Tell us about the West Bank, then. What is happening there right now and how it relates to Hamas?

I do think there's evidence, plenty of, that Israel is doing its best to expel the Palestinians.

I don't pretend to understand how it's to be a country surround by enemies, and there's a lot of history there that explain all of this. But the current facts - all the destruction in Gaza - can't be justified, ever.

You say that ICC has no investigative power. But ONU has people on the ground and has been denouncing Israel for months...

> The majority of Israeli would like to find some sort of win win solution where everyone can live in peace. The majority of Palestinians don't see any solution that includes Jewish people living in the region.

[citation needed] Because your equivalent on the other side would say it is exactly the other way around, and both of you would feel unarguably right. So unless you base your claim here on a neutral trusted source I would file that away as someone's gut feeling that may be part of a political bubble.

Your palestinian counterpart could point out the same, as far as I know more than three quarters of the palestinians alive today did not vote for Hamas, since they were kids when that vote took place in 2006. Your Palestinian counterpart could point to the fact that their people are unarguably more restricted than an Israeli citizen living in the same area or to the fact that their territories got smaller over the decades which is surprising given your statement about a lack of Isreali ambition to drive them away — did the Palestinians voluntarily gift that land away or how did that happen?

Now sure, in reality this conflict is much more complex, and the history of the Palestinian territories has to do with repression, terrorist responses, constant military intervention, settler ambition and so on. But if — in effect — you drive the other people out, even if "you don't want to", you are driving them out, period. And for that you just have to look at a timeline of the border over the history of the region, without bothering yourself about all complexity, which in this conflict is abused by both sides as an excuse.

Todays younger generations in the West perceive Israel as the stronger force (and it is) and as such feel that Isreal has a moral duty to de-escalate the conflict. Now that 80% of the Gaza strips population is displaced and this is the conflict with the most dead children than any other recent conflict¹, taking about not wanting to drive them away seams a tad bit cynical — one could infer from that they are not to be driven away, but to be erradicated.

In any way this will mark the sad point in history where the decline of support for Isreals ambitions in the West started and Isreal won't even see it coming, since their own perspective on the conflict is skewed by their own propaganda. A support Isreal both needs and given its early history also deserved. But taking it too far has consequences.

And as someone who grew up with 3 brothers: It is for the stronger one to stop the conflict and act with controlled force. And Isreal is the stronger one and right now it is beating the smaller brother into a bloody bulp in stupid rage as the rest of the world watches in absolute horror.

¹: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-child...

You are aware that there are international laws regulating what an occupying force is and isn't required to do?

Not letting civilians in occupied areas starve is one of the laws.

And this is very basic occupational law, if you don't know that maybe consider lowering your voice on the issue in the future?

https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/occupation

It's not serious to suggest that Israel did not supply any food or water to the Palestinians when in fact it supplied plenty.

After sufficient arm-twisting from the Biden administration, it did.

But until that point - it withheld. And quite intentionally and forthrightly so:

   “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

   “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.

The main lesson of the Holocaust is: if someone is saying he is going to kill you, you believe him and act accordingly.

Let's for the sake of argument assume you're correct and these were just words. How come at least 200k civilians in Gaza are dead as the result?

> That is not really true.

I do not understand Hebrew but if you ask ChatGpt, you will get a different answer.

> At some point Netanyahu will be out of power.

I wish and hope that's true.

But I think some of your analysis is really incorrect, unfortunately.

> He's been voted out of office before.

Yes, he was out of power for about a year of the last 15 or so years, and got back into power.

> He's in trouble politically.

True, and I hope it stays that way. However the elections are still two years away, there doesn't seem to be any pathway to forcing the elections to happen sooner, and he is gaining ground, not losing it. It is very much a possibility that he holds on to power.

> He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead.

I'm not sure he actually promised a short war. That said, the war against Lebanon is probably the most successful thing he's done in terms of restoring his power. It's entirely possible that acting more aggressively against more enemies is a winning strategy for him.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

This basically reads as completely wrong to me. Almost every politician on every side of the aisle in Israel has condenmed the ICC. The intrusion into Israeli sovereignity is a big blow to Israel, implying that Israel's democracy isn't trusted to hold people accountable by ourselves.

Even if privately opposition leaders would want Netanyahu gone, giving him up would be suicide politically.

"instead" ?!

There was already a cold war with Iran before Oct 7, and many warned it could pop any moment. It could be said to the detriment of Netanyahu that he ignored that and didn't want this on his watch. Iran was priming and planning for a moment where a joint Hezbollah-Hamas ground invasion would have put the Israeli military to a stress beyond its means, and with many thousands casualties on the first day. It would have happened sooner or later if it wasn't for the Hamas independent action.

Also, on Oct 2023 he and other officials said it is going to be a long battle from the beginning. He never once promised this to be short. And also, a clear victory from a long war gets him more electorates, so he aligns his own victory with Israel's.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

That seems very unlikely. If the next gov really hates him they might prosecute him domestically (the things he is accused of are all illegal under israeli law), but i can't imagine they would hand him to the icc.

Not just because that would look bad, but also because icc is supposed to be a court of last resort only to be used where domestic courts fail.

It will not happen to that next administration would turn over Netanyahu to the ICC. Even if they wanted to, he would seek asylum in the U.S. Embassy and he would certainly be granted asylum.

One thing I've learned these past 20 years: when an awful political leader seems to obviously be undergoing a downfall and on their way out of power, you can be sure they'll be there 20 years later. And they'll outlive all of us too, even if they're already geriatric.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC

The next person to win a fight for a most exclusive position may decide it should be of substantially less value.. But usually only as a tactic to get the position.

>The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

I thought it was the USA that makes these decisions

Justice is self hypnosis and self idealization that settles in when there is plenty to go around. If there isn't its just a threatening word , whose values is mostly "we get you all when the good times roll back around ." Which they usually don't do unless there are major scientific breakthroughs generating surplus and a amnesty after armistice.

"The ICJ is at least holding out against that future."

ICJ? Are you implying that what I said, implied or inferred was against the ICC?

Let me be clear, I nether said, meant nor inferred any of those things. In fact I'm in favor of the ICC despite the fact it's a paper tiger in areas where it's most needed.

Edit: that said, like many, I've some criticisms all of which other comments have echoed. Like most things the ICC is a compromise in an imperfect world, it's better than nothing though.

Merely getting "declared" is not enough — North Korea "declares" itself to be a democracy — what matters is actually doing it.

The relevance of the ICC etc. is rooted in how much people actually do, not just say.

Apologies, typo, ICJ -> ICC

Now I'm wondering if airspace spreads out horizontally from the coast the same way that shipping rights do.

I'd assume so, but a quick skim-read didn't tell me either way.

If it does, then they'd pick between going through Spanish or Moroccan airspace, because the straights of Gibraltar are narrow enough you can see Africa from Gibraltar.

> If you mean to imply that Europe is somehow going to shoot down their planes if they fly over that’s obviously absurd.

Shoot down? No.

Force them down? There's precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

You will find that you'll get much better discussions if you do some introspection on how you might misinterpret someone when you think someone says something that you think is 'obviously absurd'. Why would they say something that is obviously absurd?

Maybe it is more revealing that you jump to the obviously absurd interpretation rather than the even more obvious, and not absurd one?

> Presumably if they get invited to Europe it will be with assurance from the state that nothing happens to them.

I believe ICC members are obligated to enforce its warrants, which is why Putin couldn't attend BRICS in South Africa last year. And this applies to almost all the western world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

So no, it's not toothless.

The typical route to the US from Israel passes over much of Europe.

I'm not sure what "deliberately withheld food and medicine from civilians in a calculated manner" means exactly.

Did the US, UK, and Australia supply the citizens of the Islamic State with aid as they were attacking them?

Did the Syrian government and the Russians supply the cities they were barrel bombing with food?

Do the Turkish supply the Kurds they're bombing with aid?

Did Israel prevent aid coming in from Egypt? Generally no. Israel did request Egypt to let it check the trucks that go in but that was not the bottleneck. Every time international organizations screamed about hunger in Gaza there was plenty of evidence that there was a lot of food (markets were full of food). Population that refuses to evacuate, stays in fighting zones, can't expect to have Pizza delivered to their door but a lot of effort went into supply those areas as well. Which is really unprecedented in any war.

Right now Egypt refuses to deliver aid through the Rafah crossing because Israel took the Gaza side of it. What about the stocks the Gaza government (Hamas) held, did those get disbursed to the civilians? Why is this all on Israel?

You seem to have a very flexible definition for a war crime.

The problem is that this starts with the politics. Only through a certain political prism does this look like a war crime. The court makes many political assertions and under that distorted lens Israel somehow has to feed the enemy while that enemy is actively fighting them, stealing the aid, and cares nothing if their own people starve or not. Really Israel is not allowed to wage war with Hamas because it's embedded with civilians is about it. This is not what international law says, this is political twisting of that law.

Bear in mind that most of the time, sanctions not only prevent you from doing business with the sanctioned entity, but also with any other entity that's doing business with them.

I think you are agreeing with that. There is not some international law that says countries must deal.with countries they don't want to. It's a national thing.

Geography is the problem not technology.

> Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.

This falls clearly under 'not wanting to'.

> However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working

Sure... Such was in the interest of America

The double edged sword is that proving an ongoing crime maybe stops it from unfolding but anything other than a conviction is presented as an endorsement and encouragement to continue. That could be fine if there's really no crime, not so fine if the crime just couldn't be proven.

Considering here the old adage that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. They both lead to the same verdict from a court of public opinion point of view, and realistically the same consequences from a court of justice.

> That seems to me like the Israeli military was going beyond and above to protect the civilians in that area

The Israeli military was going above and beyond to protect civilians by destroying their homes? What a truly evil opinion to hold.

It’s not war in terms of international law if it’s internal. Not clear cut that it’s not internal, but there’s nuance.

There's video that comes out every single day of dead children and civilians. Those buildings are civilian and not empty.

The charges in question are that of targeting hospitals and hindering aid from reaching Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are being charged with the policy of targeting hospitals and hindering aid. The videos we have of people dying are only related to the crime if they show how hospitals or aid convoys were targeted. Of which we have plenty. For example the flour massacre is only one of many instances of aid being targeted which resulted in hundreds of civilians dying. And the fact the the four massacre was not an isolated incident, but followed a pattern of other links in the aid chain being targeted or otherwise prevented from being delivered to civilians is a very good argument for that this is actually a policy, of which Netanyahu and Gallant are guilty.

The charges are not of war crimes, but of crimes against humanity. A war crime is an event which individual soldiers or commanders, or generals are guilty of. Crimes agains humanity is criminal policy which politicians are charged for.

That higher standard sounds similar to "Double reasonableness" from British tax law.

"Double reasonableness" is used to delete tax advantages for certain things which you say were correctly exempt from taxation or attracted significant tax advantages but the government alleges you were in fact just generally avoiding paying tax and whatever you were doing doesn't count. It's not a crime to have mistakenly believed you didn't owe tax, but, if a court finds against you, you would now owe the back tax, plus potentially penalties.

The "double" comes from a requirement that not only can the reasonable person (say, a juror) not think of any way that what you're doing isn't just avoiding tax, but they can't even imagine any other reasonable person who thinks what you were doing made sense for another reason beside avoiding taxes either.

The idea is this only triggers for people who are very obviously dodging tax, so that their scheme sounds completely ludicrous unless it is explained that they hoped to avoid taxation, rather than just being a slightly eccentric thing to do which happened to have tax benefits when they did it.

"I buy and sell used cars" makes you a used car dealer. No reason you shouldn't take advantage of used car tax treatments which are a significant benefit.

"I let somebody else do all the buying and selling" OK, I guess you just own the business? Nothing wrong with that, small business, entrepreneurship, excellent.

"I don't own the business or anything, I just get the advantageous tax treatment". Huh, well it's very good of the people actually doing the transactions to let you benefit while they go without, very generous indeed, but at least you're ensuring a healthy market in used cars.

"Oh, there's just one car. That car is just bought and sold over and over again to make up the amount of money I requested". See, now that's ludicrous, why would anybody believe you had some reason to do this except to avoid paying taxes?

I had a look at the democrats who support the recent "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act". I had a look at 10 of them. 7 of them had substantial donations from AIPAC. The others were soon up for re-election.

I am not American, but why oh why are you not rooting in the streets? That is just soooo effed up. This is just one of so many issues, and AIPAC is a just a part of the problem. It is just so obvious that U.S. politicians are up for purchase.

> Israel was massively radicalized by October 7th

Israel had been locking Gaza in a total blockade for 17 years (with talk of "keeping them on a diet"), plus had bombed Gaza multiple times resulting in more than 5000 deaths (= 5 October 7ths- they called this "mowing the lawn". During these bombing campaigns we have pictures of Israelis enjoying the show from afar from observation points with food and drinks).

In the meanwhile they enforced an apartheid regime in the West Bank, building new settlements for hundreds of thousands of residents, and launching pogroms to drive away the Palestinian population.

So no, it wasn't Oct 7th that radicalised them.

It is telling that you also mention "better economy" and "comfortable life", but not "equal rights" or "self-government" or any such thing. Even with animals in the zoo one doesn't think that all they need is being well-fed.

Myself, I have no sense of what it's like in Israel right now, but I have noted several times that the October 7th attack was proportionally worse to Israel than 9/11 was to the US, so I can easily believe that this had a similar impact on the national psyche.

That said, I do often read comments and news articles claiming that Netanyahu's government is unpopular within Israel, and that he only maintains his position by the support of the… well, there's not a polite way to describe the attitudes of the settlers who take land that isn't in Israel and then demand Israel defend them, nor those who demand violence while claiming their religious beliefs prohibit serving in the armed forces even though everyone else has conscription.

Not confident of that popularity though, as Googling gets me an extraordinarily broad range of popularity scores.

That said:

> But ultimately, October 7th killed any chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, for a long long time.

Did any chance of a peace live before?

The Israeli PM who signed the Oslo Accords, Yitzhak Rabin, was shot by a far-right-wing Israeli extremist for signing them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

A large portion of the Palestinian population also opposed it.

Which atrocities? What wasn't shown on mainstream media?

In my experience, most of what mainstream media claimed initially around atrocities was proven to be categorically false - up to and including the president of the USA going on live TV and lying about having seen evidence of baby killing, with staffers having to sheepishly and quietly release a "that didn't happen" statement later.

Of course these retractions happened later, and Israel's explicit and planned messaging of atrocities, inhuman animal behavior, etc had its desired effect of riling people up to support a genocidal assault after a single successful counterattack from an impoverished people at war for generations.

I agree that what the IDF is doing to Palestinians, now and for a long time is very tragic, and it's also tragic how many of their own people and fellow soldiers they (IDF) killed on Oct 7th.

The IDF and elected islraelis officials were openly genicidal and bragged about killing civilians. It wasn't just random people.

I've done this with software developers that I know and have worked with and have been shocked that people I thought were my friends openly supported genocide. I no longer speak to them.

The situation is very heterogeneous: not all Israelis are okay with what their government does, and are increasingly outspoken against it.

Not all Israelis are Jewish: note also that substantial numbers of Israelis are of Arab background, some with relatives (or fellow Muslims) in Palestine. Most of non-Jewish Israelis oppose the military measures. (But there are even a few that are upset that they cannot serve in the IDF because Arab Israeli citizens are not trusted enough to serve in Israel's military - in violation of equal treatment of cizitens.)

Not all Jews are in favor of Israels military action: in particular among the most religious people, there is a division between those disgusted by Israel's own military action (c.f. Rabbi David Weiss at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtMV2i8-8 ) and those right-wingers that even volunteer to become settlers in areas cleared by bulldozers from Palestinian homes in violation of the law (UN resolution 2334, Fourth Geneva Convention).

What is clear and undisputable is the power asymmetry between Israel and Palestine.

You asked, referring to Palestine's admission to the ICC:

> good for them; is there some reason they shouldn't have?

Their point is that the ICC should only be admitting those who intend to abide by the rules that ICC exists to enforce. Since it was Palestine's admission you asked about their answer referred to Palestine leaders' intentions with regard to those rules.

That Israel also doesn't abide by those rules is not relevant to the question you asked. It would be relevant if the question was whether or not Israel should be admitted to the ICC (and Palestinian lack of abiding by those rules would be irrelevant to that question).

I would say that when you are being treated poorly in a way where laws exist protecting your right to demand better and realistically should be able to expect better, then using those laws is using them as intended. Sure it is to your advantage, however, the way you say it implies it is an unfair advantage, rather than simply trying to remove an unfairly applied disadvantage/detriment.

Are you suggesting they should not try to use laws to protect themselves from genocide/displacement?

raising a valid and logically sound critique of an argument is not like deflection at all, in fact it doesn't even come close to being similar, they're directly addressing the core argument. I think you might benefit from some time with a dictionary.

The person you are replying to didn't imply that it was military aid. They said it was to strengthen Hamas and weaken the Palestinian Authority. I have no idea if that's true or not, but it's a different claim than you are challenging.

The PA routinely arrests Hamas members. On the daily. Locks them up or hands them over to Israel to lock them up for years. Isn't that already evidence?

Fatah and Hamas have engaged in open combat regularly.

Willingness isn't really in question. Ability to do so is, though.

To be fair, the GP comment asked what one thinks about the possibility, and the parent comment provided some limited grounding. It’s a bit difficult to provide concrete evidence for a hypothetical.

ICC issued a warrant for very dead Muhammad Deif.

> normal position people take when it comes to Palestine

out of curiosity, where are you from?

sympathy for the Palestinian liberation struggle is very common where I live (despite what our government says and does)

Well, I apologize for the misreading, certainly!

I walked past the offices of Medcins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) incidentally across the road from the very good new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, with posters in the windows imploring “no bombardment of hospitals in Gaza”.

The numbers are absurdly small, if hospitals were still operational, their employees not subject to extrajudicial killing from the occupation authorities and the facilities themselves not subject to bombardment.

Data from these killing fields is probably going to be far, far worse than we believe, once the dust has settled.

This is a really good independent report on the death toll:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> But the problem is that Israel's style of warfare is (intentionally or not) blurring the distinction between those numbers, by using methods of combat that have exceptionally high rates of collateral damage.

I'm not sure that is true. Urban combat is notoriously bloody, and other conflicts of this nature have seen similar orders of magnitude deaths.

Additionally, civilian deaths are not neccesarily indicative of war crimes. Certain types of collateral damage are allowed where others are not (rules are complex and quite frankly oblivious), so you would also have to separate the legal collateral damage from the illegal collateral damage.

> The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.

Well that allegation is the main basis for this warrant. However so far it seems like only a very small porportion of the deaths are attributable to that practise. To the point where so far the icc found that there wasnt enough evidence for a charge of extermination. I think about roughly 15 people have to die for it to be considered extermination. So it seems like so far there isn't evidence that a significant number of deaths in this conflict are related to that method of war. Of course new evidence can always come to light later. (Its important to note that siege warfare is still a warcrime even if nobody dies. The counter side is israel would probably try and argue (for the recent activity at least) that they gave civilians an opportunity to evacuate and thus it wasn't directed at civilians).

> the problem is that Israel's style of warfare ... The most extreme instances

Yep. The complication is, the Strip is close to being totally dependent on Israel, and yet chose war. I doubt any other country ruled by right-wingers, with that much power over their already (diplomatically, economically, socially) cornered enemy, would have acted any differently. I guess, the sequence of events reeks of desperation & despair from all sides and has ended up exposing one & all.

If we are going to discuss the diplomatic and international implications of the ICC, it is important to note that the security—and even the continued existence as independent, sovereign entities—of the countries supporting the court is overwhelmingly reliant on the U.S. military umbrella. Without this protection, their sovereignty would quickly be at risk.

As a follow-up to [2], even more interesting is the text of covered persons:

"military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand"

The challenge wasn't based on exactly that, they were trying to argue that a treaty palestine signed with israel precluded palestine from giving icc juridsiction that it didn't have itself.

That said, if it ever gets to trial, the defendants will almost certainly try to challenge it on that basis.

Realistically though i think the chance of that type of challenge succeding is unlikely. International courts generally are above domestic law. They probably have a better chance of convincing the court that palestine isn't a state and thus cannot sign the rome statue (which is also a long shot imo)

Good thing that's not how laws are formed - "your" not recognizing authority doesn't mean "you" haven't committed the war crimes or other illegal act that international organization has charged you with; so far it's worked that veto power can immediately suppress action even when the rest of the organized-civilized world is against you, where so far most international organizations have been for theatre - but where we have an opportunity for them to finally have teeth.

> Court deciding earlier in a 2-1 decision that Palestine is a state, the PA is the legitimate government of Palestine, and that Gaza is territory under its jurisdiction.

I think you are overstating it. They made a provisional decision, but just for the purpose of if the investigation can go forward. The decision does not decide whether or not palestine is a state in general, and if this ever goes to trial the defendants can still challenge this decision.

Straw man argument. I didn't make the claim the ICC accused the ICC of genocide, however Netanyahu is now at minimum now officially wanted for war crimes.

ICC and ICJ are different, yes.

The proof you provide is very shallow, and with no real relevance or weight as an argument point - when it's known that the US and Israel have veto powers, as an example, that most international organizations currently are theatre without teeth - and so that's essentially why it's "fairly unprecedented."

Now Netanyahu has done enough blatantly, what's argued by some to be the most video/photographed-recorded genocide in history, the hierarchy and people resource hierarchy of the ICC hasn't fallen to Israeli political pressure (or whatever other tactics Mossad is known to use to try to get their way).

Once again, your final point is more neutral - where you could only really honestly say that if in a vacuum, if you're not looking behind the scenes with how much pressure Israel has put publicly and privately on members of the ICC to not file nor then issue charges, etc.

> a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement [between any two or more states] with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights.

Wikipedia quote: "States and non-state actors may choose to not abide by international law, and even to breach a treaty but such violations, particularly of peremptory norms, can be met with disapproval by others and in some cases coercive action ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to war."

I think isolating bad actors can be a limited solution to the absence of physical power/not wanting to start a way, which ultimately as you rightly state corresponds to a situation of absence/breakdown of law that is best avoided.

I'm using "criminals" as a short-hand for "the worst of the worst in terms of rights-violating countries and dictatorial regimes" which is what you initially said.

If there is no such thing as international law, then what "rights" are these countries violating?

> When you have multiple nations that operate independently, each with their own laws and rules, all you can do is get them to agree to certain things, as long as they have some basis upon which to enter into an agreement.

It sounds like you do think all countries should be 'invited to the table' unless they fail to meet a standard which you yourself don't think exists. Confusing.

> We're dealing with the concept of "International Law", which is largely understood as agreements / treaties amongst different countries.

Well this is true of a lot of international law, it doesn't apply here. The ICC largely deals with things that are preemptory norms which apply regardless of if you sign the treaty.

I think you are correct that the US service members committed some fucked up war crimes in Iraq. But many service members faced justice in the US for those crimes. And I'm not persuaded that those crimes were widespread, relative to the scale of the military engagement.

Your statement seems to imply that the Iraq War was unusually bad in terms of war crimes. If so, you should be able to give several examples of 21st century conflicts which you're confident had fewer war crimes committed per capita. Can you do so?

The way I see it, there are two rough hypotheses here:

Hypothesis 1: The US is an unusually evil country which has a harmful effect on world affairs. Its actions in Iraq exemplify this. The recent trend towards US isolationism is good, since isolationism will diminish its pernicious effects on world affairs.

Hypothesis 2: War crimes and violations of the laws of war are ubiquitous in conflict. The international treaties prohibiting them were well-intentioned but largely fruitless. The psychology of war drives soldiers to commit war crimes, and/or the incentives to commit war crimes are too strong. The US has a free press, and has systems in place to prosecute service members who commit war crimes, so you hear more about war crimes committed by the US than by other countries. But the per capita rate of the US committing war crimes may actually be lower than average.

What evidence is available that lets us differentiate between these hypotheses?

There's jurisdiction questions there since neither Iraq nor the US are Rome Statute signatories, however Palestine is a signatory.

Regardless of whether a group of politicians use it maliciously or not - Antisemitism exists and happens all the time. It has not "lost its value", and if it has then so has western society.

Why would it matter? I don't think we should ever justify Islamophobia based on the actions of Islamic states or other Islamic groups; by the same token we should never justify antisemitic hate crimes regardless of our views on Israel.

Hmm, good point. I'm not 100% sure i agree - i think it depends on what the conditions were, there could be non-bargaining conditions, but you've convinced me that is a plausible way to read it.

> Parties to conflict are expected to facilitate aid, not just allow it, and definitely not set conditions.

I think they are allowed to set some conditions, they just can't be arbitrary or prevent aid. Like they can set conditions around checkpoints, inspections, where aid can enter the country, as long as it isn't arbitrary or impedes the aid. (Obviously the ICC is implying something much different than those types of conditions)

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule55

This comment is just disingenuous. You know that isn’t what they meant.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/16/ukraine-must-i...

"A controversial Amnesty International report asserted that Ukrainian military tactics put civilians in danger. Video footage has since been published suggesting that Ukrainian troops may have executed surrendering Russian officers in the town of Makiivka. Back in 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) determined that Ukrainian forces committed possible war crimes against Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

To be clear: none of these allegations draws moral or legal equivalency between the acts of Ukrainian and Russian forces. Any alleged crimes committed by Ukrainian officers pale in comparison to the aggression and barbarity Russian forces have demonstrated in Ukraine. But all atrocities must be accounted for, not just those of one’s enemies."

The difference is that "America" has no other meaning (in English, that is. In some other languages it means the landmass we call "the Americas"). Whereas "England" means something different from the UK.

Not to mention Israel has been receiving absolutely immense amounts of financial, military and political support from the USA for decades, to the tunes of billions.

> very close proximity to the Middle East

Israel is in the Middle East.

(Odd to me that I'm getting downvoted for suggesting the US support for Israel has to do with US interests, and providing sources going into detail on that, and people are getting upvoted for saying it's because Jews have a lot of influence! It's really not mostly because Jews have a lot of influence.)

Many scholars argue that the US uses Israel to destabilize the region so that all other countries besides Israel are unable to form a bloc and resist US hegemony, but perhaps that's what you meant by "keep the region in check".

Israel and Iran used to be BFFs.

> Iran and basically the rest of the Middle East, US needs an ally to keep the region in check.

The US (and also UK/France/Germany) have been bending over backwards to prop up Israel since LONG before Iran switched to an anti-US theocratic government.

The US has several allies in the middle east. Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar all have major non-NATO ally status with the US, the same status as Israel. Jordan in particular is a very close US partner.

I should add, none of these countries are treaty allies of the US, i.e. none of them have a mutual defense treaty with the US. The one country that is a treaty ally of the US in the region is Turkey, though that relationship has been strained in the last couple of decades

That strategic relevance has long gone.

The current relevance is strictly dictated by internal political and demographic balances in the United States.

> From my weak understanding, it’s the only ally the west (USA) has in the Middle East, so they’re important strategically

Nope, the US has bases in Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Djibouti and is friendly with the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Most just ordered horrific atrocities, their men to die, and then killed themselves.

In practice the Netherlands, by announcing openly they would be arrested before their arrival, had refused to grant them diplomatic immunity. So it is going to be extremely difficult to argue such an arrest would be against the Vienna convention. The Vienna convention explicitly states that the receiving state can declare before arrival that a diplomat will not be granted immunity.

There are many laws on the books that are ignored or in practice re-interpreted in the ground so that enforcement is only attempted in the most egregious situations.

Case in point: the “gedoogbeleid” for soft drugs. Contrary to many people’s belief, possession, sale etc of these are not legalised in the way that we see in many other jurisdictions. Yet, teenagers sit on the side of the canal near my old home getting happily stoned with their friends and say “hi” to passing police and “handhaving” city rule enforcement officers. They buy from the “coffeeshop” whose coffee making is more theoretical than practical, even though sales of the weed they buy are against the law. Sometimes inspectors will visit the shop to ensure that no tobacco is being smoked, but not being concerned about weed, with the threat of large fines or even loss of license to sell soft drugs (illegal, remember?) being withdrawn.

It’s all quite curious.

The HN community is strongly anti-Israel. Which is surprising, but then again, what's really still surprising these days?

I do think this news is major enough to justify being on HN. There is at least some useful discussions on the ICC that I found interesting, intermixed between the typical antisemitic messaging we're all-too used to seeing.

> I don’t personally have the energy to combat all of it.

You have to put in the effort you think the current situation is. Everybody else is doing the same. Indeed see a lot of grayed out comments that defend Israel and wish they were regular color so it’s just a discussion. But in the same way commers get downvoted they could also be upvoted. Maybe your opinions have many people who disagree and few who agree? I urge all thise who agree with you to upvote your comments.

I am with you 100%.

Dang's friend and boss is Paul Graham who has made his own bias clear: https://www.timesofisrael.com/snippy-twitter-exchange-expose...

Dang does a decent job of not being blatant about his own anti-Israel bias, but given the number and rate of anti-Israel posts that hit the HN front page, it's pretty clear. Israel is the only political topic that is allowed through, and the posts are invariably anti-Israel. Disappointing.

Edit: the antis weaponize the flagging system, as well. Why was this post flagged, for instance? No reason, except that it brings nuance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42210075

>The fact that it's the only country he's been able to visit since the warrant was issued

Putin has visited around 20 countries after this ICC warrant including UAE, Saudi Arabia, China, Armenia, Vietnam , India (planned), Uzbekistan ...

Start here and start counting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_presiden...

But I know you wont. Your response will be shifting some goal posts like "these are not real countries because they don't exist in my coloring book"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42206068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42208721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42205267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42208229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42208765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42207363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42207487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42209050

Should I continue?