ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire

- Judge Barak's numbers on civilian deaths on 7th october are simply wrong and could've been easily checked. 766 civilians were killed, 1200 was the total number of deaths (including armed forces).

- Israel's own numbers say "2 civilians killed for every one militant"[1], that's 66% in the Gaza offensive.

- 766 / 1200 = 63.8%

- 63.8% and 66% are indeed close numbers, don't see why would it be flagged.

Of course, the numbers claimed by other NGOs / UN make it worse. But Israel's numbers are sufficient to make that claim.

[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/05/middleeast/israel-hamas-m...

There are 15 ICJ judges, plus the two ad hoc judges appointed by the parties.

Also voted against asking Israel to preserve evidence of the crimes. Interesting perspective for a former judge.

Spend tons of money on iron dome to shoot down the rockets and hope that Hamas won't manage to conduct another massacre, even if "only" half the scope of October 7?

This mess features not one but two parties who currently reject the concept of a cease fire.

Lost me there, because this is not the framing that matches reality. There were several instances where Hamas was willing to form unity government with Fatah/PLO, to share power, negotiate, to do things like that. It's first and foremost a national liberation movement. The movement itself would not even exist had not been for the occupation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_reconcilia...

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full

I didn't read further, because assuming lack of negotiation, lack of pragmatism, of being able to participate in politics semi-normally, etc. is just a crucial point.

Especially while not recognizing intense pressure by the West for this political process to not exist, to suppress it, for it to fail. If you suppress politics, you get violent conflict eventually.

How many wars have the US and Japan fought after WWII?

Or France and Germany after WWII?

How many wars have the US Government and Native Americans fought after 1900?

Sometimes a clear, overwhelming victory ends cycles of violence.

Well, there are ways to end it. Historically there have been thousands of cyclical conflicts that eventually ended without a diplomatic solution.

Technologically advanced, sure. Mighty? They have a pretty small population compared to most countries in Asia.

> Sounds like a ceasefire to me. How else would they do this? Definitely not with any of the military tactics Israel is currently using.

Reading the actual icj ruling it seems like it only forbid it when done with genocidial intent. The court did not forbid collateral damage.

The specific wording included the line "...take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II..."

Earlier in paragraph 78 they said "The Court recalls that these acts fall within the scope of Article II of the Convention when they are committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a group as such (see paragraph 44 above)."

So basically it is only forbidden if the intent is specificly to kill Palestinians and not if it is collateral damage to some other military objective.

I don't think this order will affect anything israel is doing.

This isn't a read between the lines situation, because SA's request was specifically for the court to temporarily rule for a full immediate ceasefire until the larger case could be heard

What is interesting here is that by mis-reading the verdict like yourself, and Israel assuming the worst, both sides immediately came out saying today was a huge win. So at least we have that, everyone (but the Palestinians, who aren't a side in this case) is happy

It isn't unlawful per se to cause civilian casualties during military operations; any demand that the warring parties limit themselves to killing combatants only would be unrealistic, especially in urban settings.

It is unlawful to target civilians intentionally or to cause wanton damage to civilian infrastructure, though.

Those bodies have zero power and countries that want to massacre will kill no matter what.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...

The problems here can be solved peacefully and permanently if the dominant faction so wished. The most durable solution is to tear down the walls, annex the occupied territories, and make the Palestinian residents full and equal citizens of Israel. Israel has stated as much directly but refuses that solution because they fear their tribal identity will not longer be a numerical majority. Another less durable solution is a two state solution in opposition to military dominance, but Israel does not want that either. Tribalism. The parallels to the conflict in the Balkans, which was ruled a genocide, are many.

Using the same broad stroke generalization and similarly de-humanizing moral compass; how do you judge the society these people celebrating child murder, arson, death, riots, mass executions, hateful incitement belong to: https://twitter.com/muhammadshehad2/status/17237393892624344...

> But that is what will be required to take Palestinian civilians out of the middle of this endless nightmare

One might say, the chief among requirements is for the occupation of a people who have rejected it every step of the way to end. Everything else is a distraction.

I think its likely israel will comply. The order is pretty weak and mostly stuff israel already claims to be doing. It wouldn't be worth the PR hassle to ignore it.

Zero, the same as most courts.

Enforcement is a matter for (ordinarily) the Security Council, or, in the case of deadlock, potentially the GA acting under Uniting for Peace. Well, decisions on enforcement; actual enforcement is left to individual UN members, acting on direction of those UN bodies.

Note that enforcement in practice is often a problem, as with the provisional measures adopted against Russia in the Ukraine v. Russia genocide case.

> Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court

No, Hamas previously claimed that they would observe a ceasefire if the court imposed one on Israel, conditioned on Israeli compliance with the same. They didn't say they would do anything related to anything other than an ceasefire order.

Unlikely that they will release the hostages just because a court said so.

Doesn’t seem people care about what’s going in Africa. People care here because this is a war of religion. And by that, I mean whether Western countries remain increasingly supreme (in terms of the world order).

As someone who also consumes US news, this does not describe what I’ve seen.

NPR also frequently talked about the right wing/nationalist power seizures leading up to this.

Before the war, I think a good number of Americans saw Israel blowing up the Associated Press offices. It hardly matters what the excuse was.

I feel like every week I've heard a story about Israel telling Gazans where to go, and then bombing that location.

I'm not sure I saw any news outlet that didn't report 70% women and children casualties, which pretty much speaks for itself.

Nobody I went to college with supports Israel at all. Genocide Joe is not just used by his oponents. That name didn't come out of nowhere. Many of the people who voted for him agree his genocidal support of Israel is unacceptable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_villages_dep...

What do you expect him to do? With or without any assistance, Israel has more than enough weapons completely annihilate Gaza. Don't forget that they likely have nuclear capabilities. Israel believes they are demonstrating restraint and this restraint is the first thing to go if Israel feels like it's being backed into a corner.

[Ianal]

https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-i-thought-israelis-would....

Apparently, those still supporting Biden will throw human lives under the bus for a more comfortable home life.

I don't think the judges had the kind of bias alleged by your comment (it's certainly possible they could have but their opinions don't seem to reflect that)

When US have Ukraine weapons to defend themselves, we were the good guys.

When US gives Israel the weapons to attack and airbomb Palestinians in daylight it puts US in a very bad light.

US should be the ones enforcing a cease fire. Where no side gets to airbomb each other.

Every life is valuable. Israelis or Palestinians.

The failure of US policy is to be the gatekeeper of world peace. We have the largest army by far. We spend an obscene amount of our taxes on defense.

Yet we failed to keep peace.

https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2YY1E6/

SA does not really present itself as an earnest or true actor in the sphere oh human rights.

Enforcement organ here is Security Council and in particular individual countries.

This is your error. States and peoples are not unitary entities with a single coherent outlook and will. The vast majority of the Israeli population is far too young to have directly experienced the Holocaust, which ended 80 years ago. There are plenty of people in Israel who do not want to commit atrocities against Palestinians. There are also people who feel that they have a (literally) god-given right to occupy the territories where Palestinians currently live. If you think of Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet as being basically the same people who survived Nazi concentration camps in World War 2, then nothing Israel is doing in 2024 will make much sense.

To my mind, Israel's actions toward Palestinians (both in Gaza and the West Bank) are powerful evidence that nationalism inherently leads to atrocity no matter who's involved. If the cultural memory of being targeted by the Holocaust won't stop an ethno-state from setting up an apartheid regime, what will?

That's part of why they're acting this way. Security fears. I'm telling you, the median Israeli isn't motivated by bloodlust or a desire for land, they're motivated by a high level of fear that they will one day be killed by Hamas/Hezbollah/etc. That fear causes them to demand complete "security control" of the West Bank and Gaza. That fear explains why they would not budge on allowing Palestinians an army as part of previous two-state negotiations. That fear explains why they would give back the Sinai but not the geographical high ground of the Golan Heights. That fear explains why the Israeli Left completely collapsed after the Second Intifada. They're happy to give part of the West Bank back in two state negotiations, but they would never, ever, allow Palestine an army. Because of security fears. The Palestine-Israeli conflict is this positive feedback loop caused by a desire for security conflicting with a desire for freedom. We're in the terminal doom spiral phase of this feedback loop right now.

If the lesson is "Everybody wants to kill us and the only solution to safety is to have a nation state and defend at all costs against any other group", well it just all make sense. Of course this is not the conclusion of every jew in the world but I fully expect it to be the conclusion of post WWII zionists, even though it was not the case for a lot of them that were influenced by socialist ideas but lost influence and power with time.

Of course the strategy of always planning for aggression in order to come up on top is somewhat self realizing in that defending your dominant position will necessarily mean abuses of power and resistance to it.

So the lesson is "Better safe than sorry" although it's not that simple because there is actually a safety cost to pay to maintain such a strategy.

I remember 20 years ago, during the first bombing of Gaza, they hit just ONE building and felt pressured enough to apologize for the handful of civilian deaths. Unfortunately, faced with larger threats (real or imaginary) and weak international pressure, Israel has been able to escalate the level of deterrence through the years to what we are witnessing now.

That is why any ruling to curb that "automatic" escalation (like today) is wholeheartedly welcomed.

IMO there are also subtler layers of racism coloring these policies. It's not as blatant as the far-right rhetoric, but a persistent undertone within elements of Israeli society justifies severe deterrence tactics and totally overide any empathy learnt from historical lessons.

So you have to realise that Israelis are not thinking normally right now. Even though the Hamas attack has in military terms "culminated", and Israel's military is many times more powerful, their trauma leads them to believe that there is a real, present threat of extinction of the Israeli state and their own nation and families. Under such conditions, it is very hard for them to see the suffering of 'the enemy' as relevent.

It also doesn't help that basically everyone else is just piling responsibility for a solution on the Israelis, despite the US, UK and Europe having enormous historic responsibility for setting up the situation.

[please note, this is explanation, not justification]

[1] https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statemen...

Urban warfare is an ugly and complicated thing. Many of the Israeli soldiers serving in Gaza are moderates risking their life to defend their home and bring back their people.

When individual cases of reckless disregard are discovered (like in videos shared by Israeli soldiers on groups that get leaked out), those soldiers are disciplined.

But globally, it's just not true that the IDF has complete disregard for Palestinians.

(These aren't necessarily my opinions, and I am not Jewish. However I'm very closely connected to people who are, and I'm sharing the perspective I've been given)

But, a mistake you make in asking the question is two-fold, one - the Holocaust was not a lesson taught to Jews so they'll learn empathy. It was something horrible and traumatic that was done to them. Two - comparing the Holocaust to what happens in Gaza means you're not aware of what the Holocaust was. Maybe you know highlights such as gas chambers etc, but not what it really was (through no fault of your own I'm sure).

But, to attempt some semblance of an answer. In the same way you wouldn't ask Haitians why their gov did terrible things to the DR and their population - didn't they learn from slavery? Or about India/Pakistan, didn't they learn from the raj? Or any of the African states in conflict - didn't they learn from colonialism? Or Turkey and Syria, Iraq/Iran etc. Then why ask this from Israelis? I hope you get my rhetorical point.

Many of Americans, including soviet immigrants, enlisted in the army driven by that feeling.

Israelis lost significantly more of their population percentage-wise during October 7 attack perpetrated by the official government of Gaza AND as we know now, some Gazan civilians. Over 200 Israelis were taken hostage.

With that in mind, its fairly simple for me to empathize with the Israeli public who are angry at the death of their fellow citizens and want Hamas to be punished.

In terms of non-homicidal genocide (i.e. genocide in the sense of dismantling the group without killing its members), certainly a lot more people are fine with something like a Transfer plan (for example, I've heard a proposal that Egypt will take Gazan Palestinians as refugees/civilians and similarly have Jordan absorb the Palestinians in Yehuda and Shomron) and don't see it as much of an atrocity, merely taking back the land those Arabs conquered and colonized starting at around 640AD, without actual harm to those individuals (in fact, their lives could be much improved!). There's also the fact that Israel is very tiny; Even from just the southern part of Gaza, Hamas already fires rockets at Israel's most populated cities, giving them the mountains of Shomron (incidentally, the capital of the Israeli kingdom), simple mortars could rain down on Israeli civilians without warning and could easily lead to an actual genocide of all Israeli Jews, so moving the people a few tens of kilometers east sounds like a peaceful resolution in comparison.

Naturally, there's also the element of a long conflict. Arabs have been killing Jews in Israel during the British Mandate as well as the Ottoman rule of the region (in fact the IDF traces its roots to what are essentially local militias the Jews had to create to defend themselves). Israel's scroll of independence (a document that is considered that closest thing Israel has to a constitution) actually includes two paragraphs calling for the Arab nations surrounding Israel to work together in peaceful cooperation, so literally the very first action Israel took as a state was to call for peace, and literally the first thing that happened in response was an attempt to destroy Israel. After 76 years of war, certainly there's lowered sympathy for the enemy, especially one that elected Hamas (see above) and rejected peace (I've somewhat recently learned that outside of Israel almost no one knows that the Annapolis Conference very nearly resulted in peace via a two-state solution that was refused by Mahmoud Abbas [which I've heard he has later come to regret, not sure how reliable that is]).

Rising anti-semitism around the world (especially how popular it is to call for a genocide against Israeli Jews is in the form of the "From the river to the sea" phrase) also creates a backlash - Israel must act strongly to defend itself since it is the only place in the world where Jews can be in charge of their own fate and their own defense. If the BBC publishes lies about what happens in Israel, and protesters in England are calling for a genocide unopposed, not only should we not listen to what the English want us to do, we should prioritize ourselves even further. This is why IMO something like BDS is counter-productive, it only causes further resentment and defiance in Israelis; If you want peace between Israel and Palestine you should instead work to make sure Israel feels safe enough to be able to relinquish territory to the Palestinians without having another October 7th instead of working to undermine Israel (unless your goal is the destruction of Israel of course).

The thing is, I personally can’t relate to any of that. It’s just like reading a book or watching a movie. It’s just so far removed from my reality. I think you greatly overestimate the impact of the holocaust on modern day Jews.

Additionally, they have not shown "a reckless disregard for Palestinian people" and they would argue that unlike other conflicts in the region (Syria, Yemen, Kurdistan) they've been incredibly efficient in trying to avoid or limit civilian death.

Still, Gazan's have been dealt a pretty raw deal in that they have been ruled by a terrorist organization which has repeatedly stolen their aid to push their own agenda, and living amongst neighboring countries Egypt, Jordan, that are afraid to take them in lest they bring instability to those governments. Note that in the beginning of this conflict the Egyptians wouldn't open the Rafah border to allow refugees.

Rather, many of the holocaust survivors would instead say that the Israelis are being too nice and not defending the people living in the country from a government in Gaza that has the following in it's charter: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" and "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees."(https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp)

[1]https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...

My understanding is that the colossal tradegy of Holocaust made Jews realise that not fighting back is an existential threat for them.

When Israel was established then Arabs did not accept its existence nor the existence of Jews in the region. What followed was a genocidal war to exterminate Jews in Palestine and destroy Israel. We know this war today as Israel war of independence.

The Arabs who participated against Jews in this war fleed in fear of retribution and were not allowed by Israel to return. We know these people and their descendants today as Palestinian refugees (they have special inheritable status given by UN).

After the war Israel was established nearly within the borders of UN assigned Jewish territories and UN assigned Arab territories were annexed by Egypt (Gaza) and Jordan (West Bank). But it was still not tolerable for the Arabs who again in 1967 attempted to exterminate Jewish state with the war.

After the failure Isreal took control over larger territory that was then inhabited largely by Palestinian refugees (Palestinians) - West Bank and Gaza and also part of Egypt over the Suez canal and part of Syria called Golan Heights. The reasons where twofold. First the UN assigned territory was clearly not realistically defendable and second the large part of the previously not controlled territories like Bethlehem or Jerusalem were believed to be Jewish lands (historically Jewish lands were between Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea). Territories belonging to Egypt were later returned by bilateral treatis (but Israel kept control over Gaza).

Fast forward to today and it appears that Palestinians have not abolished the idea of genocide against Jews. It has been clearly established that the 7th October attack was a genocidal act to eliminate as many Jews as possible. Around 3000 Palestinian men took part in it, Hamas had around 40000 fighters. This demonstrates that they had wide support among Palestinians.

This leads us back to Holocaust. Jews promised to themselves that they will not let the genocide happen against themselves ever again. Yet it happened.

What is going on in Gaza is a systematic work to eliminate this threat.

They do this with minimal risk to their soldiers who are mainly reservist e.g. common people with military training. They can't afford to lose thousands of people. Palestinians in contrast value martyrdom and are willing to take very high risks (like attacking an armored vehicle with a RGP within a group of civilians next to the hospital entrance (this has been documented by the video evidence)).

It is not a police operation. It is a military operation against heavily armed and trained opponent. The weapons are chosen accordingly. The urban landscape makes it especially difficult and destructive. Regardless as far I have observed then Jewish military has made great efforts to systemically minimise civilian casualties.

What they did not realise first was that in addition to the military operation on the ground there is also sizeable information war against them and when the enemy can find many willing sympathisers then the enemy can produce what ever claims they please regardless of the truth as was demonstrated by the al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion.

I haven't observed the situation closely for months but by then Jewish armed forces evolved to be more open in their communication and to communicate more clearly the threats they had to fight against.

The question is "Why would Israel act like this?"

Israel has offered many times a two state solution. I think in '47, several times in the 90s, and the 2000s. They have all been rejected. The reason is that the Palestinian leadership wants more. How much do they want? They want all of it. "From the river to the sea" is the expression. They have said it over and over again that this is the only thing that matters to them, and they will sacrifice everything to get it.

That is more or less why Israel is doing this. For some, that is enough to explanation and a fair summary, but if you want to understand more details then read on.

The Israelis, obviously, are not going to just leave their country, and so that leaves the Palestinians with war as the only option. And war has happened, like 4-5 times, and each time the invading forces were defeated. Rather than deciding that the welfare of their people is what matters, Palestinian Leadership values complete, total restoration as the only goal and everything they do is to that end.

So, it can be debated from that point of view whether Israel should exist as a country or not. If you however think that Israel should be a country, even a little bit, then you are basically against the Palestinian leadership's raison d'être.

Even then though, I think most Israelis had a hard time believing that this is how it would be forever. Time after time, war after war, they have tried to 'do the right thing' short of just leaving Israel or dying. For example, they were invaded, the fought, the won, and the controlled Sinai, which was part of Egypt. Then they gave it back, and the Egyptians were reasonable and they signed a peace treaty.

The problem is the Palestinian leadership will never do this, and that is what the point of October 7 was. The point of it was to make peace impossible. Remember, just before the October 7th, there were the Abraham Accords. Basically, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel were take the first step in establishing a new direction for the Middle East, with those countries at the center of it. Boom, then you have the October 7th attack.

Let me take a step back and and try to address some things.

It's important to say that in 2005, Israel already militarily occupied Gaza. The corridor that has been used to smuggle in weapons for the terrorist was locked down. Then, due to international pressure, Israel withdrew from that region, and they removed any Israeli settlements. What happened? Immediately after, Hamas took over and there has not been an election since. Now, there is no governance, all of the money is stolen and funneled into weapons, and they're backed by Iran, along with Hezbollah, the Houthi, etc... and it is Iran who has a strategic interest in dividing influence in the Middle East.

So let me be clear. They don't want peace.

It's a very difficult situation because Israel would 100% prefer peace. The trouble is that they have a neighbor, who controls millions of people, that would rather be destitute and keep fighting than to govern responsibly.

A good analogy would be something along the lines of North Korea, but with a very different military strategy. Hamas uses guerrilla warfare, whereas North Korea is going for the long shot of a nuclear weapon.

The Palestinian Authority is not that different, other than strategy. They're also incompetent and they also want to see Israel eliminated. However, their strategy is to pretend to want peace, so they can negotiate territory, in anticipation of an invasion. How do I know this? Because every time that a two state solution has come on the table, they would only accept borders that were militarily impossibly for Israel to defend.

So there you have it. That is why this is happening. Because the Palestinians have these people as their leadership, and it's such a sunk cost at this point that they have nothing left but to fight for the total eradication of Israel. This is what happens when you lose 5 wars and still don't get the hint.

So people that engage in colonialism end up doing similar crimes. Israel remains probably the only old school colonial project in the present day with present day technology, backed by the U.S. empire to secure geopolitical interests in the oil-rich region among other things.

Something to think about: America is also a genocidal settler-colonial project and is one of the only nations to back Israel in the UN. Our genocide is still ongoing: visit a native american reservation and witness the immense poverty. Similarly to Gaza, the US state will simply say that despite being an occupying power, these are autonomous zones and we have little responsibility.

Shouldn't we all be opposed to Nazism? Shouldn't we all be against slavery? Of course. But in the present discussion, I can be opposed to the atrocities of October 7th, while being sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians, just as I can be opposed to the destruction of Gaza while having compassion for the Israelis.

Being critical of either side doesn't mean I'm against them.

Edit: I guess my basic response is that I'm skeptical of approaching these questions from that level of abstraction. None of us can say what we would have done in those horrible situations. We can only answer out of our own imagination about ourselves, which is likely to be completely unreliable.

What I do think is that on this site, we can and should be working with our own responses in a way that is more than just venting them onto a perceived other. That's in keeping with what HN is supposed to be for.

Yes..

> Should we _always_ be looking to find the humanity in the other side, or is there something fundamentally different here?

Yes..

(While the USA and Israel have shown immense disdain for the ICC and the USA has levied sanctions against it, its chief prosecutor, and The Hague in the past, the US officially sponsored Khan’s nomination for the post of chief prosecutor this past round and Israel has been extremely chummy with him and the ICC compared to under Bensouda. The ICC under Khan hasn’t done anything about Gaza.)

The overt driver of the system - and the one that is agreed to across the whole Jewish-Israeli population - is the security issue of a Palestinian population that has held since 1948 that they are still at war with Israel, will never accept a Jewish state in the region, and will one day drive the Jews into the sea. This belief is propped up by constant propaganda from other Arab states and UNRWA (which has defined itself to exist because of a Right of Return that applies to 750k Palestinians and their descendants in perpetuity, but doesn't apply to the 14 millions Indians & Pakistanis, 12 million Germans, or 2-3 million Poles & Ukrainians who were also displaced by ethnic partitions established in 1947-1948).

Israel shows every day that they are willing and able to live closely with the Palestinians who accept their right to exist and aren't trying to murder their families, without using apartheid-like systems of control. Israeli Arabs certainly face suspicion and unofficial day-to-day discrimination, but if you asked Israelis how they would feel about an equal two-state system where West Bank and Gaza were a sovereign nation populated by Palestinians who were like the Israeli Arabs, they would largely be on board. There would be friction for a while, but it would be tolerable for both states to survive and thrive without the security apparatus that needs to be in place right now.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu's current governing coalition is made up of racists and religious extremists who would NOT be okay with that. Many of those secretaries want to use security issues as a pretext to fully take over "greater Israel," and use the border wall as much to keep their actions there hidden from the Israeli public as they use it to keep Hamas and IJ terror attacks to a minimum. But the PA - for all its collaboration and security partnership with the IDF - still pays bounties to the families of suicide bombers. And the reason more moderate Palestinian leaders have never been able to really negotiate a settlement is that they would be immediately overthrown by a populace who never accepted 1948 as the end of a decades-long attempt to throw the Jews out of Palestine.

This has not been adjudicated in court, but I think it's difficult to claim that the current system is primarily an ethnic or racial one when it doesn't apply to the millions of Palestinians who are accepting of their neighbors. Even if it is often abused by racists.

Indeed that understanding is corroborated by several human rights organizations, like HRW and Amnesty international:

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2022/02/qa-israel...

What's inaccurate about it?

(Btw - thank you for posting the links in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146163. We need those.)

If you read some of those past explanations and still have a question about our general approach, let me know what it is. As for this particular story, I turned off the flags on it because it clearly counts as SNI (significant new information - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

* as has the question "how is this hackernews", of course: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869

I think there's an intellectual interest here, but the line is very blurry with politics. It's probably as blurry as the articles posted about US being a surveillance state, cryptocurrency articles unrelated to the technology itself, etc.

Edit: sorry this took me so long. Here are my thoughts based on past experience:

It's not helpful to look at other accounts as "propagandists", "trolls", "bots" (or "shills", "astroturfers" or all the other similar terms internet commenters use), because there's no reliable way to distinguish between someone who is arguing for views they earnestly hold vs. someone who might be engaged in a propaganda campaign. The majority of commenters are sincerely arguing for what they sincerely think. A few may be doing something more sinister—but most people don't do such things, and there's no way to pick out the ones who are. Trying to pick them out will drive you crazy. Moreover, it doesn't matter in the end, because everyone is ultimately working with the same tool: arguing things in comments. Even the propagandists can't do more than that.

When people feel like someone else is a troll, propagandist, or bad faith actor, it's usually because that person's views are so distant from your own that it seems like nobody could possibly hold them in good faith. In reality, what's usually going on is that people on the internet underestimate how different each other's backgrounds are. It feels like you're talking to someone who is either insane or lying, but most likely you're talking to someone whose background is so different from yours that it's hard for the two of you to relate to each other. I wrote about this last year, if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35932851.

I think the only way to handle this is by responding to bad arguments with better arguments and to false information with correct information—and to do this as neutrally as possible. Focus on clear information, and try not to let your feelings turn into aggression toward the other person. This is not easy, but it's in your interest to do it, because when commenters get aggressive with each other, fair-minded readers recoil.

For extra influence, if you can manage it: look for a way to connect with the other person, acknowledge some aspect of what they're saying, and implicitly make it clear that you're not trying to defeat or destroy them, but rather to understand. This is a big multiplier on how persuasive your comments become.

As for leaving bullshit unchallenged, I know it's hard to walk away from a thread that one feels is dominated by falsehood and distortion, but walking away is sometimes the most effective thing you can do. Here are a few thoughts which I try to remember in such situations:

(1) The internet is wrong about approximately everything. You can't change that, and you'll burn out trying.

(2) The one who walks away first usually comes across as stronger.

(3) Other people are not that different from you. When someone seems crazily wrong, they're most likely not bad or evil, but ignorant: they don't know what you know because they haven't experienced what you've experienced. For this reason, sharing your personal experience is probably the most effective thing you can do.

(4) When other people say things that produce strong feelings, try to let the feelings run their course in you before coming back to react. This is painful and hard, but it's in your interest.

1. xkcd 386: Someone is wrong on the Internet: <https://xkcd.com/386/>

2. Woozle's Epistemic Paradox: as epistemic systems become more prominently and widely used, they also become more attractive targets to those who would choose to manipulate them. See: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230606193813/https://old.reddi...>

3. More generally, all informational channels become battlegrounds, as noted by von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, numerous evolutionary biologists, and others. I've been slowly making my way through Jeremy Campbell's The Liar's Tale which is a big-picture look at this.

4. HN really isn't optimised around truth but conversation, and more specifically sustainable conversation, grounded in intellectual curiosity. There are numerous topics on which HN really is unable to have meaningful discussion (perennial ethnic conflicts are amongst these, as are other political hot topics), and its general tone-policing and penalisation of high-tension topics tends strongly to a status quo bias. (I've criticised HN for this often, despite an increasing awareness and appreciation of why those rules exist, see e.g., thread here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023516>.)

5. Reporting blatant trolling and suspect motivations to HN mods does often work. Email to hn@ycombinator.com and link directly to the offending content and/or user, with a clear but succinct description of the problem.

6. Voting (up or down) and flagging also have their place. For sufficiently contentious threads this may well lead to something of a high-attrition zone, but often the really egregious crud does sink to the bottom. I find that higher-rated comments tend to be more anodyne than insightful, though occasionally truth does out.

7. I've found that rather than direct engagement, either supporting a counterthread, or writing your own well-reasoned and well-supported counter-thread, is often suprisingly effective. Remember that yours is always the last comment when you write it, though a thread may well have additional life. Sometimes my late efforts prove far more successful than I'd expected, and often I'll see that others have succeeded where I've either failed or failed to try. And again, supporting others' salient and productive engagement even where you don't have time or energy to contribute is highly underappreciated.

8. You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to.

9. Truth is not a popularity contest. Voting systems ultimately don't select for truth or importance, and expecting that from sites such as HN or Reddit will prove disappointing.

10. The meaningful audience is typically not who you're responding to directly, but the overwhelmingly silent majority reading rather than contributing to discussion.

The problem is that this is such a partisan issue than partisanship can be perceived in the smallest of details.

As someone who was staunchly pro-palestinian but as of recently came to have a more informed and I hope a more nuanced view of the whole situation, I can't help to see the title as potentially misleading :

Is the ICJ saying to prevent the Genocide (i.e recognizes that a genocide is happening) or to prevent a potential genocide (that is it believes the situation could escalate towards a genocide) ?

From what I have read this is the second option, so I believe the title could be misleading. The more a topic has a loaded emotional and symbolic value, the more careful the wording must be.

Also I remember how annoying it was that people did not share my indignation and how I perceived such carefulness as a form of voluntary blindness.

I'd need to see links to specific comments, but certainly the flags aren't working any differently than they usually do. The only difference between [flagged][dead] and just [flagged] is the number of flags relative to upvotes; in the former case it would be higher than in the latter case.

Your several comments in this thread seem to be coming from a place of battling for one side against the other. I'm sure you have very good reasons for it, but it's not the intended spirit of discussion here, as I tried to explain at the top of the thread. In such cases, where people have (legitimately) strong feelings on a topic, the temptation to see the mods as biased in favor of the opposite side is almost irresistible. It happens from every perspective on every divisive topic, and this topic is one of the most divisive we've ever seen.

https://icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/donoghue_en.pdf

Sorry but this is goofy fan-fiction. No, China does not have the ability to forcibly land in Gaza without huge losses, and then being completely trapped there with no hope of resupply. That's an incredibly long supply line.

Additionally china's military currently has big corruption problems (e.g. the missle fuel water controversy). I doubt china really wants to put their reputation on the line until they sort that out, especially given what happened to russia in ukraine.

I'm also unsure if this move would be seen well domestically. They have enough problems right now, and focusing resources on this doesn't sound like it would be met with high praise.

Chinese warships will never be allowed anywhere near the Mediterranean in the first place - if there is one thing that even the split US Congress will agree on, it is that China already has too much influence and that they need to be stopped.

Additionally, China's army hasn't seen actual combat in a loooong time. It's likely that their army is in just as bad of a shape as Russia's is, and getting that demonstrated on the world stage before they have a chance to snack a piece or the whole of Taiwan would be pretty foolish.

However, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by brokering some kind of peace using their supply chain supremacy.

Meanwhile US looks more and more like a paper tiger because they can't stop Yemen from blockading Israeli shipments and also refusing to do the one thing that would resolve the shipping issues: force Israel to the table for a ceasefire.

Israel could (and probably would) prevent the fleet from delivering the aid even without help from the US.

In support of your "If China decides to send humanitarian relief to Gaza, China can do it, and Israel can't stop them," you link to a description of a ship designed for an invasion of an island 85 miles off China's coast, an invasion which China (correctly IMO) calculates would probably end in failure (or else it would've invaded by now).

Israel can't challenge China militarily in, e.g., the Pacific, but it is a wealthy competent state that takes security seriously.

According to Omer Bartov, scholar of genocide, the criterion for genocide is that there is intent to commit genocide:

The crime of genocide was defined in 1948 by the United Nations as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/10/opinion/israel-gaza-genoc...

There are numerous articles in the press reporting on mass graves of Palestinians killed in the war, in Gaza. For example:

Palestinians digging mass graves inside al-Shifa hospital, health official says (14 November 2023, Al Shifa hospital)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/14/people-flee-no...

Bodies are being buried in a mass grave at Gaza City’s largest hospital, health officials say. (14 November, Al Shifa)

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/11/14/world/israel-hamas-g...

More than 100 Palestinian bodies buried in mass grave in Gaza (22 November, Khan Younis)

https://news.sky.com/video/more-than-100-palestinian-bodies-...

"All the cemetaries are full': Palestinians buried in a mass grave in Gaza (23 November, Khan YOunis)

https://www.reuters.com/pictures/all-cemeteries-are-full-pal...

Israel Gaza: Drone shots show Palestinians buried in Rafah mass grave (26 December, Rafah)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-67825385

etc etc.

And how many hostages has the war gotten back so far?

> we cannot allow Hamas to continue ruling Gaza

There is no realistic plan for ending Hamas. The more Hamas fighters you kill the more Gazans join. You can take temporary control of the government, but Isarelis in Gaza and anyone who works with them will be targeted by terrorists until the end of time. Eventually israel will get sick of the attacks and pull out, and Hamas will immediately regain control of the government.

The obvious end game here is a return to the pre october 7th status quo with increased border security to ensure oct. 7th doesnt happen again. When will we admit that the hostages can not be saved and move to that end game?

I'm curious about this - the idea that both goals are achievable is a fiction. You either get the hostages, or you eliminate Hamas. Do y'all talk about this?

However, there's 3 "contentious" points that I want to ask (my go-to Jewish (& very pro-Israel) close friend is currently very far away and has his own issues - not that you don't, but since you posted here...)

1. What's your comment on "Hamas headquarters below Al Shifa hospital"?

2. Why do IDF soldiers shoot (and post) videos of them "mocking"/"disrespecting" Palestinian homes/mosques/schools?

3. What's the steelman argument of why Israel is "occupying" the West Bank? The best I can come up with is "they didn't occupy Gaza and look what happened", but (a) that wasn't known before Oct7, and (b) they would have IMO gained a lot of goodwill abroad if they had given it more autonomy...

The rubble of the numerous civilian homes and buildings you've leveled are the mass graves.

Obviously not. I just believe you are going about it the entirely wrong way if you want to prevent it.

How many Oct 7’s do you think this one-sided conflict will spawn?

The ICJ seems to disagree with you.

Just like the Nazis destroyed Jewish homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/01/world/middlee...

This is a straw man. Condemning IDFs slaughtering of children isn't the same as supporting Hamas. I condemn both.

When you say things like this, I know that you are either spreading IDF propaganda or have been wired to believe IDF propaganda. Either way it is telling what soldiers are experiencing.

None of the things you stated are any different than what IDF associated press has stated. This makes your post incredibly suspect.

As this is HN, and we welcome on-the-ground views, we are not finding too much info about what is actually happening from the ground view in your post.

How many Hamas terrorists have you killed compared to the now over 10 000 children?

The fact that there is no one to bury them doesn't mean it's not a genocide, come on..

> so we have no choice but to kill them too

When you fire at children playing in the streets, you had a choice. If you can't see that, you've lost all humanity..

> but we do not specifically target them

Hundreds of videoes proves otherwise. Where fleeing civilians are gunned down.

> Personally, as a commander, I would like to say that I have no ill feelings towards the Palestinian people

But your leaders have. And your peers, judging by videoes they posts about the cruelty they do.

> but we need to get as many of the hostages back as possible

You say that, but then you bomb every structure you find, and even shoot the fleeing hostages yourself. It doesn't really seem you care too much for them, they're merely a convenient excuse to do your horrors.

> Please support us and help rid the world of violent terrorism

You can start by laying down your weapon. What you're doing to Palestinian civilians is terrorism.

I struggle to believe this is really a comment by a "commander in the IDF". Such a person should know that the use of civilians as human shields by one side does not absolve the other side from taking every precaution to minimise harm coming to those civilians.

Risk to civilians does not bar military action, but the principle of proportionality requires that precautions be taken to minimize the harm to these protected persons. This analysis includes considerations like whether circumstances permit the attacker to time a military action to minimize the presence of civilians at the location.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_shield_(law)#Legal_doctr...

Specifically, saying the IDF doesn't target them, they're just in the way, is a cynical denial of that responsibility.

Further, a commander of the IDF would remember the proverb about throwing stones when living in a glass house: there is extensive documentation of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by the IDF. See for example the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead (2009):

  10. The use of Palestinian civilians as human shields

  55. The Mission investigated four incidents in which Israeli forces coerced Palestinian civilian
  men at gun point to take part in house searches during the military operations (Chapter XIV).
  The Palestinian men were blindfolded and handcuffed as they were forced to enter houses ahead
  of the Israeli soldiers. In one of the incidents, Israeli forces repeatedly forced a man to enter a
  house in which Palestinian combatants were hiding. Published testimonies of Israeli soldiers who
  took part in the military operations confirm the continued use of this practice, in spite of clear
  orders from Israel’s High Court to the armed forces to put an end to it and repeated public
  assurances from the armed forces that the practice had been discontinued. The Mission
  concludes that this practice amounts to the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields and is
  therefore prohibited by international humanitarian law. 

Despite Israel's claims Hamas does not use civilians in this way. Instead they fight from built-up areas and make it difficult to distinguish combatant from non-combatant. They "hide among civilians" but they don't "use them as shields".

> we have no choice but to kill them too, but we do not specifically target them

> we have no choice but to kill them too

bruh...

Those are war crimes according to the UN

https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/war-crimes.shtml

No, it didn't. It ruled on what amounts to (in the parlance of the US legal system) a preliminary injunction, ordering one because the pleadings and supporting evidence on initial review warrant it, while the process of a trial on the merits will take longer.

> The ruling is a joke, how can you rule against the defendant and yet order the defendant to monitor themselves?

The only people the ICJ can order are the parties. External monitoring and enforcement is a matter for, primarily, the UN Security Council.

> The ICJ knew if it found against Israel it would loose all credibility outside the West, but it also had too much political pressure from the West to rule for Israel.

The process by which the ICJ might rule for or against Israel, rather than ordering provisional measures, is much longer. This is just an early part of the case.

Yes. But this isn’t the final ruling.

South Africa asked for something analogous to a preliminary injunction. The ICJ declined to order a preliminary ceasefire. Instead, the case will be tried as usual.