ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes
cnn.com
cnn.com
"Respectful" here means respectful to the people who are wrong (in your view) and most respectful to the people who are most wrong (in your view). If you can't do that, that's ok, but please don't post until you can. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Hellish flamewars in deep subthreads are not ok. I'm going to lower the bar for banning accounts that do this, so please don't do this. If you're hotly indignant, step away from the keyboard until that changes. Nobody 'wins' on the internet anyway, and it's not worth destroying this community for. Not to mention your heart.
I don’t mention that Hamas are also war criminals because I think everyone can agree they are already. It’s obvious.
Anyway I always thought that courts like this should have a special higher authority and any of us arguing on hacker news, I believe they are brave to take this case, will review the evidence fairly and a court case can happen at some point. If these leaders are innocent then I’m convinced the court will find them not guilty, but they should be allowed to follow any evidence, your or my opinion on hacker news really isn’t very relevant compared to that of experts in war crimes and international law.
The name of the ICC does not describe what it actually does. The only role it’s ever actually fulfilled is to punish people who have already lost wars. Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers, and random African warlord losers.
The most optimistic outcomes for the ICC here are sanctions (which Israel’s closest allies wont participate in) or restricted international movement for the involved parties (which Israel’s closest allies will also ignore), and I still think that’s rather optimistic.
Talk is cheap, and it doesn’t matter what the ICC says, its role is defined by what it actually does. Which is as I’ve described.
We can only hope that the law catches up with these fucks.
1. World Politics 1918-1936 R. Palme Dutt
This misunderstands how icc works. Generally the accused has to be in ICC custody for the case to go forward. Once the accused is in custody, the ICC has all sorts of power over them.
Perhaps you mean arresting people is hard. That is true, but the merit part only cones after that part.
> Which is why it’s pretty much only ever been used to prosecute WWII losers, Yugoslavian civil war losers
Neither of those were the ICC.
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You're not entirely wrong of course. The ICC has trouble enforcing warrants against powerful people from powerful countries.
What you are expressing here is essentially a variant of the philosophy known as "legal realism" – laws only exist to the extent they are enforced, so a law lacking a sufficiently effective enforcement mechanism isn't really a law at all.
However, that perspective was rarely heard prior to the 20th century. Historically, international law grew out of the work of early modern European scholars such Grotius. Many of them (Grotius included) were natural law theorists – they saw the law of nations as grounded in human nature, and ultimately established by God. In those days, much of Europe – even in the purely domestic sphere – was still governed by customary law: laws evolved due to custom, whose content was never entirely clear, and which were never perfectly enforced. The continental legal tradition was founded on ancient Roman law, which continued to be studied as a kind of abstract intellectual system in universities long after it had ceased to be enforced in practice – however, rather than an exercise without any practical relevance, lawyers and judges would apply its provisions to every day cases, but only when they could get away with doing so – an attempt whenever they could to impose some neat Roman order on the anarchic mess of royal decrees and Germanic pagan custom. Against that historical background, the idea of international law without any clear lawgiver or law-enforcer made much more sense than it does to you.
Again, you are relying on a contested viewpoint in the philosophy of law as if it were obviously true, despite the fact that many people (both historically and today) disagree with it.
It is one thing to argue for a contested philosophical position – but if you are just going to assert it as "obvious" or "self-evident", then you are really just preaching to the choir, you can only ever convince people who already agree with you.
I could issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, and hold a trial for him myself. Perhaps I could also contrive some philosophical justification for why this would be a deeply meaningful act, but the reality of daily life would continue without any regard for such a gesture.
No, my criticism is that you are making the category mistake of confusing history with philosophy of law.
Nobody disputes the historical fact that international law has never seen any more than selective enforcement.
The dispute is about what relevance that historical fact has for the ontological status of international law qua law. That's a philosophy of law question, not a history question.
You are also ignoring the historical fact that the vast majority of states prefer to claim compliance with international law (however dubiously) rather than openly defy it. If other states accuse them of violating international law, the standard diplomatic response is to dispute the contents of the law or its application to the facts at hand, not to reject the whole concept of international law. Your nihilism about international law ignores the real historical fact that states at least pretend to believe in it – and a lot of the people who make those decisions on behalf of states (diplomats, bureaucrats, politicians, etc) aren't just pretending to believe in it, they really actually do. This is a real historical and contemporary phenomenon your theory can't explain.
> I could issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, and hold a trial for him myself.
There is an obvious difference – nobody with any real world power would accept what you did as legitimate. Whereas, if the ICC issues an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, many people around the world with real power (government officials, judges, diplomats, international bureaucrats, etc) will officially consider that a legitimate act. Now, of course, despite the fact these people do have some real world power, it is unlikely to be enough in practice to actually bring about Netanyahu's arrest. But still, that's a very different situation from your hypothetical of an act which nobody with any significant real world power would accept as legitimate.
And, an ICC arrest warrant is likely to have some real world consequences for Netanyahu – it will likely reduce somewhat his ability to travel internationally; it is also likely to harm Israel diplomatically and politically (e.g. it could well make an easier job for people lobbying for various governments to recognise the State of Palestine); conversely, it is likely also going to help Netanyahu in Israel's domestic politics; whereas, your warrant/trial would have zero real world consequences for him or for his government or country.
And it wouldn't be discussed through-out the Internet. It wouldn't be spoken about on CNN and other mainstream media.
It all really comes to this, doesn't it? It all comes to the established belief in the authorities. With enough uncontested claims like yours, the power of ICC would fade. However because of witty responses of skissane, its power grows.
One of the best quotes from the Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire:
> A King, a priest, a rich man and a sellsword are in a room. Those three man tell the sellsword to kill the other two.
> Who lives and who dies?
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/161997/so-what-was...
The US put bounties out on Osama Bin Laden. This isn't unprecedented.
Makes it look rather like they did so at the behest of Russia (whether on behalf of their ally Iran or as a simple continuation of Russian support for the ANC, who knows).
Even if it only looks like that, the conflict of interest is sufficiently obvious that I find it difficult to regard the ICC's indictments wrt Israel as judicially legitimate.
(this is not to imply that Israel is anywhere near innocent of all accusations made against her, only that I see no reason to trust the ICC's judgement in the matter of which ones she's guilty of)
The ICJ is handling a the case against Israel filed by South Africa. The ICJ handles only cases with state parties, and only on the basis of complaints of one of those state parties.
The two cases are entirely separate, and the ICC and ICJ are two entirely different courts. The ICC was created under the Rome Statue. The ICJ, meanwhile was founded on the basis of the UN Charter.
I think ICJ giving credence to South Africa given they consider the ICC optional is still ... unfortunate, at best, but "conflict of interest" is rather less applicable.
not just does the US criminal elite not recognize ICC but they took it one step further with spelling out[1] what might happen if a US criminal is being charged by the court:
"The Hague Invasion Act", allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.
... so not only should Israeli and Hamas war crimes be prosecuted, but in order not to appear utterly hypocritical, and "to do right by history", should US/UK war criminals like Dick Cheney, G.W. Bush, Tony Blair, and all other despicable criminal soldiers face the music for what they did in Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other places. Kidnapping from a sovereign country, torture, etc ... Just utterly barbaric.
But the US especially is a lost cause considering how they treat the worst transgressors and war-criminals like the execution without trial as in the case of Osama bin Laden. So just imagine if anyone would propose having US war criminals meet that very same fate? It would get you banned on every Internet site for "hate speech" LOL. Which is why it's pointless to cite laws, the justice system or pen and paper to solve something that is immune to that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
- What crimes and under whose jurisdiction are Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and George Bush guilty of? Osama bin Laden was indicted by a US grand jury under US jurisdiction and refused for extradition by the Taliban, not to mention his Interpol arrest warrant from Libya.
You also linked the Wikipedia page for the Hague Invasion Act but didn’t bring up this paragraph from the Abu Ghraib one:
> In response to the events at Abu Ghraib, the United States Department of Defense removed 17 soldiers and officers from duty. Eleven soldiers were charged with dereliction of duty, maltreatment, aggravated assault and battery. Between May 2004 and April 2006, these soldiers were court-martialed, convicted, sentenced to military prison, and dishonorably discharged from service. Two soldiers, found to have perpetrated many of the worst offenses at the prison, Specialist Charles Graner and PFC Lynndie England, were subject to more severe charges and received harsher sentences. Graner was convicted of assault, battery, conspiracy, maltreatment of detainees, committing indecent acts and dereliction of duty; he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment and loss of rank, pay and benefits. England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act and sentenced to three years in prison.
Let’s not act like the United States not being party to the Rome Statute means that US soldiers can commit crimes with impunity and not be punished under policy like the UCMJ.
Many US citizens killed by state actors abroad, including by allies. Nothing of note happens. The key here is you think it is unreasonable for US war criminals to be tried at all (even when they commit atrocities in countries party to the Rome Statue).
The people I've mentioned are guilty of acting on made up fake intel (Iraq has WMD's). They ought to face the same fate as Saddam Hussein.
Also in Abu Ghraib low ranking soldiers got convicted when the entire chain of command's been guilty of these crimes. It wasn't a one off.
The US always has and always will continue to commit war crimes because they never had to reckon with their imperial past. And chickens are gonna come home to roost because no other country has been subject to propaganda by its own government while also to that of other countries (Russia/China) as the US. And having such a large number of people simply being illiterate isn't helping.
The reason Trump came to power isn't just because Russia made that happen (also Russia winning the infowar and enabling Trump is the biggest successful Information Operation and achievement of soft-power in the last 4000 years).
I might change my mind if the US is able to do a peaceful handover of power (without an insurrection) next time this is due. And also provided that they do manage to treat the homeless as human beings. Until then this country remains a failed experiment whose population lacks manners, history, culture, cuisine or basic decency. And every soldier (no matter from what poor background they stem) are an embodiment of that failure.
I guess this sounds like Anti-Americanism. But actually I think the US model is the most promising system we have in something that claims it's the free world. I'm just allergic to all forms of nationalistic boot-licking. And I also believe that the only way to make a system stronger is when it's being critcized. Being addicted to applause and praise for imperial achievements of your own country is for the simps who have never lived abroad, and/or for nationalist bootlickers (the US is full of both).
* Israel is the one operating the jetty. If you look at photos the trucks bringing the aid from the sea to land have yellow Israeli civilian plates. These are civilian Israeli contractors being paid by the Israeli government to disperse the aid because the Americans refused to have boots on the ground
* it only takes 3 people (prosecutor + 2 judges) to completely crumble the western block. You could suspect war crimes for any post 9/11 war campaign and arrest every past and present leader of the Us, France, UK, Australia since 2001 because 3 people said so. That’s way too much power for a small group
The pier provides something else to Israel: a large escape hatch for forcibly transferring a large population without resettling them in Israel (or Egypt). This plan was suggested last year by an Israeli think tank linked to Likud and the current Israeli war cabinet: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20231024-israel-think-tank...
(By the way, there is still some aid attempting to enter Gaza via the land routes but there are multiple examples of trucks being blocked and food being destroyed. Here’s a video from last week where the IDF watched as food aid was blocked and burned: https://x.com/sapir_slam/status/1791143191988543538?s=46)
Like you mentioned there are hundreds of trucks going in per day but there are also issues with Egypt shutting down their side, Hamas bombing the Israeli gates, and israeli protesters blocking aid. The sea bypasses all 3 of those issues. They’ve already transferred in hundreds of tons of aid in just the few days it’s been open.
There are two additional checks-and-balances which you have not mentioned: (1) Decisions of the Pre-Trial Chamber can be appealed to the Appellate Chamber (2) the UN Security Council can by resolution suspend proceedings in any case for up to 12 months (indefinitely renewable).
So, a prosecution requires (1) the Prosecutor to decide to prosecute, (2) at least two out of three Pre-Trial judges to approve the prosecution, (3) at least three out of five Appellate judges to dismiss any appeal of that decision, (4) either a majority of the UN Security Council or else at least one of its permanent members to oppose suspending the prosecution. That's more than just 3 people's say-so. That's six people plus at least one major world power say-so.
There's a hit Israeli song about wiping Gaza making the charts there, there's settlers attacking Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, mobs burning Palestinian vehicles and homes, blocking aid trucks, burning UN property in East Jerusalem etc.
Please can we stop pretending that Israel is somehow a state that can do no wrong and that every criticism of them is simply haters ganging up on them?
Of course every criticism should be targeted at specific individuals, which is exactly what the ICC did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mCOi71b6AU
"Responding to Legal Challenges to IDF Operations in Gaza"
It's from a pro-Israeli viewpoint but is informed and has a lot of interesting details and maybe insight into the ICC/ICJ and the process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#/...
Using the military to prosecute aggressive military operations in an area the clear majority are unarmed, unprotected civilians again shows there is virtually no chance of prosecutions being taken.
Add to that the severe limits added to press freedom, to the point it's obvious the plan is there is no independent reporting, the repeated and systematic targeting of hospitals, ambulances, medical and aid workers, treatment of people detained, never mind densely packed civilian areas which in similar ongoing conflicts (Ukraine/Russia) would be directly called out as war crimes without equivocation, but are ignored, then is there even any point attempting to prosecute individual soldiers?
Seeking arrest warrants for those with most direct decision making powers is far more legitimate, necessary even. Demands for limitless, in all senses, military operations help no one longer term.
The belief is that as sovereign nations, they can hold their own people accountable, and no one else should have the right to hold them accountable instead.
Except when they can't, as in the case of senior government figures.
It is a principle of democracy that senior government figures can be held accountable.
E.g. in the US, Trump, a former president and a potential future president, is currently in several trials.
E.g. in Israel, where Netanyahu is under trial in several cases (unrelated to the ICJ) and where e.g. a former PM was convicted of several charges and served time in prison.
Obama deserves an investigation and trial at the ICC for much the same reasons, but was somehow seen as better by the ICC and signing countries.
All of your examples are domestic crimes.
The examples are domestic crimes because the argument is that the US doesn’t need to be party to the Rome Statute because it would enforce similar penalties on servicemen and leaders using domestic jurisdiction. Others countered that the US somehow can’t do that despite the former president literally being on trial as we speak and the above commenter provided examples to the contrary.
https://crescent.icit-digital.org/articles/bush-and-associat...
Not seeing any mention of a conviction on the Wikipedia page though, which seems like it would have at least a mention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Internat...
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This is pretty wild: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/16/icc-us-coope... (archived: https://archive.md/IDpQk)
That's clearly trying to pull some shit / suppress investigation into US activities.
(ICJ = a court for countries to go to when they disagree on how to interpret a treaty. ICC = throw individual people in jail who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide)
There is no such thing as a sovereign nation in the modern age.
Even if you ignore the dependence on international trade (i.e. relying on other nations to trade with you), sovereignty requires the military ability to defend yourself against any adversary trying to impose their will on you. In the nuclear age we've effectively abolished this concept thanks to Mutually Assured Destruction. If China wants the US gone, either China "wins" (i.e. the US surrenders or offers a compromise) or the world ends (i.e. the outcome of global thermonuclear war makes "US" and "China" meaningless concepts).
So if "as sovereign nations" is no more than a meaningful flourish, the belief becomes simply this:
> they can hold their own people accountable, and no on else should have the right to hold them accountable instead
We can break this down again:
> they can hold their own people accountable
It's interesting that you say "can", which already admits that there is a difference between the ability and willingness to do so. But even if we ignore this, the important consideration here is that there can be a mismatch between what "they" think "holding their own people accountable" means and what others think.
By "they" you reference the US and Israel but legal entities don't do anything, people do things. Granted, those people exist within social systems of power but at the end of the day people within those states will be the ones holding people accountable or not. If you think of this in terms of people, a potential conflict of interest becomes apparent: the people being held accountable are the military and political leadership and legislators, the people holding them accountable are military and political investigators and courts. The victims of the alleged crimes are not represented by either of these groups as Gazans are generally not fully Israeli citizens.
This isn't to say that Israel's legal system might be unfairly biased against Gazans or that it might err on the side of ignoring crimes against them or that this might be a systemic problem. My point is merely that there's a credible reason to believe that an investigation by Israel into alleged actions by its government against Gazans might be biased simply based on an in-group/out-group distinction between the involved groups.
> no one else should have the right to hold them accountable
This is begging the question of "accountable for what". You can only hold someone accountable if there's some bar they're supposed to meet. Israel was a signatory to the Rome Statute (although it walked back from it in 2002 along with the US) and we're talking about the ICC so the bar seems to be "upholding human rights and abstaining from human rights abuses and war crimes".
You might argue that no outside state should be allowed to intervene in another state's human rights abuses as long as they are contained to that state's territory or only people who are subjects of that state. But clearly Israel doesn't believe this or otherwise the Mossad wouldn't have a history of abductions and assassinations. And it's a good thing too because otherwise we wouldn't look at events like the Rwandan genocide as a horrific failure of the international community and instead just consider it business as usual.
Legally speaking, the ICC clearly has the "right to" do what it is doing. But if you mean morally, again I don't think you believe this unless you believe interventionism is never justified. In other words that would mean you want to go back to the Peace of Westphalia and abolish the notion of universal human rights entirely and allow states to commit genocides, engage in chattel slavery or do all kinds of unspeakable horrors as long as they do so within the confines of their own territory.
I don't think you're saying any of that. I think what you're instead arguing for is nothing more than special pleading: it's different when {the US, Israel} does it.
With the so-dubbed "The Hague Invasion Act" I'd say the US has not only withdrawn its signature, it actively threatens anyone trying to hold their citizens accountable to things like war crimes. Officially, they're an observer these days, but practically, I think they're only there to see their enemies get convicted, and nothing else.
And they didn't waste any time in stating they would never actually execute the signed treaty. At least we already know that:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cmllykpwgdyo
(Yes, I know what the BBC title says, Hamas statement that they won't follow the treaties they agreed to uphold is there, for their own people. In THE SAME STATEMENT they complain that it isn't applied faster to their opponents)
(Also: obvious conclusion, if Hamas has no intention of holding up treaties they signed, then that makes any peace with them worthless, even if it's a signed treaty. Without a trusted counterparty there is no choice)
AND they "demand" it is held up against Israel.
Plus the basic point stands. With people who think like this, treaties aren't worth the paper they're written on.
That being said, even those that didn’t vote for Hamas would probably not have elected the PA, as public trust of Palestinians in the PA has eroded due to Mahmoud Abbas’s unwillingness to step down and the perception that the PA is a puppet government.
All this to say that Palestinians lack a trustworthy government, much less a government that could be responsible for turning in the Hamas members the ICC wants to arrest.
So that's the problem I have with the statement: it's true, absolutely, but if we think like this then human rights aren't human rights, but merely subject to governance. Your statement is true, but is a denial of international law. If your statement is true, you may as well abolish the international criminal court. After all, if a government exists, there's no need for them and if a government doesn't exist (or doesn't apply) then, as you say, the rules don't apply. So what's the point?
Your statement is true, but the world would be a much better place if your statement was false, and therefore we'll at least pretend it is false.
(and, of course, if you think like this, then absolutely anything goes in war)
What you are saying here is a bit confused. Under US domestic law, the President has the unilateral authority to sign whatever treaties the President wishes. Ratification comes after signature, the US never ratified the Statute. So there was nothing actually "shaky" about the signature.
This is a topic which confuses a lot of people. Agreeing treaties under international law is a two-stage process – the first stage, "signature" is in-principle agreement but isn't actually legally binding (except for a limited obligation "not to defeat the object and purpose of the treaty", and it isn't very clear what that even means); "ratification" (sometimes also called "acceptance" or "approval") is fully binding agreement. For less important treaties, the two stages are sometimes collapsed into one ("signature without reservation as to ratification"), but for major treaties the distinction is generally preserved. Also, joining a multilateral treaty subsequent to its entry into force is often a single stage process ("accession"). However, the average person doesn't understand this two-stage process, and is used to everyday contexts where signing a contract is sufficient to make it legally binding.
There are some particular reasons why Americans find this even more confusing than people of most countries do. Many Americans have the idea that the US Constitution requires treaties to be ratified by a two-thirds majority of the US Senate. However, strictly speaking, the President ratifies treaties, not the Senate; the Senate just gives the President permission to do so. Furthermore, US law distinguishes between "treaties" (whose ratification requires two-thirds Senate consent) and "international agreements" (whose ratification doesn't) – but as far as international law is concerned, both are treaties – whether some act of ratification requires consent by the US Senate is an internal American matter with which international law is largely unconcerned.
Actually, US law distinguishes three types of "international agreements" (all of which are treaties as far as international law is concerned) – treaties (President ratifies with consent of two-thirds of Senate), congressional-executive agreements (President ratifies with consent of ordinary majority of both House and Senate), and sole executive agreements (President ratifies unilaterally). It is generally understood that "treaties" are used for foundational legal issues, military alliances, borders, human rights, etc; congressional-executive agreements are primarily used for trade; sole executive agreements are used for more minor matters of international cooperation. However, there is no precise legal rule regarding what type of agreement is to be used for which category–the Supreme Court views it as a "political question" which it expects the President and Congress to sort out between themselves, largely without its input. Under international law (Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties article 47), if the President ratifies something, that ratification is still binding under international law on the US, even if US Congress (or even the Supreme Court!) decides the ratification to be illegal or unconstitutional – unless its illegality/unconstitutionality was "manifest" and "objectively evident" to the other states parties at the time the President made it.
For instance, in Illinois there was until recently no punishment for a violation of the Vienna Convention by law enforcement, therefore the Convention was essentially worthless. (Illinois state law generally requires a punishment to be attached to make a law mandatory, otherwise the reading of "shall" is directory)
As far as international law is concerned, once a treaty has been ratified and entered into force, it is binding on the ratifying state, they have an international legal obligation to obey it, and they can be subject to consequences under international law if they violate it. The nature of those consequences vary greatly depending on the details of the treaty - often treaties have dispute resolution mechanisms to be invoked if one party claims another is violating it (such as the ICJ, arbitration, WTO dispute settlement, etc). Trade treaties often permit imposition of tariffs in cases of violation. In extreme cases, violating a treaty could even result in military action (e.g. what happens if you sign a peace treaty to end a war and then decide not to comply with it?) On the other hand, many treaties are rather toothless in that they fail to provide any real consequences for violations. Still, just because there might not be any real consequence for the violation, doesn’t negate the violation’s legal existence.
Coming to your question about implementing legislation - different countries have different systems. In countries with a “monist” system, international law is considered part of domestic law, and so a treaty once ratified automatically becomes part of the law of the land. Conversely, in countries with a “dualist” system, international law and domestic law are viewed as two independent spheres, and the domestic legal system will not consider a treaty binding absent domestic implementing legislation. And “monist” and “dualist” are ideal types, and some national legal systems are actually hybrids that don’t neatly fit in either category, combining elements of both - they may be monist with respect to certain categories of treaties and dualist with respect to others. Even in a purely monist system, some treaties might be considered “non-self executing” - for example, some treaties require states to criminalise certain acts under their domestic law, but leave the detailed definition of those crimes up to each state party - even in a monist system, such a treaty will likely be viewed as domestically ineffective absent domestic implementing legislation, since the crimes it seeks to create are too vaguely defined to actually be prosecuted. Also, in some countries with a federal system, e.g. the US, implementing legislation may be required at both the federal and state levels; in others, the federal level has the power to impose treaties on the states, even in areas where it would not normally have legislative competence (e.g. the external affairs power under the Australian constitution)
However, from an international law perspective, the question of whether domestic implementing legislation exists is irrelevant. If a state ratifies a treaty and it enters into force, they have an international legal obligation to obey it - and if they fail to do so because they haven’t enacted the necessary domestic legislation, international law does not consider that a valid excuse-they are guilty of violating it, and have to face the consequences of that violation, whatever those may be.
You are talking about the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. There was a 2001 ICJ case on that, the LaGrand case (Germany vs United States). The LaGrand brothers were born in Germany, moved to the United States, never became US citizens, stabbed a man to death in 1982 in Arizona in the course of a bungled bank robbery. Under the Convention, they had the right to German consular assistance, and US authorities had the duty to inform them of that right, but failed to do so. They were sentenced to death, and the state of Arizona executed them in 1999. Germany got an order from the ICJ that the execution not go ahead, but the US chose to defy the ICJ order and execute them anyway. In 2001, the ICJ found that the US had violated Germany’s rights under the Convention by so doing. However, given Germany did not make any request for damages, and the US decided to formally apologise to Germany, the ICJ did not impose any penalties on the US for the violation.
The US argued that under the US constitution the federal government was powerless to compel the state of Arizona to comply with the Convention or the ICJ’s order. Germany even filed a case with the US Supreme Court seeking it to compel Arizona to comply, but it ruled that under the US constitution Arizona didn’t have to. However, international law doesn’t care about the US constitution. If the US constitution prevents the US from obeying international law, that’s an internal US problem of zero relevance to other countries or to international institutions such as the ICJ. Given there are over 190 sovereign states in the world, if national constitutions were an excuse for disobeying international law, international law would quickly turn into a dead letter. Also, while US law considers the federal government and state governments to be “separate sovereigns”, as far as international law is concerned, it is all one country, and the US (represented by the President and State Department) is internationally responsible for the acts of all its subdivisions, and if the federal government lacks the constitutional authority to make states obey international law, that’s its internal problem, with which other countries ought not need to be concerned
I'd not heard about the Arizona case; it actually tracks almost identically an Illinois case, People v. Madej, with a Polish citizen under the same circumstances (although zero information online outside of the court filings).
What powers would the ICJ have to punish individual actors at fault in a situation like this? Or to force an injunction? (outside of monetary damages which does you no good if you're dead)
Law has always been a passion of mine, and international law in particular. I even applied for law school once but wasn’t accepted. If I tried again, applied to more schools, I probably would have been accepted by one of them eventually, but I took it as a message from the great beyond that it wasn’t meant to be. Still, if one believes in parallel universes, I reckon there must be one out there in which right now I’m a lawyer instead of a software engineer
> What powers would the ICJ have to punish individual actors at fault in a situation like this? Or to force an injunction? (outside of monetary damages which does you no good if you're dead)
The ICJ has very broad powers to order states to do things. The only real limit is its own judgement about what is legal and what is prudent-if it starts ordering things which the international community views as unreasonable, it could greatly harm its own reputation, and I think its judges are aware of that risk and keep it in mind when making decisions.
However, while the ICJ can order states to do things, it has no actual power to compel them to obey its orders. Under the UN Charter, that’s the job of the Security Council. In theory, if a state violates an ICJ order, the Security Council can order military action to enforce it. In practice, that obviously doesn’t work when one of the P5 is the respondent, since they aren’t going to vote for military action against themselves. And even if the respondent is some friendless pariah country, other states might not view enforcing an ICJ order as worth going to war over.
An unenforceable order isn’t entirely worthless though. Obviously it can have negative diplomatic and political consequences for the state concerned, it can harm their reputation in the court of international public opinion. And a case can be valuable for establishing legal precedent. The LaGrand case actually was important in that the ICJ for the first time ruled that its provisional measures (basically a preliminary injunction) were legally binding. This was unclear because the wording of the English text of the Statute of the ICJ suggests they are not but the French text suggests they are, and both the English and French are equally authoritative. Faced with that contradiction, the ICJ decided in this case to follow the French over the English.
I'm sure it will never come back to haunt them... /s
That is, a court ordered warrant is typically executed by a government’s law enforcement. There is no such proactive enforcement mechanism available to the ICC.
Instead, the governments that have ratified the ICC-related treaties have simply agreed to arrest warrant targets if they happen to travel to their jurisdiction.
As such, it seems more like a “travel-ban” or “house arrest” than a warrant. Is that correct?
A warrant may additionally grant the police extrajudicial powers to enforce the warrant but that's a separate legislative concern. In the case of the ICC the enforcement is left up to individual member states. There may be consequences for not enforcing a warrant when the opportunity presents itself.
If they get a warrant - its just like a warrant in the USA, maybe the cops bother looking for you i.e. go to your house / work / last known address but more often they just wait until you get a traffic ticket or something where you happen to interact with them. If you had a warrant from another state, the local cops would need a pretty good reason to bother actually looking for you.
Often goes slightly further than this. The state issuing the warrant must pay “transport fees” to the state doing the arresting. The arresting state calls the warrant state to see if their transport fees will be authorized. Most of the time, those fees are not authorized by the issuing state. So the suspect is let go, if the police interaction wasn’t otherwise justified in an arrest.
The reasons for why transport fees are generally declined vary, but I’d imagine that as long as the suspect stays out of the issuing state, they can’t commit more crime in that state, so the outstanding warrant is itself an effective deterrent against crime in the issuing state…the suspect generally will avoid returning. Also jails/prisons are overcrowded, dockets are overflowing, etc.
But generally any police interaction which shows a valid warrant in another state, the “local police” will by default attempt an arrest. It’s not “unimportant” to them. Just they can’t do anything with the suspect if they arrest them without approved transport fees so there’s simply no point in completing the arrest.
I learned all this just last week by picking up a homeless fugitive hitchiking along the interstate. But he’d had enough interactions with police in various states and seemed otherwise intelligent enough to be a reliable narrator on the matter.
The main counties around me go pick you up, not relying on the arresting jurisdiction to transport. One county in particular, Macomb, has a bad reputation in that it will drive across the country to pick you up. Traveling pick up buses criss cross the country. The bad part was the sometimes multi-week long trip spent in handcuffs sleeping in shitty hotels eating cheap McDonald's for every meal.
However I can't find a reference to that.
I think it is best to think of it as a warrant because it is a standing order for any member state to arrest them. Whether those member states actually do so is not certain, South Africa for instance has shirked recent ICC arrest warrants multiple times.
I do agree that the end result is a sort of "travel ban", but that's no different than if the US issued a warrant for (say) a Chinese citizen living in China. The Chinese government is probably not going to hand that person over, and that person is effectively barred from travel to the US (and likely other countries like Canada that might help the US enforce that warrant if the opportunity presented itself), unless they want to get arrested.
Meng Wanzhou (daughter of the founder of Huawei) bypassed sanctions against Iran
Vancouver airport arrested and put her under house arrest for a few years
South Africa did not with a Sudanese war criminal: "As a signatory to the Rome Statute that governs the jurisdiction and functioning of the Court, South Africa was obliged to arrest al-Bashir when he was in the country, and to extradite him to The Hague to face trial."[1]
Last year, Putin cancelled a visit to South Africa as there's an ICC arrest warrant out for him.
[1] https://theconversation.com/icc-ruling-on-south-africa-and-a...
I'd welcome if he came. :)
Arrest warrants for both sides in the conflict. That actually makes a lot of sense.
Needless to say, they're backing him, and the ICC can't arrest Netanyahu. At worst, the U.S. government will sanction ICC officials as they did under the Trump administration.
I personally can't believe the ICC is equating the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government. What a shameful organization.
1- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
2- https://www.state.gov/warrant-applications-by-the-internatio...
I think that is an unfair statement. Just because they asked for a warrant to be issued for both does not imply that they think both are the same.
But media, PR and politics don’t play by these rules. Mention two things together and the messages will go through.
A similar example would be Whataboutism, a logical fallacy, but it seems to work very well in politics.
I have my issues with the ICC, but they are supposed to enforce international law impartially.
They clearly not the same. One is a modern state and one is not.
The actions of both are not so different. Killing civilians is not good. Whether it be guerilla terrorism or bombs and troops
International law looks at this differently. There's a huge difference between targeting civilians and striking genuine military targets that have civilian human shields, especially after issuing a warning and taking reasonable precautions. The first is a war crime, the second is actually allowed by Geneva conventions. The phrase “killing civilians” throws these differences out of the window and simply shouldn't be used in intelligent conversion about this topic.
I think that is a distinction without a difference
If your siblings are killed or maimed in their home or at a party, do you care?
Killing people is a bad thing
But there is version of this where weapons at the hospital are removed by force, without bombing it.
The air force can hit the targets required around the hospital to allow an easier time for ground forces. Reach the hospital, and use those ground forces to secure it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/15/middleeast/idf-accidentally-k...
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1D9Zaet2ypKD7H6gyxYtU...
One source of many about targeting journalists for over two decades
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/09/middleeast/israel-military-jo...
One source on IDF killing indiscriminately
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/02/middleeast/israel-bo...
And for some extra flavor have a few sources on the IDF posting videos of their abuse of Palestinians
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-09/ty-article-ma...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/idf-posting-abuse-foota...
Are these actions that of the "most moral army"?
These things are easily googlable yet you haven't bothered to do the slightest bit of reading before dismissing the claims outright. Even the US president had said that the attack on the Liberty was 100% intentional while knowing it was a US vessel
Version A (what happens now): Israel calls everybody in the vicinity of the hospital, gives them time to evacuate. Then Israel strikes the hospital with a missile without a warhead. Then Israel actually bombs it.
Version B (what you suggest): IDF storms in with guns blazing.
What version, in your opinion, will result in more civilian deaths?
1. In many cases whole Gazen families have bee killed in their homes.
2. I always blame those giving orders. On both sides.
Maybe you could argue Israel is not accidentally doing this, but collateral damage of civilians will almost always happen regardless of how careful attacks are planned. I don't think there has ever been a war that occurred in such a densely packed area that has had no civilian causalities.
I think there is an element in glee at civilian casualties on both sides
You can personally think international law is wrong, but that probably won't affect what the ICC does very much.
There are videos of them celebrating on Oct 7 and crowds attacking the hostages when they're brought into Gaza.
Did they think killing is a bad thing?
I do not know, but not on the face of it
But we can all do better than justify our actions on the basis of "they did it too"
That is school yard logic, and nation states can do better
Silly me, tho. The nation states involved all seem to be devoid of principals
Or to put it more broadly what distinguishes a soldier who has killed dozens of enemy soldiers from a school shooter who killed dozens of his peers?
According to your statement they are morally equivalent, society at large would vehemently disagree with you.
Even in the latter case, the cost to civilian lives has to be proportional to the the military value/lives saved long-term by ending the threat. This is not proportional: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
But unfortunately, the latter case does not account for all that we've seen in the last few months and years. There's been plenty of "targeting civilians" too
Additionally they werent charged on the basis of unporportionality afaik, i think all the charges are based around failing to let in enough food aid, causing a famine.
No, starvation is only one of the alleged offences: "the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza"
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-...
> The Prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, on the basis that they committed the war crime of ‘intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare’ under article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the ICC Statute. The Prosecutor also seeks to charge the two suspects with various other war crimes and crimes against humanity associated with the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare under articles 7 and 8 of the ICC Statute
Ahh, yes, like when the IDF told Gazan civilians by evacuation order to move to the south of Gaza because they were going to intensify bombing in the north.
And then increased bombing of southern Gaza by 85% in the next 10 days...
Source: https://news.sky.com/story/gaza-war-satellite-data-shows-isr...
This may be how things played out after the second world war, but it's a horrible standard to live by. If the ICC has any integrity, they won't take "but they started it" as an excuse.
Aren't you? I thought the Geneva convention and similar treaties all require reciprocity.
The Rome Statute does allow foe the ICC to convict according to the Geneva conventions as well, but the exemptions therein don't necessarily apply.
Second, both Israel and Palestine have signed the main conventions. Israel with reservations, and have not signed AP I and II. Palestine have signed all of them, unconditionally.
Since both are signatories, they are both bound by the conventions even if the other party breaks them.
No, i don't think so.
To quote the fourth geneva convention (fourth convention is the part related to treatment of civilians):
> Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.
The fact that it didn't tell you all you need to know about how legitimate this "court" is.
In 2019, the ICC got involved following the 2014 Gaza war and concluded that war crimes were taking place (on both sides, in different ways), but they concluded that they lacked jurisdiction. Investigations has been ongoing ever since.
Short of going full "one world government" or the next best thing, "team america world police" you can't really violate state sovereignty even if someone is doing atrocities so instead you need to convince key players or a critical mass that something should be done. If successful, you can then tighten the screws on that person as fast as you can get all the relevant bureaucracies moving.
There were no "screws needed" to issue an arrest warrant against Hamas months ago. Yet they didn't.
They should have issued arrest warrants years ago against Hamas for deliberately firing into civilian territory. It's an easy case to make, no one at all claims Hamas didn't do that.
But, nope, they did not issue any warrant.
No, they only issued a warrant against Hamas to pretend like they have some balance in trying to issue a warrant against Netanyahu.
It's no longer Netanyahu on trial, it's actually now ICC that is on trial. If the ICC actually grants the warrant against Netanyahu they have proven themselves to be a bunch of clowns with no legitimacy.
We shall see.
Things like what Milosevic or what Janjaweed leaders do are identifiable.
Issues warrants for both sides at the same time is utterly repugnant and calls the entire court into question.
First things first: neither the Polizio di Stato, the Garda, nor the RCMP are actually going to arrest Sinwar or Netanyahu. The practical impact of the warrants will be (at least in the near term) negligible.
Concurrently: unlike the ICC Genocide case, which is difficult and unlikely to succeed, the ICC war crimes warrants are probably broadly going to be seen as strong and compelling. Reporting has Biden and his team maneuvering for months to keep any kind of supply lines open to Gaza; he knows firsthand that some of these charges have validity.
But the USA is Israel's most important ally; further, reporting suggests that Biden's team has been the only thing between the current situation and abyss that would kill 3-5x as many civilians. That pushback only functions because of soft power (Israel would not depend on US arms suppliers for indiscriminate bulk bombing, massed land incursions, or supply blockades).
What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront. You can't really do diplomacy wth a world leader while at the same time saying (or implying) that they belong in the Hague.
There's a general vibe where people want international justice to work in simple moral terms, where everyone just lays the truth as they understand it out, a tribunal sorts out the details, and the chips fall as they may. But international law absolutely doesn't work that way; for similar reasons, Assad won't be charged by the ICC for killing half a million Syrians (Syria is not a signatory to the ICC).
Once you accept that the court is fundamentally political, you're left asking: are the politics of this move effective? Will they hasten an end to the conflict, or save lives?
Either way: once the warrants were announced, I think you could have taken bets on what Biden (or literally any other American president in the last 50 years, or any major party candidate for the presidency) would have said, and all the money would be on exactly this. We're not signatories to the ICC to begin with!
(I think Netanyahu is a criminal; the Hague is fine with me, though I think it's more likely he'll do his time in Maasiyahu after the Israelis convict him once his coalition falls apart).
Um. What?
Biden's team vetoed UN calls for a ceasefire three times.
Biden's team has delivered how many billions of dollars of weapons in the last 8 months?
Biden's team has consistently and repeatedly lied in front of the whole world, saying that they see "no evidence" of genocide. This, during the most documented mass murder in all history. This, despite clear and unequivocal genocidal statements from Israeli leadership, media, and populace.
How many people have resigned from his team now, saying they can't have this much Palestinian blood on their hands any more? To claim that Biden has prevented deaths in the last 8 months is breathtaking. At every juncture he and the team he still has have been complicit.
Which of the facts I stated do you disagree with? I'm sure I can find you a source for any of them.
Biden, in _theory_, could say to Israel that "continued arms supplies are contingent on surrendering Netanyahu and Gallant to The Hague immediately", but a) it's not at all clear that that would work, b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse, and c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
I hate all of that too, and it doesn't speak well of us as a society or species, but what _should_ happen and what _would_ happen are two very different things.
Tptacek is demonstrating this well by editing the part of the comment I quoted, then acting confused. However, I don't subscribe to the idea that facts are not material to discussions involving claims of fact.
The claim Biden is preventing deaths in Gaza while sending the bombs that are killing them and vetoing ceasefire resolutions left right and center, even against the will of his own voters, would require stronger evidence than has been provided.
Also, international law, including the Genocide Convention, is binding on all signatory states. 'Realpolitik' is not a defense for complicity in genocide.
However, let's look at your abc points, ignoring international law for the moment:
a) it's not at all clear that that would work
We've skipped past the issue, which is that we shouldn't be sending arms at all at this point. We also have other leverage which hasn't been used yet - sanctions, trade restrictions, etc.
b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse
This has merit - Israel did threaten to use more unguided bombs if the arms flow stopped. Too bad Biden's people vetoed the UN ceasefire resolutions three times, against the will of basically the entire planet. What about the realpolitik of that loss in our global standing?
c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
Believe it or not, and despite tptacek's claims above that most people don't care, polls in fact show that significantly more registered Democrats disapprove of Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza (sending arms) than approve, and that this is affecting their vote [0].
> "This issue is a stone-cold loser for Biden," said Douglas Schoen, a pollster and strategist who reviewed the Reuters/Ipsos poll results. "He's losing votes from the left, right and center."
0 - https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democratic-divide-gaza-war-...
Bigger picture - this disagreement seems fundamentally rooted in conflicting political philosophies, as alluded to above. More facts are not going to change that.
An example... "'Realpolitik' is not a defense complicity in genocide." Says who? I mean I agree with you on the face of things, but who gets to decide what genocide means? And what does it mean for international law to be "binding on all signatory states"? Some view overconfidence in this notion as Wilson's great and lasting mistake.
Unfortunately, there is no compiler that can adjudicate these types of questions for us.
0 - https://www.natesilver.net/p/your-friends-are-not-a-represen...
Maybe your court of carrier strike group says the ICC judges are committing war crimes, issues a warrant for their arrest, the SEAL team executes the warrant against the fugitives from justice, and tries, convicts and executes them.
If you still think realpolitik isn't a defense, look at a practitioner of it like Kissinger, ask yourself why Pinochet, et al, were tried, but say Kissinger was not for Operation Condor.
Outside of a courtroom, and ignoring all international law and externalities, sure. Within the Hague, or the parts of the world where international justice is respected, not so much.
> the court of the carrier strike group is superior to the court of the ICC.
Until your 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms. Or no country wants to trade with you any more, because you can't be trusted and their citizens are furious.
Or until China utterly dominates you economically and geopolitically, because they invested in growth instead of carrier groups. Or until you're stretched too thin on too many fronts and no one wants to help any more, or any of the other unintended (possibly world-ending) consequences of our wilful and belligerent disrespect of long established international law.
... But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
Realpolitik, in the sense Morgenthau and Kissinger understood it, absolutely takes into account management of public opinion and risks related to violation of international standards. It just does not only take those into account in decisions related to national interests.
> But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
This is stated as a fact and dismissed on the basis of a tacit moral argument rather than reasoning. Why would the claim be silly? I see no reason for those statements to be cast aside as un-addressable or 'farcical'.
On the other hand...
> 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms
If this were possible Houthi drones would have done it already (against a single carrier).
> because they [China] invested in growth instead of carrier groups
China has been investing heavily in their military for three decades [0]. And we will see about that growth part... it is not looking so rosy for Xi currently.
0 - https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/chi...
Juries in and of themselves are realpolitik, it's why most countries don't use them, because they deliver verdicts the legal professions dislike.
I think domestic politics are certainly a factor, but not a big one in an ICC case, because Americans, to a first approximation, do not give a shit about the ICC; further, we aren't a party to the ICC, so it's not as if the administration is being asked to do something or help adjudicate.
I want to say again that I think this particular case is well-founded. But an ICC warrant against the leader of a non-signatory is fundamentally a political act, and while I don't take issue with the stated intent of that act, I don't get the theory of change behind it.
I put it to you directly: what good comes of this while Netanyahu remains in power?
It would if Israel has any sense of self preservation at all. They need the support of the American government more than they need Gazan land.
(I also think it's not at all clear that serious policymakers in Israel "want Gazan land", let alone need it; the messianic nutballs bolstering Netanyahu's coalition are, to put it mildly, not representative of mainstream Israel policy thinking.)
A reminder that we're just talking about this stuff here; this is HN, not the UN Security Council. If we're going to have threads like this here, we're going to have to accept that we're having curious conversations, not high-stakes deliberations. So: I can be wrong about all of this stuff, and I'm glad to hear why. But we're not going to solve Israel/Gaza on a thread.
(You didn't say anything to prompt that disclaimer, it's just a stress reaction from previous threads).
Or just make them themselves. That seems fully within their capabilities if push comes to shove. After all, we are talking about bombs not fighter jets.
Being able to purchase weapons from the US also gives them significant political latitude internally. When a significant amount of your economy and government spending goes to making weapons, you're going to affect domestic budgets, which will make coalition building much harder especially in a country with as many small parties as Israel. We see this in Russia as well but because Russia is not democratic when it comes to defense allocation, it simply throws its dissidents in jail or encourages them to leave.
And yet are regularly re-elected. And have been for decades.
Reagan did it with a single phone call: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/13/world/reagan-demands-end-...
(I kind of like Bush 1, at least as a competent operator with some discernible principles, and think Israeli settlement of the West Bank is abhorrent).
"Calls for ceasefire" that didn't include "calls to release the hostages", to say nothing of the fact that Hamas leadership had already been shouting they would "repeat October 7th again and again until the final destruction of Israel" and so on.
However, Israel is not the USA's most important ally.
The US is not really an ally of Israel at all. The NATO countries are. Japan and South Korea are. They have US troops and bases. The US does not send troops to fight in Israel's wars. The US just sends money.
That's what Ukraine is begging for.
The US is really in a bad position now.
But of course this is politically impossible for the US. Near half of the US population would throw an absolute fit.
But a large chunk of the population is already throwing a fit, and given the spread in views among different age groups, that's a growing chunk of the population.
I think the best way to sum up public opinion from what we know given polling and on-the-ground numbers is that Americans just don't much care about this. We care. But as is so often the case, caring about this issue makes us the weird ones.
I don't know if it'll actually happen, but this is probably the most likely path towards it, if there is one.
I suspect you don't know what Zionism is, because otherwise your message makes no sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_ethnostate#New_Zealand
And I'm not picking on them - tons of countries are like that, and that's fine as long as they ensure equality of all citizens, which Ireland, New Zealand, and Israel have all done.
Historically this region suffered from settler colonialism where Britain encourage Protestants to move into the area. If you wanted to make a comparison to anti-Zionism, then the Nationalist‘s fight for civil rights and political representation is much more apt, then Protestant hardliners wanting to keep the demographics in their favor in order for continue suppress the rights of Norther Irish Catholics.
Ironically, the IRA were not afraid to use terrorism to further the nationalistic cause (similar to a certain Palestinian resistance movement), and when the British tried to defeat them militarily (including via occupation) it only made matter worse. What did work however was stopping these policies which stripped Catholics from their civil rights, and granting them a political avenue for their prospects. Turns out that if you have political means for your goals, you are less likely to use terrorism.
I assume you chose the word “citizen” carefully, so let’s just imagine that in a hypothetical Palestinian state — whether alongside or unified with Israel — Palestinians would enjoy the same rights as Israelis, unlike today.
Anyway, obviously you aren’t picking on them for any of that, and I’m not super interested in debating it. I’m just answering your question about what “opposition to Zionism” means.
If/when there is a Palestinian state, there is no basis to assume that they would enjoy the same rights as Israelis. It would be their own state, and their rights are determined by them. For example, Syrians do not have the same rights of Israelis, and Israelis do not have the same rights as Syrians.
Currently, Israeli Palestinians (Israeli Arabs) have the same rights of Israeli Jews.Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza do not have those same rights.
Regardless, you have correctly identified one of the core things that anti-Zionism opposes: in Israeli occupied territory, there is currently de jure discrimination against an indigenous ethnic minority population.
I also do not understand what this has to do with anti-Zionism in that Zionism is the notion that the Jews have a right to a homeland, and not be relegated as a people to the hims of others. Yes, there is an occupation of West Bank/Gaza, however, I would not deny the right of the Persians to have an Iran, even though I am very much against their current government, and they have taken over control and created misery in other countries (Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and are attempting to do so in Iraq and Syria).
You can be against the current government of Israel, you can be against occupation (as many people, including Israeli's are), but to be against the existence of a Jewish state (anti-Zionism) without being against an Egyptian state, a Persian state, a Jordanian state, etc is singling out the Jews, and needs to be called what it is.
"predicated on the dispossession of and discrimination against an indigenous population"
I am unaware of anything like this in Israel's laws. I assume what you mean by this is the Nakba, which happened after Israel's creation, and as a result of a war declared by the Arabs with the stated intent on destroying the new nation. About 650k-700k Arabs fled/forced/chosen to move out due to that war. Those who stayed ended up with lives comparable to that of their fellow Jewish citizens, I do not see much in the way of discrimination for those who stayed.
Also, as a result of that war, 850k-900k Jews fled/forced/chosen to move out of the surrounding nations. These people were forced out of their homes and their lands simply because they were Jews.
Many, many indigenous people were dispossessed during those times, no nation in that area has clean hands. If you want to single out Israel, that is your right and prerogative, but if you want to be fair (which you do not have to be) you should do some research and understand that many middle eastern countries have dispossessed and discriminated against their indigenous populations. Some did it because they were attacked, some did it just "because"
Those who actively claim they are opposed to Israel because it is an ethnostate but are not also actively calling for these other states to be dismantled need to explain why that is not anti-semetic.
There is also the related question on those opposed to Israel because it is a "European settler/colonial" state. A significant majority (66%) of Israel consists of brown people. 25% of Israel is not Jewish, and of the rest (the Jewish population), at least half of those are indigenous to that area, and are, from a racial perspective, just as "non-white" as anyone else from that area.
I don’t know why you think the current demographics of Israel preclude it from being a settler/colonial state. There is a formal effort to attract Jewish settlers. Just a few months ago, there was literally an event in my hometown advertising property in the West Bank to Jewish prospective residents.
On what happens in Israel, all Israeli citizens have equal rights. All countries have rules on who can become citizens. Yes, Israel is unique (I think) in the reasons for citizenship. Israel is also unique in its needs for survival. I am not sure if there are other differences, there could very well be.
On the settler/colonial issue: What I find most interesting about this is how vehement many people are in my country (US) on Israel being a settler/colonial state, when, almost without exceptions, they are the ones living on Native land, using Native resources, and participate in a conspiracy to eradicate Native culture (this is anyone in the US who is not a Native American), and are therefor themselves settler/colonists, while it is the Jews who are native to the middle east, whether the 50% who are Mizrahi or the other 50% who are returning to the land their ancestors were kicked out of.
And the Palestinians are also native to that area. The fundamental issue is: Can there be a compromise where each of these peoples get a land of their own, or is the idea of a Jewish state anywhere is what at some point of time was Dar A-Islam unacceptable.
The US is undeniably a settler culture. I am outraged at the actions of my ancestors [1] who played a part in that culture. Just because I'm descended from reprehensible people doesn't mean I'm precluded from complaining about reprehensible people today.
> and participate in a conspiracy to eradicate Native culture (this is anyone in the US who is not a Native American), and are therefor themselves settler/colonists
Not saying that the US in the past hasn't been genocidal, but many of the people complaining about Israeli settler culture today are also broadly supportive of current Native American rights issues, which is the opposite of participating in a conspiracy to eradicate their culture.
> while it is the Jews who are native to the middle east, whether the 50% who are Mizrahi or the other 50% who are returning to the land their ancestors were kicked out of.
And here comes the special pleading. What Israel is doing in the West Bank is seizing land from extant landowners, transferring it to a favored landowners, and turning the former landowners into second-class citizens. This is exactly the kind of policy that people complain about in settler colonies. Claims of it's-our-ancestors'-land-from-centuries-ago don't fly in international law (see also Russia's diplomatic failure to assert this vis-a-vis its invasion of Ukraine), and it certainly doesn't justify forcible expropriation of land from current landowners.
[1] Indeed, my great-x-I-don't-remember-how-many grandfather participated in the Cherokee Strip land rush, so this is literally personal ancestry in play here, rather than vague reference to historical US ancestry.
The subtext here (clear from the invocation of the Mizrahim) is existential arguments against the the state of Israel as construed in its conventionally recognized borders. In that sense, the "settler colonial" notion is complicated and unavailing.
But you and the preceding commenter would seem to agree with the common argument that settlements in the West Bank are a direct, probative, and actionable instance of unjust settler colonialism.
I don’t see how this is more fundamentally complicated than other settler-colonial enterprises. The inclusion of the Mizrahim is no different from e.g. when the British did settler colonialism in Northern Ireland (then Ulster) by granting very favorable land deals and work to Scots. No doubt many (if not most) of the Scots were of Gaelic ancestry. That fact doesn’t change the dynamic at all. The Ulster Plantation is a schoolbook settler colonial project, which was wrong and evil in every way possible. What mattered is that the English demanded a certain culture would come up on top, that the Scottish immigrants were not Catholic, spoke English (not Scottish Gaelic; and certainly not Irish), and that they behaved like the English when after they settled stolen land.
Who is the guarantor that this new Israel will not simply turn into another Lebanon/Syria/etc where the minority (Jews) are oppressed ?
Regarding the right of return for the Jewish people displaced from the countries surrounding Israel, sure, I’m in favor. As far as I know, the discriminatory laws which pushed a lot of the exodus have long since been repealed and families who fled to Israel don’t face nearly the same level of discrimination as Palestinians wanting to return to their homeland. (Reparations still need to be payed and Iraq could probably step up their game and re-issue citizenships to their emigrants).
That said, the tit-for-tat mentality is not helpful here. Yes, the Jewish emigrants (particularly from Iraq) deserve reparations for passed wrongs, but whether they get that or not should not affect whether Palestinians are granted their basic right of return, and the dismantling of all Israels’ ethnocratic policies.
Is Israel an ethnostate (or an ethno-religious state, if that's your jam)? It rhymes with one, for sure. But if that's the case, so is Japan. I have never once seen a protest in North America against Japanese ethnocentrism. At least I understand why Israel is structured this way (it was founded within 1-2 Kendrick Lamar album release dates of the liberation of the concentration camps).
There's some innuendo in your post --- "what does that say about you" --- are you prepared to field the same kind of innuendo directed back at you? Because Israelis and Jewish supporters of Israel in the west notice and point out that Israel is held to a different standard.
A reasonable answer to that is that Israel has spent 20 years working to prevent a 2-state solution, and effectively occupying Gaza while slowly colonizing the West Bank. That's fair! But criticism of Israel's modern day activities have a tendency --- as they did here --- to bleed into critiques of the premise of Israel itself.
The demographic policies of Israel are way worse than any other democracy, which is why people criticize Israel harder, and why anti-Zionism is a global political movement. People protested Apartheid South Africa for the same reasons, and is the reason why anti-Apartheid became a global political movement.
Understanding why Israel maintains their ethnocratic policies is no justification for it. I’m sure you can also understand why F.D. Roosevelt ethnically cleansed the West Coast of Japanese Americans during World War 2. But that was still a human rights disaster. Thankfully, that policy was reversed and the victims were given the right of return. Palestinians were not so lucky. Anti-Zionists like my self want Palestinians to get that minimum level of justice. If there was still a Japanese exclusion zone on the West Coast, I would for sure be protesting that.
There is a Palestinian American living in my community, she would like to at least visit the birthplace of her grandparents. But she cannot, Israel’s ethnocratic policies won’t let her. If Israelis are uncomfortable living in a place which gives her racial group equal rights, then I’m just gonna say it, they are racists, and they should not be given an ethnostate to keep their comforts.
There's nothing practical to be said about this stuff. Everybody in the world is racist. It is a strength of the west, and of the US in particular, that we pay so much attention to it. There's no "should" about Israel, only "is". Israel is a nuclear-armed state with a thriving, self-sustaining economy and one of the world's better regarded militaries. If you want to call it an ethnostate, that's fine (I will then call Japan an ethnostate as well). I don't like ethnostates either. But it is what it is: the history and purpose to which Israel --- which, unlike Japan, at least nominally proscribes racism! --- is designed is profound. It's not going anywhere.
I'm fond of pointing out that you'd have a stronger argument that Texas be returned to the Coahuiltecans. Texan settlers hadn't just survived the Holocaust. There was no large scale exchange of populations, with Tamaulipecan tribes somehow finding reservoirs of Germans and Czechs to expel from Nuevo Leon. But, again: nobody is protesting this.
I would say my position is this: to litigate the existence of Israel itself is to surrender any hope, at least rhetorically, of self-determination for Palestinians on any Palestinian land.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the minimal requirements of Anti-Zionists is that the Palestinians which were displaced in the Nakba be granted the right of return. I personally don’t care if there are two states, one called Israel and the other Palestine. But for the state which ends up being called Israel should grant those it displaced the right of return. Texas does not exclude Coahuiltecans from visiting Texas. Texas does not control its demographics with racialized exclusions (I know some Texas politicians would like that, but they are not allowed; and if they were allowed, there would be riots).
I know Japan has a lot of problems with racism. Japan also has a history of being settler colonialist. They’ve even committed a couple of genocides in the past. What sets Israel apart though is they continue and maintain their policies of racialized demography. Japan used to do that (particularly in Korea, but also in Ryukyu), but they don’t any more. Today Japan recognizes the Ainu as a distinct indigenous minority group. They recognize the Ryukyu people as a subgroup (though honestly they need to recognize them as a minority group). They don’t exclude the Ainu nor the Ryukyu from any parts of Japan. They don’t have a policy prevents them from gaining political influence. etc. Stating that Japan has ethnocratic policies similar to those of Israel is lying at best.
For Israel to exist as an independent democratic country besides Palestine in a two state world which meets the minimal requirements of anti-Zionism, they need to relinquish these ethnocratic policies. A good start would be to sign and ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (like Japan has). They don’t have to grant citizenship to every Palestinians, but they must at the very least allow free travel between the two states, and they must allow those which were displaced in the Nakba to have the option of dual citizenship. Recognizing that Israel did settler colonialism and apologize for it would be appreciated as well (Japan has yet to do that).
A non-viable path forward is demand the repatriation of millions of non-Jewish people to right one half of a wrong (not that it would matter if you could somehow right the other half) done in the 1940s and 1950s. Israel will not allow it to happen. No imaginable Israeli leadership of any ideology or party would allow it. Israel's allies won't allow it to happen, but that doesn't matter.
The Arab world was (is, really) in the verge of normalizing relations with Israel, premised on the viable solution I outlined above. It is not in fact a requirement of the Arab world that Israel accept a Palestinian/Arab majority in its 1967 borders.
What's frustrating about this is not the concern that Palestinians might somehow succeed in the non-viable cause (I don't like ethnostates either?) but rather a certainty that it can't happen, any more than Mexicans will gain as-of-right dual citizenship and free travel into their original Texan lands, and the knowledge that the pursuit of that doomed cause comes at the cost of generations of Palestinian lives deprived of self-determination on any terms because western philosophizers oppose what they see as half-measures.
If they would have the foresight to include guaranteed civil rights for Arabs living in Israel and a Political avenue for the unification of Palestine which could be executed in a couple of generations, perhaps the worst of the mistakes of the Anglo-Irish treaty could be averted.
What made the Anglo-Irish treaty so disastrous for Northern Ireland were in fact racialized policies and discriminatory practices which denied civil rights and political representation for one group so that the other group could exert their dominance. If a two state solution repeats that, all I can say, is “I told you so”.
> The Arab world was (is, really) in the verge of normalizing relations with Israel, premised on the viable solution I outlined above.
The political class in most of the Arab world is not Anti-Zionist.
I understand and can take seriously a narrower "anti-Zionist" definition that pushes back on "Greater Israel" ideology that impedes Palestinian self-determination.
But what we're talking about here is basically: "I reject the premise of the state of Israel". To which, and I mean this respectfully, the only reasonable response I can see is "it's good to want things, I guess".
(It's fine if we just intractably disagree; it would be weird if any two people here never did.)
The goal here is social justice for Palestinians, as of now, they don’t have civil rights, political recognition, nor any non-violent avenues of resistance. So I get your sense that, yes, these are urgent issues which needs addressed. But the anti-Zionist will not stop until full justice is achieved. Maybe you are looking at an anti-racist while slavery is still a thing, or a land-back activist during the trial of tears. Perhaps you are a reformist being presented with a radical (i.e. looking at the root of the issue) solution.
For me the root of the issue is the settler colonial prospect of Israel, while Israel wants to maintain any ethnocratic policies (i.e. zionism) it will have to come at the cost of civil rights for Palestinians. My solution is to not grant Israel the right of ethnocratic policies.
I think the only thing I'd put on the table here past just recognizing that we're working from incompatible premises (at least, when we get past a Palestinian state and self-determination, and probably Netanyahu in a prison cell somewhere) is to try to stay cognizant of whether the standards you're setting for Israel are the same as those of other countries or other people or other ethnicities or whatever. because there's a whole grim history of people pretty much everywhere in the world singling Jewish people out as moral "others". But if you're being consistent about stuff, I don't have much to push back on.
this is a practical matter - both Palestinians and the Jews have claims going back a long way to all that land (rivertosea), but (during the Palestinian Mandate) they just kept massacring each other, so the governing power gave up and there was a roughly even split of the land (1/2 of the 30% left after 70% went to Jordan), and that just needs to be good enough for either side, even if neither are satisfied
Wars have consequences. 13 centuries of Islamic rule came to an end in 1917, and the Ottoman Empire lost and was dismantled. Land was given back roughly along the lines of past histories, not perfectly, but nothing is.
right of return ? well, at least as many Mizrahi Jews in Israel and other countries could claim that from the nearby countries, but that is about as likely and practical to happen as reversing the Nakba. Wars have consequences.
Why stop at reversing 1948 ? Why not just go back another 30 years and reassemble the Ottoman Empire ? I am sure that would make everyone happy.
If I had to guess, I suspect they might mean "opposition to Zionist control of American foreign policy" rather than "opposition to Zionism".
It absolutely does not - and it is not anti-Israel sentiment to say so; it's just geopolitics. For the the US, Israel is optional.
Meanwhile if Israel ever decides to pretend it doesn't need the US -- well, you know what would happen.
That's not really true. The reason are complicated and involve the cold war. I touched on some of the highlights here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40425327
> well, you know what would happen.
Nothing would happen. Israel has defended itself from multiple wars without US help, if anything Israel's enemies are weaker than they were in the past.
Weirdly enough it's actually Israel's enemies that benefit from the US - without the US Israel would just do what it needed to to stay safe, and never mind if the other country is hurt. Israel would not care, because their own security comes first.
With the US Israel is like "fine, we'll do the bare minimum".
This is also why all those people who what the US to stop helping Israel are so incredibly foolish. If Israel felt less secure they would fight with even greater ferocity. If you want Israel to stand down make them feel very very secure.
This obviously wrong, and on multiple levels.
First, there's $330b of financial support since 1946. Access to advanced weapon systems since 1962. Crucial intelligence + diplomatic support in all the big wars (56/67/73); crucial munitions support, and an offer to send a large numbers of ground troops in 73. Solid and almost unquestioning diplomatic support (or acquiescence) of essentially every action Israel has taken since 67 (no matter how provocative or ultimately detrimental to its own interests), backed by the assurance of automatic UNSC veto of course.
In the current operation, you've got 2 carriers parked offshore along with other assets in the region; special access to fuel depots and arms caches (that even Ukraine doesn't get); technical support from U.S. companies like Google, etc.
The idea that Israel fights its wars "without US help" just ludicrous.
Meanwhile, in return -- Israel just doesn't provide all that much. The U.S. supports Israel mostly for ideological regions (such as the kindling that it provides to the apocalyptic fantasies of the Christian Right) and to please other domestic political constituencies; and yes, out of a legitimate sense of moral responsibility since the Holocaust -- but not because it really needs Israel to be around (in the sense that it needs the UK, Germany, Japan, etc). It objectively needs countries like Sweden and Turkey more than it needs Israel.
Completely cut off from U.S. aid -- it would survive of course, but under significantly diminished circumstances. In particular it would have to give up the Greater Israel project -- which it of course needs to do anyway, but it would have to do so much sooner, and in an abrupt, violatile way leaving it in a much less secure position than it would like to find itself shunted into.
If you want Israel to stand down make them feel very very secure.
This is of course the mantra we've hearing since 67. And which brought us to the place we're in now.
Even in the (ill-conceived and disastrous) Iraq and Afghanistan wars other ME nations produced a lot more help than Israel did.
More complex answers involve having an allied county in an area with a lot of Russian influence.
The history is long and complex, but keep in mind Israel ran all by itself for decades, and defended itself in multiple wars, without any US help. It was when Russia started helping Egypt that the US recruited Israel. It was not the other way around.
For a while when Russia seemed powerless people started questioning the relationship, but after Ukraine it was re-energized.
Other answers are cultural: Israel is very similar to the US and Europe, same equal rights for citzens, same democracy, same culture of freedom. And the US is allied with all countries that are similar to it.
What concrete, specific advantages from having an allied country in a distant region?
“Controls American foreign policy” is hyperbolic; I don’t think support for Israel would just collapse if those orgs vanished. But come on, comparing Zionism to “motherhood” and “apple pie” is disingenuous.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2024/05/16/aipac-jamaal-bowman-atta...
Huh, I see strong and increasingly growing public opposition to Israeli influence on American politics.
The gist of the idea is that zionism is a "dead" ideology already, since it has reached its goal of creating a state. The remaining question about it is whether Israel should adhere to post-zionism or to neo-zionism.
Most people in the west opposing the current situation would probably fall in the post-zionist category if they were told about the concept.
I.. think I disagree. In a sense, Trump technically laid a foundation for that with a rather clever MAGA phrase. Regardless of what you think about him, his policy or his stance on anything, he showed that there are phrases could be utilized to tap into that section with little effort and are not as easily dismissed.
Now.. those could be attacked as overly nationalistic, but that is a separate discussion.
<< No lasting and significant opposition to Zionism will ever take root.
I think I agree despite (n)'ever' being a really long time. A year is eternity in politics and this year is already pretty crazy. I honestly can't say it is impossible.
He doesn't have to do diplomacy with them. He could call their bluff. He could unilaterally start delivering food and dare anyone to stop him. If Israel starts killing "3-5x as many civilians" he could declare war on Israel.
All of these are things he could do. Won't. But could.
My point is that the US could "assent to the validity of the ICC charges". The "fantasy" is several unlikely escalations away after that, and even that scenario is something that the US could deal with.
So ruling out that they go against the ICC because they have to, we can conclude that they go against the ICC because they want to.
Something like half the world's population doesn't acknowledge the ICC. And the ICC hasn't covered itself in glory over the last 20 years --- the Darfur fiasco being the most obvious example.
All this just brings me back to: the ICC charges are a political act (fair enough! politics matter!) and should be evaluated on their political effectiveness. The predictable result of the charges: the leader of the only political party in the US that even ostensibly cares about Palestine disavowed the charges. How'd that help?
He didn't have to say anything about the substance. He could even use them as leverage in negotiations without publicly saying anything about the substance, by conditioning US efforts to get the UNSC to hold them in abeyance (which it explictly can!) conditioned on a cease-fire and concrete steps on aid.
Would it work? Probably not. Would it be better for the US interestd broadly than getting nothing at all while undermining the credibility of an institution that the US, while not a member of, has found practically and diplomatically useful in a number of past cases? Absolutely yes.
> We're not signatories to the ICC to begin with!
We have shut up about, or actively supported, the ICC in many cases, and given the US public nominal goal of a two-state solution demonstrating that international institutions are willing to take on abused on both sides of the conflict without ignoring the legitimate interests or rights of people on either side is something the US ought to be backing rather than burning down.
Certainly it is not my contention that the US is consistent with respect to the ICC.
It's a bad situation. I genuinely think that the administration is playing the best it can with the cards it was dealt. I think we're all clear what the counterfactual other administration would be doing.
Israel has three alternatives:
Option 1: Do a real siege (never tried. Gaza has less malnutrition deaths than Cali according to their own figures, and besides everything would have been over months ago if it did. That's the real weakness with the ICC case).
Option 2: Provide aid yourself (expensive).
Option 3: Let other people do it for you and not pay for it.
Obviously the optimal choice is the last one. The real differences between US and Israel are elsewhere (e.g. delusional postwar planning by both sides).
Everything else is domestic politics, and personal convictions for Biden. But Israel will not continue this war if the USA tells them to stop it. They are far too dependent on USA aid for it.
https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/13/world/reagan-demands-end-...
Edit: here is the full quote about the events in 1982:
2 P.M. (8 A.M., New York time) -The Israeli Cabinet meets. A message from President Reagan arrives, expressing ''outrage'' and, reportedly threatening to halt the Habib mission. The Cabinet decides to end the raids and order new ones only if they are ''essential.''
4 P.M. (10 A.M., New York time) -President Reagan tries for hour to call Mr. Begin but cannot get through. 4:50 P.M. (10:50 A.M., New York time) - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia calls Mr. Reagan. 5 P.M. (11 A.M., New York time) -A new cease-fire goes into effect in west Beirut. 5:10 P.M. (11:10 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Reagan reaches Mr. Begin for 10-minute telephone call. 5:40 P.M. (11:40 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Begin calls President Reagan to say that a ''complete cease-fire'' had been ordered.
> Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein said that when he was on Capitol Hill last week, he told all of his interlocutors that the aid “is extremely urgent.”
> “This is aid for immediate needs, not for something we’ll use in a matter of years,” he emphasized to JI on Thursday.
The clear reality is that Israel, while extremely high tech, just doesn't have anywhere near the necessary production of ammunitions and weapons to act in this war without US aid. Especially if the USA and EU countries were to prohibit weapons shipments entirely (as they clearly should for any country currently engaging in a genocide).
Even the recent successful defense against the Iranian retaliation required direct US and French assistance, it wasn't possible with Israeli forces and equipment alone.
[0] https://jewishinsider.com/2024/02/israel-u-s-military-aid-ga...
None of this is going to happen, because everybody involved is aware that Israel would be sustainable after a realignment away from the west. Everything gets worse for everybody (except China) after that occurs, so it won't be allowed to occur.
(It's further mooted by the fact that opposition to Israel is largely an Internet phenomenon; Israel enjoys broad, bipartisan popular support in the US, Gaza is at the very bottom of polled issues in order of importance to the electorate, and a very significant chunk (possibly more than half) of people rating Gaza as important support Israel.)
Also, you are grossly misrepresenting public opinion in the USA and the EU. In the USA there is a significant and extremely vocal minority, especially among the Democratic party base, that deeply care for the genocide in Gaza. This has been visible in the major student protests, and in the significant protest votes in Democratic primaries (>10% undecided in some states!). And given the extremely tight election, this is very likely to cause issues for Biden. Now, whether reversing support for the genocide would cause larger issues is debatable, but I think unlikely - as most of the avid Israel-can-do-no-wrong supporters are not going to vote against Trump anyway.
In Europe the situation is even more difficult for the pro-genocide camp, as the population, especially in Western Europe, and doubly especially among the significant Arab, Pakistani, Indian, Turkish, and North African immigrants, is much more sensitive to the issue of colonial genocide.
The "10% undecided" thing is a statistical null result, mirroring the last Democratic reelection campaign (Obama's, against Romney), which didn't include any attempted organized effort to lodge protest votes with "undecided" and still ran up those counts.
Polling --- Pew is a good place to start --- shows Israel below every other "major" issue, even among 18-29 year olds --- except (ironically) student debt. The issue gets less important as you go up in age brackets into cohorts that actually turn out and vote.
The groundswell of support for Palestine in America is, I believe, largely an Internet phenomenon. It's easy to forget that we're the weird people who tune in to this stuff. Most people just live their lives, and, for reasons that are straightforward to understand, care a lot more that a 12 pack of Diet Coke got weirdly expensive than about whatever is happening across the world. We have the same problem marshaling support for Ukraine!
I agree 100%! Over the past year, Israel has caused orders of magnitude more innocent deaths by terrorist actions (as outlined in the warranted issued here), has a much higher civilian death rate during military operations (Oct 7 was around 60%, while IDF's battles have been higher, with both sides hiding military targets within civilian areas) and should be taken far more seriously, as their support from other national aggressors like the US makes them far more dangerous.
First, that Biden admin and others can't escape culpability for any such claim if it's considered credible. Second, the dubious factual basis (trucks were allowed in all the time; temporary port and air supply obviously with Israel's approval; the very low malnutrition death count according to Gaza health ministry's own reports).
The first made the admin's reply inevitable. The second made it even more likely, but it's a too complex point for PR I guess, so they went with 'equating'.
I think warrants issued against Sinwar, Al-Masri and Haniyeh are very likely. Warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant IMHO are over 50%
Proportationality and intention are important when the ICC interprets what constitutes war crime or crime against humanity. These cases also set up a precedents. Arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant is for:
- Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
- Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
- Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
- Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i);
- Extermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity;
- Persecution as a crime against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(h); Other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k).
ICC works in conjunction with national courts. If a country has a functional, independent judiciary, that judiciary gets the right to address the wrong. Or not.
Israel’s judiciary is both functional and independent. Very independent. Of Netanyahu in particular.
And the Israeli judiciary seems to be going along with this.
Source: https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/how-the-court-works
> The ICC is intended to complement, not to replace, national criminal systems; it prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely.
No. Israel’s courts ratifying alleged war crimes is the Israeli national system being “unwilling or unable to [apply international law] genuinely.”
Notably, the US is NOT a signatory of the ICC (this was a whole thing in the Iraq War days).
[0] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICC_member_states.sv...
(Edit: I'm a dummy, this was the ICTY, not the ICC, but the ICTY was the precursor model of the ICC in the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars).
If the israeli judicial system made a good faith attempt to prosecute this crime following the standards of international law, it would probably prevent this warrant even though Israel is not a party to the court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
The Biden admin cooperated with the ICC, specifically quietly handing documents to the ICC that details Putin's war crimes and urging them to submit arrest warrants for Putin. Notably Russia is also not a signatory of the ICC, so there is definitely precedent for this process that even has had the backing of the US.
IMO Khan's speech today really speaks for itself. The "International Rule of Law" is nothing but a joke if we don't not apply it equally and blindly that will ultimately lead to the degradation of modern society and our species. I highly urge people to go and check out his speech on the matter and to form your own opinion.
“Rule of law” means all people are equal before the law.
It’s hard to pull off. Some nations have, most haven’t.
But Chairman Xi isn’t going to face charges for his crimes against Uyghurs.
Most countries have no rule of law, and internationally, none do.
The fact that China gets away with its treatment of the Uyghurs (and plenty of other major powers that technically break ICC laws) is definitely an example of how much international law is a farce, though they aren't getting around the ICC by staying within their own borders.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_t...
Part of the "Rule of Law" is enforcement of that law. Who could realistically enforce it against the US? How about China?
This would mean that Netanyahu has been charged, tried and eventually acquitted of the same crimes. ICC investigates if the national proceedings are genuine.
To start the process, Israeli prosecutor must prosecute.
Does the fact that the ICC disagrees with the Israeli courts mean the ICC is correct?
No, it does not.
> ICC works in conjunction with national courts
Not in the way you are suggesting.
> If a country has a functional, independent judiciary, that judiciary gets the right to address the wrong
No, the ICC will rule a case inadmissible if a state has investigated and/or prosecuted that specific case (not just if it has some general level of legal functionality), unless the ICC also fines that the investigation or prosecution was not genuine (e.g., was pretextual for the purpose of, say, giving the accused an exonerating document to wave around to protect against ICC prosecution.)
See Article 17 of the Rome Statute.
> The ICC was established by its state parties as a court of limited jurisdiction. Those limits are rooted in principles of complementarity, which do not appear to have been applied here amid the Prosecutor’s rush to seek these arrest warrants rather than allowing the Israeli legal system a full and timely opportunity to proceed.[0]
---
The ICC defines:
> 1. Complementarity: The principle of complementarity governs the exercise of the Court’s jurisdiction. This distinguishes the Court in several significant ways from other known institutions, including the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (the ICTY and the ICTR). The Statute recognizes that States have the first responsibility and right to prosecute international crimes. The ICC may only exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems fail to do so, including where they purport to act but in reality are unwilling or unable to genuinely carry out proceedings. The principle of complementarity is based both on respect for the primary jurisdiction of States and on considerations of efficiency and effectiveness, since States will generally have the best access to evidence and witnesses and the resources to carry out proceedings. Moreover, there are limits on the number of prosecutions the ICC, a single institution, can feasibly conduct.[1]
namely,
> The ICC may only exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems fail to do so, including where they purport to act but in reality are unwilling or unable to genuinely carry out proceedings.
The US argues that the ICC has not adequately allowed this process to play out through the courts in Israel.
---
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs states:
> The criteria of unwillingness or inability to carry out proceedings would involve some indication of purposely shielding the accused from criminal responsibility or a lack of intent to bring the person to justice. This may be inferred from political interference or deliberate obstruction and delay, from institutional deficiencies due to political subordination of the legal system, or procedural irregularities indicating a lack of willingness and inability to investigate or prosecute genuinely.[2]
---
Imo the hermeneutics are clear, though it will be up to the lawyers from either side to make arguments in favor of/against.
[0]: https://www.state.gov/warrant-applications-by-the-internatio...
[1]: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/NR/rdonlyres/20B...
[2]: https://jcpa.org/article/would-judicial-reforms-in-israel-op....
"Prosecutor’s rush to seek these arrest warrants" does not seem to be true.
ICC prosecutor did not bring this case quickly without warning. He has consistently demanded that action must be taken or he will prosecute. Israel's Supreme Court has the authority to conduct judicial review of laws and government decisions and intervene in exceptional, extreme cases. Israeli prosecutors have had time to charge.
>Since last year, in Ramallah, in Cairo, in Israel and in Rafah, I have consistently emphasised that international humanitarian law demands that Israel take urgent action to immediately allow access to humanitarian aid in Gaza at scale. I specifically underlined that starvation as a method of war and the denial of humanitarian relief constitute Rome Statute offences. I could not have been clearer.
>As I also repeatedly underlined in my public statements, those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my Office takes action. That day has come.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-...
btw. The US has demanded same and put conditions to military aid.
EDIT: It's also important to note the odd timing of asking for arrest warrants for the Hamas leadership at the same time as the Israeli arrest warrants.
Clearly unlike Israel there is no chance in *$#@ that Hamas would prosecute their own leadership for violation of international humanitarian law. The Hamas violations have also occurred earlier.
I.e. Israel should be given more time for its independent legal system to evaluate whether or not there's a case and pursue it. Israel justice system has put prime ministers and presidents on trial. Hamas shouldn't be given any time.
Given this you'd think arrest warrants for Hamas leadership would come a lot sooner.
Since this isn't the case one has to wonder if the prosecutor is doing a "both sides" kind of thing, maybe afraid of backlash if they only go after one side, in which case the response of Israel to the request to increase aid (which has happened) is not relevant.
How long was that supposed ramp up? Maybe a couple weeks out of 7 months.
EDIT: I can't find a concise summary but latest update: "422 aid trucks were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip, yesterday, (May.19). These trucks entered from the various aid routes we developed: Ashdod port, Erez crossing, Judea and Samaria, and JLOTS (maritime route)."
Supposedly the UN said Gaza needs a minimum of 100 trucks a day. https://www.newarab.com/news/un-puts-gaza-humanitarian-aid-n...
EDIT2: It's worth mentioning that since Israel took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing Egypt is refusing to let aid in through that crossing.
It should be noted in context that even bringing in aid is dangerous. The population attacks the aid drivers for two reasons (one, to get the aid, and two, they consider those drivers "traitors" and have been attacking them for long before the current conflict). And there is not insignificant risk to the Gazans as well, there was an incident a few months ago where an aid truck ran people over trying to stop it and some people were killed in a very gruesome fashion.
I think yesterday or the day before the first aid came in via the port, actually.
Need about 2X10^6 X 2000 = 4X10^9 calories as day.
At 600 cal/kg you need then 6.67 X 10^6 kg of rice per day.
Truckloads = 6.67X10^6 kg / 35,000 kg/truck = 190 truckloads of rice per day.
Most likely conclusion is Salafists and their supporters lie about everything.
Are you the salafist you speak of?
> Are you the salafist you speak of?
> Clearly unlike Israel there is no chance in *$#@ that Hamas would prosecute their own leadership for violation of international humanitarian law.
Huh, I almost forgot there were massive protests against the current PM when he set out to cripple the ability of the said Judiciary from trying him in court. But go on.
> it prosecutes cases only when States do not are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely.
And if you read the last part of the sentence you quoted it should make it pretty clear that it doesn't work like you have interpreted it.
Pretty clearly the U.S. and the South Vietnamese military. Just because you can't tell who is a combatant and who isn't doesn't give you permission to slaughter entire villages.
If the group killing your soldiers isn't adhering to these rules of war then all the civilians in the area will find themselves at risk.
There is no world where combatants can expect to be allowed to enjoy the protections civilians are afforded while still killing you.
The US base in Okinawa has a rather dubious reputation that continues.
That is true, but this does not take away the protection afforded to civilians. As a concrete example, if you take fire from people in civilian clothing holed up in a hospital, then you can return fire in that specific occasion, but you may not start to indiscriminately fire upon people in civilian clothing or hospitals.
(Also, you are not required to wear a uniform. You are required to distinguish yourself from the civpop by at least openly wearing arms and/or wearing a distinctive sign. Keep in mind not everyone in a uniform is a combatant, and not all combatants are armed.)
If group of villagers resists you, maybe you have no right to be there.
It is also a war crime, and doesn't even have the fig leaf of an active war to justify it.
If Netanyahu is punished for this, then GWB must face a more severe punishments for his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan which saw far more collateral damage.
> It has to happen in a place where the ICC has jurisdiction.
> Palestine has ratified the Rome Statue
In any case, The Palestinian Authority does not rule the Gaza strip. Then were overthrown in a very bloody coup, 2005 or 2006, in which Hamas threw some 100 PA members off the top of the buildings.
You would be incorrect [0]. The UN recognizes a "State of Palestine" independent of the specific government, which includes both Gaza and the West Bank. This entity, the state of Palestine, not the PLA (that would be weird, like saying the Tory party is signatory to the Rome statute), is signatory to the Rome statute. The state of Palestine is a non-member observer state in the UN.
You're correct that it's good to be precise here, so you should do so around the specific political entity of Palestine when that is what is being discussed.
[0]: Depositary notification of Accession to the Rome Statute by the State of Palestine; https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2015/CN.13.2015-E...
The gist of the argument can be gleaned from its sub-headings:
Palestine is a State for the purposes of the Statute under relevant principles and rules of international law...... 25
C.1. The Montevideo criteria have been less restrictively applied in certain cases........ 25
C.2. It is appropriate to apply the Montevideo criteria less restrictively to Palestine, for the purposes of the Rome Statute ..... 29
C.2.a. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination and it has been recognised that this implies a right to an independent and sovereign State of Palestine... 30
C.2.b. The exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination is being obstructed by practices contrary to international law................... 32
C.2.c. Palestine has been recognised by a significant number of States.............. 34
C.2.d. No other State has sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territory............ 35
C.2.e. Palestine’s status as a State Party must be given effect........ 36
C.2.f. The Prosecution’s alternative position is consistent with international law ........ 39
C.2.g. Participants’ arguments regarding a possible referral by the Security Council are unclear.......... 40
D. The Oslo Accords do not Bar the Exercise of the Court’s Jurisdiction........ 40
D.1. The Oslo Accords regulated a gradual transfer of power to the Palestinian Authority over most of the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) and Gaza.............. 40
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20230609070357/http://www.icc-cp...
Coincidentally, Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief of the EU, announced earlier in the month that several of the bloc's member states intend to recognise Palestinian statehood on the 21st of May - today.
See: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/spain-ireland-reco....
> Hamas threw some 100 PA members off the top of the buildings
Also you should support this, because this seems 1) ridiculous given the total number of casualties and nature of the fighting 2) I can only find claim of 2 persons being thrown off building, 1 from Fatah and 1 from Hamas.
Eg. hundred page report from PCHR named "Report on Bloody Fighting in the Gaza Strip from 7 to 14 June 2007" doesn't mention 100 PA thrown off the rooftops.
Almost certainly
ICC warrant will likely just be ignored.
I am not an expert, but I am under impression that he will be jailed in Israel too once/if loses power.
As for how far will the US go, well in 2002, Congress passed (and Bush signed) the American Service Members Protection Act, more colloquially known as the Hage Invasion Act. It authorizes the president to use all necessary force including invading the Netherlands if an American servicemember or appointed official is ever taken into ICC custody. This includes officials and servicemen of key allies, including Israel.
So will Betanyahu or Gallant actually be arrested? Almost certainly not. The practical effect of this is political not legal.
The goal of protests, boycotting, ICJ applications, ICC warrants, UN (GA and SC) motions, "Undecided" voting in Democratic primaries and so on are to incrementally pressure the two key players here: Israel and, more importantly, the US. Why? Because the US could end the conflict with a phone call. They could end it with a press release.
BDS (Boycott, divest, sanction) movements were considered successful in isolating and ultimately toppling the Apartheid South African regime in the 1970s and 1980s. Given this success, an awful lot of lobbying has been directed at US politicans to pass so-called "anti-BDS" laws that are laws in ~37 states. For example, to be a teacher in Texas, you need to sign a contract agreeing to never participate in a BDS movement against Israel.
So the practical effect of ICC warrants is just to incrementally isolate and pressure Israel.
And really the only way we are resolving this is by actually solving the underlying issue, which is that there are a set of people essentially locked up in a prison for 30 years and/or slowly being shot by settlers in the West Bank.
I agree about solving the underlying issues and the injustices that have historically taken place but the above is intended to answer the question and engage in analysis rather than arguing the merits, which is likely an unproductive conversation.
[1]: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PP410_INVES...
You also forget that Israel has fought all its major wars without the US.
Economic measures could be a different story, but pulling that lever on an an ally of 75+ years would damage the US's credibility. Not to mention to the domestic impact in the US. I don't think any decision makers weighing national interest would go there.
Plus, if the US successfully isolated Israel, it's highly likely the whole region would be at war in short time. Hard to imagine the West not getting involved again at that point, except now in a significantly worse position.
- '2000 Camp David Summit offer
- '2001 Taba Summit offer
- '2007 Olmert offer
In fact, during the peace talks between '2000 and '2001, the Palestinian leader at the time, Arafat, with control over the main armed faction in PLO at the time, Fatah, has failed to thwart the waves of violence against Israeli citizens, for the following 4-5 years, known as the Second Intifada.
Iron Dome simply allows Israel to do more offense. Without it, they would need to be more cautious.
https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/fs_2203_at...
If they lose the support of the US they might actually have to play nice.
US funding of Israel is used to buy votes in the US, and to buy some influence in Israel, it will not change the military situation much.
- Giving up Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt
- Giving up access to the Temple Mount for a peace treaty with Jordan
- Repeatedly offering peace deals to the Palestinian leadership following the Oslo Accords ('2000 Camp David Summit, '2001 Taba Summit, '2007 Olmert offers etc.)
[1]
> Shlomo Ben-Ami, then Israel's Minister of Foreign Relations who participated in the talks, stated that the Palestinians wanted the immediate withdrawal of the Israelis from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and only subsequently the Palestinian authority would dismantle the Palestinian organizations. The Israeli response was "we can't accept the demand for a return to the borders of June 1967 as a pre-condition for the negotiation." In 2006, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated on Democracy Now! that "Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well."
Multiple members of Clinton's negotiating team also dispute that interpretation:
> Robert Malley, part of the Clinton administration and present at the summit, wrote to dispel three "myths" regarding the summit's failure. First myth, Malley says, was "Camp David was an ideal test of Mr. Arafat's intentions". Malley recalls that Arafat didn't think that Israeli and Palestinian diplomats had sufficiently narrowed issues in preparation for the summit and that the Summit happened at a "low point" in the relations between Arafat and Barak.
> The second myth was "Israel's offer met most if not all of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations". According to Malley, Arafat was told that Israel would not only retain sovereignty over some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, but Haram al Sharif too, and Arafat was also asked to accept an unfavorable 9-to-1 ratio in land swaps.
> The third myth was that "The Palestinians made no concession of their own". Malley pointed out that the Palestinians starting position was at the 1967 borders, but they were ready to give up Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and parts of the West Bank with Israeli settlements. Further, the Palestinians were willing to implement the right of return in a way that guaranteed Israel's demographic interests. He argues that Arafat was far more compromising in his negotiations with Israel than Anwar el-Sadat or King Hussein of Jordan had been when they negotiated with Israel.
---
2001 Taba Summit
[2]
> A new round of talks was held at Taba in January 2001, during the last few days of the Clinton presidency, between President Arafat and the Israeli foreign minister, and it was later claimed that the Palestinians rejected a "generous offer" put forward by Prime Minister Barak with Israel keeping only 5 percent of the West Bank. The fact is that no such offers were ever made.
[1] Camp David wiki page
[2] Carter - Peace Not Apartheid
There is no easy solution … from camp David to now.
Everyone from the Hague to UC Berkeley administrators is learning one hard truth: agreements with some polities in that part of the world and their ambassadors are not worth very much. But if you pretend that they are then it seems like there are easy solutions.
To Israel. The modern state of Israel simply cannot exist without the largesse and political cover the US provides.
> There is no easy solution
Yes and no. End the genocide. End the apartheid. Nuremberg-like trials to deal with war criminals on both sides. Reconstruction of a single state. 750,000 settlers has made a two-state solution impossible.
We've been here before: post-US civil war and post-apartheid South Africa.
There is the idea that the currently oppressed population will rise up in vilence against their former oppressors. History doesn't back up this view. Our modern examples such as Reconstruction showed the opposite: the rise of the KKK and the rise of violence against former slaves by their former oppressors.
Afghanistan has been described as the graveyard of empires. This region may be vying for that title.
Couldn't you say the same about whites in apartheid South Africa?
These are unconstitutional laws that unfortunately are easy to pass but difficult to remove. There needs to be more legal challenges to remove these laws. There have been positive efforts to remove these laws although the states find new ways to keep amended versions of the laws on the books which requires further lawsuits to challenge.
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Constitutional_c...
A high profile Islamic terrorist attacks would shift the narrative, for example. On the other side, if the war cools down a bit people will gradually lose interest in the same way that no one cares about Modi's past actions.
For perspective, I'm with Israel. Though, I'm for saving as many Palestinian lives as humanly possible. Which should be all of them, should the clerics and State Actors stop abusing them via radicalization and the Islamic World works with Israel toward offering appropriate options.
But what I'm speaking about, in terms of prediction, isn't the way that the wind blows. What I'm speaking about is high level State intention.
No one today can seriously believe that State political orientation is a grassroots effect. The reality is that, with the exception of extremely unstable States that are de facto puppets of other Nations, the broad political orientation of modern States is an effect of the allowable movements, opinions, revolutions, propaganda, and migrations that are facilitated by the agencies over decades. Ergo, the eventual orientation of any State toward or away from Israel has to be assumed to be in that State's geopolitical interest as dictated at the highest level.
As we can easily observe, if there was an event and the resultant popular effect was not in the State's interest than, no matter what, the event would be minimized into oblivion by State Press.
Conversely, the Press will manufacture events out of virtual non-events if that assists the State's interest.
Only the State or God will determine whether or not it supports Israel, in any future. That's my starting point for prediction.
Seems like in most cases the state is more pro-israel than the population.
And God killed that Turkish guy so apparently he's pro-Israel too.
In some cases. But like I said, Western Nations are now factional at a high level (in my observation, and whether or not this is an intentional result - in my view, it might be). And the short to medium term may not predict the long term. What is also possible is that what the State says, in any period, may not predict its long-term strategy.
Not really. Go check the results of the popular vote for Eurovision. Israel came in second.
There's a huge quiet population that is pro-Israel. They don't make noise with protests though, so some people don't realize they exist.
The fact that Israel didn't win the popular vote suggests that the support for them is not particularly strong in Europe.
They came in second place. How is that "not particularly strong"?
And the difference between the popular vote and the jury vote was especially dramatic for Israel. No one expected anything else though......
And there is already a precedent for strong popular support. In 2022, Ukraine won the popular vote with 439 points, with 239 points for the next country. This year, Israel lost with 323 points vs. 337 points for the winner. Ukraine, which came in third, also got pretty close with 307 points.
Similar forms of activism, such as petitions and protests, are supposed to demonstrate support for something, but they often end up showing the opposite. Because the absolute number of supporters rarely matters. What's more important is the number of supporters as a fraction of the total, or relative to the expectations.
Once upon a time, I was involved in something controversial. There was a petition opposing us, with a very large number of signatures for that context. But the petition ended up strengthening our case, because it showed that the opposition to our plans was no more widespread than what we had assumed. The next elections proved us correct. A large number of people with a particular opinion didn't matter, because they were a small enough fraction of the total.
This sounds exactly like the scam that the right wing runs in America regarding the "Best Selling Book lists". There are a number of right wing books on the list each year but it turns out those books are purchased in large bulk by right leaning groups funded by billionaire donors and are then handed out for free at events or dumped on the clearance channels. It gives a fake impression that the books are more popular than they really are and is in effect a way to blunt the effectiveness of left wing thinking.
This is also done via channels such as PragerU. Right leaning groups funded by billionaires produce white papers describing their thesis which are then sent out to groups such as PragerU and Ben Shapiro in the form of talking points to be inserted into the narrative of their videos.
There is a huge quiet population that is OKAY with 40k Palestinian bombed by Israeli regime.
I had no idea on Eurovision result and to see Israel to be second, I guess people are blind to the genocide
You live in a bubble if you think social media represents people. Social media represents the highly motivated ones. It does not reward quiet thinkers, it rewards "useful idiots" who have brainless slogans.
The normal people who actually think about things don't participate because they have better things to do than useful idiots.
And then you have people like me who also have better things to do, but feel obligated to post occasionally to at least try to reduce the amount of misinformation.
So the ICC already decided on this? No? Well, then I wouldn't be so sure about this if I where you. Because starving a population, denying them water, fuel and medicine amounts to genocide in all but name.
Actually, "normal" people should thing about these things if their tax dollar is funding the genocide against the Palestinians.
To be quiet on the killing is to be complicit.
> there is no genocide
One better thing for you to do is not spread lies.
Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, Omer Bartov, Gabor Mate aren't "noisy activists", I don't think.
I was concluding the same thing at the start of this Israel/Palestine conflict but then I saw amazing amounts of resistance to Israel, the likes which I have not seen before. People taking the time to protest in real life gives a more reliable indicator of the internet support. There has definitely been a step change in favor of Palestine. I predicted that i'd see this in my lifetime but I honestly thought it would have taken another 20+ years as more Pro israel older generations died off. The fact that it is happening now and that the rich Israel supporters are freaking out and doing whatever they can to "suppress" the narrative makes me think we are seeing some sort of slow moving shift.
Honestly it could go either way, there is a lot of astroturfing on both sides to make the noise level so absurd that its hard to see a clear picture.
I have never seen such a large physical response to Israel in my life though, that really leads me to believe that this may be a step change from past incidents regarding Israel/Palestine.
Also the fact that the rich Pro Israeli donors are freaking out more than in the past seems to indicate something has changed.
Yes, definitely, that's what they did.
The main reason I can think of would be that they didn't need to 'astroturf' that many, due to europeans generally being conservative and anti-arab or anti-muslim. But they ran a campaign to get votes, and exactly how efficient it was is very hard to pinpoint.
Zionists have quite extensive tooling and robust parasocial networks for running propaganda campaigns. Why wouldn't they use that to try and become the next host of the Eurovision pop tournament?
"“My colleagues and I look forward to make sure neither Khan, his associates nor their families will ever set foot again in the United States,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton wrote on X."
"The ICC is the world’s first permanent international war crimes court and its 124 member states are obliged to immediately arrest the wanted person if they are on a member state’s territory."
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/21/no-equivalence-bide...
I don't understand how the US and many other EU governments can be so extremely critical of a court which as far as I know has been considered legitimate by all of them (except the US which apparently removed its signature... anyone knows why?), and whose decisions have always been applauded by all of them (including Putin's arrest [1]), except for this last one.
Quoting from the linked article [1]: "British journalist George Monbiot wrote in a Guardian op-ed that the ICC targeting Putin was an example of the organization's bias in favor of prosecuting crimes by non-Westerners, ...".
Looks like that's the real issue here, doesn't it?
Imagine a leader of a country saying that the judiciary's decision is wrong and that the judge won't be allowed to travel freely anymore because of that. That would be the end of the rule of law. Why is it different in this case?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_a...
Tom Cotton is a clown senator that is an symbol of the dysfunction of the US government of the last few decades. He along with a few frequent imbeciles are the reason there is so much dysfunction. If there was any redeeming factor of the current US system, he would be impeached and removed a long time ago.
A) I'm told warrant approval is almost always a rubberstamp.
B) There will be a discrediting campaign, but ICC's future is the least interesting thing to me.
C) I'm not sure this leads to a conviction, but actual trials will probably take years by which time Bibi and co will be out of office. Again not so interesting.
D) Bibi was already done for. But paradoxically this strengthens him domestically temporarily and massively strengths the Right next elections. I'll expand on this below since this is IMHO interesting.
E) It makes attacking Israel a bit more 'legitimate', but in the ME legitimacy for that was already sky-high. War with Lebanon was very high likelihood anyway.
F) Saudi normalization is DOA for this term (always was, but admin was blind to everyone's interests. Qatar would have had to be nuts not to put every possible roadblock here, and Biden admin could never see what was in front of its eyes).
G) Hamas has not so simple problems here. The various ideas for reintegration has hit serious roadblocks, and later on I believe this will cause them bigger problems than Israel which can always change leaders.
---
D is not 'rally around the flag'. It has to do with the opposition is built: its deep links with the 'security state'. The security state is outraged and itself vulnerable to possible warrants. The same logic could have easily justified adding Gantz.
An Israeli Left opposition which can't claim the world likes them more (due to warrant risk) and loses its security credentials (security state links to pre and post Oct failures, warrant risk again) is dead in the water. Which means it needs more time before an election to find its footing again... But on the other hand, it wouldn't like possible ICC isolation either. So a temporary delay before losing in the elections.
After the arrest warrant goes out, everything stops until people charged are in custody. It's very unlikely that Gallant or Netanyahu will ever be arrested. Their travel will be just limited for the rest of their lives.
My other point - ICC can issue secret warrants, and no denial would be credible due to its very nature... This is poison to Gantz's political career and same for any active general who would want to join the current opposition following service. The current Israeli opposition is just not competitive without generals, and all they've left are certain people who are very... outspoken to put it mildly.
Do you have a source for that? This doesn't make sense to me since it relies on more than a hundred different countries to enforce them, it'd be impossible to keep anything they do a secret
Yeah, in practice any such warrant will eventually leak, but it's still a risk for anyone who might be on the other end which de facto creates limits to anyone who might fall under suspicion.
If that's the case then they are defacto banned from travelling. Still these secret warrants will be shared with the respective countries, right? So they should know?
Its pretty similar to an indictment in the US (to judges rather than a grand jury); its an unopposed process where the prosecutor knows the standards and chooses when to bring a case to that step based on confidence in being ready to meet the standards. There's not a lot of probability of surprises if the basic work is done competently and in good faith and not with an intent to push the envelope.
> I'm not sure this leads to a conviction, but actual trials will probably take years by which time Bibi and co will be out of office.
Trials won't take start until the individuals being tried are in custody for trial. (They don't have to be at the same time.)
It's a tiny bit higher since IMHO he pushed the envelope on starvation (the reported malnutrition death count is 32 out of over two million people), and on not engaging with Israel (was due to a trip to the country before issuing indictments), but given unopposed nature, his advantage is so large I don't see odds of this being rejected.
>Trials won't take start until the individuals being tried are in custody for trial. (They don't have to be at the same time.)
Yeah, the other comment slagged me on this. The essential 'this isn't resolved for years, by which time they are out of office' is right.
On the other hand, it defuses the situation away from an world war wannabe into something Israel fights alone.
If warrants are issued, I’d bet at least the House votes to sanction the ICC [1]. If Trump wins, I’d bet it passes. (Which is ironic, since every moment of attention on Israel and Palestine is a win for Trump. This war is Biden’s abortion debate. He’s checkmated, with massive vote losses regardless of what he does.)
[1] https://www.axios.com/2024/05/20/icc-netanyahu-arrest-warran...
That is not to say I think Trump would have handled the situation any better. I’m sure it would have been fuel on the fire.
Can we all agree on one single thing though:
The Governments of USA, Germany, UK and Israel would be best informing the world of their definition of genocide as there is definitely a massive difference in opinion of what genocide is. It is super important. If they can explain why and how what is happening doesn’t match the definition of genocide agreed upon in the Genocide Convention of 1948 then maybe the world will stop using the word. But until they can change everyone’s minds, people are going to keep believing it. I think that would solve a lot of this back and forward.
They absolutely are. Really everyone with a non-cynical opinion in this whole mess, on both sides, is deeply unserious. There are no solutions here, at all. Everyone wants something terrible. Push one side and you eventually get to "The Palestinians Deserve What They Get". Push the other and you get to "Jews are Colonizers Who Need to be Driven Out". And BOTH SIDES use the term "genocide", largely incorrectly, to describe those horrors and are SHOCKED AND OFFENDED that anyone would describe their own opinions so.
I've just given up. My general political feelings align mostly with the Palestinians here, if for no other reason than it stops the immediate bleeding faster. But there will be no peace here, not within our lifetimes.
The thing is, there is a definition of Genocide and while I think what Hamas did in October was absolutely monstrous I just can’t logically conclude they committed Genocide. So anyone saying that is just ‘saying it’ if you catch my drift. But for what is happening in Gaza, I just want my Government to explain why so I can know for sure that I am mistaken about it and it isn’t genocide. The definition shows it is, but my Govt are saying that it isn’t. It just feels like a whole load of double think to me. Y’know what I mean? If there’s a definition of what it is, then why is the world seeing with their eyes it is genocide and a few powerful allies of Israel saying it isn’t.
Why does logic need to be so controversial eh? A definition is right there yet ‘opinions’ are taken more than fact in this age.
Feeling the same as you - won’t be any peace in the middle east at this rate.
...is not all of what Hamas is responsible for, nor a limited statement of its goals or desires. Nor frankly does it even reflect the limits of what non-palestinians like you are calling for. All the kids in NYC chanting "From the River to the Sea" are embracing a genocidal frame (that the expulsion of an existing population from its home is an OK thing to do). And... you don't really care, and choose to excuse that while you condemn the other side.
And so you (yes, you personally) are making things worse and not better. Because when Hamas or whoever finally gets to the line with an army capable of marching across it, they'll think they have your support.
Like I said, there will be no peace here. And the reason is opinions like yours that choose to excuse one evil while you rail against another.
I read and then re-read the parent. It does not not appear that he has been discussing the totality of both 'sides' actions ( and there is a loooong history there ), but rather focused on most recent Hamas action and Israel's response to it.
From where I sit, OP is not wrong. It is tiring - it is especially tiring when it is couched in moralistic 'you should support <my side>' with the undertone of 'because we are the good guys'. I am starting to seriously doubt there are good guys here.
<< And so you (yes, you personally) are making things worse and not better. Because when Hamas or whoever finally gets to the line with an army capable of marching across it, they'll think they have your support.
And I guess this is the weirdest part. There is really one army in this conflict. An army with technology, training, supplies and knowledge seemingly to do whatever is needed -- some of it courtesy of American taxpayer -- and still managing to fail so hard across the board against seemingly inferior enemy, who adopted guerrilla warfare.
<< And the reason is opinions like yours that choose to excuse one evil while you rail against another.
I remain unconvinced. OP is not excusing anything. Personally, I can easily say Hamas is bad.
Can you openly say Israel's response is bad? Can you even openly state its response is 'over the top'?
No? Then the discussion will remain fruitless and the issue will remain as-is for and will not be solved within our lifetimes. Might as well check out and keep US semi-safe.
Israel's response is bad. Israel's response is 'over the top'.
Can you state that responses to that which embrace eliminationist goals are likewise bad? Do you condemn not just "Hamas" but Palestinian nationalist aims (oft-parroted by activist westerners who don't really understand what it means) of retaking the 1948 land? Or do you just look the other way and figure The Jews Have It Coming? You're picking a side here, whether you admit it or not. And picking a side means that someone loses.
Sure, elimanationist goals are likewise bad. I will go even further, it is a really bad idea for the humanity to go down that path, because, if history taught us anything, it is really, really hard to stop violence once it starts.
<< Do you condemn not just "Hamas" but Palestinian nationalist aims?
Can you define those a little more closely? I am hedging, because it is already moving way past the discussion at play and if want to evaluate all nations nationalist aims, I am not sure we should be limiting ourselves to just Palestinians.
<< You're picking a side here, whether you admit it or not.
I worry that you may have chosen a side and are not arguing in good faith ( whether you admit it or not ). Based on your statement, no matter what I say, you have already made a determination about me and my views. That is fine. I am ok with stopping this conversation here. I am not expecting to change minds. I was, however, expecting more.
<< And picking a side means that someone loses.
Does it really have to be that way? Is it truly a zero-sum game? It is not a rhetorical question. I am curious if you can imagine a non-binary world.
Which side do you think I've picked? What can I say to convince you that I haven't? There are no solutions here. There can be no Palestinian homeland within the 1948 borders without terrible violence. There will be no peace within Gaza and the West Bank without it. At best we can achieve a detent for a while and an end to the immediate violence, with a pie-in-the-sky best case of some kind of end to the west bank settlement activity and maybe a little clawing back of recently-taken territory.
If you're asking for more than that, on either side, you're perpetuating the conflict and making things worse. Because eventually we'll get to a stage where one side isn't dominant, and what happens then is an actual shooting war with millions of civilian casualties.
Zero disagreement. This is an HN thread. It is not even intended for a solution. The fact that is even discussed here is an indicator how unusual a conflict it is.
I am not a dignitary. I hold zero to no real world power. Frankly, if I did, I assume I would not be discussing stuff online for practical reasons. As it stands, its just two humans talking.
<< There can be no Palestinian homeland within the 1948 borders without terrible violence.
I will ignore for a moment the 1948 restriction.
I look at this from an outsider point of view so when I see words like this, I can't help but respond with 'but there already is terrible violence; how exactly do you want to escalate it?'
<< actual shooting war with millions of civilian casualties.
There already is a shooting war with all the horrors war can bring. The only thing missing is millions of civilian casualties. And it does not look like it ( war ) is being contained. If anything, there is a growing risk of expanding and moving beyond ME region.
<< If you're asking for more than that
Best I can ask for is a plea that both sides stop. Right now, this is probably the only reasonable way to stop immediate violence. And I suppose we can worry about 'day after' then. But as I mentioned before, once the violence starts, it may be hard to stop.
<< Because eventually we'll get to a stage where one side isn't dominant
Because it worked so well now with a dominant party?
<< pie-in-the-sky best case of some kind of end to the west bank settlement activity and maybe a little clawing back of recently-taken territory
So what do we do? Nothing? It goes full circle to 'there are no solutions here'.
edit:
I think I will be removing myself from the remainder of this conversation. It was genuinely interesting to me so I thank you for your answers. It looks like it is going to be a long week here as I am starting to get half panicky dms.
Demanding people leave their homes doesn't work. They fight. They kill. They'll starve. They'll die. This is exactly the problem we're seeing in Gaza, and it's just amazing to me that you don't understand it's symmetric.
It doesn't matter who you think "should" be living there, Israelis actually are. Homes are homes. People in the western pro-palestinian movement have fooled themselves into thinking that Israelis will just move to The Bronx or Palo Alto or whatever, and that's not remotely how it works.
> Because it worked so well now with a dominant party?
It's working comparatively well, yes. Both Israeli and Gazan casualties are bad, but low relative to total population. That's not the way real ethnic wars work, usually. If a Palestinian army thinks they can actually win, they'll invade and kill everyone. Because to their worldview it's their land and the Jews are invaders, and that's what you do with invaders. It shocks me the extent to which people don't understand this.
Hmm, are you suggesting that the moment Palestinian settler is able to eke out a piece of land he/she is able to defend from Israel, it is automatically acceptable ( in a might is right kind of way )? Is this really an argument we should be putting forward? Does it not clash with your previous statements somewhat?
<< it's just amazing to me that you don't understand it's symmetric.
Do I really though? Is it possible you are trying to force me into a particular convenient label? It makes no practical difference, but I would like you to note that most of the people here are used to 'internet argumentation tactics'.
<< It doesn't matter who you think "should" be living there
My friend, this is the reason we are unable to keep this conversation going. You are putting words in my mouth.
<< It shocks me the extent to which people don't understand this.
What is there to understand? Violence begets violence.
My apologies, I took your evasion of the homeland border issue as evidence that you didn't want to treat with the fact that it's completely unresolvable. If that's not the case, I'm happy. But you're still not giving ground here and unless you do, you're basically siding with and supporting the aims of the folks who want to ethnically cleanse the levant.
Once more, to repeat: Israel's actions in and administration of the West Bank and Gaza are terrible injustices. But they're stable injustices and just "turning off" Israeli dominance in the region, which seems to be your goal, is going to hurt things very badly.
No worries. It was an evasion guided by trying not to muddy the waters further. I am not sure, bringing border issue into the mix would make anything clearer. It would likely force us down the history lane along with all the distractions associated with it, discussing sources, whether they are valid, biased, accurate and so on.. and while I am sure it would be a really interesting conversation to have, I do not think I am the right person to discuss it.
<< you're basically siding with and supporting the aims of the folks who want to ethnically cleanse the levant.
I purposefully choose not to align myself with either. I am, as it were, neutral, partially because I have no direct stake in outcome ( although I am open to argumentation on this front -- would you be able to make a case for it being useful to US interests ). If it makes you feel any better, I approach question of Ukraine in roughly the same way ( and I technically have a bigger stake in outcome there ).
<< But they're stable injustices and just "turning off" Israeli dominance in the region, which seems to be your goal, is going to hurt things very badly.
I find the phrase 'stable injustices' interesting and I suppose it does speak to something deep within us when as long we know something bad is coming, it is not as bad, because it is just the way life ( currently ) is. All of a sudden, its all ok, because it is, what it is. Might as well complain about the weather really. Pointless.
Do you not find it mildly depressing that you have effectively excused 'terrible injustices' by saying they are at least stable ( and predictable I suppose )?
As for goals, I am not sure I have actual goals here. If I did, I think this conversation would be more structured. But it isn't. I chat with you in this manner precisely, because my mind is not made up and, if it helps, you do offer interesting counter-arguments.
With that in mind, can you elaborate on how 'turning off' Israeli dominance would 'hurt things very badly'? I am a sucker for balance so it is possible I am missing something.
Assume that October 7 is what Hamas and Hezbollah would do on a much larger scale if Israel were militarily weaker than them. (You could, for example, take the Hamas charter as reason to think that.)
In that process nine million people get killed or displaced, with "killed" being a significant fraction. That's orders of magnitude worse than the status quo. Note that "who's right" has nothing to do with that evaluation - it's just based on the body count.
That I think is the case that the current "stable balance" is better. Even though it is tragic, brutal, and deadly, it still is far better than what could happen if the equilibrium were destroyed.
But this argument is totally dependent on whether you believe that Hamas and Hezbollah would do that. Personally, after October 7, I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you may see it differently.
More than mildly so. But it remains the best option.
> With that in mind, can you elaborate on how 'turning off' Israeli dominance would 'hurt things very badly'? I am a sucker for balance so it is possible I am missing something.
When you want to kill someone else, but they are overwhelmingly superior, you can't. So you won't try, for the most part. When their power wanes and yours grows, there comes a point where you think you can win. And that's when you roll the tanks.
"Balance" is about stability, not equality. Fuck with Israeli dominance and eventually Iran sneaks enough weapons into Gaza that we see Hamas start to take and hold territory. How is that better?
Well that is incorrect and to put words in my mouth and then personally attack based on said words is kind of pointless.
My argument is about genocide. Words don’t equate genocide, but certain actions are. I don’t think you’ll be winning any nobel peace prizes for figuring out the difference.
And my argument is that your "genocide argument" is overnarrow and has the effect of picking a side in a conflict that cannot and will not end unless people stop perpetuate it like that. Stopping your particular favorite enemy has the effect of empowering and emboldening their enemies, who are just as bad.
This is like the Flat Earth equivalent in geopolitics — and getting people to explain why they think things is fascinating.
I also like irony — so seeing Israel “prosecuted” for the lowest civilian casualty rate in modern history is hilarious.
The Gaza Ministry of Health says as of today that 35,562 people have been killed [0]. The Israeli Ministry of Defense in March said it has killed 13,000 Hamas operatives [1].
Leaving aside the two month gap between these figures, the civilian casualty ratio is 1:1.7.
I tried to find a source for what a "typical" casualty ratio is in urban conflicts. This source [2] claims that 90% of overall casualties is a typical number. That would be a ratio of 1:9.
John Spencer, who chairs the Modern Warfare Institute at USMA, and seems to be an authority on the subject, has a tweet addressing this specifically [3], in which he cites the Battles of Mosul, and Manila as having casualty rates of 1:2.5, 1:6 respectively.
I don't think proving the negative of "lowest civilian casualty rate in modern history" is feasible, but a nearly 5x improvement in civilian casualties compared to the assumed norm, and lower civilian casualties than Spencer's comparisons seems to indicate that the claim is not without merit.
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-ham... [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-says-gaza... [2] https://civiliansinconflict.org/our-work/conflict-trends/urb... [3] https://x.com/SpencerGuard/status/1786612914117349769
The source you provided says "for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians". This is clearly an upper bound, and makes no claim about how close to this they actually come.
In the same way, I might offer my customers an SLA of two nines in their contract, but never drop below three in practice. Part of effective planning is describing the worst case scenario, but that doesn't imply it will actually happen.
For what is worth, the UN estimates are significantly lower with less than 8’000 children (and 5’000 women) out of the 25’000 identified casualties. Maybe there are indeed 10’000 additional victims as Hamas claims (the UN take that number at face value, Israel estimated are slightly lower) but it seems unlikely that 75% of them are children. It’s not physically imposible though.
And there will still be many more starving to death each day, thanks for aid trucks being attacked and burned (with IDF collusion apparently).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/21/israel...
You've put my thoughts into words better than I could.
I'm not seeing a happy ending to this story, ever. I keep thinking about the turf war storyline in The Last of Us II (which was clearly written as an allegory for the Israel-Palestine conflict), and I think the storyline's conclusion was apt. There is only death and misery ahead. Get out if and while you can, and don't look back.
There is no definition of Genocide but only of what you can get away with. These countries are engaged in a proxy war via Israel. They can't replace Israel right now, heck they can't even replace the current leadership. So they just have to explain away and launder the reputation of the operation.
If this goes through every western leader past and present can have a warrant out for them at any minute, it really doesn't take much to find 1 suspected violation and a need to arrest and stand trial to see if they are guilty.
You do nothing. Which is why all of hand-wringing around this ICC decision is for pointless. There is no such thing as "international law" in any practical sense.
Curious: What's "Western" about this particular democracy?
How could something be both? Palestine is either a separate state from Israel or it isn't.
That’s all insofar as anyone or entity actually respects international law. It comes down to states agreeing that it’s in their best interests to cooperate on a matter. As long as the USA and Europe support Israel and don’t bring to bear any leverage to stop this insanity and form an independent state, the ICC can call Palestine whatever it wants to describe the situation.
Additionally ICC only has juridsiction if Palestine is a state. So the entire thing goes away if Palestine is not a state (since only states can aceede to the rome convention).
I do not think Palestine being a state is the same question as if this conflict is international. I think it may be possible for both Palestine to be a state and this conflict be non international. However IANAL and that is pure speculation.
Nor can it be not international due to the vagueness of Israel's borders. Israel has internationally legally recognized borders (the Green Line) and is acting outside them.
This conflict is international.
The two things are different. Switzerland did not join the UN until 2002. I’m sure that we can all agree that Switzerland was recognized as a state prior to 2002.
Becoming a full member of the UN is a sufficient but not necessary condition for recognition. The other way is simply to get as many other states as possible to recognize you.
Arguably Palestine’s recognition by the UN General Assembly is also sufficient.
I don't think this is correct. Palestine's status is disputed. Legal status isn't a physical property, it's a social one, so if many people think "A" is "B", then "A" is in some sense genuinely "B".
Considering the conflict in both contexts avoids "Oops, the entire thing is nullified because it's technically Conflict Type 1, not Conflict Type 2."
Rather, A is A for many people, and B is B for many people. Both groups aren't mutually exclusive
( GroupA ∩ GroupB ) != ∅
The ICC likely judges about crimes that happened during multiple phases of the conflict, hence the conflict could have multiple types.
--
I also found in the legal report the following that partially explains the reasoning https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-p... :
War crimes require a nexus to an armed conflict, and for some war crimes this conflict must be international.5 For this reason, it is necessary to assess the situation in Gaza and in Israel to determine whether an armed conflict exists and if so, its nature. 13. The Panel agrees with the Prosecutor’s conclusion that the conflicts in Israel and Gaza comprise an international armed conflict and a non-international armed conflict running in parallel. Hamas is a highly organized non-State armed group, and the hostilities between Hamas and Israel have been sufficiently intense to reach the threshold of a non-international armed conflict. The Panel’s assessment is that the non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas began, at the latest, on 7 October 2023, when Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups launched Operation al-Aqsa Flood against Israel and Israel launched its Operation Iron Swords in response. The Panel has also concluded that there is an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine on the basis either that: a) Palestine is a State in accordance with criteria set out in international law, for which there is a sufficiently strong argument for the purpose of an application to the Court for an arrest warrant, and an international armed conflict arises if a State uses force against a non-state actor on the territory of another State without the latter’s consent; or b) Palestine and Israel are both High Contracting Parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and that pursuant to the text of Common Article 2 of the Conventions, an armed conflict between two High Contracting Parties is international in character; or c) There is a belligerent occupation by Israel of at least some Palestinian territory. 14. The Panel’s assessment is that the international armed conflict began at the latest on 7 October 2023, when Israel first started responding to the Hamas attack on its territory by using force on the territory of Palestine without the latter’s consent.
I don’t believe the ICC’s jurisdiction is limited to state-on-state conflicts. The more-curious question is how the ICC is claiming jurisdiction over non-signatory nations.
- who are alleged to have committed crimes on the territory of the signatory nation, or
- who are nationals of the signatory nation
[1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-p... page 3, paragraph 9
> Given Palestine is a signatory does it mean they have to take action to extradite the Hamas leadership to face trial? What consequences do they face if they fail to do that?
Almost certainly nothing. They are obligated to help, but realistically if the palestine authority had the ability to capture hamas leadership i imagine they would have done so a long time ago, as the two sides fought what was essentially a civil war a while back.
The ICC prosecutes individuals not states, so there's no contradiction here.
>Given Palestine is a signatory does it mean they have to take action to extradite the Hamas leadership to face trial?
Yes
>What consequences do they face if they fail to do that?
There's no penalties built into the statute. It tends to have diplomatic blowback. See [1] for a prior example.
Gaza isn't actually part of Israel, though, is it? Even Israel says it's not, if I understand correctly.
It's also invading and attacking citizens of Palestine State without consent of its representatives (PA), that's international conflict.
You can write "russia is genociding ukrainians". You can write 'china is genociding muslims". That isn't hellish flamewar. Guess what is hellish flamewar?
Hamas haven’t retuned the hostages because they believe their own people are dying for the glory of God as martyrs.
Don’t forget the government of Palestine waged war on Israel though ? I mean what did they think was going to happen after October 7 ? A picnic ?
The government of Palestine, who had a responsibility to take care of its people believed every Jew should be wiped off the face for the earth. So I’m not sure what Israel is left to do besides basically demolish the country to ensure its own security.
I actually can see the difference between Russia, China and this personally. It would be like Taiwan attacking China. Which they won’t do because they’re not insane fanatics.
What do you think Israelites should do instead ? Go back to Europe ? Ceasefire so their enemy can regroup and kill more?
https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/artic...
(grain of salt)Think it is easy in the US to think Israeli public opinion somehow mirrors the US but the vast majority of people in Israel right now are pro-war (similar to the US post-9/11) and anti-two state
e: not sure why I'm downvoted for something that can easily be confirmed by googling polls
Israel has a multi-party legislature. Netanyahu can be outflanked on the right.
He was outflanked by the right in 2019 when Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu and Lapid's Yamina withdrew it's support for Likud and joined Bennett's and Lapid's anti-Netanyahu coalition in 2021, but Bibi was able to leverage fringe Kahanist and Mizrahi parties to reclaim the top seat.
Hell, Bibi would make a coalition with the Arab List/Ra'am (the Islamist Party in Israel) if it meant remaining PM (and thus retaining immunity)
Traditionally, the hard right Jewish parties would always win around 20 seats in Knesset but would never be a major part of any coalition - but Bibi has alienated just about every single faction in Israel at this point trying to extend his rule.
Yeah but part of that half probably supports Gallant, who has split with Netanyahu, but is also charged alongside him.
The fact that Hamas attack was so successful under his watch has not disappeared.
His career is full of scandals and corruption. He is still going to have domestic charges in near future.
His war cabinet is going to collapse soon if he continues without any plans for the future of Gaza.
I think the US would not comment on the matter. Candidates for Office (Trump) would loudly comment about it.
The US has deep political and geopolitical ties with Israel. It will never go agaisnt Israel (the country) when it matters.
What even is his plan anymore? Keep beating the "im better than Trump" drum and hope for the best?
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/31/63percent-of-workers-are-una...
There is an argument to be made that the country is not thinking about any of this stuff at all and they will base their vote on how they feel come election time.
On the flipside, there is also evidence to indicate that Trump has completely lost the independent vote which you need to win the election.
You know what would help save the country? If Biden did not seek re-election. After all, he originally called himself a 'transition' president in 2020. His selfish behavior is the reason we are even having a discussion. There still might be time to swap him out at the convention if things get really bad but there is an argument to be made that the large Muslim community in Michigan would rather punish him for Israel/Palestine and accept Trump than give him the satisfaction that he so desires of being a two term president.
Thats all Biden seems to really care about and by making him the president that lost the country to Trump, it will be a greater way to get payback than anything else they can try.
In general I don't see why the Israel situation should be laid at Biden's feet specifically, as opposed to the Israeli lobby that has had a stranglehold on US politics for quite some time. Short of waiting for generational change, the only way to sidestep that would be to paralyze the US government's foreign policy, but that also means the end of US hegemony, USD as a reserve currency, and the generally high standard of living we take for granted. Frankly it's odd to attack such conservatism as a "privileged" position, when the fact of the matter is that people with wealth will be generally fine regardless of what happens.
As for Biden, his personal aspirations, and internal party jockeying, I've got little opinion. Swap in another not-Trump candidate and I'll vote for them instead. Personally at this point I'd likely support someone even if they were a blue-flavored extremist, because the incumbent power structure would be inherently set to resist them, whereas at this point a reelection of criminal Trump would essentially be throwing in the towel on our system of government. But obviously another extremist would turn a lot of people off, and let so called "conservatives" maintain their cognitive dissonance that Trumpism is about conserving anything at all.
Ultimately I think if we want to throw off the chains of the military industrial surveillance complex, we've got to take that bottom-up from the grassroots (eg decentralized communications tech) rather than thinking a power vacuum at the top will lead to anything good.
>Statement from President Joe Biden on the Warrant Applications by the International Criminal Court
>The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.
This is the hypocrisy of the West, when the same court issued a warrant for Putin, it was praised but when it involves a U.S. ally, it's labeled as "outrageous". This only fuels the sentiment prevalent in many Global South countries about us (the west) "rules for thee but not for me".
Seems unlikely that Israel would be causing this much destruction if the group that they were seeking to retaliate against wasn't using civilians as shields (which is a war crime in itself).
Seems weird to put all responsibility on Israel here.
But in general I agree that a world government criminal court is a political joke that nobody takes seriously
Sitting US officials, up to and including the President, have already strongly condemned the pursuit of the warrants.
> The US has deep political and geopolitical ties with Israel.
Which is fine as a basis for opposing things like this as long as the US doesn't ever want anyone to believe any of its claims that its policies are based on principals beyond bloc interest.
This isn’t a guerilla war either, it’s the actual official government party. One who has actively promised sequels of the attack.
What would you do in such a situation?
I've been saying, only kind of jokingly, that a more likely outcome than arrest or Israel-directed assassination of Sinwar is Haniya (or his successor) taking him out to a field to talk about the alfalfa they're going to plant, and how Sinwar will get to feed the rabbits. Sinwar really fucked Hamas over here. Easy to lose sight of how good a thing they had going! It had tacit Israeli government support and was making a bunch of Hamas people fairly rich.
Anyways, from that point of view: yes, killing tens of thousands of civilians is certainly going to radicalize people and drive them into militant groups. But those groups might look more like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades than the Al-Qassam Brigades.
(I'll say again though that Hamas in 2018 is a different entity than Hamas in 2016. They're both very bad organizations, but only one of them was literally working to bring about the end of days.)
It's hard to look at October 7th and its aftermath as anything but a setback for literally every party in the region. Even Iran seems to have been caught flat footed.
It would have probably ended in a civil war type situation but at least you wouldn't have widespread famine or the bombing of hospitals or further civilian atrocities. Also forcing regional states to allocate their own resources to the conflict means there's a direct incentive to wind it down since their resources are a lot smaller than the resources of the US. Israel would eventually face domestic pushback over wartime spending and the autocratic states in the region would have to balance their funding of the proxy conflict against their own ambitions and budgets. Iran is somewhat democratic and they too could only fund Hamas so far before looking after their own affairs. A civil war would also create a generation fatigued by conflict and more open to compromise. The unilateral nature of this conflict will guarantee that Palestinians and dissidents in the region will hold this as a grudge over Israel and the US for decades and might even open the possibility of further terrorism against the US.
The US's own nation building efforts in the Middle East after 9/11 flagged due to outrageous spending that materialized in minimal results. The same effect with poorer governments would naturally circumscribe the conflict in the area.
Can you tell me more about the difference here?
Funded and trained by Mossad and others too, at times. In fact, Netanyahu was approving tens of millions a month to Hamas to stay militant and provide a more extremist opposition to Arafat and the PLO who were calming down and more peaceable in their old age.
This is the thing that really gets frustrating.
Israel's hard right is as opposed to a two state system as Hamas is. People point to "from the river to the sea" as "proof" of Hamas' genocidal intent (and I won't pretend they haven't said other things to that end, either), ignoring that it was literally Likud's platform slogan since the 1970s.
Some millions from Qatar with no political engagement towards 2SS isn't good by any measure. It was most certainly good for the Israelis: the Abraham Accords and recognition of the Western Golan Heights + Jerusalem by the US, with practically no opposition.
Sinwar may be a lunatic, but we'd be lunatics just the same to assume Hamas were happy with the status quo. They are not PA for a reason.
Note: there hasn't been a "generation of motivated terrorists" coming out of Japan and Germany after WWII, those populations were entirely subdued.
But again, Japanese and Germans aren’t blowing up Americans and Indians aren’t blowing up London. Claiming this will create more terrorists is saying the Palestinians are irredeemably violent. I don’t think that’s right.
Unfortunately I don't see it as very likely that Israel will give back all the territory in Gaza and provide aid to the Palestinians to rebuild.
Gaza was quite beautiful! And given its prime location on the mediterranean sea, I don't see why it couldn't be built up again.
https://twitter.com/InsiderWorld_1/status/178854608101537840...
But of course the massive mistake was not eradicating the evil terrorist genocidal mentality of its nominal leadership, Hamas. Israel (and the world) shouldn't make that mistake again.
Gazan Palestinians don't even have limited local rule the way Chinese autonomous regions or Puerto Rico do.
Note that despite aid and the occupation, Japan had significant unrest following the war. The Communist Party of Japan's candidate Inejirou Asanuma was assassinated by an imperial revanchist on Oct 12, 1960 [1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Inejir%C5%8D_...
With respect to your proposal. Can you be more specific about how Israel is supposed to target Hamas leadership when they are in tunnels underground below civilian populations and holding hostages? That Hamas leadership is not dead is not due to lack of Israel trying to target them specifically. I don't think it's possible to get at Hamas without taking over the entire Gaza strip which leads me to repeat the OP's question of what would you do. Another question is whether you're suggesting to give free pass to the Oct 7'th attackers and kidnappers (which seems to be implied by saying "focus on Hamas leadership").
Heh this is funny because this was an explicit concern for the US after WWII. This is the reason behind the creation of the Marshal Plan and directly the reason why the US occupied both Germany and Japan and assisted in nation building there. The idea that losing a war leads to radicalism is as old as WWII, but probably even older, as the UK came to a similar conclusion when divesting its colonies in South Asia.
For more recent cases on how political instability and sectarian conflict leads to a rise in terrorism, look at what happened in Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the dissolution of the Baathist party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=821R0lGUL6A
If you've never seen "Your Job In Germany", bookmark and it and make sure you do at some point. It is pretty unreal.
Of course, the counterpoint here is: the reason we worried about German terrorism but didn't see it is because we trained our forces with videos like this, and we were the nice guys about it compared to the Soviets.
The Palestinians are taught from primary school to hate Jews[1] (books paid with western money). They couldn't possibly hate Jews more.
[1]: https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value...
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17p7mfx/bett...
Unprovoked is a stretch.
Settlers have been given free rein to commit terror acts all throughout the Palestinian Territories.
And Hamas has been propped up by the Netanyahu government for years.
Not quite:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_G...
This is not to say that Israel permitted Gaza to have any reasonable sort of economic development (as a simple example, it’s effectively a country with two not-very-open land borders and no port, which surely made trade rather challenging).
If you want an analogy, imagine roughly the population of San Francisco plus San Mateo County, but with under half the land area, hostile relations and extremely limited travel across the land border with Santa Clara County and points South, with no bridges and no port. Throw in a near-complete dependency on Santa Clara for water and electricity, and nowhere near enough agriculture. (At least San Mateo County has a decent amount of farming to the West.) Take out the hot tech scene as well, and the economic situation would not be awesome.
What was the total number of Palestinians killed by Settler terrorist attacks in 2022? Do you have that handy? What was the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorist attacks during that time?
167 Palestinians and 12 Israelis in the west bank. All deaths, not just by settlers etc.
If a Palestinian attempts to stab someone and is shot that's not the same situation as "settler" terrorist attacks.
I think you should answer my question.
Also please count Israelis in Israel killed by Palestinians from the west bank.
Maybe by "is" you mean since Oct 7th. But again that's not provocation, that's after the fact. If you think Gaza was occupied how come the IDF needs to re-occupy it?
Killing people and children along the border is NOT a characteristic of occupation. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230513-gaza-israel-confe...
Counting calories of food consumed by Gazans is not occupation : https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE89G0NM/
Restricting water supply is most definitely not an act of occupying power : https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/11/the-occu...
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/2021-0...
All these are before the Oct 7.
60% of homes destroyed, 80% of schools, all universities, 31/35 hospitals.
What Israel [0] could have done was to not create this situation in the first place, but their goal was never solve it anyway.
[0] I mean the current government in power and right wing extremist settlers
Israel withdrew from Gaza. Is your proposal that Israel should not have withdrawn to "not create the situation in the first place"? Or re-taken Gaza when Hamas took it over from Fatah by force in 2007 after winning the elections?
Not to mention the continuation of apartheid in Israel itself and expansion of settlements in the west bank.
This situation was created because Netanyahu has supported Hamas for a long time, even before 2005, as a classic divide and conquer strategy, to not allow PA to control both territories. But the US also helped as Bush forced elections early when PA had a reputation of being corrupt, and when they lost the election they tried to get PA to do a coup and Hamas kicked them out from Gaza.
There's no apartheid in Israel itself but let's not get into that.
Expansion of settlements in the west bank. True. I don't understand how that's a provocation to Gazans to rape and murder random Israeli civilians. It's also true that Netanyahu pursued a divide and conquer approach. Again you're trying to claim that Israel's support of Hamas' rule in Gaza is provocation for Hamas to launch attacks on Israel civilians which makes no sense.
EDIT: To be fair the legal question of "when does an occupation end" is complicated. Gaza was occupied from Egypt and Egypt does not want it back. The uni-lateral withdrawal of Israel without a peace agreement left Gaza in a weird legal situation. This is why despite Gaza being under Palestinian control and not occupied the legal state of occupation is perhaps not fully resolved. There's reality on the ground though (not occupied) and international law status (debated).
No apartheid? I guess Palestinians enjoy the right to return then? https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-...
The west bank is part of the whole situation, of course it matters to Gaza what happens there. It also shows exactly what would happen if Hamas did not exist, Israel would continue to allow settlers to take land and homes. I'm not saying that Hamas should exist, but its very much a situation created by Israel themselves and Hamas has support from Palestinians because of Israels actions.
May the hasbara be strong in you.
Does this make the Czech Republic an Apartheid state?
Is Russia an Apartheid state? Can Ukranian refugees return to their homes? What about the millions of other refugees from random places?
There is zero connection between the right of return (which does not exist, refugees have no right to return after they lost a war) and Apartheid.
It's not "Hasbara" (which means explaining in Hebrew, so yes, I'm explaining). It's just common sense.
With both the Cezchs and the Germans being in the EU, they very much do, yes.
> Is Russia an Apartheid state?
Sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagestan, etc. are explicitly set up as ethnostates within Russia.
Really? The entire point of the Aliyah for return to Israel is that they lost against Romans, and they expelled them. Or is it selective injustice to the Palestinians?
> What would you do in such a situation?
The situation is that Israel is an oppressor and an occupier, so what should it do? Well, first of all it should have made different choices in the past, honest and fair and peaceful choices. Which it didn't make, and it's its fault. But it's never too late. It should have made honest, fair and peaceful choices also in this occasion- mourned its deads, vowed to bring those responsible to justice, and engaged with Palestinian counterparts to withdraw within the 1967 borders and promote the birth of a Palestinian state.
Of course, it didn't do any of those things. It did exactly what Hamas expected.
Yes: Israel did exactly what Hamas expected. The problem for Hamas is twofold:
* Hamas thought the urban combat to root them out of Gaza City and Khan Younis would be a Vietnam-scale bloodbath that would tie the IDF up indefinitely until they were forced to make a truce.
* Hamas's messianic nutbag leader genuinely believed that he was ushering in the end of days, and that the IRGC's other assets would immediately commit to full scale combat operations against the IDF. Instead: Hezbollah noped the hell out, and Iran launched a large scale drone attack that ended up providing a Boeing and Lockheed-style fireworks display in which other Arab states, even as Israel was massacring Palestinian civilians, pitched in to help. Then Iran "declared the matter resolved". Gulp.
Sometimes, if only strategically, it makes sense to do what your enemy wants you to, because your enemy is stupid.
This is more or less why Israel has so much support between Evangelical Christians. A relatively large number of these people actually want the world to end because they really believe in the Rapture and that they’ll be saved.
That said, a lot of evangelicals do believe the world is about to end and are willing to pay to hasten the process.
No, the real news here is of course the news: the ICC seeks to arrest Israeli top leaders as much as the Hamas leaders. The subject that is going from being everyone's darling to international pariah is Israel, absolutely no doubt about this. This is a massive win for Palestine and those who claim to fight for it, including Hamas- with the potential for historical consequences.
My take is that this was the intention behind the October 7th attack- to drive Israel to such a violent retaliation as to force the world to take notice and to condemn Israel. I might be wrong and the victory might be entirely an unintended consequence. However your interpretation essentially requires Hamas to have zero knowledge of the real ratio of military force between Hamas/ Iran and Israel, and zero knowledge of the fact that the US have always been ready to commit their entire military for Israel. And even your imagined "win" scenario for Hamas is Israel committing to "a truce"- which is what they already had before Oct 7.
* Iran's fireworks display is the result of Israel, not Hamas, trying to drag Iran into the war.
I see very strong parallels between this and the Dublin 1916 rising. I don't believe the leaders of the Irish rebels could beat the British - it was seen as a "blood sacrifice" and a way to show the world the brutality of British colonial power. The Brits duly obliged and brutally put down the rising and set the wheels of an independent Ireland in motion.
I have to say though, that the 1916 rebels didn't go out of their way to kill civilians like Hamas clearly did on the 7th ...
You're missing an important part about tens of thousands of rockets and mortars being fired from Gaza at Israel and terrorism originating from Gaza at Israel. Israel didn't just randomly attack Gaza.
Here's what really happened in Gaza: Israel completely withdrew in 2005 and was not occupying Gaza any more. It handed the entire Gaza strip to the Palestinian Authority. There was even an agreement for safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_freedom_of_movemen...
Not to mention that even before 2005 Israel handed control of most of the Gaza strip to the PA as part of the Oslo accords (and agreement to hand Gaza and Jericho over to the Palestinians predates the Oslo accords).
In 2007 following Palestinian elections Hamas took control of the Gaza strip by force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007) Israel only imposed a full blockade of Gaza as a result of this change because Hamas' stated goal is/was the destruction of Israel. Despite Israel's blockade Gaza has a border with Egypt and had no shortage of goods (and weaponry) through smuggling and other means. There was also plenty of travel in and out of the Gaza strip (both towards Israel and the West Bank and towards Egypt) and there were plenty of good going into Gaza through Israel. Gazans also worked in Israel. Gaza also had a power station and a water desalination plant. It has billions of dollars of aid and investment flowing into it (Ismail Hanyah needs to be a billionaire after all).
So Israel was neither an oppressor nor an occupier in Gaza. It took actions to try and prevent Hamas from arming itself.
The other part wrong with your premise is that Palestinians want to live in peace with Israel within the 1967 borders. They do not. Maybe some of them do. But many do not. When the Oslo peace process was accelerating towards that goal Palestinians started a suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians which results in the killing of Rabin, the rise of the right, and the termination of the peace process.
EDIT:
Bombings by Hamas starting 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_at...
Rabin's assassination 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin
1993: Oslo accords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords
2007: Blockade of Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip
2005: Disengagement from Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Gaz...
Rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...
Gaza-Israel barrier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_barrier
Netanyahu has supported Hamas long before 2005 as part of a divide and conquer strategy. The elections were pushed by Bush at a time when PA were seen as corrupt. When they lost Bush tried to get them to coup and Hamas took over and kicked them out as a reaction to that.
>In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman's noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, "Death to Rabin"
Should tell is everything we need to know about the people in power now.
Maybe the Palestinians were not happy with the deal, them losing their land. Not to forget previous atrocities perpetrated by Jewish terrorists and the nakba.
> Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval.
Doubly untrue today; Israel took complete control of it on May 6.
Gaza is considered an occupied territory by all international bodies with the power and authority to make such a determination, for excellent reasons that you can look up. End of the story. What you do (and Israel does, for propaganda purposes) is to confuse the civilian settlement with the military occupation, or to pretend that since soldiers are not inside Gaza but just all around its borders, Gaza is free. Which is like saying that a prison camp is free if the guards are all outside the fence.
Are you denying Nakba with 'unprovoked'? I recommend you read through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_denial
The only major countries/blocs that are ICC members are the EU/EFTA/EU ascension candidates, UK, Canada, Mercusor (lowkey surprised Venezuela's still a signatory), Mexico, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and NZ.
Edit:
Yes. 124 nations did initially sign the Rome Statute.
I meant regional powers/countries that matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
> The United States is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Act authorizes the president of the United States to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court". This authorization led to the act being colloquially nicknamed "The Hague Invasion Act", as the act allows the president to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of the Netherlands, where The Hague is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.
It was introduced in 2002 when the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and hasn't been rescinded. So if the US ever committed war crimes in those countries, or any other ones; too bad. The US so totally and completely doesn't recognise the ICC's jurisdiction that it will literally invade the Netherlands in order to not be bound by it in any way, shape or form.
No, it wasn't; the ICC (which the US had a lead role in negotiating and initially signed despite never ratifying it) was never going to have retroactive authority, and the US knew that was not an issue long before it “unsigned” the Rome Statute.
Both the unsigning and the “Hague invasion act” were in 2002, during the runup to the 2003 Iraq War; it was about protecting people then in office from consequences in the war of aggression they were about to launch, to the extent it was about protecting specific people and not just the broad idea of American exceptionalism and opposition of the US government of the time to the idea of international institutions not fully subordinated to the US.
The ICC was formed out of the ICJ, to tackle matters that rose beyond 'dispute' between states. The ICJ came out of the IMT, which was the Nuremburg trials, which defined war crimes and crimes against humanity for the first time, so it would not have been really retroactive. These things were already crimes, there just wasn't a body capable of prosecuting them.
No, it wasn't. In any sense.
It was a permanent successor to ad hoc criminal tribunals like the International Military Tribunal, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
> The ICJ came out of the IMT, which was the Nuremburg trials
No, it didn't, it was the UN system's successor to the League of Nations system's Permanent International Court of Justice (the ICJ statute is modelled on that of the PICJ, the PICJ transferred irs assets and archives to the ICJ on its dissolution, the ICJ was headquartered in the Peace Palace that had held the HQ of the PICJ, and the ICJ even adopted the PICJ seal.)
The ICJ—like the PICJ, a court for disputes between nations—was in no respect a successor to International Military Tribunal, which dealt with crimes by individuals (and, indeed had most of its lifespan during that of the ICJ, starting work only a few months before the ICJ.)
The "Hague Invasion Act" is performative silliness enacted in the immediate wake of September 11. The truth is that no major European country is going to arrest an American, Indian, Philipino or Israeli politician. There's kind of a deus ex machina thing happening with the ICC; you still have to do standard-issue diplomacy.
Wikipedia says there are 124 states party to the Rome Statute and there are 193 sovereign states that are members of the united nations. Thats 64%, which is most countries.
Non-signatories are overwhelmingly represented by a handful of countries with very large populations. None of the 5 most populated countries in the world are signatories, and out of the 10 most populated, only 4 are signatories (Nigeria, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Mexico). Out of the top 20 most populated countries, 10 are signatories.
Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey have all previously expressed intentions of signing the Rome Statute, if only these countries would do so, it would bring over 60% of the world’s population under it.
The standard semantics of ‘most countries’ counts countries, not the people in them. Of course the related claim that the majority of /people/ do not live in state parties to the Rome Statute has different truth conditions.
A majority of Israelis voted for this government's representatives, including Netanyahu, some specifically voting for him (his party has almost x2 as many votes as the second-biggest voted party).
Democracy doesn't work only when the representatives that you like are elected.
Edit to add: I tried submitting that link to submit it myself, and can't?
They state that actual crimes will be dealt with by JAG, but I think the Okinawan community disputes that they were taken seriously when it comes to domestic violence and sexual assault.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
To my knowledge, this is also the grounds on which the US and UK dispute jurisdiction: They say, no country in this conflict that they recognise is ICC signatory, so the ICC does not have jurisdiction.
(Not a lawyer, but this seems a pretty spurious and self-referential legal argument to me and in any case the UN accepted Palestine as an observer state, so I doubt that it would fly.)
Because from what I hear, that “Palestine” doesn’t really exist.
There’s Gaza, and there’s the West Bank.
Most countries which recognise Palestine as a state seem to recognise it in the 1967 borders, i.e. Gaza + West Bank + East Jerusalem.
Not sure about the UN though.
> For now, the announcement is largely symbolic. Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction in Israel or Gaza, meaning that Israeli leaders would face no risk of arrest at home.
The US is also not a member
Like there is no such thing as a "universal" right, law, lawful action or anything. There is just "agreements/policies" countries enforce by the power of their military/economical/geopolitical might not by jurisdiction, through for practical reasons most times there is a _self imposed_ jurisdiction of some form.
Through in most cases (i.e. not war, special military operation) this "upholding" is limited to their territories.
The jurisdiction the ICC has imposed on themself is, more or less, to judge war crimes and genocide by anyone anywhere internationally.
In practice this means anyone anywhere as long as the power of the ICC member states allow them to do so (in a for the member reasonable way).
Practically the only place in which countries can reliable enforce such things is in their territory/people. E.g. this means they don't enforce it when the person committing the crime is an US Citizen because they are not powerful enough to force the US to allow them to do so.
What that means in this case is, that assuming a warrant is issued, they will be arrested iff they step into member state territory. And even then it might depend on the individual power of the member state and the context under which they stepped into the member state.
Through iff ICC members would be far more powerful and united, things could be very different.
E.g. the US imprisoning no US Citizens arrested outside of US territory in Guantanamo was a case of "having enough power to enforce their rules outside of their territory". (But it's also a terrible example given such arrests in general didn't follow the procedure you would expect from a state of law (or the ICC) and we know today involved more then just one or two innocents. Heck if the ICC had the power they would likely have judged that to be a war crime and issued an arrest for the people responsible for it.)
The Panel and its academic advisers are experts in international law, including international humanitarian law and international criminal law. Two Panel members are appointed as expert 'Special Advisers' by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Two Panel members are former judges at criminal tribunals in The Hague.
Despite our diverse personal backgrounds, our legal findings are unanimous. We have unanimously determined that the Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian nationals. We unanimously conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including hostage-taking, murder and crimes of sexual violence. We unanimously conclude that there are raasonable grounds to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have commited war crimes and crimes against humanity including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution and extermination.
I served on this Panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict. As a human rights laywer, I will never accept that one child's life has less value than another's. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law. So I support the historic step that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has taken to bring justice to victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine.
Today, my colleagues and I have published an oped and a detailed legal report of the Panel's findings. My approach is not to provide a running commentary of my work but to let the work speak for itself. I hope that witnesses will cooperate with the ongoing investigation. And I hope that justice will prevail in a region that has already suffered too much."
- Amal Clooney
I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion. On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
War crimes are war crimes, and these were committed in the same war. This is like complaining a corporation and an employee were charged in the same press release. They’re different, but not in the respect of the alleged crimes.
> why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Refusing refugees isn’t a war crime and isn’t—to my knowledge—under the ICC’s jurisdiction.
Saving them was not an objective of the war effort and was opposed by many due to domestic anti-Semitism and ethno-nationalism (Nazism had significant open sympathy in the US at the time).
Until the political tides changed in the US/UK, both countries definitely wasted time during which many perished in the Holocaust. Mostly people watched as the Nazis killed millions. There was no public uproar to intervene while the events were happening.
It's also not clear that either country would have ever accepted millions of Holocaust refugees, even though the US certainly had the space. The creation of the state of Israel after the war in a way helped them not have to face that question.
1. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-united...
But there is also a religious rationale. In fundamentalist Christianity, the re-establishment of the state of Israel to its biblically described borders is a precondition for the return of the Messiah and Judgement Day, when the same Jewish people will supposedly be given a last chance to convert ... or else. So the policy is in part rooted in the anti-Semitism of Christian eschatology.
Those ideas had strong appeal after WW2, and they are a major policy motivator of the Christian religious right-wing in the US today.
I suppose a better term would be "evangelical protestant fundamentalist Christianity", although I suspect that even there, some small number of them are not focused on politicizing Christian eschatology.
But the analogy breaks down here because (1) the UK and USA had strongly antisemitic attitudes at the time and imposed very small quotas on the number of Jews they accepted as refugees and (2) it appears that Israel is not pursuing extermination of Palestinians.
Some were committed 7 months ago, the other were allegedly committed a short time ago.
Putting them both in the same release is utterly repugnant.
Israel is not at fault for trying to recover hostages from a population aiding and abetting terrorists. Have you even seen footage of a Hamas member in uniform being killed? They dress as civilians so their rightful killing is interpreted as "war crimes" by gullible American students.
The prosecutors at the ICC are neither gullible nor American.
> Palestine using human shields are not Israel's war crimes
Starvation as a war tactic ... can't be human shields? Dropping a bomb every 50secs for the first 2 weeks and now again in the past week killing 15k+ can't be human shields? Withholding aid, inciting genocide, destroying large swathes of infrastructure isn't merely human shields.
> gullible American students
I know one such student quite well. They are Jewish, right-wing, and all their life were taught (at the Jewish school they attended, and by their family) to support Israel. Then they went out into the world, and met some Palestinians. Now they are leading protests against the war
In other words, if by "Israel" you mean only within the borders of its sovereign territory, yes it's a democracy. If by "Israel" you mean all territory controlled by the State of Israel, it's clearly not.
So, they at best get partial credit for being "a democracy". If they wanted to get full credit, they would have to either relinquish control over the West Bank (and Gaza for that matter), or grant the people living there equal citizenship and voting rights.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Nobody has to let foreigners into their country if they don't want to. Israel has every right to limit what goes over their border with Gaza, too. What bothers me is that they also restrict Gaza's territorial waters and airspace (and have been doing so since long before Oct. 7th), which AFAIK Egypt isn't involved in.
Eh [1]. But not the ICC’s business.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_S...
This is one aspect of the whole conflict that has always seriously irked me.
The West effectively treats Israel as if it were the legal guardian of the Palestinians: Israel controls the entire territory, controls the tax revenue, population registry, borders, airspace, energy and water supply, can precisely restrict what (is allowed to) go in and out, can construct or demolish buildings at will, can arrest people at will, or even shoot them, can arbitrarily set the rules for court proceedings, etc. Western and neighbor countries fully support this view, to the point where, if Palestinians import or export goods into their own territories without Israel's authorisation, this is called "smuggling".
Yet at the same time, Israel seems to have no obligation to actually consider or represent the interests of the Palestinians: They are not allowed to vote in Israeli elections; they don't have any representation in the Knesset; laws can be passed that arbitrarily disadvantage them without loss of democratic status; Israeli politicians openly call the Palestinians "our bitter enemies".
In any situation where any individual person were the legal guardian of another person and at the same time called them "their bitter enemy", we'd be deeply alarmed and suspect an abusive relationship. Yet in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, that's "how things are supposed to be" and everyone who tries to change that status quo is the problem.
This feels extremely wrong to me.
(The UN is clearer here: They give Israel the specific legal role of "occupation force" and point to various obligations towards the occupied population that come with that role. However, the western countries somehow both deny that any occupation even takes place and demand that Israel must continue to have full control over the territories - which is contradictory in itself)
Wait till you find how in response to white nationalist attacks, the US political elite instead end up making laws to ban Palestinian groups.
An issue involving 14m peoples shouldn't be this international and should have never shaped the West's domestic policy (let alone foreign policy) as much as it has.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/instruments-of-dehuman... / https://archive.ph/BWrzw
I don't think this is really true or at the very least it's nuanced. There are some extreme right politicians that say very questionable things but Palestinians (including Israeli Arabs, Palestinians in the west bank, and Palestinians in Gaza) are not generally, as a whole, thought of as bitter enemies. The Hamas maybe. People on both sides generally get along in many situations (e.g. Palestinians that are Israeli citizens, Palestinians working in Israel, Israelis shopping in the West Bank, even most settlers in the West Bank with their Palestinian neighbours).
Even in his denial that these claims are basically holding all (or at least most) of the people of Gaza responsible for October 7th, he has actually reiterated the same claim:
"But the reality cannot be ignored, a reality which we all saw with our own eyes as published by Hamas on that cursed day, and that was the involvement of many residents of Gaza in the slaughter, in the looting, and in the riots of October 7. How the crowds in Gaza cheered at the sight of Israelis being slaughtered and their bodies mutilated. At the sight of hostages — God knows what they did to them — wounded and bleeding being dragged through the streets. In view of such terrible crimes, it is appropriate that the honorable court investigate them in depth, and not casually in passing."
He then goes on to say that despite this, they are of course not targeting civilians. But it's hard to see any way to interpret both of these statements other than as claims that the people of Gaza, collectively, deeply hate Israelis.
And other figures of power (members of the Knesset certainly, even some minsters I believe) have said much more explicit, and more heinous, things. I can search for quotes if you haven't seen them.
Quotes taken from
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-blood-libel-herzog-says-icj-...
Your statement is incorrect but you're doubling down on it.
I think the sentiment of Gazans towards Israelis is a topic we can look at via surveys if you want to go that way.
It's also a matter of fact that some Gazan civilians were aware and did indeed participate in the Oct 7th attack. The first wave was combatants but random people followed that pillaging, killing, taking hostages. The statement about cheering in Gaza at slaughtered Israelis is also true. Neither of those truths support the idea that in general Israelis view all Gazans or all Palestinians (your original claim) as "bitter enemies". I can find you many quotes of Israelis saying their war is not against all Gazans. Those opinions outnumbers by 2 orders of magnitude. You can't just cherry pick, you need to look at the entire picture. Even Netanyahu clatified many times that Israel's war is not on Gaza's civilians (despite the truth of some of them participating in Oct 7th).
But these are clearly statements about Gazans in general, not some specific subset of Gazans. Mr Herzog is clearly saying, or at the very least heavily implying, that Gazans in general are bitter enemies of Israel. Not every single Gazan, but Gazans in general. He could have said "there was some small group of Gazans that [...]". He could have said "There are some X thousand Gazans that [...]". But he didn't: he chose to say "Gazan civilians", without any other discriminant.
> "Israeli politicians openly call the Palestinians "our bitter enemies"."
As I said the bulk of statements from Israeli military, politicians, and government, in Hebrew and in English say that the war in Gaza is not against civilians but against Hamas. If you insist on cherry picking some statements and building your story on those then I would respectfully ask that you reconsider.
I would also urge you look at surveys and see what Gazans think about Israelis instead of obsessing with the (IMO not true) idea that Israelis consider Gazans their bitter enemy. Find me surveys before Oct 7th that show that Israelis had more negative opinions about Gazans than Gazans held about Israelis overall and I'm open to changing my position. I also urge you to see footage of Oct 7th and ask yourself a question about the mindset towards Israelis leading to these actions.
According to Amnesty International (which has a separate report detailing Palestinian war crimes), the politicians you are defending directly authorized the killing of 10,000’s of children, the maiming of 10,000’s more, torture of civilians (often to death, and including residents of Israel), created a famine that lead to a 93% starvation rate last winter, and also committed systematic violations of LGBTI’s rights in Israel.
There are many, many more war crimes enumerated in the report, and it also documents the connection to top Israeli officials.
The above is indefensible, as are the actions of Hamas.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-af...
The UN numbers come from Hamas, there is no independent verification of those numbers and Hamas is a side to the conflict.
Either way, your statement about "authorizing the killing of 10's of thousands of children" is false.
I'm not sure what systemic violation of LGBT right you're referring to. The LGBTQ+ community in Israel has no issues unlike anywhere else in the middle east (for example). Israel ranks above most countries in the world in LGBT legal rights and friendliness: https://www.equaldex.com/equality-index
I don't know what 93% starvation rate you're talking about. This is just an outright lie. Also straight from Hamas. This lie has been repeated endlessly since the war started but somehow the markets are still full of food. People (e.g. Hamas) are also stealing aid and re-selling it.
Everything happening in Gaza is a result of war. Yes, Israeli went to war after Oct 7th, which Israel's government has authorized. The goal of the war is to destroy Hamas something that is within Israel's legitimate right to self defense. These outcomes you're describing including civilian casualties, hunger, etc. are not just a function of Israel's decision, they're also a function of Hamas' decision to hold onto its hostages and continue fighting. The reason for the war is Hamas attacking Israel. Hamas, the government of Gaza, is responsible for the condition of the people it governs.
There are no other numbers for Palestinian casulaties. The Israeli state and military have continuously and vehemently refused to provide any numbers of their own (recently in a very embarrassing way on Piers Morgan's show, of all people). In contrast, the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers are considered very high quality by the UN and by all humanitarian organizations working in the region, and have been consistently confirmed for years. Sure, the ministry of health is run by Hamas, but that is only because they are the official ruling party in Gaza. Its not like trusting numbers reported by Al Quaida or ISIS.
Not to mention, those numbers represent a significant undercount of casulaties, since they only count confirmed deaths of people whom the health ministry could specifically identify. People lost in the rubble, small communities that were killed or starved and were not reported, etc are all not counted in these numbers. You can go and check the name and address of each and every one of those 7,797 children, and confirm that they are indeed dead.
Edit: If the IDF or Israel want to refute those numbers, it is extremely easy to do so: they can provide their own numbers, their own methodology, and allow independent experts to study them, like the ministry of health has. "Mysteriously", they have entirely failed to do so, just like they have failed to price that the hospitals they were bombing were Hamas control centers, and many other bogus claims they are making.
Even according to Hamas officials many of the the casualties are based on "self reporting" and/or so called "media reports". Even they do not claim that the count is as accurate as you claim.
Nobody can check the "names and addresses" of those Hamas declared to be dead. For one thing there has been huge movement of people and even Hamas doesn't know who is where, for another there's no way for anyone to independently check on this.
The IDF released plenty of evidence of fighting Hamas in hospitals by the way. It also released interrogation videos where Hamas operatives describe their use of hospitals. Probably not in the news you choose to consume.
I think the IDF simply does not know. I think Netanyahu said something like 14,000 combatants and 16,000 civilians is the estimate.
And in fact Netanyahu has all but confirmed these numbers himself. The "about 30,000" number, with no other details about provenance, accuracy, methodology, etc, is basically an excellent confirmation of the Hamas numbers.
> The IDF released plenty of evidence of fighting Hamas in hospitals by the way. It also released interrogation videos where Hamas operatives describe their use of hospitals. Probably not in the news you choose to consume.
They staged a few photo shoots of weapons they "found in the hospital", and showed some tunnels under one of the hospitals that Ehud Barak himself confirmed live in an interview with Christiane Amanpoor were actually built by Israel back when it controlled Gaza. So, no, they have not actually presented any evidence whatsoever, anymore than Avengers was evidence of an alien invasion in NYC. No journalists were ever allowed to investigate this evidence on their own, nor have any other kind of investigators.
> I think the IDF simply does not know. I think Netanyahu said something like 14,000 combatants and 16,000 civilians is the estimate.
Than it should shut up immediately about (1) the "Hamas" numbers that they just confirmed being "inaccurate", and (2) any pretense that they care about not slaughtering civilians, if they don't even know how many they are murdering.
This by the way is a total lie. Barak never said that. You're just repeating Hamas talking points.
> As I said the bulk of statements from Israeli military, politicians, and government, in Hebrew and in English say that the war in Gaza is not against civilians but against Hamas. If you insist on cherry picking some statements and building your story on those then I would respectfully ask that you reconsider.
They say they are not fighting against the civilians through one corner of their mouth, and say the civilians are bitter monsters that cheered as Israelis were slaughtered (as you are claiming as well) through the other corner of their mouth. In the meantime, their hands are busy destroying hospitals, schools, universities, killing journalists, killing aid workers, killing doctors and nurses, killing children, preventing aid of any kind from entering the country, and so on.
Not to mention, for every video of one Palestinian or Gazan cheering on the Hamas crimes of October 7th you find, I'll find a similar video of an Israeli citizen or soldier cheering when a school is destroyed or a "terrorist" killed. Both are heinous, but a lot of people, like yourself apparently, pretend only Gaza has monsters that take pleasure in the killing of civilians.
And still it must be remembered that Gazans are being actively occupied by Israel, a state which has no intention whatsoever as recognizing them as an independent nation, nor allowing those of them that wish to to return to the homes they had to abandon in the fighting of only a few decades ago. I personally cut oppressed people some small amount of slack when they feel vindicated for their oppressors feeling some amount of the oppression they feel every day, as bad as it is to think like that (note that more than 200 Gazan civilians were being killed per year even before the current slaughter began).
To continue your analogy, Israel tried to "graduate" Gaza to adulthood in 2005. The army removed all Jewish settlers and settlements, and all military presence, and left the Gazans to form their own government. Gaza held elections that were judged to be free and fair by international observers.
Unfortunately, Gazans elected a Hamas, a recognized terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Don't get me wrong, I can understand if Palestinians feel sore about the creation of Israel on some of the land that they desired for an undivided Palestinian state. But 10 million people live there now, including generations of Jews who have no other home, many of whom were expelled from other Arab countries when Israel was founded. A settlement between Israel and Palestinians will require compromise, but Hamas is not interested in compromise. Hamas dedicates every available resource towards an absolutist goal of destroying Israel.
Moreover, Hamas does not see itself as having any responsibility towards the people of Gaza. It builds tunnels to protect its fighters, but considers it the UN's responsibility (through UNRWA) to protect its civilians. In this sense it operates differently from almost any government in the world, in that it is not actually trying to build a society and govern it. In the eyes of Hamas Palestinians are in a war that has been going since 1948, and this war will continue until Israel is destroyed. It considers all of its people refugees and wards of the UN until Israel is destroyed.
I have plenty of criticism for Israel, primarily that it builds settlements in the West Bank, sabotaging prospects for a future Palestinian state. But it's hard for me to fault Israel for acting as the legal guardians of the Palestinians when I witness the Palestinian's disinterest in actually building a state that could coexist with Israel, not to mention the means by which they enact their resistance.
I suspect this is an aspect of the collapse of support for Israel in the US along demographic lines. For many of young Americans' adult lives, Israel's 'guardianship' has been somewhere between anti-democratic and outright oppressive, and certainly not a context in which a people could be expected to 'build a state' for themselves.
I really am curious what young Americans expect Israel to do.
Hamas wants an Arab Islamic state to rule Palestine from the river to the sea. It doesn't want equal rights and seats in the Knesset, it wants Arab Muslims to govern the land under Islamic law. This is all spelled out explicitly in their charter.
Acknowledged.
[The 2017 charter] unambiguously rejects recognition of Israel: "There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity."
By itself this statement certainly sounds unambiguous. But it comes into clear conflict with the language that immediately follows:
However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
Taken together -- I would not call this an "unambiguous" formulation of their position. There's obviously a very clear surface-level conflict between the two passages.
Holistically -- the most reasonable paraphrase seems to be: "Hamas rejects the moral legitimacy of the Zionist state. However as a practical matter, it will support the 2SS (along June 4 1967 borders) if this is determined the be the national consensus (among Palestinians), and provided the Right of Return is also granted."
The fact that it mentions "borders" is extremely significant, in that this means at least de facto, if not de jure recognition of the State of Israel.
I think your reading is consistent with what the document says. On its face, the document hints at accepting a two-state solution under the 1967 borders. The most charitable interpretation would be that Hamas is willing to consider a two state solution an ultimate settlement of the conflict, with the two states living side-by-side in peace and harmony indefinitely.
However, another possible interpretation is that Hamas is willing to accept 1967 borders in order to secure statehood, but after securing it (including lifting of the blockade, etc) it primarily intends to use its state as a base to attack Israel with more vigor and resources until Israel is destroyed. "As a practical matter" could easily be read as "as a short-term solution."
When I observe Hamas's behavior, the second interpretation seems far more likely to me. Even as the document was announced, they said "We shall not waive an inch of the Palestinian home soil, no matter what the recent pressures are and no matter how long the occupation." The formulation of the document seems designed to legitimize future attacks on Israel once the two states are established. And Hamas shows little interest in developing Gaza as a permanent home for any of its people, as you would expect if they truly see it as a core part of their future state, preferring instead to preserve refugee status for as many people as possible.
My only point is that it's important to come to an objective view of what the language of the document says, on its own terms (even if we suspect it's all on the surface and their real intentions may be entirely different). And even if the language is only surface-level -- it at least opens a door to some kind of a pathway towards a solution based on negotiation and international law, without outside observers and verified inspections of their offensive capabilities, verified elections and national referenda at regular intervals, and so forth.
Which is the only viable route out of the current state of the conflict, in my view.
Unfortunately I don't see a Palestinian state accepting international limitations on its offensive militarization. I imagine they would consider that an unacceptable limit on their sovereignty.
I also think the "right of return" is an unfortunate stumbling block that will prevent this kind of settlement. Palestinians want to turn the clock back to a time before their allies launched a war to destroy Israel, and a time before the Mizrahi were expelled from the Arab world. Practically speaking, it's asking Israel to accept an unspecified number of people who are likely to be hostile to its existence. It's hard to imagine how this doesn't lead to a sharp increase in the amount of terror attacks inside Israel.
I want to believe that you are right, and that recognizing/encouraging small steps towards agreement from both sides will ultimately lead to a lasting peace. But my fear is that it is just a ruse to gain advantage, and that accepting it at face value will lead the West to give concessions that will ultimately aid future wars that seek to destroy Israel.
People go back and forth on how much evidence there is or isn't for Sinwar and Gaza-based Hamas's rejection of the 2017 charter, but read reporting and analysis from the time, untainted by what happened on October 7, about what the objectives were for updating the charter (significantly: easing Egypt's longstanding blocade of Gaza, repairing political relationships, working around Egypt's post-Arab-Spring, post-Sisi coup suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas's parent organization). Then look what happened on October 7. Like, there isn't much doubt that the 2017 document was unserious at this point?
This is purely a nerd point and not something I expect would change anybody's mind about what's happening in Gaza or what the outcomes should be.
The Charter was at the time meant seriously, at least by a certain faction within Hamas.
But with intervening events -- such as the appallingly harsh response to the 2018-2019 border protests; the storming of Al-Aqsa; and the election of the 37th Government (which brought on board not just an unsavory cast of characters, but specific plans for the continued expansion of the Settlements) -- the view took hold that Israeli society was plainly not interested in such overtures.
So as a result, the Charter got flagged and downvoted.
Since you prefer not to be centered on the Charter itself: if we are to understand why the decision was made to launch Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; an in particular how they were able to recruit so many people to agree to what was apparently promised as a suicide mission -- then I submit that is necessary to consider the whole background of events up until that time.
The 2018 "protest"
Can we just acknowledge the cruel and unduly harsh nature of the military response to the protests (which by all accounts did at least start peacefully, and from within sectors of society independent of Hamas) without having to allude to the Israeli government's snide, mocking ("fake protest") narrative of it?
As if these people have nothing to protest or be unhappy about.
1. Not even remotely likely to happen.
2. Not what almost any of the parties on the ground want to happen.
3. If implemented, would almost certainly lead to atrocities.
4. The opposite of what most people who have studied this issue think is a good option.
It is the essence of not being really engaged with the problem, and trying to fit it into a mold that doesn't make any sense, and therefore coming up with solutions that will leave everyone worse off.
I highly suggest that if you want to better the lives of people in the region, especially the Palestinians (since they're currently the worst off), you advocate for some form of 2-state solution, just like almost every other peace advocate in the region.
(I'm happy to elaborate on any of the points above, if you'd like.)
Stop bombing hospitals and churches. Even if hamas "built tunnels" under them.
If your position is that it's Israel's responsibility to protect and value Gaza's civil and religious infrastructure more than Hamas itself does, then you are treating Gaza as a dependent state that needs legal guardianship.
If Israel is expected to work around Hamas's militarizing of civilian infrastructure, that more than justifies Israel's blockade in my mind.
When you call Palestine "Hamas" like this, it becomes obvious what you're doing ideologically. Come on.
>your position is that it's Israel's responsibility to protect and value
What a way to frame "please stop bombing hospitals and churches"
>you are treating Hamas as a dependent state that needs legal guardianship
I am not treating Hamas as a state of any kind, I'm treating them as a hostile political party that currently holds power in a country that has been dealing with a literal genocide for decades.
>A real state would not militarize hospitals and churches
I guess Israel isn't a real state then, giving how they use hospitals and churches as military targets...
>or if it did, it would accept the consequences for having done so.
Oh yeah? Those hospitals were really asking for it by "letting" Hamas operate? That's callous.
Hospitals and churches that are militarized. I don't think you are interested in understanding or fairly representing what I'm actually saying, so I'm not interested in discussing this further with you.
> When you call Palestine "Hamas" like this, it becomes obvious what you're doing ideologically. Come on.
That was unintentional actually. I was trying to edit for clarity and conciseness, but this is not what I meant. I changed it to "Gaza's".
Freudian slip? Hehehe
In this context -- it seems clear enough that the commenter above understands what you're saying, and is not making any distortions of it. They simply do not see any reason accept, at face value, the IDF's attempts to spin and obfuscate these horrific incidents. As seems to be the IDF's expectation from the world at large.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara
Do you just hope they didn't mean the things they wrote in their charter?
Even though it didn't prevent him working with them to alienate PA though.
Doesn't the US have a bunch of territories that don't have representation? Like Puerto Rico. It seems like this sort of arrangement is not alien even to Western politicians, although the treatment of people certainly differs.
Last I checked the question of democracy didn't expand to occupied territories. When the US occupied Afghanistan or Iraq (or German or Japan) those countries did not get a vote in the US elections. Puerto Rico also don't get a vote in the US?
Handing over the west bank to Palestinians isn't an option because: a) the world would not recognize that as the end of Israel's occupation just like it didn't accept Israel's handing Gaza over as the end of the occupation. b) That area would be taken over by Hamas just like Gaza was taken over and would be staging ground for launching attacks into Israel just like Oct 7th or the rocket barrages that came from Gaza over the years since Israel's withdrawal. The West Bank has a significantly longer border with Israel which would put most major Israeli cities minutes of driving and within rocket/mortar range. c) The option of annexing the West Bank and Gaza and making everyone citizens is also not acceptable to either the Palestinians or the international community.
This really answers your unasked question of why is this area under military occupation for so long (IIRC Germany and Japan were also controlled for a pretty long time but anyways). Initially Israel needed the area so Arab armies aren't sitting 10 minutes from its population centers (when the entire Arab world was still at war with Israel). Now that there's peace with Jordan and Egypt it's more of a Palestinians aren't willing to make peace in exchange for this land, they don't want to become Israelis, and there's no realistic option that ensures both the safety of Israelis and their rights and the rights of Palestinians.
After all this you might be right to complain about e.g. settlements in the west bank. And there I'd finally agree with you. Israel should not allow Israelis to live in the west bank before it's final status is determined. That said, it wouldn't really make the problem that easier to solve, if anything it is taking us closer to a day where that area is annexed and Palestinians do become Israeli citizens.
Also, settlers in the west bank aren't just a "that sucks" type of thing. It shows exactly the intentions of Israel once any territory is pacified. Which is exactly what happened to the west bank since they stopped fighting back.
You got the settler vs. Palestinian violence in exactly the wrong order. Before the first Intifadah there were hardly any settlers in the west bank. The settlement movement is a response to Palestinian violence, not something that happened because the violence stopped. Palestinian violence against Israelis and Jews predates 1967 (when the west bank was occupied from Jordan) and predates 1948 (When the state of Israel was created).
Also I don't get your point. So they started settling because of the intifada? That doesn't make sense, and I've never seen settlers claim that it was related to anything expect that they see it as their god given land regardless of what happens to those who live there already.
I mean it's pretty simple, when the Fath ceased armed combat, the settlers came and Israel did nothing expect provide IDF protection to them. That's what the Palestinians got for trying to actually normalize the situation and create the PA and even fight their own little civil war against extremists (Fath vs Hamas): unrelenting settlement.
I'm sure the settlers wouldn't be so brazen if Hamas was also on the west bank. Funnily enough though, Israel ministers were also openly discussing allowing settlements again in last year in Gaza.
Still, it's very weird to see settlement as a "oh well that sucks but what can we do" when Israel could stop it any moment they want like they did in 2005. Oddly enough, only Israel gets to have literal conquest and blatant disregard for international law and even their allies marked as an oopsie.
You story doesn't jive with the facts. The period between 1967 and the mid eighties was the least violent period in the west bank. Palestinians worked in Israel. Israelies shopped in the west bank. That period also had virtually no settlement activity in the west bank.
The extreme right in Israel sees settlement as the "proper" answer to Palestinian violence. That's another thread connecting these things. But the government that enables this was literally brought into power by Hamas.
When did Fatah cease armed combat exactly according to you? Are you talking about the Oslo agreements and the return of Arafat to Ramallah? I'm not following you (and I used to live in Israel during those times so I'm not making stuff up).
Hamas is also in the west bank so your other statement doesn't compute either.
Israel has dismantled settlements in Sinai, and in Gaza, as part of an agreement. During the Oslo process there was support in Israel to dismantle those as part of a peace agreement. The Palestinians didn't want peace (Arafat thought he'd be murdered if he makes peace with the Israelis and anyways Hamas and the PIJ wouldn't abide which makes the whole thing moot).
I'm not sure I'm following though. You are saying that Palestinian terrorism caused the right wing to come in power and disregard international law. Sure, okay. I hope you realize that in the 1980s, most of said terrorism was happening in areas that Israel was already occupying. Also, again, you seem to imply that Israel's left wing actually gave the Palestinians more than apartheid and at best, a ghetto to live in semi undisturbed. That has never happened. Again, the poster child for that was 2005. What the Palestinians got was a a completely choked out, blockaded strip of land.
Like were the Palestinians supposed to be grateful and just accept that they will have to live in a state of semi servitude and protectorate because at least it wasn't the right wing in power? That's just completely irrelevant from the Palestinians pov. Again, who cares about the political climate of Israel as if it's some sort of actual excuse for settling and stealing land at gun point? Again, there's an incredible double standard here.
Palestinian motives and goals and politics don't matter, but Israel is always justified because it could've done worse. I mean sure? It reminds of Russian propaganda for the war: they have really tried to stay peaceful but NATO FORCED them to invade and steal land. It could've been worse though! They could've used nukes.
Yes, Israel wasn't doing settlement back then. But that's the point now isn't it? Back then, they already occupied the west bank. And the extremism and fascist inspired ideology of settlers didn't emerge yet. On both sides, extremism was less prominent. But again, the double standard is to excuse the Israeli settlers and their batshit insane ideology.
I think murdering Rabin was also part of the Israeli support for peace?
Even if this is true, all it demonstrates is that Israel is willing to take any measure necessary to avoid giving Palestinians in the West Bank full legal and political rights. Mere military occupation was met with violence, so instead of taking it as a sign that they weren't welcome and letting the population govern itself, they resorted to civilian settlement on top of that to solidify their hold.
Many (IMO most) Palestinians don't want to govern themselves. They want Israel erased. Israel tried "govern themselves" in Gaza.
There is nobody representing Palestinians that will accept resolving the conflict in return to control over the west bank and Gaza. This is true in multiple ways, firstly the Palestinians are fractured and have no one representative. None of the different factions would accept this either. Find me one Palestinian leader that says that.
It's super naive (sorry) to think that this conflict would be over as soon as Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza. Ariel Sharon wanted to withdraw from the West Bank if the withdrawal from Gaza proved successful. Most Israelis do not sympathize with the settlers (at least that's the way it used to be, public opinion shifted a lot with all the violence). What would happen is that Hamas would take over, just like it did in Gaza. The PA is relies on Israel's support right now which prevents that from happening. Then all of Israel would be bombarded with rockets, mortars, etc.
The Palestinians demand the right of return, that is any refugee from the war of 1948 and all their descendants should be allowed to return to Israel. This is a non-starter for Israel and something without precedent in any other war in history. What this means in practice is the destruction of Israel by killing or expelling all Israelis. The other point of contention is Jerusalem. Israeli maintains freedom of religion and access to all religions. When Jerusalem was under Jordanian control Jordan did not. It's unlikely that Jerusalem under Hamas control would maintain free access. Jersualem is the holiest city for Jews.
Oslo (which never included a firm promise of a Palestinian state in the first place, or even an end to the settlements) was sabotaged by the extremist fringe on both sides. If there is ever to be peace, those fringes can't be allowed to have a veto over the process. As for Camp David: https://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/fmr_israeli_foreign_m...
> Israel tried "govern themselves" in Gaza.
To be specific, Israel tried "govern themselves, but also help fund and bolster Hamas terrorists. And blockade Gaza by land, air, and sea (including bombing out their airport) so their economy has no possibility of ever growing. And shoot to kill civilians in wheelchairs if they dare protest this state of affairs." That's what the situation in Gaza has been for the past two decades. Any nation—any nation—subjected to such treatment for such a span of time would consider it casus belli.
> the Palestinians are fractured and have no one representative.
Yes, and that's because Netanyahu and co worked tirelessly for years to fracture them, so that they would be able to make this argument. https://original.antiwar.com/scott/2023/10/27/netanyahus-sup...
Barghouti perhaps could be a unifying figure if released, though maybe that wouldn't be a good thing… In any case, lack of unity between Gaza and the West Bank is no excuse to block work towards peace and ending the occupation in either locale. Israel could make separate deals with both factions.
> The Palestinians demand the right of return
They demand that RoR be acknowledged. In practice, their negotiators have admitted on several occasions that all of them returning would be impracticable. Instead, Israel could let only a small percentage in, and financially compensate the rest as restitution.
> Israeli maintains freedom of religion
Eh, they are trying to destroy the Armenian Christian quarter. But mostly true
>Under the Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing, part of the Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) of 15 November 2005, EUBAM was responsible for monitoring the Border Crossing. The agreement ensured Israel authority to dispute entrance by any person.[14]
This was in 2005, before Hamas. Now if you can't get to Gaza from the sea, because of Israel. Or from Egypt, because of Israel. Or from Israel itself...
Again, any territory or nation would consider something like this as an act of war, or if we don't see them as nation then apartheid. But no, the Gaza strip was completely free otherwise I guess?
If Israel has such good control over the Egypt-Gaza border how do Hamas fighters get to train in Iran?
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-fighters-trained...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/09/...
How did they get all the rocket manufacturing technology? Weapons?
This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafah_Border_Crossing says: "It is located on the Egypt–Palestine border. Under a 2007 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egypt controls the crossing but imports through the Rafah crossing require Israeli approval."
There is no mention of controlling movement of people. Anyways, this is something Egypt agreed to and it's sovereign and free to agree to anything it wants to. What do you mean "Egypt has no chosen voluntarily"?
Do you have a reference to your claim that Palestinians can't move without Israel consent?
You're mentioning EUBAM but EUBAM hasn't been there since 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Border_Assistan...
And yes, so between 2005 and 2007 Israel already had control over the border. That's before Hamas. Once Hamas got into power, Israel restricted the border policy even more, but Egypt just basically closed theirs.
I mean I'm not sure what's the debate here. Even Israel is very clear that they issue visas for entry to Gaza. That sure sounds like administering a border to me. In the west bank, they completely control every border point. In Gaza, it's de facto the same thing as Egypt doesn't open theirs for most of the year as they consider Israel the administrative authority that deals with Gaza borders. Which is something Israel acknowledges. Does your country emit visas for territories it doesn't administer?
https://www.gov.il/en/service/entry-to-gaza
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-03-10/ty-article/.p... https://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement/20170515_thousan...
Edit: as for Egyptian control of the border, here's a source that explains how it's in many ways nominal only, with a tacit agreement between Israel and Egypt about dual use materials.
https://features.gisha.org/red-lines-gray-lists/
Which I guess can make sense considering Hamas. But then one has to remember that this has been the case before Hamas took power too. So that catch all excuse doesn't hold water.
Israel administers it's border with Gaza. That's not the debate.
Israel requires people to get a permit to enter Gaza from Israel. It does not control who goes into Gaza from Egypt.
Your claim: "Does your country emit visas for territories it doesn't administer?" is nonsense and factually incorrect.
Israel has shown itself to basically have 0 regard for international law. It's not like they haven't shown that they will attack any way to cross the border that they don't have some sort of control on. I mean, why would they attack the Gaza flotilla and enforce a maritime blockade on Gaza if the border with Egypt was already "free" from their control?
Generally speaking, do you agree or disagree with the fact that enforcing a maritime blockade is usually an act of war and grounds for retaliation? Btw, you still haven't shown me a single example of a country that emits a visa of entry for a territory that isn't under occupation (or under blockade).
But sure, I guess Egypt totally has control over the crossing that is within shelling range from Israeli military outposts, in an area that they did shell in the past too.
So if we ignore the soft military threat on Egypt, the choking out of the border crossing opposite of the Egyptian side, the lists of goods that can't make it through due to israeli graylists, the fact that every other border crossing is controlled by Israel, and that they did control human passage before Hamas even at Rafah until 2007... oh and also the fact that Gaza has no rights to maritime traffic or air traffic.... then yes sure you're completely right.
I'm sure Palestinians should be glad that Israel gives them the privilege of being a notch more "open" than Warsaw ghettos. The few weeks per decade when Rafah is actually open, that is.
I doubt the current state of Israel would ever make the Palestinians full Israeli citizens, because then Israel would no longer be majority Jewish. Being known as the Jewish homeland is very important to Israel.
> Almost all Israeli Jews oppose a literal right of return for Palestinian refugees on the grounds that allowing such an influx of Palestinians would render Jews a minority in Israel, thus transforming Israel into an Arab-Muslim state. In addition to the right-wing and center, a majority of the Israeli left, including the far-left, opposes the right of return on these grounds.
It still would, as long as the Gaza strip is not also included (West Bank only).
If you think the prima facie case against Bibi and Gallant is convincing, the Israeli AG is quite plausibly doing so little that subsidiarity is no longer engaged. If you think it is unconvincing, as you say, the problem is not some inappropriately symmetric ignoring of subsidiarity but that the charges themselves are unconvincing.
A final point is that the Rome Statute does not prohibit merely ‘orders of directly targeting civilians’, and so other potential crimes must be considered. These include ‘cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i); [e]xtermination and/or murder contrary to articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)(a), including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity; [and o]ther inhumane acts as crimes against humanity contrary to article 7(1)(k)’. Of course, you may think that Khan has jumped the gun on each of these in that each of these charges is also implausible, but that is a stronger position than doubting that there were orders to directly target civilians.
(edit: I should add that Khan [I imagine] and I would say that while subsidiarity may not preclude proceedings against Israeli officials because of Israeli inaction, Hamasnikim are not subject to anything that remotely resembles a judicial system worth the name, so there is nothing comparable to even fail to act.)
Again I'm all for investigating whether war crimes have been committed by Israel. It's going to be a nuanced argument in any case to prove so that will probably involve how many civilian casualties are acceptable to achieve legitimate military aims.
The contrast must be pointed out by all who want nations and non state actors to be accountable for their actions.
Instead, the case is mostly about intent, and that can be gaged from public declarations and actions outside of mere combat. The case against Hamas is clear, they attacked in secret, with quite likely no military targets at all, and with a clear history of anti-civilian sentiments and declarations.
The case against Israel is also relatively simple from this point of view: numerous Israeli leaders, from the president to ministers to members of the Knesset have given public declarations about the collective guilt of Gaza's civilian population, and their actions in preventing aid from entering Gaza, attacking refugees, attacking journalists and international aid workers have been thoroughly documented.
I might not want to ever be on either side of such a war, but that seems to be the biggest, intellectually honest hole in the ICC's warrants.
After all they are supposed to be an alternative to the justice system of violence.
Iraq is kind of a terrible example.
Over a hundred thousand civilians died in Iraq. Maybe most of them died in urban combat settings.
Isn't the "Battle of Fallujah" a whitewash of the Siege of Fallujah? (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2012/1/4/seven-years-afte...)
"Early Target of Offensive Is a Hospital" (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/world/middleeast/early-ta...)
"US Admits Using White Phosphorus in Fallujah" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/16/iraq.usa)
This isn't whataboutism. War is horrible.
Israel started by dropping bombs on hundreds of sleeping families, leveling entire neighborhoods and after a month of that, started fighting some ragtag scavenger fighters (non-state actor), who have almost no external support, while continuing to level everything remotely related to governance, culture, or other social institutions that came in their path for seemingly no reason but the desire to completely erase possiblity for Palestinians to live in Gaza.
Seems more like an extermination campaign, and no, you can't fight that lawfully.
Yes.
> that seems to be the biggest, intellectually honest hole in the ICC's warrants.
No warrants have been issued nor have the specifics of any of the charges sought, beyond the names of the crimes, been made public. No oene can talk about what the holes in the charges that might ne issued in the future are, only of strawman charges that they have invented to argue against.
(If they had named only one leader in that press release, perhaps quietly expecting to name the other later, I would think that would appear to be a judgment of the multiple obvious potential concerns, and a taking of sides.)
Because Egypt believes this would amount to supporting ethnic cleansing:
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2024/02/27/why-e...
And given that many on the far-right in the Israel government want Palestinians out of Gaza it's a reasonable position.
but they also don't want to die, want flowing water, food, electricity, medical infrastructure etc.
The real question is: why is there a militarized border fence and who is paying for it?
Unless you're trying to claim that Israel has decimated 75% of Hamas, and is almost done, let's not try to diminish this.
The number has also been largely substantiated by press and aid agencies, it's not just Gazan propaganda.
That's why you see reports of 600 extended families being completely erased, just because they lived together. It's not random civilians here and there.
Or do you see this as some just warfare on Israel part? https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
And I think Israel should not wage its extermination campaign at all, btw. So I simply don't agree with the premise of your question, personally.
A point. The reason a lot of countries want a two state solution is because they plan on deporting all their Palestinians once that happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_exodus_from_Kuwait...
Lebanon has built walls around Palestinian refugee camps.
https://www.dw.com/en/lebanon-builds-wall-around-palestinian...
The moment Arab countries have a place they can deport Palestinians they'll do that.
I see phrases like this tossed around in countless political debates - "Well, if they're investigating X, why the heck aren't they investigating Y!?".
To that, I ask - how are you 100% sure that that's not also happening?
The Panel's report is not based on "far fetched assumptions." It names the explicit acts that Israel is known to have committed (eg: mass starvation via blockade of food and shelter):
"based on a review of material presented by the Prosecutor, the Panel assesses that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant formed a common plan, together with others, to jointly perpetrate the crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. The Panel has concluded that the acts through which this war crime was committed include a siege on the Gaza Strip and the closure of border crossings; arbitrary restrictions on entry and distribution of essential supplies; cutting off supplies of electricity and water, and severely restricting food, medicine and fuel supplies. This deprivation of objects indispensable to civilians’ survival took place in the context of attacks on facilities that produce food and clean water, attacks against civilians attempting to obtain relief supplies and attacks directed against humanitarian workers and convoys delivering relief supplies, despite the deconfliction and coordination by humanitarian agencies with Israel Defence Forces. These acts took place with full knowledge of the extent of Gazans’ reliance on Israel for essential supplies, and the adverse and inevitable consequences of such acts in terms of human suffering and deaths for the civilian population."
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-p...
The starvation charge could at least in theory fail (e.g., along the lines of intent - although Gallant's words in the beginning of the war certainly do not help Israel's case).
Furthermore, there's no way in hell Netanyahu gets his endgame (wiping Hamas off the face of the planet) without either exterminating all Palestinians in Gaza (which absolutely is a war crime, orders or no) or significantly backing down on several of the things Israel does to Palestine to make it mad. He also has no reason to simply snipe some of the higher-ups, patch up the holes in the Iron Dome, and declare victory. Netanyahu needs the war to continue so he can continue delaying his corruption trial long enough to declare himself above the law with a judicial reform.
To be clear, yes, Israel is more western and more liberal than Palestine, but that gap is closing faster than I think anyone would like to admit.
>In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because countries do not recognize migration as a human right. If the ICC did this and was consistent about it, they'd have to challenge basically every restrictive immigration policy ever. I'd personally love that, but given how many countries in the EU are making handbrake turns to the right wing specifically so they never have to take in another refugee ever again[2], the EU would rather just invade the Hague like Bush threatened to.
Furthermore, (one of) the reason(s) why the 'three state solution'[3] never really panned out is because Egypt and Jordan don't want to become hosts for further revaunchism. Hamas will set up shop in their new home and Israel will just invade them - like they did in the Yom Kippur War. For similar reasons Israel has never wanted to entertain the 'one state solution'[1] that would also have solved this conflict decades ago, because they (mostly correctly) think Hamas will never be satisfied until Palestine extends from the border to the sea and all the Jews have been deported.
[1] Just abolish the Palestine/Israel border and let people live and work wherever
[2] Which, to be clear, is also a travesty.
[3] Move Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan and let Israel take over the rest of the land
The Israeli defense minister went on TV on 9 October 2023 [0] and declared that he was going to starve Gaza:
"We are imposing a complete siege on the city of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly."
I assume that this explicit admission of guilt is why he has been charged.
Citation needed. When the PLO and Arafat were becoming less militant, and more diplomatic, that's when Netanyahu and Mossad started sending tens of millions a month to Hamas, to keep it as the "public enemy number one". But if Hamas goes away, then Netanyahu has to explain why he won't support a two party state (because "from the river to the sea" has also been Likud's platform and policy).
Wasn't this internationally donated Palestinian aid money?
I don't think anyone is actually doing that, though. The leader of a terrorist group and the leader of a democratic state can both commit war crimes. We need not compare them directly or try to say which one of them is worse in order to acknowledge that fact. Putting them in the same press release (this isn't a press release, though; this is a CNN article) seems fairly natural to me, since both are actors in the same conflict, regardless of how it started.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
You don't need direct orders to target civilians. You merely need negligence or a lack of care that causes civilian deaths in excess of what is "necessary" (ugh) to achieve the military objectives. I personally believe that Israeli forces have been indiscriminately killing civilians in Gaza in a way that would constitute war crimes, and apparently that just means I'm in agreement with the ICC.
> On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
Again, it is perfectly possible to acknowledge that two different parties have committed war crimes, even though they've done so in completely different ways, and the organizations they represent are completely different.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because that's not against international law. Even if it was, your question here is just whataboutism.
Egypt's non-involvement may violate some other principle, but probably not a "war crime".
I spent a while trying to see what you wrote but am not finding it.
On that basis all of the targets of the ICC are leaders of terrorist organisations. Hamas is considered terrorist organisation by certain authorities, you bet the Israeli government is considered terrorist by other authorities.
The ICC is meant to act on the evidence of war crimes. The definition of war crimes is far more formal than the qualification of terrorism. Consider giving a definition of terrorism, you will find that any arm belligerent who happen to cause civilian casualties can be categorized as such.
Finally, it is also worth noting the french resistance to the country's occupation and Nazism was considered led by terrorist groups. Those did employ sabotage, kidnapping, bombing, instill terrors. The collaborating french authorities and the Wermacht put those resistants on their terrorists lists, back then.
The ICC is surely meant to be above the arguments in the lines "these terrorists and those aren't", or politically and some government's biases as arguments. It would look into the evidence and prosecute based on these.
It's obvious to all that the warrants for the Hamas leaders only exist in order to justify the warrants against Netanyahu and co.
Courts can only deal in facts otherwise they are ineffective.
Courts that care about “optics” are ineffective. And there are no optics here that will please everyone. So just follow law.
What's pretty bad is attempts to discredit the ICC by those who oppose it's decisions.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion. On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
No you are not; Your pro-genocide stance is nauseating.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Whataboutism and deflection from the issue at hand must not and will not be tolerated.
What an unacceptable conduct.
They aren't being equated by the fact that people associated with each are having charges sought. The five individuals charged are in the same press release because it is the outcome of one investigation of the conflict by the prosecutor's office.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because, even if that were to constitute a crime within the general subject matter jurisdiction of the court, that's not an crime that took place on the territory of Palestine or any other State Party to the Rome Statute, or by nationals of Palestine or any other State Party to the Rome Statute, so the ICC, under Article 12 of the Rome Statute, lacks the ability to exercise jurisdiction over them.
The "functioning judicial system" is only relevant here if that judicial system is actively investigating the crimes that the ICC is looking into. If Gallant and Netanyahu were on trial inside Israel for war crimes, then the ICC would step back. But that's not the case.
I won't get into whether Israel is really democratic, given that it rules over several million non-citizens in the occupied territories, whom it deprives of even the most basic rights.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
In Gaza, the IDF has targeted nearly every civilian apartment building, nearly every hospital, nearly every school, in fact nearly every building period. The IDF knows that civilians live in apartment buildings. It knows that hospitals are full of sick and wounded civilians, as well as medical staff, families of patients, and people seeking shelter from the bombing. When Israel decides to bomb a civilian apartment building or a civilian hospital, it is intentionally targeting civilians. Israel can claim that it is just going after Hamas operatives in a highly selective fashion, but that is implausible given the scale of the bombing campaign. It is also contradicted by leaks from inside the IDF, which show that Israel is intentionally targeting the personal homes of anyone suspected by an AI system of being connected to Hamas, and that the IDF is willing to kill up to hundreds of civilians just to hit one Hamas member.[0,1]
0. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-cal...
If that doesn't say "your're no better than the other side", I don't know what would. It might be especially disrespectful to the Israeli, who usually play moral high ground, but it's probably also true the other way around.
Titling the official release "... in the situation in the State of Palestine" is a cherry on the top. (https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-... — thanks to sibling comment)
Why did they wait 7 months?
If the Netherlands had any morals they would have ejected these clowns long ago.
Yeah, it's not a real court, it's just a bunch of "transnational" bureaucrats imitating the forms of a court, without the foundational basis [1], and at great remove from whatever situations they're pretending to judge. At best, it's a political prop.
[1] Which would include things like de-facto power over its claimed jurisdiction, and having law known and respected by the people there.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/may/20/iccs-kar...
One of them, incidentally, is Judge Theodor Meron CMG, a holocaust survivor.
Their political bias couldn't be any more obvious.
Among the G20, countries like China and Russia consider Palestine as a "state" but the UK, US, Germany, France, Canada and others do not. Make of that what you will.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-...
Did you read the text or just grab the talking point from someone else?
"...the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine" - the word and appears after the word territory. It means the territory of both. It is not just talking about the territory of Israel.
Also it refers to the names these countries use for themselves and which the UN uses as well. The official names of the countries are Israel and the State of Palestine. If Israel wants to be called the State of Israel as its official country name it would have to change its name to such, it has not.
> Among the G20, countries like China and Russia consider Palestine as a "state" but the UK, US, Germany, France, Canada and others do not.
143 countries recognize the State of Palestine. The State of Palestine is recognized by China and Russia along with other G20 members like Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey. Most of the countries in the world recognize the State of Palestine, the ones who don't are mainly in western Europe like the UK, Germany and France. As you say, make of that what you will.
How's that working out? Until proven otherwise, my assumption is the outcome will be roughly the same in most of these cases, especially for Netanyahu and Sinwar.
thats the point isnt it?
edit: although ICC has had plenty of opportunities to punish war crimes from various states in the past, wonder why they decided to make a move now. because of the scale?
Honestly this could be a really great thing for the region. It could be an opportunity to shift blame from an entire ethnicity, the Jews, onto a single member of that ethnicity, in order to let the Jews and Palestinians be at peace with each other.
* Ironically, Bibi will be temporarily strengthened. No sane Israeli leader would want to depose him and risk being seen as collaborating with the warrant or risk getting a warrant too later on. Over time Bibi will still inevitably be replaced (too many reasons for Israelis to hate him), but this may stretch to 2025.
* Israel allowed aid since the beginning and especially recently. Warrants will help focus the mind here.
* Result of US elections big key here.
0. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/aid-trucks-begin-m...
There's no right for 'commercial goods'. The only issue in question is food, and trucks with food going in are twice the prewar level (the rest was mostly construction goods used for we know what exactly - that's not gonna go in).
Given the people in question are the ones with a vested interest in stamping out as much life as possible, I find it difficult to believe that this is even a tenable stop point for cognitive processing for anyone but someone who couldn't be bothered one way or the other.
Some days it is apparent that the wrath meted upon the Palestinians has turned into bloodlust. While I understand the grief and anger following such a massacre, there has long been a pattern of wilfully misplaced reaction against stone throwing kids and targeting of journalists and their families. These cannot be attributed to Oct 7.
Now with Israeli funds making its way back to US politics, the crazier the politician the better his chances. With time, the benevolence of the US will be questioned by their allies and make the world a less predictable place.
What alternative do these other "partners" have? The Ukraine war has exposed how badly atrophied all their military might has become and lets be honest, post Ukraine, its clear that is the most important thing.
The EU still isn't meeting their minimum NATO commitments despite how far behind they are. It would take a massive amount of pain that the EU populations would have to bear in order to turn this around. I suspect all of a sudden EU population will become like the US population caring only about their own short term self interests more than what is "morally right". So the partnerships with the US will stay until the EU is willing to make that painful sacrifice to build out an alternative to the US military.
Geopolitically, the NATO was heading towards obsolescence as Germany and Russian integrated their economies and achieve a lasting peace in the region. The US meddling in Ukraine weakens Europe and maintains the US status as the global hegemon.
The post-1945 globe evidently demands a hegemon. Which would you prefer, the US and its allies, or Russia and China? Those are your options. "None of the above" is not among them.
Also note that no one has ever declared a war legally since WW II. Because of the UN and international conventions.
I'd also add that it's not entirely correct to consider countries equal top level actors in the historical process now and in the past. Nowadays so called political nations are technically subjects of international right, of course. But, for instance, in pre-Westphalian world that wasn't the case and these days there is plenty of evidence of transnational actors' influence. For example, Vatican dates back to that era I mentioned. And also who owns most the land in Europe? And how come these von Something German nazis avoided The Nuremberg Trials and ended up as board members in big industrial companies?
So no, the world doesn't need a hegemon in your sense. Taking into account the paralysis of the UN since 1991 it's more likely there will be another take on the ruins that.
By the same token, at the national level, it's possible that dictatorship will emerge as the only stable model of governance. People everywhere seem to want it. The only principle that actually matters in politics turns out to be "Screw the other guy," and dictators are the best at that. If so, the US's ability to protest and resist its central government will turn out to be maladaptive, giving the advantage to the China-Russia alliance in the long run.
As for the church, they still own the land but not the hearts and minds. Or the nukes. Religion is irrelevant at the international scope. But of course it's still as useful to the rulers of individual nations as ever, because you can't maintain a cult of personality without exploiting the same mental bug that the church originally stumbled across.
The eastern bloc countries suffered badly under soviet rule. When the Ukraine war started, I’m as eager as anyone to see that the Russians were dealt a black eye.
In retrospect, given the gas shortages that occurred in Europe, and the destruction of the German economy; the large number of deaths that occurred on both sides, and the war zone being turned into a weapons testing ground, I am left wondering who are the real winners and losers?
The question really is … whilst it is not totally useless, is it more to demo how weak this is and so dictator can free to do as they are dare. Like bombing other people places or even yours (per claim) and flattening them; would it be more war crime than war fighting in disputed land.
Though Putin's warrant isn't for common war crimes, but for deporting / indoctrination of children as it's something that is super easy to prove.
Besides, the U.S. government is on Netanyahu's side, so he will never be arrested.
The reputational damage to Israel, from being put on the same level as Putin, is significant though.
His support is waning on both sides of the political spectrum. Gantz is threatening to quit the war cabinet. I don't think the ICC decision will give Netanyahu much of a boost. If he goes crazy, the Knesset could oust him.
> Besides, the U.S. government is on Netanyahu's side, so he will never be arrested.
I don't think the US has that much influence in this case. They would have to push hard to threaten the Israeli president, and even then I am not sure what would happen. Netanyahu will not be arrested because he will just stay in Israel. Israel will probably not extradite him, even if they agree with the arguments, simply because it would look bad to allow an international court to arrest a former president. However, he could be arrested on corruption or other charges if he loses his position.
Hamas would exist if not for the occupation. Or else there will inevitably be a Hamas 2.0
This is exactly like uMkhonto we Sizwe in Apartheid in South Africa, it doesn't exist without Apartheid. Or like Hamas isn't the West Bank.
Treat people like human animals, imprison them, occupy them and expect any other outcome is foolish. Apartheid Israel needs to make the first move that doesn't include killing civilians and stealing land.
I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Palestinian resistance, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians, indiscriminately bombing schools and hospitals.
In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into US and Germany conduct of delivering weapons enabling the genocide?
And this whole “terrorist” word was jeopardised by Bush. There’s no “terrorism” per se as an emanation of evil.
It’s just an asymmetrical and violent extension of political expression, where dialogue failed to reach a settlement.
Otherwise you’d need to explain the ideological similarities between Al Qaeda and eg. ETA.
We have the Nuremberg Code now, where people including propagandists were hung simply because they should have known better - even though there weren't yet specific laws in place yet.
It's been fascinating to see how fascism can rise so quickly, hidden by the veil of propaganda, different countries around the world at different stages of capture - some where turnkey authoritarianism has recently been executed on like in Canada, policies and infrastructure put in place that allows top down control so easily with so many succumbing to the fear mongering in part due to deep seeded programming.
The NaZi Germans were eventually suppressed, and with the internet this next attempt will hopefully be quickly stopped in its tracks globally - however there are arguably $ trillions in the war chest of the bad actors in the global establishment toeing the same line, of which people like Catherine Austin Fitts have been sounding the alarm for years now - who saw behind the scenes the financial markets et al aligning for this. Unfortunately because so many systems are centralized at the moment, it only takes a very small amount of people to cause chaos and mass destruction-death - whether that's manufacturing consent for people to believe power outages aren't planned and "out of our control - give us $ trillions to upgrade infrastructure [which actually will mostly go to our friends while we continue suffocate society financially and extract as much of the value of your labor-productivity as we can manufacture consent to get from you]" etc.
I hope, pray, that RFK in the US will win the next election - and that Pierre in Canada wins, and pray God is ready to cut the shit of these tyrant wannabes with totalitarian wet dreams - and will prevent their assassinations, etc; else the floodgates of hell are seemingly near ready to be unlatched.
What exactly are they going to be able to do once they manage to grant themselves these warrants?
Whether those countries will do the arrests or not will be up to whomever is in political power and if they are toeing the same line or not. Those with arrest warrants then would have to risk traveling.
Not true. That’s why Putin shied from visiting South Africa [1].
[1] https://apnews.com/article/putin-brics-summit-south-africa-i...
Also, one does not have to choose sides. We can condemn both sides as barbaric.
I agree entirely but I'm not really trying to make any political statement here. I'm purely interested in the mechanical aspect of how this court works and how it can manage to accomplish anything in this situation. It seems to me that this story isn't much worth following, because nothing of consequence will happen if these warrants end up being served.
Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm just kind of unimpressed that that's the worst punishment something called the "International Criminal Court" can inflict on leaders that they've judged to be war criminals.
If the US genocides a significant portion of their own populace, and nobody could muster up an army large enough to physically stop them, and nobody could blockade their trade enough to hurt them, then why would the US stop?
Accountability requires someone to execute the "punishment" or whatever. If you want international accountability, you REQUIRE an independent entity which all nations treat as a global government, one which as the ability to militarily slap anyone who doesn't fall in line. The UN isn't that, on purpose.
First problem: Where is the office for that world government? There is largely no land that is "outside" other countries.
The US literally experienced this "How do you get fiefdoms to cede their power to a common government" problem in 1787, and overcoming it took promising slave owners that they wouldn't outlaw slavery for at least 20 years, and hand out a massive power structure benefit to the states that had significant slavery. Of course the invention of the cotton gin just a few years later would destroy that possible outcome and set us on the path for the civil war.
If you invent a world government that could punish a country that was unruly, how do you convince the US or China to submit to it ENTIRELY? How do yo prevent this world government from simply being a tool of the US or China?
Broadly I think Israel has the right ambition (the destruction of Hamas) but are going about it in a terrible manner and it will now backfire on them spectacularly.
The way Israel is doing it. There is no pretty, hygienic way to fight an existential conflict, which is what this is.
Do you think the rest of the population just stands by? You can't treat people like Israel treats Palestinians and not have terrorism. It's really that simple. Any serious plan by Israel to achieve peace of any sort with Palestinians involves massive concessions compared to the actual state of things and I can't imagine for a second anything like that would happen.
There's an inverse to what you're saying (which I don't disagree with) which is that if Israel does nothing in response to Hamas aggression, and just lets Hamas + it's allies keep bulling, Israeli's will die and their citizenry will be radicalized to do something in response.
This has been the pattern in this region since literally day 1 of Israel being acknowledged as a country. It's two irreconcilable groups locked into a situation where neither can meaningfully (or "safely") de-escalate; a clean solution is really unlikely to emerge.
Also, it's not like the other option is "doing nothing", but acknowledging that a way must be found to return to the pre-2005 state of things. There must be a Palestinian governance with a degree of sovereignty and the settlements have to be removed. These are evident steps towards deradicalization but steps that the Israeli right in general is not keen on, in fact they would rather do the complete opposite.
It would be nice if one side could break the cycle of responding to violence with more violence, but that seems unlikely to happen, especially when one side is essentially defined by their intent of violence towards the other.
Israel backing out (removing settlements) and allowing for Palestine self governance isn't going to magically make hamas be nice. Israel would only agree to that kind of measure if they got to maintain some amount of influence over the region so that they could have some reasonable confidence that they can at least assess active threats against them. And suddenly we're back to 2005 Israeli disengagement, where they did withdraw their settlements in gaza and reduced their physical presence instead opting for trying to influence "remotely" while allowing Palestine to self-assemble it's governance. Turns out doing that is actually really hard, hamas took over anyway, and it landed everyone in the current mess.
Suggesting that they just do it again but trust me bro this time it'll work, or suggesting that what they really need to do is also relinquish any influence they have over the region is just not an idea that is going to make it off the ground. Some compromise related to it is probably what will happen, and we can all set our watches for the next iteration.
Again, it's almost like we're stumbling into how this is one of the trickiest geopolitical issues in the last hundred years
Yes, because Israel delivered the entire region to Hamas on a silver platter, having absolutely no coordination whatsoever with Palestinian authorities. This was in a time in which the majority of the population there supported a peaceful relationship with Israel. A massive blunder that Israel seems content with paying in Palestinian blood but not concessions of their own, it's insane to me that this ever became a talking point to defend Israel's actions.
>Suggesting that they just do it again but trust me bro this time it'll work, or suggesting that what they really need to do is also relinquish any influence they have over the region is just not an idea that is going to make it off the ground. Some compromise related to it is probably what will happen, and we can all set our watches for the next iteration.
>Again, it's almost like we're stumbling into how this is one of the trickiest geopolitical issues in the last hundred years
Sure, it's incredibly complex and yeah, I hope that's what happens in the end, thing is for all the deep this hole is, Israel doesn't seem interested in stopping digging, from their actions the trajectory seems set towards escalating the conflict up to a breakpoint in which they can end up better off, since they are very clearly in the more powerful position.
So what should Israel have done to not hand control over to Hamas on a "silver platter"? They + the US tried to keep Fatah in power, that was everyone's preferred outcome where some stability could've emerged. That failed due to real Palestinian support of Hamas, as well as Hamas' military force.
Israel's options were basically to intervene militarily, overriding the results of the election; or "accept" the results and deal with/ reduce Hamas' military ambitions (which is what they've tried to do ever since). Both options put Israel in a losing situation. Override the will of Palestinian elections and you're denying them their sovereignty, interfere with the obvious military threat, and you're doing apartheid. Lose lose.
In terms of preventing the Hamas-Fatah war and the initial takeover of the Strip -- there probably wasn't very much it could have done.
But after that juncture -- perhaps if the Prime Minister did not have an explicit policy of keeping them in power for 14 years (in order to "smash the vision Palestinian state into two pieces" as he would boast of his genius plan), backed by allowing $1.8 billion in transfers of Qatari cash from 2012 to 2018 -- that might have helped turn the tide.
So it is decided that it will do both. Maybe, just maybe, reconcile? No. Acknowledge the right to return and pay reparations? No. We will run apartheid and blockade sea, air and land. And the Egypt border will be controlled by way of a trilateral treaty. Increase illegal and immoral settlements in West Bank? Yes. Shield and promote settler terrorism? Yes.
In lieu of just matching snark with snark, I'll just suggest you take 5 minutes of self reflection to ask yourself if you're maybe being over-reductive of the situation, if you're really considering what reconciliation (+ it's risks) means to people who live in Israel/Palestine, and what a practical solution might actually look like.
I'll do the same. Have a nice day.
Plenty Israelis want a two state solution where Palestinians are not harmed. How many Palestinians want a two state solution where Jews live free? Why don't Palestinians get visibly upset when a Hamas rocket meant for Israel blows up Palestinians?
Bibi should rot in prison. So should the leader of Hamas. But who is willing to run Palestine without shooting rockets at Israel, and how long will they stay in power before they are overthrown by people who want to go back to shooting rockets at Israel?
There can't be a peace as long as Palestinians want the eradication of Israel, much as there can't be peace as long as Likud wants to eradicate Palestine. But if we tell Israel it can't do anything, but do not limit Hamas in the same way, all you are doing is allowing Israelis to die for the convenience of ignoring an actually difficult geopolitical problem.
"Just stop shooting at Palestinians" will certainly end the suffering of Palestinians, but is objectively trading 30k Palestinians dead now with a few Israelis dead every year.
And this isn't even getting to the insane levels of Anti-semitism that hide themselves under a cloak of "just supporting Palestinians". If you know any jewish people who aren't evenly Israeli, ask them how safe they feel nowadays.
There's shooting and there's shooting. 30k Palestinians in Gaza Strip are in the war zone so in a way it's not a much surprise they're dying, but there are Palestiniani on the West Bank, who are being murdered by Israeli (settlers backed by IDF). Last I checked the death toll is around 500 (https://apnews.com/article/settler-attack-palestinians-west-...), which puts it within the ballpark of 7 October Hamas' strike.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_tag_attack_policy
This is absolutely "Just stop shooting at Palestinians", and I think they have every right to resist such occupation.
How could Israel defend itself against Hamas in a manner that wasn't "terrible"? What non-terrible options do they have?
No, Israel has been trying to defend itself against Hamas, a terrorist organization which has explicitly declared that its objective is to destroy Israel. What options does it have to do that that would meet with your approval, or even grudging acquiescence?
There is no stable middle ground here. That's what much of the commentary on this situation seems to be missing. This is an existential conflict between Israel and Hamas (note that I said "Hamas", not "the Palestinians"--they're not the same): the only stable endpoint is that one or the other ceases to exist. And Hamas is the side that chose to make it that way. So I'm really struggling to see what possible options Israel has other than what they are doing.
They could form a state with equal rights, including right of return, for Jews and Palestinians.
You really think a country can double it's population overnight bringing even more division without it crumbling? You'll just end up with another Lebanon.
A two state solution is the only thing that can make sense short/medium term. Longer term after decades of peace you can open the borders and create perhaps a union of sort.
A one state solution is detached - it's just not a viable option, and even if you believe it's the right thing to do it just doesn't seem wise.
Prosperity can do a lot towards killing the shared stories that cause people to want to go kill the people in the neighboring country. Grandpa's story about losing his home won't be as stirring when you're not being bombed and starved by the same group of people who stole Grandpa's home. Especially when they give back Grandpa's home.
Do you really think the new nation wouldn't just delve into chaos Lebanon style? Might as well just sentence everyone to eternal conflict.
How is starting with two states and later on creating a union type entity not better for everyone?
Let's say you had to approach this as an engineering problem of merging two very different branches/companies/etc, how would you approach it?
And re US, they basically committed genocide and ended up absorbing a minority, the situation in Israel is different as it's similar sized populations on a fraction of the land.
Not now, but there was a long period during which native Americans were seriously pushing back and a lot of people on both sides were killed.
This is not a serious argument. Israel has arguably the strongest military in ME. Forget the ragtag Hamas, no country in ME - including Turkey - can destroy Israel. Israel has nukes and Hamas has hand gliders for airforce. Hamas rockets are like glorified firecrackers.
There are crazies all over the world with all kinds of crazy manifestos. That is not a license to kill and starve civilians en masse.
Oct 7 was a serious security lapse on the part of Israel. It is clear that the guilty are busy distracting the population from an objective investigation and trials to punish people who are responsible for the lapses, just like what happened after 9-11. Doing that improves Israel’s long term security. But it is unlikely to happen.
They could make meaningful steps towards a one or two state solution in order to undercut Hamas' power.
In the sense that Israel failed to reach a stable endpoint to this conflict once before, in 2009, yes, I suppose this is true. They should have destroyed Hamas then, and they didn't. Which would suggest that Israel should finish the job this time.
The criminal model does not work for war. This is a war.
> each time you bomb an area with innocents, you may or may not kill your target, but you definitely just turned all the friends, family, and so on of the innocents killed into new "real" enemies.
So when Hamas fires rockets into Israel, killing innocents, or sends a terror squad into Israel, killing innocents (and kidnapping others), it makes more Hamas enemies. Yes, indeed.
Looking at the example of successful counterterrorism conclusions, such as The Troubles in Northern Ireland or Colombia's efforts against FARC, the general pathway to success is to build up successful alternative political institutions that have the legitimacy to disarm the terrorist groups, which also means to a degree making some concessions towards the political aims of terrorists, and perhaps also requires co-opting the more moderate terrorists into legitimate political parties.
Notably not on that list is such things as targeting enemy leaders with artillery rounds. Indiscriminate damage is one of the best ways to fuel an upsurge in terrorist violence; what Israel is doing now looks in many ways like what the British did in Northern Ireland to start The Troubles rather than what it did to end them.
(Which, really, is one of the principal causes of the current situation: Netanyahu has in the past sought to undermine the ability of the Palestinian Authority to effectively govern Palestine--including covert support for Hamas--so as to be able to claim that there's no partner for peace to avoid having to make any progress on the statehood issue.)
I disagree. US policy in this area, for instance, is being significantly influenced by the fact that there are protests at major universities in support of Hamas, and elected politicians who are advocating the same thing. (And by that I mean explicitly supporting the Hamas objective of destroying Israel.)
> the Arab countries have in the recent past explicitly endorsed proposals to recognize Israel
In other words, they don't currently support Israel's existence, but they might decide to if enough of their demands are met. Which concedes my point.
The reason this matters is that the UK and Colombia were only able to even consider the options they ended up taking to resolve their conflicts because they knew that no matter what, their existence as nation states was not in question. Israel does not have that assurance, and that means they do not feel able to consider those kinds of options.
Or, to put it another way, as I have said in several other posts elsewhere in this discussion, this conflict is an existential conflict for Israel. Northern Ireland was not an existential conflict for the UK, and FARC was not an existential conflict for Colombia. That makes a huge difference.
I'm sorry, but no. These protests have only reached salience in the news because of overreaction from a few university presidents who sent in the police to (in the event) violently break up the protest. I assert there is no influence on the policy being done by these protests. The general stance by the administration has remained the same--the Biden administration remains firmly pro-Israel--and to the extent that it's changed, it's been prompted by frustration with the continued inability of the current Israeli government to actually listen to the administration's points about "what the hell is your day-after plan?"
> in support of Hamas, and elected politicians who are advocating the same thing. (And by that I mean explicitly supporting the Hamas objective of destroying Israel.)
I'm not going to deny that there are people among the protestors who support Hamas and maybe even want to see Israel cease to exist. But it's definitely far from the majority of the protestors, and I've never actually seen any statement by anybody involved that would place them in that category.
The thing is, there's this persistent tendency I've seen where people try to twist any criticism of Israel or its government into support for Israel's nonexistence. No major world power today has disestablishment of Israel a policy goal, nor is any of them close to having that policy. But I do worry that if Israel continues on this path, then it may in a few decades' time become a murderous genocidal state... and that very well could have the superpowers pushing for Israel's destruction.
Even though Israel is unarguably the state that faces the greatest existential threat, it's policies can still be (and indeed probably are) counterproductive to combating that.
If the whole world stepped in, captured every Hamas militant and left, it wouldn't take more than a couple of years and somebody else would take up the arms against the Israeli occupants.
We'd have to do that AND then protect the Palestinians from militant Zionists for half a century at least to actually have any chance to solve the situation.
And since EU doesn't give a shit, US is unable to stand up to antidefamation league, rest of the Islamic countries enjoys blaming Israel but don't actually do anything, Palestinians are good as dead.
Well a few months ago Netanyahu sent the head of the Mossad to Qatar asking them to fund Hamas ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... ). So these endless massacres of Palestinian civilians by Israel (and effectively by the USA too) are happening for a pretty capricious reason, if that even is the reason, and I think it isn't.
It already has. Biden was quick to condemn it and further alienate his base: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/20/internatio...
Now, why is the court accepting legal challenges on legal issues, and independently of the merits of those issues, from countries like South Africa, who publicly said they would not arrest Putin, who actually DOES have an ICC arrest mandate against him?
I thought they either outright said they would arrest Putin, or at least equivocated just enough to convince Putin to not want to find out if they would or not?
Did they later clarify "no we won't"?
"...South Africa has issued blanket diplomatic immunity to all leaders attending an August summit, meaning Vladimir Putin might be able to travel to Johannesburg and not fear the country acting on an international criminal court warrant for his arrest..."
It's the ultimate hypocrisy on South Africa to undermine the same court where is currently arguing, and a major legal failure on the court to accept South Africa claims.
> South African officials insisted the broad offer of immunity, issued in a government gazette, may not trump the ICC arrest warrant.
Which is exactly the same uncertainty I had before.
I expect the request for the Israelis will not be approved.
Hamas will be interesting. Hamas' territory has no functioning judicial system, but does the ICC have jurisdiction?
In any case the "warrants" if issued would only apply to countries who signed the ICC treaty.
At the time of the declaration accepting jursdiction of the ICC by the State of Palestine[2], there was a unity government of Palestine, so it feels like maybe.
In April 2012, the ICC declined to assert jurisdiction over Palestine, as it was not recognized as a State by the UN [3], but in November 2012, Palestine was granted the status of a non-member observer State, which seems to satisfy the ICC.
[1] https://www.icc-cpi.int/palestine [2] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/iccdocs/PIDS/pre... [3] https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/NR/rdonlyres/9B6...
"The Chamber provided a legal answer based on the strict interpretation of the Rome Statute. It emphasised that the issue of the territorial jurisdiction of the Court would have to be further examined when the Prosecutor submits an application for the issuance of a warrant of arrest or summons to appear. The Chamber declined to address the arguments regarding the Oslo Accords in the context of the present proceedings and indicated that these issues may be raised at a later stage of the proceedings."
https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/p...
Did the legal government of Palestine do the initial request in 2015? That would have been Hamas, since Hamas was the last elected government of Palestine. I would be surprised if Hamas acceded to the ICC's jurisdiction.
Can a non-state actor be accorded the same rights as a state under the Rome accords? Is the "government of Palestine" an actual entity?
If an entity other than the authorized government accepts jurisdiction of the ICC, does that count?
I mean, this isn't even getting the actual meat of the case and it's already a mess.
But yeah, you're right, my summary was overly brief --- the earlier ruling was more that there's a reasonable question of if they have jurisdiction, so investigations can proceed. As opposed to before where the court ruled that it didn't have jurisdiction, and couldn't proceed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Hamdallah_Government
"Like the former emergency governments after June 2007, which were installed by presidential decree, this unity government was in fact illegal, as it was not approved by the Legislative Council.[2][3] Without the cooperation of all parties, however, it was not possible to get the necessary quorum to put a vote.[20]"
Article 43 seems to give pretty wide berth for the President to operate when the Legislative Council is not in session, and if the Legislative Council is never expected to be in session, there's no mechanism to reign that in.
> Article (43) The President of the National Authority shall have the right in exceptional cases, which can not be delayed, and while the Legislative Council is not in session, to issue decisions and decrees that have the power of law. However, the decisions issued shall be presented to the Legislative Council in the first session convened after their issuance, otherwise they will cease to have the power of law. If these decisions were presented as mentioned above, but were not approved, then they shall cease to have the power of law.
To be honest, not a lot of countries have laws that contemplate continuance of government in case elections are not held.
That seems to be a misunderstanding based on an improper generalization of Article 17 of the Rome Statute: the kind of inadmissibility you refer to applies not based on general capacity of the state but of action in the specific case:
---[Art 17]
1. Having regard to paragraph 10 of the Preamble and article 1, the Court shall determine that a case is inadmissible where:
(a) The case is being investigated or prosecuted by a State which has jurisdiction over it, unless the State is unwilling or unable genuinely to carry out the investigation or prosecution;
(b) The case has been investigated by a State which has jurisdiction over it and the State has decided not to prosecute the person concerned, unless the decision resulted from the unwillingness or inability of the State genuinely to prosecute;
(c) The person concerned has already been tried for conduct which is the subject of the complaint, and a trial by the Court is not permitted under article 20, paragraph 3;
(d) The case is not of sufficient gravity to justify further action by the Court.
2. In order to determine unwillingness in a particular case, the Court shall consider, having regard to the principles of due process recognized by international law, whether one or more of the following exist, as applicable:
(a) The proceedings were or are being undertaken or the national decision was made for the purpose of shielding the person concerned from criminal responsibility for crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court referred to in article 5;
(b) There has been an unjustified delay in the proceedings which in the circumstances is inconsistent with an intent to bring the person concerned to justice;
(c) The proceedings were not or are not being conducted independently or impartially, and they were or are being conducted in a manner which, in the circumstances, is inconsistent with an intent to bring the person concerned to justice.
3. In order to determine inability in a particular case, the Court shall consider whether, due to a total or substantial collapse or unavailability of its national judicial system, the State is unable to obtain the accused or the necessary evidence and testimony or otherwise unable to carry out its proceedings.
---[end]
Neither Galant nor Netanyahu is currently in an ICC state, but that's not entirely novel territory for international criminal tribunals.
> What exactly are they going to be able to do once they manage to grant themselves these warrants?
If the judges of the court grant the prosecutor’s application, the court will issue warrants and seek cooperation of its 124 member states and any willing cooperating states in enforcing them.
That is it..? Hamas has thousands of militants and hundreds of officials in Gaza and Qatar. At minimum the ICC should be issuing warrants for every Hamas member of al-qassam (their military wing) and Hamas core leadership.
3k Hamas fighters attacked Israel and posted it openly on social media. Half of those died in the initial attack and lots have surely died in the war since but there is no reason not to get arrest warrants for these war criminals who directly posted their war crimes to the internet.