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Comment by fckhsbra | Hacker News Reader

There is a double standard but it's not the one you think.

Israel is the only state that can get away with such behavior without a single sanction. Russia is under a severe package of sanctions for doing something that is not fundamentally different.

Israel is also a particular focus in the West (and especially in America) because it's done with US support (in the UN) and US weapons. So, yes, people are talking about it more than, say, the situation in Myanmar. Note that there are also sanctions against Myanmar, among other things a ban on military sales to them for what they are doing; so can we now similarly ban the sales of weapons to Israel?

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I think a lot of what Israel has done is hard to defend, but it is all very much unlike what Russia has done. An organized military organization didn't invade Russia from Ukraine and kill hundreds upon hundreds of civilians, face to face, and then return to Ukraine vowing to repeat the attack. That did in fact happen to Israel.

They don’t offer exemptions on human rights if you have the right motive. Human rights are supposed to be kept regardless of past wrongs. So what happened to Israel prior to their violations of international agreements is irrelevant. The double standard here is that both Russia and Israel are guilty of breaking human rights but instead of ordering sanctions against Israel, many nations offered them more weapons to double down on their atrocities. And in fact Israel’s crimes against humanity far exceed those of Russia. So the double standard is even amplified.

EDIT: Executive’s director of Human Rights Watch on the international double standard https://aje.io/ussvy1?update=2613047

You're rebutting an argument I didn't make. Not being like Russia doesn't excuse war crimes.

Sorry, I’m not that good at making my argument clear.

What I’m rebutting—or rather making a poor attempt to rebut—is your hinting that the international double standard doesn’t exist, or at the very least is understandable. The interviewee in the al-Jazeera interview makes a much better argument for the existence, the importance of recognizing, and the inexcusableness of this international double standard, better than I ever could.

The international double standard does not in fact exist. The two situations are not comparable. That observation does not exonerate Israel.

This particular criticism is not directed at Israel, but at countries supporting Israel, such as the USA and the UK. The point is that human rights violations are enabled and even supported by third countries when Israel is the perpetrator, but not when Russia is the perpetrator.

Again: the situations are not comparable. Russia was unprovoked and has a stated objective of annexing a sovereign country. Israel is in fact under military threat (was, in fact, attacked, gravely), from territory it has occupied since 1967. It is unsurprising that the international responses are not equivalent.

A short way to sum this up is: regardless of the distaste many in the west (myself included) have for the means by which Israel is pursuing it's goal, the west is unanimous in support of that actual goal: no western state believes Hamas should be left to govern Gaza, even as many probably do quietly hope to haul Netanyahu to the Hague (if the Israelis don't imprison him first).

Meanwhile: every western state actively, viscerally opposes Russia's goal.

Again: When it comes to crimes against humanity, that doesn’t matter. Signatories to the Geneva convention convention are expected to uphold international humanitarian laws even when greater crimes are committed against them. The same applies to the Genocide convention. The international community is supposed to punish signatories which violate these convention, and in the case of Israel, they routinely don’t.

It in fact matters a great deal, as you can see.

> Israel is also a particular focus in the West (and especially in America) because it's done with US support (in the UN) and US weapons.

You are nitpicking historical events. It's critical not to view events in isolation, they are deeply linked to the past, rather than being a series of unrelated incidents.

In 1948, following the UN Partition Plan of Palestine approved the creation of two states (this decision was made by the same United Nations to which you referred) Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq attacked Israel (yes, Israel because it was approved as a new country by the UN in the same way it happened to other nations).

US did a weapon embargo [1] that no benefited Israel (and the five other attackers). In this conflict, Israel was in a defensive position and Israel won that war without US support. The history is fluid.

Also, at that time Iran mas a monarchy and in 1979 after the Iranian revolution converted into a theocracy. Iran uses proxies for igniting more fire into the region. Not an opinion.

We can talk in the future again once Iran, probably, converts into a nuclear power.

[1] https://pluto.huji.ac.il/~slonims/publications/48_American_E...

> You are nitpicking historical events.

In response to the straw man that people who criticize Israel never do so based on principles they apply to everything else as well, which warrants no response at all. It's not even worth taking note of at this point, it's just a square on a bingo card that got real old real quick.

The problem here about fallacies is that these discussions have real world implication and are not a theorem in a chalkboard.

People kill and die based on ideas, power, etc and not following logical rules. That is the main fallacy: applying [only] logic to the human world.

I was just saying that there is no such thing as an insufficient counter-argument to something that can't even stand on its own. "People who say X NEVER say Y" is just.. nothing.

And when I "apply logic to the human world" there is not an instance in which I'm not fully "inside" the human world myself. Logic isn't some magical outside thing, and like conversation it doesn't have to be a means to an end.

Do you agree that war is a continuation of politics? (probabilistically speaking)

What does "war" have to do with dropping 2000lbs bombs in one of the most densely populated areas of the world, bombing refugee camps, stripping people in the streets, sniping a 70 year old women with a white flag and fleeing with a child, destroying streets just to make Gaza unlivable, singing about how there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, spraying demented graffitis in the homes of Palestinians that are either racist or religious zealotry? Politics? All that stuff is a result of personality disorders and group dynamics between people with personality disorders. The incapability to have empathy and the inability to reflect, the positive NEED to deflect every single time, talk about the other, talk about something else, is the one constant.

Are you saying that this is a planned genocide order executed by the IDF? I was just looking at your profile [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=johnnyworker

So you can't answer the question, instead of making it about me. Called it?

So, are you denying it? Here's IDF dancing chanting genocidal stuff. And what they showed is nothing compared to what's out there. As the SA legal team said, the refrained from shock value. Let me know if you need more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G15NyemgYDM&t=4548s

(isn't it "funny" how like 1% of the Western Channels that reported on Israel's "defense" didn't say a peep about the day before that? That's a matter of record now, too, another thing that won't be forgotten nor forgiven. The casual treatment people in Palestine like vermin, if not just collateral, was heard around the world. The people who are already tired of hearing that are in for such a rough ride.)

There's taxis and busses with genocidal slogans driving around. This goes way deeper than the prime minister, countless other ministers and Knesset members, IDF generals and IDF soldiers.

https://twitter.com/ireallyhateyou/status/174508838519726080...

Jason Hickel put it well:

> The US and UK are bombing Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, so that Israel can continue its genocide and mass displacement of the Palestinian people in Gaza without disruption. That's the reality we're in.

While Jason Cameron can't answer the question if turning off water is a breach of international humanitarian law because "he's not a lawyer".

Let's see what happens in the ICJ which works in the real ruling.

Yes, of course. But that will take years. In the meantime, time is of the essence, due to the nature of the alleged crime.

From the first day of hearings ( https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192... )

> 3. South Africa has come to this Court to prevent genocide and to do so in the discharge of the international obligation that rests on South Africa and all other States under the Convention. The consequences of not indicating clear and particularized, specific, provisional measures - and not taking steps to intervene while Israel disregards its international obligations before our eyes - would, we fear, be very grave indeed: for the Palestinians in Gaza, who remain at real risk of further genocidal acts; for the integrity of the Convention; for the rights of South Africa; and for the reputation of this Court, which is equipped with and must exercise its powers to afford an effective realization of the rights under the Convention.

> 4. That means, we respectfully submit, indicating the provisional measures being sought by South Africa, as well as any others in addition which the Court might deem appropriate. Justice, and equal respect for the rights of Palestinians, points overwhelmingly in favour of these critically required provisional measures.

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(Oh, and also I'd like to add that I had no idea who Jason Hickel was, just had seen that tweet and agreed with it.. but I checked him out since and I wish I could edit that quote out, because that man is terrible)

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