in how we've handled support of Israel unflinchingly. I guess we didn't write enough sternly written letters while people were being forcibly starved to death.
This leads to a bit of a conundrum for the Netherlands. It is the home of the ICC and officially a big sponsor of international justice. But also the right wing government has a hard on for Israel. I don't think that our esteemed ancestors ever envisioned white people to end up in court...
The leader of the PVV (biggest political party) is going to visit colonial settlers in Israël.
Many immigrants hate Israel.
Official state policy is a two state solution.
The relocation of the Dutch embassy to Jerusalem.
You could make a Netflix TV show about this. May we all live interesting times!
Hopefully he gets arrested that would fulfill me with joy and laughter. But realistically nobody was and probably will be able to humble Netanyahu, he is a above the ladder psychopath.
E.g. Going to 2 then down to 0, back up, back down and stabilizing again at 0; of course sophisticated coordinated activity will pace itself, even if across real users, as to not "waste their ammo" or be blatantly obvious; makes me wonder if there have been any studies analyzing this.. anywho. Back to life.
I really don't think this belongs on the front page.
It is a highly divisive political issue with strong radicalisation
at the edges of any discourse on it.
I have my own strong opinions on it, but arguing it does
not in my opinon belong on the front page here.
There are plenty of places you can go and have this discussion
in as heated of a version as you prefer.
I disagree. #1 this topic is not as divisive as it may seem. There is consensus as to what is happening and only a minority of the world thinks otherwise.
#2 Israel is a major tech partner and most large tech companies have offices in Tel Aviv. Many startups that we discuss here are headquartered in Tel Aviv. The head of state of the country having an ICC arrest warrant and the situation at large have major consequences to the tech world and thus HackerNews users have a unique lens through which to have discourse. Discourse with an angle that you won't find elsewhere this is discussed.
Huh? The vast majority of the world has repeatedly voted at the UN to accuse Israel of related war crimes, and public opinion in the vast majority of the world follows as well. There really is a consensus worldwide, with a minority disagreeing, centered around the US.
There is a strong but not unanimous consensus that Israel is committing war-crimes and enforcing an apartheid state in the territories it occupies. There is consternation over whether Israel's actions constitute genocide.
That said, I think it's fair to assume that people from the US and other Israel-allied nations are disproportionately represented on Hacker News. So, we should not expect the global consensus to be reflected here.
But I think think this topic both (1) is on topic for HackerNews given Israel's outsized prevalence in the tech industry, (2) has geopolitical implications that I think are worth discussing.
Either way, HackerNews is an outlier in terms of the quality of the discussion, among social media or forums where people will argue both for and against Israel's actions. While I am very much on the "against Israel's actions" side, I do think there is value in this discussion, and so I am happy this topic is here on HackerNews.
A quick check of your recent HN comments proves to me that you have only ever researched / trusted a single narrative and talking about this with you won't be very productive.
I think you would find it useful, even for supporting your current arguments more substantially, to read any of the following (in order of recommendation):
- The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
- The Holocaust Industry
- Except for Palestine
I also used to justify or overlook Israel's history and military actions in the same way but once you allow yourself to hear from scholars on both sides, you can't really go back to who you were before.
I appreciate your condescension, but if you believe a few recent comments constitute proof of what I researched or trusted, perhaps this discussion isn't very productive.
I've been reading multiple outlets in English, French, Hebrew and Arabic (using machine translation), as well as history books and articles, for quite a while before October 7th and have formed opinions. I don't feel I need your help supporting them.
Not super meaningful in reality - any country looking to arrest either man should tread carefully.
The American Service-Members' Protection 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".
Israel is listed in the act as covered. Any means explicitly includes lethal force, which is why the act is nicknamed the "Invade the Hague" act.
The question here is why is only Israel covered in this act?
Also anti-BDS legislation in finance, regardless of ethical etc. concerns?
The US gives $4bn/year to Israel gratis, and so far $20bn in weapons over the course of this conflict, including advanced weapons like the F35 WITH source code access (which no other F35 partner has) - why?
There have been no investigations of US deaths WRT settler violence, aid workers killed etc. Normally with any US death it's a huge issue.
What does Israel do in return to make it such a favoured country?
eg. 20bn in disaster relief aid to Florida would be probably more welcome by US citizens.
It's not only Israel. It's all of NATO plus "major non-NATO allies" specifically Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand
The biggest condition behind US aid to Jordan and Egypt is them continuing friendly relations with Israel. In 1970s when this aid was started- this condition was made very explicit by USA.
So in other words, these two at least are nothing but indirect aid to Israel.
You could ask the same questions about that yes, but whataboutism does not answer the questions here.
For Ethiopia it's flagged as humanitarian aid, and likely for Jordan as a result of the neighbouring Syria war.
None of that is arms though, and critically more than the aid, why the legislation?
What justifies making it illegal to stop investing in a country despite it's actions? Surely that's a commercial decision rather than a legislative one?
We gave Pakistan and Iran a few billion dollars in military aid a while back. What we got in return was a Bangladesh genocide and an Islamic revolution.
Lesson learned: arms sales can be used to ideologically justify butchering civilians if the government receiving that aid is not held accountable.
The Netherlands said that they would arrest anybody accused. That would be peculiar to see, what would actually happen if anybody of the accused were to travel there.
The Dutch have a very lackadaisical attitude to law, and at the very same time a very principled cut-off-my-nose-to-spite-my-face rule of law mentality.
If I were a senior Israeli or Hamas leader I’d avoid the place for a couple of decades in case of sealed charges.
> If I were a senior Israeli or Hamas leader I’d avoid the place for a couple of decades in case of sealed charges.
If the Netherlands granted diplomatic immunity to said leaders before their visit, and then decided to arrest them, that by itself would be an act of war.
And even worse, it would ruin basically the only treaty every country has agreed to - the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
In practice the Netherlands, by announcing openly they would be arrested before their arrival, had refused to grant them diplomatic immunity. So it is going to be extremely difficult to argue such an arrest would be against the Vienna convention. The Vienna convention explicitly states that the receiving state can declare before arrival that a diplomat will not be granted immunity.
There are many laws on the books that are ignored or in practice re-interpreted in the ground so that enforcement is only attempted in the most egregious situations.
Case in point: the “gedoogbeleid” for soft drugs. Contrary to many people’s belief, possession, sale etc of these are not legalised in the way that we see in many other jurisdictions. Yet, teenagers sit on the side of the canal near my old home getting happily stoned with their friends and say “hi” to passing police and “handhaving” city rule enforcement officers. They buy from the “coffeeshop” whose coffee making is more theoretical than practical, even though sales of the weed they buy are against the law. Sometimes inspectors will visit the shop to ensure that no tobacco is being smoked, but not being concerned about weed, with the threat of large fines or even loss of license to sell soft drugs (illegal, remember?) being withdrawn.
I'm sure if they try it will go down perfectly well with the rest of the world.
It's not like the US has a monopoly on finances or force globally. China and BRICS are waiting in the wings.
The EU has a mutual defence clause, and one of the EU's member states, France, has nuclear strike capabilities, including at least one submarine with nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles on constant patrol somewhere in the oceans.
I doubt it would get to it, but if the US legitimately invades the Netherlands to rescue war criminals, France is more likely to side with the Netherlands than with the US.
Yes. Very low chances, but if there's one country in Europe which would be willing to go as far to stand up to the US, it's France. It's always been fiercely independent - cf. military procurement, it does what it needs for itself and maintains its supply chains; withdrawing from the NATO command structure; it has always had an independent but aligned foreign policy (e.g. not joining the Iraq war); and French leaders have often, and especially the current one, Macron, been very outspoken about being EU and Europe first and how we should distance ourselves from the US and not rely as much on them.
In comparison, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, Turkey (biggest European NATO militaries) all have American bases, and extensively use American military hardware.
Because Israel is an integral part of our industry. Most major corporations have their presence in Israel. Moreover, Israel is using AI extensively in their war on Palestinian people, which they develop in partnership with the US.
A significant portion of the US economy uses Israeli developed cybersecurity products. I wonder if there are any backdoors Mossad uses to consolidate influence.
On HN, having some stories with political overlap is both inevitable and ok—the question is which particular stories those should be. We try to go for the ones that contain significant new information. See more at https:///item?id=42204689.
This approach has been stable for many years and there's no intention to allow HN to become a primarily-political site (quite the contrary) but it also doesn't work to try to exclude these things altogether.
I don't think I've seen any pro-Israeli post in top since the beginning of the war. Definitely anything I submitted was flagged to death almost immediately, even if it was hacker-ish (say, the analysis of the Hamas statistics). You can say of course that users decide what they want, but for political stories at least I don't think it is straightforward
The HN community is strongly anti-Israel. Which is surprising, but then again, what's really still surprising these days?
I do think this news is major enough to justify being on HN. There is at least some useful discussions on the ICC that I found interesting, intermixed between the typical antisemitic messaging we're all-too used to seeing.
I guess my question is towards admins to decide which stories to unflag and not to users. I'm sure many stories from both sides could got to the top if users wouldn't be able to flag them.
I suppose there's a bit of nuance here. I agree HN tends to be left-wing. I'm just surprised (and again, not very, not anymore) at the degree of anti-Israel rhetoric I see here - it's more alike what I'd expect from more fringe corners of the Internet.
I hope the community is able to moderate itself appropriately, so far I think it's doing a fairly good job.
> I'm just surprised (and again, not very, not anymore) at the degree of anti-Israel rhetoric
You are saying this as if anti-Israel rhetoric is something bad. Israel is an apartheid state currently engaged in genocide. It is an absolutely normal reaction on the part of this and other communities to call out Israel's atrocities.
Dang, it's a serious problem when discussions like this result in any serious attempts to engage from one side getting flagged to death.
That's what happens here, and on any news involving the Gaza War, for quite some time. To someone who doesn't use [showdead] this creates an impression of partiality in this community which is not borne out by reality.
Which makes Hacker News appear complicit in supporting that point of view.
If you're going to keep overriding the flag mechanism and letting these posts hit the front page, you need to disable flagging of individual posts except by you or another moderator (if there is one?) after manual review. The status quo is unfair.
> I don’t personally have the energy to combat all of it.
You have to put in the effort you think the current situation is. Everybody else is doing the same. Indeed see a lot of grayed out comments that defend Israel and wish they were regular color so it’s just a discussion. But in the same way commers get downvoted they could also be upvoted. Maybe your opinions have many people who disagree and few who agree? I urge all thise who agree with you to upvote your comments.
Maybe Mr Paul Graham has a conscience? The article you link to makes no mention of the atrocities Israel did and is doing in Gaza. It’s not just defence, it’s just starving people. Any person with dignity should have sympathy for dying people and especially at such magnitude. And hey, dont try to paint me terrorist supporter bullshit, I am not supporting and have any sympathy for Hamas, they disgust me and their attack was just dumb but you know what? What Israel has been doing lately disgusts me, been giving them a free pass all along. I am still sympathetic to Israelis who are against this as much as I am sympathetic to dying Palestinians. You seem to be one of those unscrupulous ones who has no conscience.
Discussion about Trump winning had like 2k comments. There was also that Supreme Court ruling from earlier in the year about how presidents can't be held liable for criminal conduct or whatever.
HN is almost certainly not the place for it.
HN is a much better place than most of the Internet to discuss politics, this I know.
This will not amount to anything, but it's nice to know we aren't all crazy or anti-semitic for thinking the Israeli state has been acting very poorly in regards to the State of Palestine. Feels a little bit like trying to get organized crime on tax evasion.
What is the point of the ICC? Russia doesn't recognize it, Israel doesn't recognize it and even the United States doesn't recognize it. I am confused at what these warrants even mean.
In this case, to make a political statement against Israel and their leadership.
Note that the only member of Hamas indicted, Mohammed Deif, will never see a day in court. As the ICC already knows, he was killed in an airstrike earlier this year.
Since there has been no proof of his death bar the announcements from Israel, it is sensible to consider him as a wanted man until there is concrete evidence he is dead.
In practice these warrants mean that they cannot travel to any country that does recognize the ICC without being arrested, which means they almost certainly won't.
The fact that it's the only country he's been able to visit since the warrant was issued (aside from North Korea) indicates that, by and large -- it's working as intended.
"The fact that he's only been able to visit a relative handful of countries -- nearly all of which were traditional Cold War allies (and several of these being current or former vassal states) -- indicates that, by and large, the warrant is working as intended."
I count 12. However only Mongolia is a member of the ICC, 3 (Kyrgyzstan, UAE and Uzbekistan) have signed the Rome Statute, but have not ratified it, and none of the other 8 (China, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan) has even signed it. Russia it self has signed it, but, like the USA and Israel, has notified the Secretary General that they have no intention of ratifying it.
I'm looking at the bullet lists for 2023-2024, whereas it seems you may be looking at the table of all post-2022 visits (several of which were before the warrant was issued).
Just like how Putin couldn't travel to, say, South Africa, after a warrant was issued for his arrest. Oh wait, South Africa declined to enforce the ICC arrest warrant in that case.
I don't see this meaningfully constraining Netanyahu's foreign travel options.
It would be politically very risky for any European democracy to not enforce this arrest warrant, much more so than for South Africa or Mongolia. Israel is not popular among the public in Europe, and if a government invites him for a political visit, and don’t arrest him, that government will have to pay for that in the next election (and probably sooner, with mass demonstration and public unrest).
Now, lets talk about Putin’s visit to South Africa. So Putin was scheduled to visit a BRICS summit in South Africa despite the ICC arrest warrant. South Africa claimed they wouldn’t enforce the arrest warrant. People got very mad. South Africa, in response, declared that Putin would only participate in the summit remotely, where the arrest warrant couldn’t be enforced.
Now this was obviously a way to bypass the ICC warrant, and the stunt did not go well in the general public. In the next election the ANC, the governing party at the time, lost their parliamentary majority for the first time since South Africa became a democracy in 1994. Now South Africans had several other reasons to ditch the ANC, but this stunt certainly didn’t help.
In a great many other countries, including nearly all Western countries, the warrant is still in effect.
And even in the South African case: the government's decision was considered quite tenuous, which is why Putin cancelled his visit, in was was considered to be a major diplomatic setback at the time. So at the end of the day -- the warrant still had significant effect, and fulfilled its purpose.
There have been several pundits with opinion on the matter, you’ll find quite a few in any news source (personally I recommend al-Jazeera). The gist of it is that this will have implication mostly around travels of Israeli officials to Europe. We might also see a slow and gradual policy shift in Europe as a result of this.
Rightfully so, their intentions and actions which have matched, have been clear for the last year. Hopefully the rest of the international community including governments will finally stand together and call them out for the crimes they have been committing. This is hopefully a step to removing arms sales to Israel as well from many countries.
Hacker News Guidelines: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
It's not a significant update. When the evergiven got stuck in the suez canel; if a court issued an arrest warrant for the captain that wouldn't have a historical impact.
In a hundred years from now, the leaders of Isreal that people talk about will be the first, the last and the second to last. Similar to how when people talk about the Roman Empire (~500 year span) it's just Cesear.
Users flagged it, as is common for the most divisive topics.
I've turned the flags off now, in keeping with HN's standard practices: some (but only some) stories with political overlap are allowed, and in the case of a Major Ongoing Topic (MOT) we prefer the stories that contain Significant New Information (SNI).
I agree, so long as the people who flagged a given submission or post should also be displayed, for the same reason of transparency. Also the items a user flags should be included in their profile, for the same reason of transparency.
In the interest of full disclosure and the same transparency, I say this as someone who has had such a flag-bombed submission saved, an NPR report about one of the first systemic uses of gun-armed, AI-powered flying drones to mass-shoot people (not to mention that location targeting for the shootings is largely AI-driven as well). I struggle to think of a good reason to flag that as off-topic for Hacker News:
What you should do is reduce the degree of bombast and aggro in your comments which trash the discussion no matter what side of the various issues you happen to fall on. It's especially against your own interests to argue like that when you're arguing for an unpopular or contrarian viewpoint - it's not going to get heard if you yell it at everyone.
> It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours.
As an "outside observer" to the insanity in this thread, I think your post and others like it only solidify Dang's point on this. In your eyes there will never be an opposing viewpoint to yours that you don't consider "anti-Israel". It'll always seem as such to you regardless of any rational explanation.
Edit: this also goes for the poster that is indiscriminately going around throwing "zionist" labels against anyone that opposes their views. Which once again, solidifies Dang's point. Both you and they will always proclaim "bias!"
Dang's point is moot (thanks
dredmorbius for pointing this out) because the evidence of when he chooses to unflag posts have a clear bias, and he isn't transparent when he chooses to not intervene to allow flag posts, which also shows his bias, these discussions brings nothing to HN and are not in the spirit of HN regardless if it's pro or anti Israel or any other country.
My point is that this is HN, this isn't /r/news or /r/worldnews, politics don't have a place on this platform.
"In your eyes there will never be an opposing viewpoint to yours that you don't consider "anti-Israel". It'll always seem as such to you regardless of any rational explanation." - You don't know me, my opinions or my thought, what I'm for or against.
Dang's generally happy to respond to emails inquiring as to practices, though he's increasingly complaining about email load: <[email protected]>
I've done my own analysis of front-page activity on HN and, though that's a limited methodology, overall biases don't appear to be overt. Mostly, HN has difficulty in discussing controversial topics, whether political, technical, social, or other. That's inherent to the site mechanisms (voting, flagging, comments), and if anything mods intervene to counter that effect, though with limited success.
That's scattered over a number of comments, a general search will surface many of them:
You can also review dang's visible comments (a small subset of overall moderation, most of which is NOT by mods at all but by member votes/flags), to see what if any biases emerge. Largely to the extent that there are it's a status quo bias with tone policing as a principle issue. He's been getting better on that last point in the past few years, though I'll occasionally still find what I find to be unwarranted or unsympathetic interventions. And I do mean occasional --- maybe a every few months, for the most part.
If you do want to address controversial topics, remaining within HN's guidelines will greatly increase your efficacy:
I'd joined HN some time back feeling as if I were somewhat against the mainstream. I've had reasonable success in expressing my own views, and addressing bias whether through comments, votes, or emailing mods.
I appreciate your analysis and I would like, if you will, to focus on the controversial/flagged content analysis more.
What Dan has done is counter productive to his moderation efforts. If what you say is true that 'HN has difficulty in discussing controversial topics' and that the mods have 'limited success' he shouldn't have unflagged this item and just locked it for comments, he and the team can't possibly moderate an almost 1k comments post.
I don't know if they have specific tools to identify potentially problematic posts (P3?), though the flamewar detector and member flags would be obvious proxies. I've often had success in emailing specific issues (e.g., "ideological battle", "personal attacks", etc.)
If you'll spend a few moments contemplating what it takes to discuss highly controversial topics, political or otherwise, I suspect you'll realise that HN simply isn't equipped for that, and that very few open-access sites are.
(That'd be "none" in my experience, though I really wish it weren't the case. And if anyone cares to suggest what might make this possible or suggest literature on the topic, I'd appreciate it. Jürgen Habermas is the usual susepct though I haven't gone over his work on social discourse as thoroughly as I'd like.)
Edit/addition: HN moderation follows guidelines rather than content (to the extent that these can be distinguished). Which means that mods look to the guidelines for how to moderate, or justify those moderation decisions. The other site characteristic dang's commented on several times is how fragile the entire community is, and that most of the moderation is geared more around maintaining the community rather than bolstering or suppressing specific viewpoints (see: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>). Again, I've concerns with how this tends toward status quo bias, though that doesn't seem to be the principle focus of your own concerns here.
And on analysing post flags, I simply don't have insights into that data, though there are some proxies for this which I'd commented on in the comments search linked earlier. (Mostly: what topics/sites tend to see more/less flame/spiciness tendencies. Sites / topics (or word tokens) / submitters with a high comments-to-votes ratio would tend to be "spicier", and in general, odds are greater that moderator intervention has occurred for those cases. I've not looked into that specifically however.
There's flag protection that dang/moderators choose to enact on contentious posts like this one that result in them sticking around for way longer than without the protection. If anything, dang is biased in favor of political posts like these lasting way longer than I bet he'd personally want to.
I looked at a few myself, many are off-topic, or engage in whataboutism, or openly supported war crimes like collective punishment. Others are plain insults or racism.
I think it's reasonable to flag items which violate the site guidelines.
> for example #1 is not offtopic at all, it's a direct reply
I didn't say it was offtopic, I said it was offtopic whataboutism. All whataboutism is offtopic. Its entire purpose is to terminate conversation about the allegation(s) in question. Just because someone posts a reply doesn't mean the reply is on-topic.
As for the linked post, it's whataboutism, a shallow dismissal, and an insult to boot. A non-shallow dismissal would respectfully and directly address the allegations presented in the warrant. You can disagree with the court without being disagreeable, but that precludes inflammatory statements like "If this was a real court..." (it is one).
> And the one-sided nature of flagging is also fine with you?
I expect to see a level of flagging against each side in rough proportion to that side's inflammatory, off-topic, or rule-violating posts. For example, you previously linked to blatant racism against arabs, expressing confusion as to why it got flagged. Isn't it obvious? Racism is bad, dude.
Stories about divisive topics are routinely flagged from all sides.
It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours.
I could never say there's no bias—unconscious bias is a thing, for example—but I can tell you that we work hard to be fair, have been doing that for years, and there hasn't been any change in our practices.
Dang, you stated multiple times in the past that users who will use site for political discussions will be banned. I saw you in the past banning pro-israeli users after a few comments.
How is this user https:///submitted?id=runarberg whose submissions and commentary pretty much totally political in nature still not banned, according to guidelines that you very fairly enforce ?
Sure, and yet if you take the examples you provided, unless you just happened to make a series of "unlucky" picks the probability is that the bias is pretty strong.
Now of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a bias (depending on the bias of course), but if you clearly have one while claiming to try and be unbiased that's wrong imo.
I don't think you can call it bias because there are no options here. Israel outlawed foreign reporters from entering Gaza which means our only account of what's happening comes from an inherently biased Israeli perspective.
Flagging Haaretz columnists is not any more biased than flagging a "Death to America, Death to Israel" tweet. Flagging the ICC warrant because you disagree with it or it upsets you is conscious bias.
unflagging anti-israeli articles while keeping articles about other major events that have appearance of pro-israel - is bias.
banning pro-israeli posters after a few messages supporting israel for "it's not place for political discussions" and keeping on-site those who post continuously anti-israel articles - is bias.
> unflagging anti-israeli articles while keeping articles about other major events that have appearance of pro-israel - is bias.
To a limit. Very famously, a lot of Israeli publications promote an unrealistically positive perspective of their politics (a-la Hasbara). These Israeli articles with a predetermined bias are generally lower-quality and contribute to less fruitful discussion than the Israeli exposés like the "Lavander"/"Where's Daddy?" reports or the sniper drone allegations that NPR reported on yesterday. Since Israel has banned all other forms of reporting in Gaza I do not think it is biased to filter obvious propaganda when it appears.
> banning pro-israeli posters after a few messages supporting israel for "it's not place for political discussions" and keeping on-site those who post continuously anti-israel articles - is bias.
This I agree with. But it's not dang that's doing that, it's your everyone on HN that's not using a burner account and has the "flag" capability. We are extremely biased against fringe opinions expressed on fragile throwaway accounts. If you're seeing a disproportionate number of flagged Israeli perspectives, shouldn't that prompt a reflection on what the narrative is now? Gaza is not a back-burner discussion anymore, you cannot whataboutism or handwave justification for the plainly apparent ethnic cleansing Israel initiated.
npr article is not sourced well. somebody said something. 0 evidence. same like article about "israeli targeting ai" that was published on israeli blog without any proofs that resulted in a cheerfull israeli bashing session
i posted below a couple of "non-burner" accounts that post anti-israeli articles for an year already without bans. it includes account that posted this article. it explicitly against rules and dang banned repeatedly pro-israeli users for writing a dozen of comments. will it be hypocrisy ? bias ? editorial policy ? casual anti-semitism ?
To tell you the truth, I think you're crazy for expecting Hacker News of all places to not be biased. The website where users control comment and post visibility, where venture capital gets priority billing and anyone who shits on $TECH_CORP is hung up on a crucifix and poked with [150 more] comments? You mean they have strong opinions?
I disagree with a lot of the shit that gets flagged on this site. However, I don't think that posting the ICC warrant to HN is biased or even inherently political in nature. It's only Israeli nationalists pretending to be shocked at the world's reaction to Israel's choices. That's not a carte-blanche endorsement of everything that gets flagged on this website, but in this case I think the digressing opinion is the clearly biased one here.
Suck it up. This happens on HN all the time and unless you pay for the server costs nobody is going to give you the time of day. There are other websites that value consistency, you're not using one of them.
i know that hn is biased. even more than anime tities. but i am talking here about dang specifically who supposed to enforce rules impartially. instead of this dang creates out of hn askmiddleeast.
> The Act gives the president power 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".[2]
If you dig a little further, you'll notice that it also applies to "military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand."
I wanna emphasize: This pre-dates Trump, Biden and Obama. This has been a law for over two decades. It passed both the House and the Senate with very little opposition. Both parties voted in favour of it.
One of the most absurdist takes I've seen even on the context of this topic, which brings out the worst in all of us.
It's called sovereignty. A set of sovereign nations should absolutely be able to decide that they want to form a court and arrest someone for war crimes if they set foot in their country. It's not like the court is sending agents to non-participating countries to arrest people. If the US govt decides they want to arrest e.g. Putin the second he sets foot on US soil, it's their right to do so. In fact it does so, just look at the FBI most wanted fugitives list, or Interpol red notices. Same goes here.
The prosecuted are free not to set foot in participating countries.
> Hamas is a terrorist group that was elected by Gaza’s residents.
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that a strong Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state." - From "Buying Quiet: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas", NYTimes [1]
Man, Trump isn't going to shit about leaving NATO. He'll moan about some countries not spending enough, that's about it.
Leaving NATO would mean closing US-bases in Europe overnight, not getting valuable intel from partners in NATO, jeopardizing US defense deals, and a million other things.
As always, it's grandstanding from Trump to get some extra bucks from his allies.
US pulling out of NATO would likely embolden China to make a move on Taiwan. Seeing how much of the US economy revolves around technology, I really don't think there's any other option than to defend Taiwan, as it stands. Sure - Europe also depends on chips from Taiwan, but they'd also be swamped in the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
I should start a running list of all the people who say "Trump isn't going to...!" and then how they act like it was all part of the plan when he actually does it.
* People who say "Trump isn't going to...!" and then how they act like it was all part of the plan when he actually does it.
* People who say "Trump is going to...!" and the how they quietly stop mentioning it and move on to the next (bad) thing he's going to do when he doesn't do it.
You also need a list for things Trump attempts to do but ultimately gets stopped by more reasonable people in his administration.
The size of that list in his prior term is a lot larger than many people are comfortable with, and the purge of insufficiently loyal members from the party as well as loyalty tests for appointees suggests much of that list is now back in play.
his first term, despite all the clownery and drama, ended up being run of the mill republican politics. Why do you think things will be different this time?
Preparation and intent. I don't think Trump believed he would win the first time around and people in his first administration were either loyal and stupid or competent and not willing to carry out his most extreme orders. This time he is putting a team in place that is malicious and willing to do whatever he says. He also has the added incentive of all of his court cases and debt from court cases that he would love to make disappear.
I don't think that leaving NATO would necessitate closing US bases in Germany or Italy; it is my understanding that those bases are required (to be provided by the respective 'hosts') as a condition of the treaties which ended World War II.
Parties can withdraw from a treaty. There's such a thing as state sovereignty. :)
They can withdraw based on treaty itself or based on law of treaties (art 42)
What happens then of course only depends on what the sovereigns will want to do... In this case I'd presume it would not mean restarting WW2 after zillion years have passed. :-)))
Trump is heavily funded by Zionist extremists, but he isn't one himself. As soon as the ship really starts sinking (which could be induced by a Netanyahu arrest), he will attempt to jump ship and save himself.
It's a bit reminiscent of the Bangladesh genocide by Pakistan, to whom the United States also sold weapons and also did nothing to stop hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.
Have to wonder what compelled folks to do a drive by on the “I disagree” button. I wouldn’t have thought anything I said to be controversial amongst geopolitically aware individuals.
I'm wondering what power does the ICC have to carry out its sentencing if the US chooses to disagree with it?
Same with The Hague court, where the US said its soldiers would be imune from standing trial for crimes.
So if these international courts are only allowed selective enforcement, what's the point of their existence? To only prosecute people the US doesn't choose to protect? Then what's the line between good guys and bad guys?
There is pretty much no way to enforce so-called "international law" other than through sanctions or direct military action. Germany is not going to arrest Netanyahu if he visited the country. What would be the consequence of that? Nothing of substance, maybe a sternly worded letter from the ICC, but there are no effective and practical means of forcing them to act.
In order to avoid the problem, Germany would probably not allow Netanyahu to visit the country in the first place.
If I remember correctly, a former president of the USA cancelled a visit to Switzerland because they were wanted for war crimes. Would Switzerland have arrested that former president of the USA? Hard to say: cancelling the visit was an easier solution for the people who made the decision.
In Britain, an Israeli general arrived by plane but never disembarked because of an outstanding warrant for war crimes. Would they really have arrested the Israeli general? Hard to say: not letting them disembark was an easier solution for the people who made the decision.
Obliged by who? The US can choose to wipe their ass with whatever they signed and arbitrarily say NO to a request they don't like. Who's gonna hold them accountable for breaking their signed agreement?
Wasn't there the same pitfall with the League of Nations?
I was just answering your question my friend. Given the states are not party to the ICC, they have very little to do with it. But to your point: what teeth does the ICC have? In theory the 120ish other countries that WOULD arrest someone with a warrant, south korea, ausieland, canada etc. In theory.
The US is not a signatory to the ICC. The US legal position is that the bilateral immunity agreements it has with many (mostly non-european) countries that are signatories to the ICC prevent those countries from being required to arrest US citizens accused of war crimes. I'm not aware of any legal theory in or agreements that lets the US directly block the arrest of non-us citizens in a foreign country so it would have to be the result of backroom pressure.
It’s really rather simple. Anyone on this planet only has as much authority as their guns provide them. The people who operate these courts have fewer guns than the US, so they don’t get authority over US interests.
Of course. Isn't it obvious how in history books the "good guys" were always those with the most guns who ended up defeating the guys with less guns, who lost and were always the bad guys, 100% of the time? What a strange coincidence.
US interests is a very broad category, it frequently doesn’t get its way.
There’s tit for tat involved where things might escalate to the point where the US kills some people via airstrikes, but it simply can’t escalate everything to a full on war.
“He served 21 months of his sentence before being released in a prisoner swap in 1962.” So no actual retaliation, and we gave up something they wanted for him.
There’s also edge cases. Yeh Changti was trained by the CIA and then shot down flying a U-2 in 1963 and held in China for 19 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeh_Changti
Listing examples of chinese nationals captured in a time when 85% of Americans today weren’t even alive isn’t proving the point you seem to think it is.
The simple fact of the matter is that modern countries simply don’t want to mess with america.
Your question included allies, but if we’re talking US citizens only USS Pueblo (AGER-2) Was a capture of a US military vehicle, torture of its crew, and we did nothing.
Sure, going back to the main point North Korea has guns and this helps to hem get their way. And if we restrict ourselves to those countries which are relevant to the main point (ICC member states), they don’t, and don’t. What’s your point? To date all you’ve done is list rule proving exceptions.
That’s no true Scotsman… but anyway as long as you’re giving up the idea that this different recently.
Compare France or the UK as ICC member states with NK and your argument is obviously false. They have plenty of nukes to be a major issue.
I’ll flip this around, try and find examples that fit your narrative outside of fiction or active wars. IE, situations where civilians are in charge of deciding what our military is doing.
I still don’t know what your point is. I’ve been consistent since the beginning. UK and France are quite weak indeed, nuclear is a separate plane that is irrelevant in this thread.
> Do we have many examples of cases where countries have held US soldiers or commanders of allied nations captive without repercussion?
And clear answer to that such a year yes, with dozens of examples off the top of my head that I was unsure in what context you might assume it was true.
> UK and France are quite weak indeed
Not in comparison to NK and especially not historic NK they aren’t. Have you ever actually studied foreign events, history, or looked into foreign militaries etc? You have such a distorted viewpoint I just find it baffling. In terms of traditional military NK has 1/3 the UK’s population, vastly worse industry, outdated equipment, minimal ability to move beyond their borders, etc. In a head to head fight they would lose badly.
Its been years, but I worked on strategic planning for the DoD. As in the group that actually plans how to preform an invasion, though I was developing the software not doing the actual planning. They still wanted us to have an understanding of what’s involved.
All I can suggest is your methods are inherently flawed. Ask yourself why you were unaware of all these incidents and how you might change that deficiency.
Yes, I see that it’s been years. That’s why all your examples are ancient news. Consider other people might be active, and that you never actually refuted my point.
Not in the ways you might think. I used examples from well outside the periods and events I have classified knowledge of, for legal and ethical reasons.
However, reading your responses I can understand why you ended up with such a wildly inaccurate understanding of the world. It’s been interesting talking with you.
yes, and in this case, the relevant guns are those of the ICC and Israel.
The court has no army or power, while Israel does, so US guns are already irrelevant. Israel doesnt need US military protection form the ICC any more than it needs US protection from random critics.
Guns don’t exist in a vacuum. They need constant financial support. US provides that support. Without US, they have no support. Without support, they have no guns.
Don’t just take my word for it, look at all the published requests Israel has made for American gun money.
I don't think so. I am aware that the US has thrown in about 20 Billion to the war effort. Israel has spent more than twice that much from its own budget.
Pre-war US military aid was about 4 billion/year, compared to the the Israeli domestic budget of 16 Billion/year.
The idea that Israel would have "no guns" without US aid is flat out wrong. Doubly so when you are talking about enough guns to to defy the ICC, which actually has zero.
Ha. “more than double”. So, a third? If I needed government welfare to pay half my salary in order to get by, I’d consider myself pretty damn dependent. A far cry from getting a free meal at costco to be sure.
But I agree it’s not the ICCs guns that are the problem for any israeli’s wellbeing.
That hardly seems objective. Every single statement I saw on the homepage was anti-Israeli. This Israeli government has done any number of horrible things, but it's a complicated situation that is not at all summed up well by "Israel bad". Acting like Hamas hasn't committed awful atrocities or that everything Israel does is bad isn't going to help innocent civilians caught up in this mess.
Yes, basically McCarthyism. Did you see the USA bill where the Treasury secretary can unilaterally designate any nonprofit a "terrorist organization" and remove their funding?
I am not against ICC. I am against any above nation world wide idiocies.
Hamas didn't do any crime against me on oct 7, Israel didn't do any crime against me afterwards, so the idea of some organization chasing after perpetrators in my name is absurd. Crimes against humanity is stupid concept. It has never had any kind of background grounded in anything resembling reality. ditto with UN - nations are anything but united. Now as talking heads it may have some worth, but to give this organization something like power (no matter how fake) is absurd.
Because US and European countries very directly supports Israel in this case. In the other cases you refer to they are conflicts independent of western countries or at least the western influences are more indirect.
Yeah, by comparison the total coverage of the ongoing devastating civil wars in Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar and Haiti is miniscule.
I guess to play devil's advocate, the US is much more involved in Palestine via its essentially unconditional military support for Israel, so it makes sense for the American left to make noise because in theory they could influence things.
Our tax money is funding these atrocities. I felt the same way about the genocide in Yemen.
>Around the world, countless marginalized groups face equally dire or even worse conditions and would welcome similar support from these people
I don't think this is true. The majority of people dying of or suffering from starvation on earth right now are in Gaza.
>Yet, these so-called human rights advocates remain willfully ignorant of anyone or anything happening outside of the US and the Israel/Palestine conlflict.
You have blinders on if you think this is the case.
>Given this, how can anyone take these protesters seriously when they exhibit a groupthink mentality, lacking self-awareness or critical thinking, and behaving more like zombies than independent thinkers?
I'd rather you didn't take us seriously if you're not going to fully understand our goals or reasons for our beliefs.
This is textbook whataboutism. I live in the UK. I'm outraged by how much time/money is spent on Israel and Ukraine issues than our own. Similar to yourself, I have to wonder why UK govt chose to help one side with weapons in these specific conflicts. The difference here is of course, protestors are there on their own free will (for the most part, I guess?), whilst I don't have a say in how my tax money is being used.
They are right, though, aren’t they? We came up with these regulations and international agreements for a reason.
If they ignore war crimes, their authority loses meaning, but if they pass judgment that we know is going to be completely ignored, their authority also loses meaning. Unless the powers that be decide to honor their word, it’s all pointless. What’s next?
They ignore war crimes plenty when it comes to Russia, Turkey, etc.
According to UN Israel is the worst country there is, as over half of the resolutions are against Israel.
It is not a war crime to wage war. Besides that Viktor Sokolov, Sergey Kobylash, Sergei Shoigu, and Valery Gerasimov have all been served warrants not related to the large scale child abductions, but targeting of civilians. Also the child trafficking is still war related.
Please inform yourself better, so you don't spread obvious false claims in the future.
>Please inform yourself better, so you don't spread obvious false claims in the future.
I am well informed, thank you.
UN consistently downplays Russian crimes, secretary-general smiles and laughs with worlds bloodiest dictators while the west is afraid to as much as lift a finger to put this terror to a stop.
This ICC ruling is just the latest in a series of hypocritical accusations against Israel and Ukraine.
It's difficult to discuss this with you, as firstly you're confusing the UN and the ICC, and secondly you're not providing much in the way of concrete examples.
It was indeed widely seen as a poor decision when Antonio Guterres visited Putin. However, the UN has consistently taken the stance that Putin has violated international charters and committed war crimes, e.g. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/un-commissio...
These warrants aren’t for waging war either. They are for crimes against humanity, including hindering aid from reaching civilians, and for targeting hospitals.
For the 2023 warrants, that was the clearest path they had towards proving genocidal intent. Putin and Lvova-Belova both made clear statements about their intent to traffick children from Ukraine to Russia.
The 2024 warrants were for attacking civilian objects and crimes against humanity.
It isn't scary at all. I for one, would much prefer to live in a world where war crimes and acts of genocide are appropriately called out. The fact this hasn't come sooner is the scary thing.
Because nobody is invading Israel. Nobody's declaring war.
The whole point of international law is to hold citizens of sovereign nations accountable, without having to go to war to achieve it.
Nobody has legal authority to go into Israel to seize Netanyahu. But now he knows that if he tries to travel to Europe, he will be seized upon entry. That's not war, that's simply apprehending someone who there is an arrest warrant out for.
War at its core is not a murder contest. You have to be strategic and you have to deal with the reality of trying to govern any conquered subjects which historically hasn't been very successful in the long term. In a globally connected world, you have to deal with the rest of the planet reacting to your actions.
That's not even touching on concepts like human rights and international law.
I generally agree with this take. The big problem with it is that the current and likely future israeli administrion(s) have as one of their largest goals the annexation of the west bank, not because of security but because they truly believe god gave them that land. IMO there is little reason to believe israelis will ever allow the palestinians full sovereignty in the west bank. So whats on the table for them in your situation? Probably giving up even more land in the west bank and the fear that israel can start a war to annex even more of it any time the israeli right wins an election. Which gets at the heart of the issue here, neither side has any reason to believe the other is negotiating in good faith, so negations can never really begin.
Ive spent a decent amount of time in Israel and my observation is that the prospect for peace is incredibly dim.
Are you asking why 5 million people don't just accept total subjugation to Israel and renounce all desire for self-determination as a nation? Let themselves be subjugated to permanent occupation and political persecution? All in all to a state that rejects Palestinian right to ever try Israelis for any and all crimes they do to them, including war crimes and crimes against humanity? (that's what even several EU states effectively argued before ICC, when challenging the jurisdiction of the court)
Israel claims there will be no Palestinian state ever, because it's a percieved threat to Israel security. Knesset resolution claiming that was passed this year. And by that, for Israelis that's poof "no self-determination for 5 mil. people". No loss for Israelis, I guess in that. They'll not even let them be citizens of Israel, because democracy doesn't mean much to Israel. Israel has to be a Jewish state, not like half Jewish half Arab and soon majority arab looking at demographic growth...
I don't know? Maybe they really don't want this, and don't know how to get out of that situation created by Jews and their European "allies" back in first half of last century in any other way.
And please don't tell me you're presuming Israel to be the innocent and honest party in all this.
"'I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,' Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba."
> I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,' Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
How's your memory? That lasted a few days only...
And again, what about Egypt? Why aren't they being charged? They've blockaded Gaza for 16 years now, even when Gazans were working in Israel Egypt still had their blockade going...
> And again, what about Egypt? Why aren't they being charged?
Because they are not a beligerent in the conflict, and don't even currently control the Rafah crossing; Israel took it in May. Even when open, Israel exercises control over who/what goes through under the treaty.
They're also apparently smart enough not to put out "we're gonna do a war crime" video announcements over it.
Honestly the entire premise of a country defending itself from attack being required to feed those attacking them is absurd. Has it ever happened in world history to anyone that's not Israel? Ukraine certainly isn't expected to feed Russia...
> Ukraine certainly isn't expected to feed Russia...
Their troops currently occupying parts of Kursk absolutely are expected to safeguard the civilian population there. Blockading food supplies there would be a war crime.
> Ukraine certainly isn't expected to feed Russia...
You seem to have the roles reversed. Israel is behaving like russia here: occupying another country, displacing residents, saying the land should be theirs, repressing civilians, employing sexual violence and other torture, killing resisters, etc.
To your point: russia is obligated to provide food and medical supplies to civilians in occupied Ukraine, just as Israel is obligated to provide food and medical supplies to civilians in occupied Palestine.
Russia is attempting to impose a colonial occupation on Ukraine.
Israel has maintained an explicitly colonial occupation on the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and a strategic occupation of Gaza (no longer involving settlement, but for the purpose of precluding any possibility of 2SS) for more than half a century. And yes, the latter is still considered to be under Israeli occupation by the international community (from the fact that it fully controls all 7 border crossings, along with air and maritime space). Meanwhile, its politicians are openly discussing the possibility of annexing part or all of the territory.
Hamas was another part of Likud's lunatic strategy for thwarting 2SS. Until one day, inevitably, that strategy didn't work out for them as well as they had hoped.
Walling off a population into a small area so you can control the people trapped inside is an occupation via any definition that matters.
> Russia attacked Ukraine. Hamas attacked Israel. Those are the roles.
Russia and Ukraine both hold some of the others' territory. They are required by international law to protect certain rights of prisoners of war and the civilian population of those areas under their control. Russia, in particular, is known for... varying compliance with the rule.
The same is true when Hamas went into Israel; they committed clear war crimes by not treating the civilians there during their very brief occupation according to international law.
> Walling off a population into a small area so you can control the people trapped inside is an occupation via any definition that matters.
Having a wall on your border is perfectly acceptable. Gazans were even allowed to work in Israel and many did (unfortunately lots of them provided intel to Hamas for Oct 7).
And no, having a wall isn't the definition of occupation.
> Having a wall on your border is perfectly acceptable.
Sure. Israel goes further; they demolished the airport in 2002, have blockaded the port since 2007, and by treaty control access even via the Egyptian crossings (which they currently physically occupy as well).
> And no, having a wall isn't the definition of occupation.
Correct, but that wasn't my assertion. Control of the population within that wall makes it an occupation. It's the same difference between "I'm gonna wrap up in a blanket and stay in tonight" and "I'm under house arrest".
> Gazans were even allowed to work in Israel...
That doesn't necessarily make you free.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindlerjuden "survived the years of the Nazi regime primarily through the intervention of Schindler, who afforded them protected status as industrial workers at his enamelware factory in Kraków".
I suspect we are all smart here on HN, and probably know there is a longer backstory, dating back decades: Israel attacked Palestine after Hamas attacked Israel after Israel attacked Palestine after Hamas attacked Israel after Israel attacked Palestine, etc, etc.
More to the point, both russia and Israel have engaged in occupying another country, displacing residents, saying the land should be theirs, repressing civilians, employing sexual violence and other torture, killing resisters, and that's all before Oct 7.
Indeed, both present the same pretextual justification for doing all this: the occupation, displacement, repression, sexual violence, torture, and killing we see from russia and Israel are all allegedly for self defense, and because they claim the land was theirs at some point in the past.
I’m sorry but this brazenly wrong and a form of propaganda; you need to provide evidence for your claims. Hamas-employed Gaza police shoot at gangs that rob the aid containers with the implicit protection of Israel. Many videos have been posted spuriously claiming without any evidence that the individuals highjackimg the aid “are Hamas” when all documented evidence points to the very opposite.
Just two days ago: Gangs looting Gaza aid operate in areas under Israeli control, aid groups say
“Officials said criminal looting has become the greatest impediment to distributing aid in the southern half of Gaza, home to the vast majority of displaced Palestinians. Armed bands of men have killed, beaten and kidnapped aid truck drivers in the area around Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point into Gaza’s south, aid workers and transport companies said. The thieves, who have run cigarette-smuggling operations throughout this year but are now also stealing food and other supplies, are tied to local crime families, residents say. The gangs are described by observers as rivals of Hamas and, in some cases, they have been targeted by remnants of Hamas’s security forces in other parts of the enclave.”
‘An internal United Nations memo obtained by The Washington Post concluded last month that the gangs “may be benefiting from a passive if not active benevolence” or “protection” from the Israel Defense Forces. One gang leader, the memo said, established a “military like compound” in an area “restricted, controlled and patrolled by the IDF.”’
There's tons of it, plenty of mainstream media reported it while it was happening. If you choose not to believe it, that's because of your biases and no amount of hard evidence will sway you.
Also ask yourself, why has Egypt had a blockade against Gaza for longer than Israel?
Egypt is not allowed to bring any cargo into Gaza, at the behest of both Israel and the USA. They are rewarded for their compliance with international aid.
"The Rafah Border Crossing is the only crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. It is located on the international border that was confirmed in the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Only passage of persons takes place through the Rafah Border Crossing; as such, the Egypt–Gaza border is only open to the passage of people, not of goods. All cargo traffic must go through Israel, usually through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossing on the Gaza–Israel barrier."
> Israel has controlled what can pass the border since 2007 or so.
"The" refers to Israel's border by normal English rules. Seems you're being deliberately obtuse.
And it's absurd to think Egypt didn't have control over their own border. Egypt didn't want Palestinians crossing for other reasons (they have a history of terrorism in moderate Muslim states).
> it's absurd to think Egypt didn't have control over their own border
Why do you hold this opinion? Israel literally controls the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, and has bombed it several times. If Egypt and Gaza agreed to let anything pass, there's a good chance Israel would bomb it again.
Also, "[nationality/ethnic group of people] have a history of terrorism" is racist.
> Netanyahu is viewed as the messiah of the Jewish people
I think there was a strong urge to portray him as the second coming of King David (the slayer of Goliath) after the assassinations of (other war criminals) Deif, Haniyeh, Nasrallah, Saifeddine, and Sinwar within 6 months of each other.
> something about rebuilding a temple in Jerusalem
No temple yet, but there's a valid religious claim should they choose to build one on the Rock. The main mosque is actually a few hundred meters removed from the Rock.
> until he achieves the eradication of the Palestinian people he will not rest
Think the political apparatus strives to control the demographics (for its own survival)? Eradication is one mechanism, but at 7 million Palestinians, they'd need to summon a World War esque scenario to pull it off. So, unlikely?
Numerous IDF soldiers and settlers have been photographed wearing or displaying the shape of Greater Israel - a plan to seize land and expand Israel into almost every one of its neighbors territories. Tim Walz even let slip in the debate that "expansion" was a key goal of US support.
To speak only to the factual claims and not any of your conclusions:
Biblical Israel did not include any part of Egypt, nor does it contain all of Lebanon.
It is concerning that you would claim this when the biblical map of Israel is a Google search away.
Speaking as someone within the Jewish community, absolutely no one views Netanyahu as the messiah. You will find all sorts and views that are for or against, but none that he is some messiah. (I'm sure you could find some 5 cranks who do; you could also find 5 Christian cranks who believe the earth is flat. In that case it would never even occur to you to say that Christians believe the earth is flat.)
The belief is that the temple will be rebuilt when the messiah comes. It has not, which is also something you could have googled.
There is a tiny segment who wishes to make that happen now. The overwhelming majority see this as something that will happen in messianic times, not an instruction manual for the present.
If you are this misinformed on points that are easily looked up I strongly suggest you seek information outside of whatever echo chamber you currently find yourself in.
Just to clarify - there is some technical correctness in this statement "Biblical Israel did not include any part of Egypt, nor does it contain all of Lebanon". I believe Genesis 15:18–21 says in "from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river [Euphrates]" (also see "map of Kingdom of King Solomon"). While this would suggest the "promised land" includes all the way to modern Iraq, it is true that most maps exclude the Phonecian areas around Tyre and Sidon. And the definition of "the wadi of Egypt" has been interpreted by some as the Nile, but I think this is mostly not believed. So it is most likely correct that "Biblical Israel does not contain ALL of Lebanon" and "did not include any part of Egypt", but this elides the fact that the Biblical narrative (not necessarily backed up by archeology) would extend into many neighboring countries.
[edit] To clarify - I do believe that some Israelis are motivated by a desire to occupy "Biblical Israel", but the parent comment is (a) ridiculous and (b) attributes way to many grand motivations for Netanyahu than I think are supported by evidence. (Compared to "savvy politician who says things to get votes for selfish reasons.")
So you want to say that the reason for _not_ doing this is: it will distract from the effort to stop the cleansing.
Would that be the same as saying that we shouldn't issue a warrant against a school shooter because it wouldn't stop the shooting? Would it distract from gun laws?
Maybe not the best analogy, but I know that I cannot say for certain whether it will negatively or positively affect the effort. It might positively affect if this makes (especially EU) countries put more pressure on Israel.
>It might positively affect if this makes (especially EU) countries put more pressure on Israel.
That would never happen. Israel is above any and all criticism, how do people not realize that by now?
Pressure, sanctions, whatever - nothing will actually happen. Likud can trot out the tired trope of antisemitism and any and all criticism, legitimate or not, is automatically waved away. Like it or not, that's objective reality.
Before the shills come in and accuse me of this or that, let me be clear: NO, I don't support Hamas, Likud, or any organization that supports the killing of innocent people. Israel has a right to exist and defend itself, Palestine has a right to exist and defend itself.
The guy is the Hamas leader who was killed recently? How would Israel get him? Special forces raid? He could hide anywhere in Gaza. And why would Israel want to do a decapitation instead of destroying the hostile organization? Even assuming Israel doesn't want to annex territory that seems like expecting the US to react to 9/11 by sending the Navy Seals after Bin Laden and stop it at that.
The Gaza invasion was never about the hostages. If Israel cared about the hostages they wouldn't have indiscriminately bombed the entire territory. The hostages are dead, and demanding the impossible return of people they killed is simply a pretext:
They want land expansion and the total ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Look up 'Greater Israel'. Tim Walz accidentally let it slip during a debate that this is the goal of the US empires support.
Hmm. It is a weird conversation for me. Since I am not part of the conflict, as the outsider I believe I see some of the game played. Still, I do not want to spend too much energy on this since I am not sure I understand how you perceive things.
I think you are wrong, but you are wrong by equating Netanyahu and Israel. It is useful for the former. It would be hard to convince me it is useful for the latter. And then, even assuming tada part is uncontested ( not impossible in current configuration ), how exactly do you see this play out?
Yes I am serious. Obviously 1200 dead is sad. Disregarding the emotions, on an Israeli political level it IS useful to rally the country to finally handle the Palestine problem once and for all, which is what is happening right now.
I sincerely doubt it will be once and for all. It will only end once and for all when the Palestinians make a true effort to have peace based on 67 borders, and that's not happening any time soon.
How about the Hamas leaders living in Turkey? They were just kicked out of Qatar, and being in (semi-)European Turkey should be easier to arrest, no? Remember, these Hamas leaders in Turkey actually, really, call for explicit genocide - and carry out their actions.
In law we generally prosecute those who are responsible according to the law. Not those who happen to be available so that we have someone to make pay.
Not saying that there are undoubtedly more “bad people” than just him. But that’s not how law works.
Are you suggesting that the Hamas leadership in Turkey is not responsible for the actions of Hamas? Or that pinning responsibility on one person (albeit dead) is enough so there is no more need to pin responsibility on others, even if they are available?
As a single example, Khaled Mashal is in Turkey.
> On 3 September 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges
> against Mashal for allegedly orchestrating the 7 October attack on Israel,
> along with other senior Hamas officials.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khaled_Mashal
What the ICC is saying is that if you study the laws of war and create a strategy to hide behind those rules while putting non-compatants at peril, you get to win.
This is what Hamas and Hezbollah have done. They have built their combat infrastructure inside of and underneath schools, hospitals, houses, etc. To say that to attack them after they do that is to invite prosecution is risable.
Um. I would take the hand-wringing a little more seriously if it were not for the fact that Israeli army is not exactly known for being super adherent to rules of engagement you suggest[1]. Please do note that this is US media saying this, which is already doing what it can to cover for Israel with oh so familiar talking points.
<< To say that to attack them after they do that is to invite prosecution is risable.
Some of us do take issue with indiscriminately bombing a hospital to get one 'bad guy' or even ten 'bad guys'. Maybe it was more excusable when technology was less.. accurate, but it is very hard to argue that point when the country bombing said hospital is able to surgically explode pagers in Lebanon[2]. And Israel can't even take over a small enclave it almost completely cut off from the rest of the world?
That is risable. And all this after massive US support both in blood in treasury.
ICC and the prosecutor are on very solid ground here.
The prosecutor asked opinions from a impartial panel of experts in international law. The panel included people like Theodor Meron (former Legal adviser for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Helene Kennedy, Adrian Fulford.
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant provided plenty of evidence of the intent. Did they really think that when they talk Hebrew to their audience, rest of the world does not hear them. Case like this would be harder to prosecute without evidence of intent.
reply