One can express a preference without having the right to participate in the selection.

Quite a few non-US citizens express a preference on who wins the Presidency, for example.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/uks-karim-khan-elected-next-ic...

> Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported that Israeli officials supported Khan’s candidacy behind the scenes, and consider him a pragmatist who shies away from politicization.

You can literally go on social media and see first-hand videos of the things happening in real-time there for yourself.

I would like to see the same standard applied by the US, or demonstrate that the US has far more options than its tacit consent, I would like the US to be completely uninvolved, and point out how the US’ leverage in the situation doesn’t involve Congress just the stroke of a pen from any President, leading the Office of Foreign Assets Control

since it would simultaneously be “anti-Semitic” to do this or avoid doing this by assuming cutting Israelis off from the global financial system to be uniquely debilitating, we could find out which view has a kernel of truth attached, and it shouldn’t be a problem at all

Erm. No? The Amalekites are “just” the enemies of Israel.

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At some point Netanyahu will be out of power. He's been voted out of office before. He's in trouble politically. He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead. The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

> We also don't know if there are any hidden warrants for other Israelis

Honest question, are "hidden" warrants a thing at the ICC? Seems like it would be difficult, as the ICC doesn't have an enforcement arm of its own, so I would think warrant information would need to be circulated to all the treaty signers, at which case it would be pretty impossible to keep hidden. I tried searching but couldn't find anything - all the results were just about this Netanyahu situation.

What this really does is remove the ICC's authority.

It's one of those things -- if you make up rules and then can't enforce them, pretty soon no one cares what you say about anything.

> It sends a signal to all of Europe to be wary of doing business with Israel, which is a big deal.

They can resume business once Netanyahu is gone.

In fact Viktor Orban has already invited him to Hungary to the dismay of EU officials. His plane would need permission to fly in other countries' airspace anyway so it would be qiite a risky stunt.

Some will say that it existed for a brief moment in the 90s-2000s.

So were the Nuremberg Trials not an instance of the RBWO?

(And all the UN mediations in e.g. Palestine, Korea, etc. from its very founding)

> I'd argue that the "rules-based world order" as most people perceive it never really existed. Some will say that it existed for a brief moment in the 90s-2000s. Back then, most countries played nice with the international treaties even if there were no penalties for noncompliance

The utter disrespect for the CFE treaty during that period is exactly what got us the Ukraine war right now.

Justice has to be declared as an essential principle of human organisation.

If the 1984 vision of a boot stamping on a human face forever is going to work out to be true, then so be it.

The ICJ is at least holding out against that future.

What will you (as a human) choose to do?

These days and years are going to be definitional I think.

If they just wanted to hop on a regular commercial flight to the US that might be a problem, but I'd expect they would fly on military aircraft.

Instead of taking the most direct route which would fly over Europe they could stay over the Mediterranean until they reach the Atlantic and then head straight to the US.

That adds about 500 miles or so to the trip which probably isn't a big deal on a trip that long.

Presumably if they get invited to Europe it will be with assurance from the state that nothing happens to them. And traveling uninvited is probably a bad move anyway. So not much difference.

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

Why not the US?

The aren't signatories to the ICC.

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There are a finite amount of the small paper rectangles available (yes the supply is increasing, but it is finite at any moment) AND these small paper rectangles are required in order for US residents/citizens that earn income in any currency in order to stay out of prison. So, in other words, not a fiction.

There is no such thing as "international law" in the way you use the term.

There are treaties that countries either sign or do not sign. The US isn't breaking treaties it has signed, at least not in the general case.

For example imposing sanctions on Russia does not have basis in international law,

Of course it does.

Every country is free to choose which countries it does business with.

the warrant is not for genocide, you did not even read it, did you?

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The standard isn't harm, it's war crimes. There is clear evidence that Israel deliberately withheld food and medicine from civilians in a calculated manner, which is a war crime that no one is alleging in the fight against ISIS.

The UK at their peak and also Russia, twice, tried the "normal colonial route" in Afghanistan..

> If the US wanted to, and if it did it correctly, it could easily conquer most countries.

It could possibly conquer many countries by largely destroying them as was done to Germany and Japan, but since the US is a democracy and a sizable portion of its people have morals and aren't sociopaths, it's politically impossible to fight a war this way in the modern era without some kind of extreme provocation. Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.

And even back when America did pretty well take the gloves off, doing nearly everything it could short of nuclear weapons in Korea and Vietnam, it still couldn't win. So I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that any decent-sized country could be conquered easily even if the 'will' was there.

<< There was never a 'rules-based world order'. We live purely in Pax Americana and every government exists at the pleasure of the United States.

Yes. However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working. Now even that pretense is gone.

<< Afghanistan happened because America lost the will, not the ability. Had America gone the normal colonial route, Afghanistan would look a lot different today.

Eh. No. I am not sure where the concept this weird concept of 'bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from. I accept your premise that some of it is the question of will, but you have to admit that two decades with nothing to show for it is not.. great.

Your dark humor made me chuckle. Thanks for that in this dire world.

May the persecution of all innocent Jews, Palestinians, Ukrainians, and Africans (e.g. Ugandans) end and a world of peace and justice be established, for one and all.

Usually when people say that they are talking about genocide. War crimes and crimes against humanity may have some intent requirements but they don't have the double intent that genocide has, which is the part that is super difficult to prove.

To over simplify (also ianal) with genocide you basically have to prove that the only possible rationale for the action was to try and destroy the protected group and that there is no other plausible explanation. With normal war crimes its more just proving the act wasn't done accidentally. [This is a gross oversimplification]

> but we also have a huge catalogue of Israeli politicians explicitly calling for the genocide of Gaza.

I don't think that is relavent here, as genocide is not one of the charges. Additionally, that would probably be more relavent to state responsibility for genocide (what the icj decides) and not personal responsibility (what icc has juridsication over). Even for state responsibility, its a bit iffy how much those statements matter if they aren't said by people who have the power to issue orders to the military (they of course matter a lot if the charge is failing to suppress incitement of genocide). I'm not saying its totally irrelavent, it is probably a bit relavent to the prosecution charge, but largely it matters more what the individuals themselves have said as they are being charged in an individual capacity not as agents of the state.

Basically the ICC and ICJ are different and what you are saying is more applicable to the ICJ case not the ICC case.

I think they only need to show intent if they are being charged with genocide, however, I think in this case they are being charged with using starvation as a weapon, hindering aid, and targeting hospitals. I think the recommendation also included extermination, which is similar to genocide, but also does not require intent, but I think the voted against that.

I think the evidence for the charges which were actually brought forward are pretty strong. I mean we have Gallant on video stating explicitly a policy of starvation, a policy which we have been seeing in action, also on video.

> but we also have a huge catalogue of Israeli politicians explicitly calling for the genocide of Gaza.

There was even a database set to track this large number of genocide calls. See https://law4palestine.org/law-for-palestine-releases-databas...

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> However, in this case, not only do we have an incredible amount of video evidence of war crimes, but we also have a huge catalogue of Israeli politicians explicitly calling for the genocide of Gaza.

I disagree that there is an incredible amount of video evidence of war crimes that are relevant here.

And I also disagree that there is a huge catalogue of Netanyahu and Gallant making statements that show intent. For the purposes of these warrants, it doesn't matter what other Israeli politicians have said as I understand it.

ICC have those guns, which Netanyahu will experience if he steps foot in a country that follows ICC decisions.

And in turn, thanks to orgs like AIPAC.

People without media and politicians are not that much better.

... where the combination of their and the public's willful ignorance results in much needless suffering.

Israel was massively radicalized by October 7th. Prior to October 7th, a lot of Israelis believed that if Palestinians had a better economy and could afford a comfortable life, peace would be possible. October 7th was not just a surprise to many Israelis, but also the atrocities were so horrible that it radically changed how Israelis view the situation. This is hard to grasp, but a lot of people don't really understand what happened on October 7th, because this was stuff was obviously not shown on mainstream media.

The entire situation is very tragic. But ultimately, October 7th killed any chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, for a long long time. The current population in Israel will never forget October 7th, there are some seriously cannot-be-unseen NSFL atrocities.

I don't necessarily think you're wrong, but drawing any conclusions from random people on Twitter seems like a mistake. They might not be human, they might not be Israeli, and they might not be representative of Israel's 9 million people. I wouldn't want anybody to judge me based on how English-speaking Twitter accounts behave.

In fairness to Israel, they have a peace movement and human rights movement and so on. It’s just that even before October 7th, they were getting increasingly outnumbered.

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> We will target all of Hamas's positions. We will turn Gaza into a deserted island.

The fact, the Gaza part is a separate sentence is telling.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/7/world-is-watching-f...

> You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.

Is what he said to Lebanon, where he threatened to do similar things to another country.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly3x1w0595o

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It's not serious to suggest that Israel did not supply any food or water to the Palestinians when in fact it supplied plenty. Why didn't Egypt supply food and water to the Palestinians? (Before Israel took the border corridor).

What other war can you provide me as an example where a the opposing side provided supplies to its enemy? Does Russia supply Ukraine with food and water? Does Ukraine supply Russia? Did the allies supply the citizens of the Islamic State with food and water? Yes- The Gazans depended on Israel in many ways before they started this war, most of them by their own choice. Did the Germans deliver food and water to the UK during WW-II? Do the Turkish give the Kurds food and water as they bomb them? If the government of Gaza, Hamas, has stocks of food and water, and it does not disburse those to the population, and even steals aid from the population, why is this Israel's problem?

Those organizations you're referring to are anti-Israeli and their statements are political.

The US, who has closer knowledge of what's going on on the ground, says Israel has not committed war crimes.

It's a country that was stolen, gutted and defaced when Israel was created. So yeah, i'm not surprised people like you still think Palestine is not a state...

The scale of torture and killing perpetrated by the IDF and illegal settlers inside Palestinian territory is several orders of magnitude larger, and the right of an occupied people to resist violently is protected by international law.

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And Israel has proven it doesn't either. Not sure what the point is here?

You are correct. But given the normal position people take when it comes to Palestine, I don’t blame GP for misinterpreting! :)

>Because maybe in your mind you think they're savages/less civilized.

No, rather because they want to use the international law to their advantage, not to their detriment.

I think the whole civilized/uncivilized spectrum is just “who has bigger gun” contest.

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Those were ostensibly aid funds; it's not as if Qatar was sending rockets. Do you think Israel should block such aid?

> You're pointing the finger at the State of Palestine and "any Muslim country", when the real supporters of Hamas for years has been Israel and Netanyahu.

You said true things before about Netanyahu propping up Hamas, and he certainly has a lot to answer for.

But you then went way too far in this statement. The "real supporters" or Hamas are not the Israelis or Netanyahu. They existed before Netanyahu, and they're armed and funded to massive degrees by Iran. And while Netanyahu certainly had a certain symbiosis with Hamas, and used them to weaken the PA, Hamas is its own organization; the diversion of the funds that Netanyahu helped secure them to creating the October 7th attack was certainly not anyone's desire except Hamas's own.

This doesn't serve as evidence that the PA would be willing to arrest Hamas members.

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As I understand it 41 is the number of starvations recorded in hospitals. 63k is a highly theoretical "estimate" based on the IPC scale and data from food insecurity in other parts of the world. It seems absurd on its face, since it would imply that an absurdly small fraction of starvations were recorded in hospitals.

This is wrong. They are still reporting daily deaths counts, that counts have been going up. The Grauniad is good about collecting the reports (but bad about other unrelated things).

I was wondering about this. Thanks for the info. Got any links where I can read more?

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How do they enter now? An American journalist was jailed in Israel as well for a video showing the Iranian missiles struck near military targets and Mossad headquarters, where the official line was they were targeting civilians.

What is it?

Alternate explanation: the ICC isn't making up the charges and Israel did commit war crimes and conceal them.

It's the ICC accusing Israel of war crimes.

That’s the whole point of the Geneva convention is that wars cannot be won by any means.

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

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

You might hit a lot of legitimate targets with this, but it's also guaranteed you will impact all the civilians in the area.

Generally, in this entire war (and also long before), Israel is far too quick with the "Human shields"/"collateral damage" argument to my liking, and using it as an excuse to basically disregard considerations for civilians at all.

(It's also instructive to see how different the hostages and palestinian civilians are treated in IDF considerations, despite both groups technically being "human shields")

The ICC doesn't claim 41 deaths were the result of war crimes. That claim is made by an irrelevant Wikipedia article that is undergoing an edit war. It was recently switched from "62,413 conservative estimate" to "41+"

ICC doesn't claim how many deaths are due to war crimes. GP is purposefully sowing misinformation

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>unless something is documented in a very specific gate-keeper approved way

Using strict process and critical methodology is the only want to approximate truth.

> observable reality right before our own eyes.

We don't observe reality correctly with our eyes. We (including you and me) are naked monkeys. Petty, vindictive, and biased. Palestinians and Israeli Jews are just like us but live in a cesspool of religion, anger and violent history.

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Pretty sure even Israel has said the Gaza health ministry’s numbers are usually correct. They have also been found to be generally correct in the past.

Lastly the lower death count is the official health ministry number but the higher estimates are from others, e.g. The Lancet.

This isn't a claim you can drop without some very convincing source.

source?

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This is completely false. Gaza Health Ministry provides the most accurate data. You could also just go on X or TikTok and see dozens of Palestinians murdered by the IDF every single day.

> Gaza Health Ministry is an unreliable source

There is no reason to doubt their numbers other than Israel says so. All reputable sources have found their numbers to be historically accurate.

If foreign journalists could report from there we would have more reliable sources.

Why don’t we have reliable sources?

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“No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.” Bezalel Smotrich

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/08/israel...

If you’re looking for death estimates there are other sources. The Lancet estimated 160K (at least IIRC) a month or two ago.

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Both sides are using the border as a bargaining chip. Both sides are complicit.

I don't think Israel controlled the Rafah border in the start of the war which is when they made their declaration of not allowing aid.

Genuine question, how would they go out?

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Actually, most reports are that the US is the one that pressured Lebanon not to join the ICC, to prevent the ICC from having jursidiction over warcrimes the IDF comits in Lebanon/

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I would totally get behind ICC charges against Hezbollah. Bad actors need consequences.

From the announcement:

>decisions allowing or increasing humanitarian assistance into Gaza were often conditional.

I may be misinterpreting legal jargon, but "conditional" implies Israel often didn't want to allow humanitarian assistance unless Israel received something. This isn't allowed under international law. Relevant excerpt from the announcement:

>This finding is based on the role of Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant in impeding humanitarian aid in violation of international humanitarian law and their failure to facilitate relief by all means at its disposal.

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

> Courts are political entities but this is one that Israel chose to accept

For what it’s worth, Israel signed the Rome Statute establishing the court in 2000 but declared in 2002 it no longer intends to ratify it[1]. (Which, I guess, is marginally better than the US, which has threatened The Hague with military invasion in case any arrests are made[2]. But not by much.) TFA specifically points out that “States are not entitled to challenge the Court’s jurisdiction under article 19(2) prior to the issuance of a warrant of arrest.”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_parties_to_the_Rome_Sta...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

Israel don't recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court. Palestine, however, does, and therefore the ICC consider these allegations within their jurisdiction. A relevant point is that the UK (under the previous Conservative party government) requested the opportunity to dispute the allegations of war crimes based on this complication, but the new British government did not choose to continue with the objection. No other countries have made objections.

> Courts are political entities but this is one that Israel chose to accept and recognize the authority of

As far as i am aware, this is a false statement. Israel has been opposed to the ICC since its inception (originally because the first version had a judge selection mechanism they thought was biased against them, although i am sure there are other reasons they object, especially relating to their settlements).

Perhaps you are confusing the ICC with the ICJ, which are totally different things.

Neither Israel nor the de-facto government of Gaza they are fighting ever accepted the authority of the ICC; neither has signed the Rome Treaty.

The ICC authority is being derived from the Palestinian Authority applying for membership and the Court deciding earlier in a 2-1 decision that Palestine is a state, the PA is the legitimate government of Palestine, and that Gaza is territory under its jurisdiction.

> Israel chose to accept and recognize the authority of

Israel never ratified the Rome statute. The US withdrew but Israel never ratified it in the first place.

> It has a history of being very transparent in its decisions and is widely recognized as being neutral and fair in their decision making process

There is a long section on criticism against the ICC, not just from Israel, that suggests otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

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I once had the honor to attend a lecture by a prosecutor of the ICC.

Out of all lawyers/attorneys/prosecutors/judges that I met in my life, that one was the one that I would judge to bet he most idealistic and justice motivated (admittedly based on my gut instinct); a very rare breed.

It's good that there are such institutions with a good purpose, staffed with good people. Bad faith actors - including war criminals - will of course claim agendas (other than bringing justice), deny jurisdiction etc. but it is a good starting point to have them. The next step is to strive to give these organizations enough "teeth" to execute.

The "individual bully" problem needs some addressing, a solution to that remains outstanding.

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Perhaps I'm cynical enough to suggest the Court had good reason to overlook the matter—fear of personal retribution.

> And the only counterweight for a person accused of genocide

The ICC has not accused anyone of genocide. It does have juridsiction over personal criminal responsibility for gdnocide, but so far, nothing on that front has been mentioned.

South africa is suing israel at the icj alleging state responsibility for genocide, however that is different from personal responsibility, and different standards of evidence and procedures apply. Its also a totally separate court system.

You can claim anything, but i don't think it means much if you don't back it up with some arguments.

Like this is basically only the second time that a sitting head of state of a functioning country has had a warrant issued against them. Its fairly unprecedented. I don't agree with the claims the icc is biased against israel, but the fact they are acting at all certainly shows they aren't biased for them.

> what do you mean by 'invite to the table'? it's a criminal court, so it's going to deal with criminals

"Criminals" in this context is meaningless. Please hear me out.

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

This means that those agreements are no more valid or better or righteous than the countries that enter into them. If the nations involved share certain basic principles and make an agreement that aligns with those principles, the enforcement of these "laws" would come from those nations that are party to the treaty.

BUT - if one nation changes its mind, or changes its internal laws or decides "nah, no thanks" then how do you enforce these so-called "laws"? Do the other nations declare war on this nation?

It gets even worse than that. Because the very concept of "International Law" contains a logical contradiction.

The idea is that we are going make war (force, violence, death, destruction, conflict) subject to some kind of rules. The problem is, you can't. You can have two parties to a conflict agree to certain things: like not to murder civilians, or prisoners etc. if it can be helped. But at the end of the day it's an agreement that doesn't have any kind of binding power or significance because the idea of war means that two groups have decided that they can't reach any kind of rational agreement and so they have resorted to violent conflict.

War, by definition, is the absence of law. The absence of reason. The breakdown of civilization. It comes about when two groups cannot reason with one another; cannot agree with one another on what the rules ought to be.

Law is not a concept that comes out of nowhere. It is the idea that in order to protect individual rights and liberty, the element of force and violence is going to be taken out of civil existence and placed into the hands of a monopoly: the government, which sets the rules and enforcement mechanisms around when force is and is not justifiable within their respective operating jurisdictions.

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

My thesis is that a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights. That the dictatorship has everything to gain by getting the free nation to agree to what its evil desires want, while the free nation has only things to lose (through compromise, which is part and parcel of coming to terms).

That's what I mean by "invite to the table."

Imagine the US having to face consequences for Iraq. One of the most fucked up collection of war crimes and violations of laws of war in the 21st century. The average American now thinks "we shouldn't have gone into Iraq" but has no idea the reputation the US has in the rest of the world because of this act

For international law to "rule" over anything, it should start by having an enforcement arm that isn't 98% the US military.

US citizens/nationals/residents have rights that would be violated by an international court. For example, you can't have due process (as required by US law), a speedy trial, or a jury trial at the ICC. This makes the idea of handing people over to the ICC not only forbidden but wrong for obvious reasons.

Surely you don't expect people to give up these very fundamental rights so they could be tried in an international court?

The only law is what you have the capability to enforce.

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It looks like ICC is not part of the fantastic rules based order.

If that were true, the US wouldn't be able to extradite anyone to Mexico, where they do not use jury trials.

Constitutional restrictions on prosecution in the United States do not apply to foreign criminal justice systems.

True, and this more than highlights the great divide across the globe on the matter, it screams it out. One can only guess what the ramifications will be.

Yet they insist that other countries should cooperate with the court

Sure, and in American courts you can appear just for the purposes of disputing jurisdiction without submitting oneself to it.

Because it works. Well, it used to work- today, I think it has lost all its value. Good riddance.

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The word has never, in its history, been used for anything other than racism against Jews. There are Semitic languages, not people.

> Due to the root word Semite, the term is prone to being invoked as a misnomer by those who incorrectly assert (in an etymological fallacy) that it refers to racist hatred directed at "Semitic people" in spite of the fact that this grouping is an obsolete historical race concept. Likewise, such usage is erroneous; the compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass (lit. 'Jew-hatred'), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone

The Romani people for example (derogatorily called "gypsies". The term "gyp"—to scam—derives from stereotypes of Romani people) faced some of the most gruesome programs in history before facing the Romani Genocide in WW2. Yet we rarely talk about antiziganism the way we talk about antisemitism and people still casually throw around terms like "gyp"

> Not to mention there are more semitic people than Jews.

Accurate, but irrelevant. The meaning of anti-semitic has always specifically been hatred of Jews.

Does Israels actions over the years have any impact on how Jews are treated elsewhere?

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The thing is, the term "Semite" is (except in very archaic contexts) pretty much dictionary-only.

It exists, and has semantic validity. But it does not in any way describe a group that has ever had any kind of common identity. Or as Wikipedia (itself a kind of a dictionary) puts it:

    The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping "Semitic languages" in linguistics.

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Antisemitism specifically refers to hatred of Jews. It doesn't matter whether it's the most accurate term given that it's anti-semitism; that's still what the term means.

Yep, it was House Resolution 1449 if anyone is curious. Really scary times to see our freedoms eroded like this:

https://x.com/RepRashida/status/1859362185178439786

So, just to be clear, you think any country that's invaded should just immediately surrender?

So if I invade the US tomorrow with a sharpened stick, they have to hand their country over because any kind of defence is immoral?

It’s weaponized antisemitism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaponization_of_antisemitis...

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It was changed to this by HN mods:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42205908

They've worked really hard at it.

Israel for instance has a special relationship with Germany because of remorse for the 1940s. This incident in the 1970s

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

further gives Germany a reason to crack down on pro-Palestinian protestors. Although supporters of the Palestinians have not staged international attacks for a long time the history of this in the 1970s explains why my Uni suddenly instituted a clear bag policy at sports games a few weeks after the lid blew off in Gaza last year. (When I started doing sports photography at the beginning of the semester I could pack a big camera bag and even take extra lenses)

Also Israel has a high GDP and involvement in international trade, academia, etc. Israel has 50x the GDP per head of Rwanda so they have a large impact in terms of Intel's Haifa office, Teva Pharmaceuticals, Sodastream, etc. My thesis advisor traveled to Tel Aviv a lot to work with collaborators.

They’re a western bastion in very close proximity to the Middle East, with a cultural and religious tie to a not insignificant number of Americans. It’s also a wealthy country.

The Scofield Bible created ardent Christian zionists in the South among evangelicals.

Israel basically uses them to manipulate DC, whilst its allies in media ensure that Christians getting spat at in Jerusalem isn't widely reported.

> don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics

The simple reason is that global politics (at the UN) led to the partition of the Mandate, against the will of entire regions, which, right now, represent 30% of world's population. Besides, anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism always rears its very ugly head during this conflict, especially in the US.

Subsequently, the lack of stability in the Middle East did Israel no favours in how it is perceived, even if it may not be solely its fault (it isn't).

Plus, the silencing of voices (particularly against patently unfounded claims such as, "the most moral army", "anti-Israelism is anti-Semitism", "the only democracy in the middle east") themselves come with their own Streisand Effect.

Also, socio-culturally, after Tibet & Cuba, it is one of the last/few remaining geo-political global movements with the added disadvantage of cutting through all 3 major Abrahamic religions.

> I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics.

Here are some of my favorite sources on that! These are all leftist and pro-Palestinian sources, but they are academic and studied. These are about why Israel is important to the "interests of the USA" (ie, what those with power to decide national interests think).

* “Framing Palestine: Israel, the Gulf states, and American power in the Middle East" by Adam Hanieh https://www.tni.org/en/article/framing-palestine

* The first chapter of "Palestine: A Socialist Introduction", “How Israel Became the Watchdog State: US Imperialism and the Middle East" by Shireen Akram-Boshar. The publisher Haymarket is giving away the ebook for free. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1558-palestine-a-social...

* "No, the US Doesn’t Back Israel Because of AIPAC" by Joseph Massad https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-the-us-doesnt-back-israe...

> I don't understand how a tiny country like Israel has become so important in global politics. By population Rwanda is ~30% larger than Israel.

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

Think about the crusader states[!] and Taiwan. You'll see a pattern there. Israel was important for the British, now the Americans and will be important for the next hegemon. It's a very old strategy used by empires to control whole regions. Having a whole "country" beats having a military base or an air-craft carrier by orders of magnitudes.

!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaNVTvZm8JI&t

According to Sachs, Israel has masterfully manipulated US influence to extend its global reach, primarily through AIPAC's incredibly efficient lobbying - spending just hundreds of millions to secure billions in aid and trillions in military spending. Netanyahu's strategy has been particularly clever, pushing the US to overthrow Middle Eastern governments that oppose Israeli policies, as seen with Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Through campaign financing, Israel has basically bought out Congress for surprisingly little money, ensuring the US consistently backs them internationally - like vetoing UN resolutions that favor Palestinians. This US shield is so strong that when the UN voted on Palestinian self-determination, only the US, Israel, and a couple other countries opposed it. Even when Biden sets boundaries for Israeli actions, they just ignore them without consequences. The whole system's genius lies in how Israel's managed to maintain its policies despite global opposition, though Sachs thinks this might backfire by making Israel too isolated and blocking any chance of a two-state solution.

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Because members of the largest religious faith in the world identify with one party to the conflict and the global hegemon supports the other

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History.

Israel is a colony of US imperialism and functions as the US attack dog in the middle east, taking actions and expressing rhetoric in support of US hegemony that are politically infeasible.

From my weak understanding, it’s the only ally the west (USA) has in the Middle East, so they’re important strategically - for military bases and other reasons I don’t really understand, and so are propped up by financial aid and weapons and other help (intelligence etc?) beyond what would normally happen to a similar country.

Given Israel is the motherland for many Jewish people, plus almost 2.5% of the USA is Jewish, plus there are almost 16 million Jewish people globally, I would imagine that.

How often do people refer to the USA as "America." It's not quite as pedantic as "it's a republic not a democracy," but...

Lol. Thought they were the same. Both in The Hague.

If you make a court under the UN and you trail US' adversaries' (Serbia) leaders (Milosovic), WHILE the US (who we know --thanks Snowden and Assange-- commits plenty of war crimes) does not recognize it: that is the definition of a kangaroo court.

Just for show. Just to provide some veil of legitimacy for the US actions to evil does without the US itself being held to the same standards.

it's a ~~banana~~ kangaroo court because the US turning over soldiers to the ICC would violate their 6th amendment right to a jury trial

There's a large attempt to pin all of this on Netanyahu and his closest cabinet but what he's saying is pretty much supported by nearly all of Israeli society down to individual citizens. I encourage everyone to find people who live in Israel on X and translate their tweets so they can see for themselves.

He is a moderate; which tells you all you need to know about contemporary Israel politics and ethical standards.

Liberal Zionists like to pretend Gallant was the "moderate one" but in reality there is essentially no moderate in current Israeli society, there is only the secular far right and the messianic further right. The two differ only in small derails of their preferred strategy when using the military to ethnically cleanse Gaza. There is no significant coalition that recognizes basic human rights for Palestinians.

He is a member of Netanyahu's party, which is a right-wing party (though not far-right in terms of Israeli politics).

He is certainly not a moderate, but he is far more trusted than Netanyahu and is considered a moderating and opposing influence on him by many people. Mostly representing the interested of the defence establishment, as opposed to purely political interests (or, if you ask me, as opposed to Netanyahu's only real interest, which is himself).

Some Japanese officers take responsibility very seriously.

>Hitoshi Imamura was a Japanese general who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, and was subsequently convicted of war crimes. Finding his punishment to be too light, Imamura built a replica of his prison in his garden and confined himself there until his death.

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

That said, it seems he is mostly accused of direct criminal liability not superior liability (failing to prevent/punish)

Huh? The vast majority of the world has repeatedly voted at the UN to accuse Israel of related war crimes, and public opinion in the vast majority of the world follows as well. There really is a consensus worldwide, with a minority disagreeing, centered around the US.

There is a strong but not unanimous consensus that Israel is committing war-crimes and enforcing an apartheid state in the territories it occupies. There is consternation over whether Israel's actions constitute genocide.

That said, I think it's fair to assume that people from the US and other Israel-allied nations are disproportionately represented on Hacker News. So, we should not expect the global consensus to be reflected here.

But I think think this topic both (1) is on topic for HackerNews given Israel's outsized prevalence in the tech industry, (2) has geopolitical implications that I think are worth discussing.

Either way, HackerNews is an outlier in terms of the quality of the discussion, among social media or forums where people will argue both for and against Israel's actions. While I am very much on the "against Israel's actions" side, I do think there is value in this discussion, and so I am happy this topic is here on HackerNews.

A quick check of your recent HN comments proves to me that you have only ever researched / trusted a single narrative and talking about this with you won't be very productive.

I think you would find it useful, even for supporting your current arguments more substantially, to read any of the following (in order of recommendation):

    - The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
    - The Holocaust Industry
    - Except for Palestine

The biggest condition behind US aid to Jordan and Egypt is them continuing friendly relations with Israel. In 1970s when this aid was started- this condition was made very explicit by USA.

So in other words, these two at least are nothing but indirect aid to Israel.

You could ask the same questions about that yes, but whataboutism does not answer the questions here.

For Ethiopia it's flagged as humanitarian aid, and likely for Jordan as a result of the neighbouring Syria war.

None of that is arms though, and critically more than the aid, why the legislation?

What justifies making it illegal to stop investing in a country despite it's actions? Surely that's a commercial decision rather than a legislative one?

We gave Pakistan and Iran a few billion dollars in military aid a while back. What we got in return was a Bangladesh genocide and an Islamic revolution.

Lesson learned: arms sales can be used to ideologically justify butchering civilians if the government receiving that aid is not held accountable.

> If I were a senior Israeli or Hamas leader I’d avoid the place for a couple of decades in case of sealed charges.

If the Netherlands granted diplomatic immunity to said leaders before their visit, and then decided to arrest them, that by itself would be an act of war.

And even worse, it would ruin basically the only treaty every country has agreed to - the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

> The Dutch have a very lackadaisical attitude to law

What do you mean by this specifically?

The EU has a mutual defence clause, and one of the EU's member states, France, has nuclear strike capabilities, including at least one submarine with nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles on constant patrol somewhere in the oceans.

I doubt it would get to it, but if the US legitimately invades the Netherlands to rescue war criminals, France is more likely to side with the Netherlands than with the US.

A significant portion of the US economy uses Israeli developed cybersecurity products. I wonder if there are any backdoors Mossad uses to consolidate influence.

I don't think I've seen any pro-Israeli post in top since the beginning of the war. Definitely anything I submitted was flagged to death almost immediately, even if it was hacker-ish (say, the analysis of the Hamas statistics). You can say of course that users decide what they want, but for political stories at least I don't think it is straightforward

Dang, it's a serious problem when discussions like this result in any serious attempts to engage from one side getting flagged to death.

That's what happens here, and on any news involving the Gaza War, for quite some time. To someone who doesn't use [showdead] this creates an impression of partiality in this community which is not borne out by reality.

Which makes Hacker News appear complicit in supporting that point of view.

If you're going to keep overriding the flag mechanism and letting these posts hit the front page, you need to disable flagging of individual posts except by you or another moderator (if there is one?) after manual review. The status quo is unfair.

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Discussion about Trump winning had like 2k comments. There was also that Supreme Court ruling from earlier in the year about how presidents can't be held liable for criminal conduct or whatever.

HN is almost certainly not the place for it.

HN is a much better place than most of the Internet to discuss politics, this I know.

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https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/5077358-new-evidence-s...

Hamas sources have also confimed this.

The fact that it's the only country he's been able to visit since the warrant was issued (aside from North Korea) indicates that, by and large -- it's working as intended.

It would be politically very risky for any European democracy to not enforce this arrest warrant, much more so than for South Africa or Mongolia. Israel is not popular among the public in Europe, and if a government invites him for a political visit, and don’t arrest him, that government will have to pay for that in the next election (and probably sooner, with mass demonstration and public unrest).

Now, lets talk about Putin’s visit to South Africa. So Putin was scheduled to visit a BRICS summit in South Africa despite the ICC arrest warrant. South Africa claimed they wouldn’t enforce the arrest warrant. People got very mad. South Africa, in response, declared that Putin would only participate in the summit remotely, where the arrest warrant couldn’t be enforced.

Now this was obviously a way to bypass the ICC warrant, and the stunt did not go well in the general public. In the next election the ANC, the governing party at the time, lost their parliamentary majority for the first time since South Africa became a democracy in 1994. Now South Africans had several other reasons to ditch the ANC, but this stunt certainly didn’t help.

Oh wait, South Africa is just one country.

In a great many other countries, including nearly all Western countries, the warrant is still in effect.

And even in the South African case: the government's decision was considered quite tenuous, which is why Putin cancelled his visit, in was was considered to be a major diplomatic setback at the time. So at the end of the day -- the warrant still had significant effect, and fulfilled its purpose.

Ironic considering that South Africa was the one who pursued this case against Israel.

If they get arrested it’d be of historical impact. These warrants mean little really.

So let it be discussed on HistorianNews

It's not a significant update. When the evergiven got stuck in the suez canel; if a court issued an arrest warrant for the captain that wouldn't have a historical impact.

In a hundred years from now, the leaders of Isreal that people talk about will be the first, the last and the second to last. Similar to how when people talk about the Roman Empire (~500 year span) it's just Cesear.

Eh…

I’ve never heard of a warrant being more than a footnote in history. Results are what ends up in the history books.

I agree, so long as the people who flagged a given submission or post should also be displayed, for the same reason of transparency. Also the items a user flags should be included in their profile, for the same reason of transparency.

In the interest of full disclosure and the same transparency, I say this as someone who has had such a flag-bombed submission saved, an NPR report about one of the first systemic uses of gun-armed, AI-powered flying drones to mass-shoot people (not to mention that location targeting for the shootings is largely AI-driven as well). I struggle to think of a good reason to flag that as off-topic for Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42199969

What you should do is reduce the degree of bombast and aggro in your comments which trash the discussion no matter what side of the various issues you happen to fall on. It's especially against your own interests to argue like that when you're arguing for an unpopular or contrarian viewpoint - it's not going to get heard if you yell it at everyone.

Dang has already addressed this:

> It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours.

As an "outside observer" to the insanity in this thread, I think your post and others like it only solidify Dang's point on this. In your eyes there will never be an opposing viewpoint to yours that you don't consider "anti-Israel". It'll always seem as such to you regardless of any rational explanation.

Edit: this also goes for the poster that is indiscriminately going around throwing "zionist" labels against anyone that opposes their views. Which once again, solidifies Dang's point. Both you and they will always proclaim "bias!"

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Would you mind giving a few examples?

I looked at a few myself, many are off-topic, or engage in whataboutism, or openly supported war crimes like collective punishment. Others are plain insults or racism.

Stories about divisive topics are routinely flagged from all sides.

It's common, if not inevitable, for people who feel strongly about $topic to conclude that the system (or the community, or the mods, etc.) are biased against their side (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). One is far more likely to notice whatever data points that one dislikes because they go against one's view and overweight those relative to others (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). This is probably the single most reliable phenomenon on this site. Keep in mind that the people with the opposite view to yours are just as convinced that there's bias, but they're sure that it's against their side and in favor of yours.

I could never say there's no bias—unconscious bias is a thing, for example—but I can tell you that we work hard to be fair, have been doing that for years, and there hasn't been any change in our practices.

One of the most absurdist takes I've seen even on the context of this topic, which brings out the worst in all of us.

It's called sovereignty. A set of sovereign nations should absolutely be able to decide that they want to form a court and arrest someone for war crimes if they set foot in their country. It's not like the court is sending agents to non-participating countries to arrest people. If the US govt decides they want to arrest e.g. Putin the second he sets foot on US soil, it's their right to do so. In fact it does so, just look at the FBI most wanted fugitives list, or Interpol red notices. Same goes here.

The prosecuted are free not to set foot in participating countries.

He's already been saying he's going to do that.

Man, Trump isn't going to shit about leaving NATO. He'll moan about some countries not spending enough, that's about it.

Leaving NATO would mean closing US-bases in Europe overnight, not getting valuable intel from partners in NATO, jeopardizing US defense deals, and a million other things.

As always, it's grandstanding from Trump to get some extra bucks from his allies.

US pulling out of NATO would likely embolden China to make a move on Taiwan. Seeing how much of the US economy revolves around technology, I really don't think there's any other option than to defend Taiwan, as it stands. Sure - Europe also depends on chips from Taiwan, but they'd also be swamped in the Ukraine/Russia conflict.

Right. Your opening paragraph made it seem like you thought this was administration dependent.

Few things bother me more than people who try to claim Biden/Harris was “good for ukraine” or “good for palestine”.

There is pretty much no way to enforce so-called "international law" other than through sanctions or direct military action. Germany is not going to arrest Netanyahu if he visited the country. What would be the consequence of that? Nothing of substance, maybe a sternly worded letter from the ICC, but there are no effective and practical means of forcing them to act.

Obliged by who? The US can choose to wipe their ass with whatever they signed and arbitrarily say NO to a request they don't like. Who's gonna hold them accountable for breaking their signed agreement?

Wasn't there the same pitfall with the League of Nations?

Of course. Isn't it obvious how in history books the "good guys" were always those with the most guns who ended up defeating the guys with less guns, who lost and were always the bad guys, 100% of the time? What a strange coincidence.

US interests is a very broad category, it frequently doesn’t get its way.

There’s tit for tat involved where things might escalate to the point where the US kills some people via airstrikes, but it simply can’t escalate everything to a full on war.

what exactly do you think would happen differently if you took the US out of the picture?

Are there any credible reports (not from US or Israel) of Hamas raping Israelis? I've always thought that was empty warmongering propaganda.

correct

Yes, basically McCarthyism. Did you see the USA bill where the Treasury secretary can unilaterally designate any nonprofit a "terrorist organization" and remove their funding?

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I mean, yes. I can understand why protests happen, because our own govt is not currently acting in our interests.

Russian leadership was issued warrants some time ago.

The ICC also issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova last year, and for Sokolov, Kobylash, Shoigu and Gerasimov earlier this year.

> Considering Hamas live-streamed their atrocities the ICC could have done this a year ago...

Netanyahu's actions have similarly been quite widely live-streamed.

Egypt is not allowed to bring any cargo into Gaza, at the behest of both Israel and the USA. They are rewarded for their compliance with international aid.

"The Rafah Border Crossing is the only crossing point between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. It is located on the international border that was confirmed in the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty. Only passage of persons takes place through the Rafah Border Crossing; as such, the Egypt–Gaza border is only open to the passage of people, not of goods. All cargo traffic must go through Israel, usually through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossing on the Gaza–Israel barrier."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Gaza_border#:~:t....

Because they don't want Israel's prisoners to spill over into their country. Israel has controlled what can pass the border since 2007 or so.