Israel/Palestine post 10/7 - follow-on events/thoughts as relate to other countries

The children of Gaza shouldn't have to pay with their lives, and neither should the children of anywhere.

I mean you were saying that the negotiations should be done by an entity other than the US. Those negotiations are apparently being attempted by Egypt and Qatar, so it seemed exactly what you were suggesting.

Was I?

fwiw I think the Qanon thing the tweet was talking about was one of the protesters yelling “Epstein didn’t kill himself!” Which is obviously not an idea exclusive to Qanon, but is a sort of weird thing to yell at that meeting.

What is the reference to qanon? What am I to take from this video???

― plax (ico), Thursday, January 11, 2024 4:17 PM bookmarkflaglink

Honestly, there is an antisemitism problem on the Left. The Israel/Palestine situation has revealed an explosion of it.

It's a problem in the US because the fascist Right has stepped in to fill the vacuum. Left leaning and liberal people like me are pretty disgusted by both sides. I do truly think that it does not help the cause of a Palestinian state. But getting tripped up over word salads and each side accusing the other of bad faith is just not helpful imo.

XxpThat is a very weird thing to yell. I didn't hear it but if it's in there it only adds to the general inscrutability of this 1:21 clip and attaching a fractured multi authored commentary to it.

Xp that sounds possible but I'm not sure why you think this clip speaks to any of that let alone evidences it in any way

Was I?

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Thursday, January 11, 2024 4:20 PM bookmarkflaglink

you posted this:

This is a very good piece.

While the martyrdom of over two million innocent Palestinian civilians continues, despite the temporary ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, a bigger question looms: who will run what remains of the Gaza Strip after the guns fall silent? Netanyahu has declared that he wants the IDF to keep indefinite security control of the strip but no one in Israel wants to assume all the responsibilities of an occupying power again.

Meanwhile, his own grip on power at home is weakening. He faces strong popular opposition for his failure to prevent the horrendous Hamas attack and, more generally, for making Israel the most dangerous place in the world for Jews to live. He is also embroiled in a corruption trial on charges—all of which he denies—including fraud, breaching public trust and accepting bribes. Politically speaking, he is a dead man walking. His days in power are numbered and there is a chance that he will end up in prison. But he is still the prime minister, and his clearly stated aim is to eradicate Hamas and to prevent it from returning to power ever again. So, who will govern the Gaza Strip after the Israeli army leaves?

&
This ghastly war has also exposed the ruthless hypocrisy of the western leaders, their blatant double standards, their indifference to Palestinian rights and their complicity in Israel’s war crimes.

&

This is not a conflict between two equal sides but between an occupying power and a subjugated population. And there is absolutely no military solution to this conflict. Israel cannot have security without peace with its neighbours. A negotiated political compromise, as in Northern Ireland, is the only way forward. That settlement required external intervention, as does this one. Here, however, the US cannot serve as the sole broker because its pronounced bias in favour of Israel would make it a dishonest one. Ever since 1967, it has arrogated to itself a monopoly over the Israeli-Palestinian peace process but failed to put pressure on Israel to compromise. What is needed now is a new international coalition led by the UN which includes the US and EU but also Arab states and members of the global south.

Pretty bleak conclusion but very comprehensive.
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Wednesday, December 27, 2023 3:00 AM bookmarkflaglink

Yeah that’s a lot more comprehensive and powerful than a couple of countries.

Oh for sure. It was responding to the idea that the US cannot broker a peace without the help of Arab states.

I didn't think the previous ceasefire was solely brokered by the US anyway.

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/desantis-israel-debate-gaza-palestinian-removed-rcna133428

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested Wednesday that he would support the "mass removal of Palestinians" from Gaza if Israel's leaders decide "they need to do that."

“We gotta support Israel. In word and in deed, in public and in private, and they need to be able to finish the job," DeSantis said at a CNN debate with Nikki Haley. "I think to be a good ally, you back them in the decisions that they’re making with respect to Gaza."

When pressed about his stance on the mass removal of civilians from Gaza, he replied: "As president, I am not going to tell them to do that. I think there’s a lot of issues with that. But if they make the calculation that to avert a second Holocaust, they need to do that — I think some of these Palestinian Arabs, Saudi Arabia should take some, Egypt should take some."

Despicable

I had been thinking about this all day. This struck so many chords with me, related to what I have talked about in the other threads. I hadn’t watched much more than a couple of clips but I read her Matrix Chambers profile and noticed that she was involved in the ICJ case against Serbia as well.

Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh was inspired to become a lawyer after learning about Majella O’Hare, a 12 y/o child from Armagh who was shot in the back & killed by a British soldier in 1976

She went crying to her mother and her mother said, ‘Do something about it’

Now look where she is https://t.co/yK5irb4s9r pic.twitter.com/HwlO1aTE1g

— Michael Magee (@michaelmagee__) January 11, 2024

Speaking of the fascist Right

xp

I didn't think tweet particularly clear either.

I did see a vid from a few weeks ago, also from SF at some kind of housing forum, which I think fits the description much more than this one. I didn't post it, but I'll try find it

Last night the Oakland City Council voted on a resolution to call for a ceasefire.

A city council member tried to insert language condemning Hamas.

This was the reaction… pic.twitter.com/r7aTb2mkrQ

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 28, 2023

It was Oakland not SF. I think if a clip is being posted suggesting the left has a qanon problem, this might be closer to it than the one posted earlier, which wasn't all that clear.

I didn't post it at the time, as a single council meeting in Oakland isn't necessarily representative of anything, and I don't know if the people in the video are on the left or not either, but it does wander into it "Hamas didn't do it but it was justified anyway" territory

I've read South Africa's petition in the IJC for genocide. Pretty horrific allegations. The religious rhetoric quoted there is pretty appalling.

It condems the Hamas attack and reiterates several times the need for unconditional release of hostages. That is not part of the formal proceeding for legal reasons that are explained in the petition.

Calling upon all member states to do everything they can to prevent further crimes against humanity seems like a pretty unassailable goal.

"Honestly, there is an antisemitism problem on the Left. The Israel/Palestine situation has revealed an explosion of it."

But again pulling this from an account which does concern trolling on the left, isn't interested in the way the left talks about this, is against South Africa presenting their case to the ICJ in the first place, and likes peddling the misinformation you are so worried about is a cack-handed way of showing it.

And the left isn't in power in the US or the UK. If anything it's people with centre and left leaning politics who are. What are they doing to stop this genocide?

I don't know if the people in the video are on the left or not either, but it does wander into it "Hamas didn't do it but it was justified anyway" territory

― anvil, Friday, 12 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

I've seen that clip contested on twitter in a fairly civilised discussion that I've no idea how to find it now.

In any case the "left" has all of these factions, a lot of whom don't like each other to the extent they aren't seen by the other as having left-wing politics.

We sure live in a fragmented, burning world.

*contested by people saying "they are not on the left" but I'd rather march than fact check every single thing someone does on a video thousands of miles away to give as 'evidence' of a problem, which has actually been documented and written about in left wing circles.

I think giving the example of things happening in local political processes is always going to misleading because it is often depicting rooms full of people who absolutely hate each other for interpersonal reasons that are baroque and completely unreadable to an outsider but acted out through the ostensible litigation of various 'political' disputes. Who knows what kind of internecine conflict is getting acted out in any of these videos, possibly to the degree it is for many actors overshadowing what they 'seem' to be talking about? I appreciate that is true to more or less degree in all contexts (ilx!) but local politics is an especially determinative and poisonous one.

We've already gone through this whole process of the vilification of the left in the UK. It works, if you want it to work, and you end up with Keir Starmer.

For sure, I'd largely agree with that. I didn't post the video when I saw it originally, and its probably more appropriate for the "is this anti-semitism" thread anyway if it were to be posted.

I only posted it this time because I thought it fit the description better than the video posted earlier which wasn't all that clear. I agree that those people aren't necessarily on the left, thats probably largely subjective anyway

I agree this thread isn't really appropriate for the video, but the conversation cropped up here rather than the anti-semitism thread, which isn't always easy when things overlap and go in wrong place

It's fine, 3/4 threads are overlapping now. Hardly a chaotic situation.

And the left isn't in power in the US or the UK. If anything it's people with centre and left leaning politics who are. What are they doing to stop this genocide?

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, January 11, 2024 11:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

Clearly not enough, and not urgently enough.

There has been some reporting that Congress is introducing a bill, sponsored by Sanders, to make aid to Israel conditional for the first time ever.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/congress-israel-gaza-biden-bernie-sanders_n_65a00b0fe4b0fbd2bc05f39d

I haven't followed this closely, so would be interested if there are updates.

This is a good step. I hope to see more about that if these efforts progress.

Isaac Chotiner does another brief interview with another hideous man. https://t.co/7j4qc5hIyc pic.twitter.com/cMcppGFui8

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) January 12, 2024

Who gets shown, who does not.

You failed to live stream #SouthAfrica’s case for the #Palestinians yesterday. Let’s call it as it is, you are bias & your one sided prejudice for Israel is appalling & blatant for all to see. Shame on you @SkyNews https://t.co/6PkkBJVmQm

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) January 12, 2024

There's a guy in the video expressing his dissent with the speaker by trying to put up horns behind him - I'm pretty comfortable calling that antisemitism?

Though yeah the link to Qanon is being assumed there - it's in an older tradition (of hideous antisemitism)

Sky news did broadcast the proceedings yesterday, so I can retract that last tweet. Good on them.

Yeah I was going to say, there’s plenty on their account about it.

BBC News, not so much.

https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1c/k1c10lsjoq
is today's proceedings from the UN website.

Is giving a testimony riddled with lies automatically perjury?

Basically saying because the ICJ did not punish Serbia for the genocide in Bosnia, they should absolve Israel too.

Important to note that there has never been a genocide ruled by the ICJ and the closest we came to it was the Serbia’s conviction of failure to prevent genocide.

— Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura (@Rrrrnessa) January 12, 2024

Trying to unpack that statement "there has never been a genocide ruled by the ICJ". I wonder if she is saying that the ICJ ruled that Serbia had not committed genocide, and maybe that the ICJ has not found any other country to have committed genocide?

The ICJ found that the Srebrenica massacre was a genocide. And that Serbia failed to prevent genocide, violated the Genocide Convention by failing to transfer Ratko Mladić to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and failed to comply with provisional measures.

Apparently the Netherlands were held by the Dutch Supreme Court also to have been partially responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, but apparently that was not in the ICJ. (A bit confusing to search for as both seem to be referred to shorthand as "the Hague")

The shorthand of the Hague is very confusing especially given how distinct the legal powers of both courts are

Yeah it is, I’ve always called it “The Hague” but it’s not very specific. The court itself hasn’t been established very long, the main proceeding a lot of people (including me!) think of first and have probably seen the most coverage of is this:

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

but that was an ad hoc proceeding not run by the ICJ? The person tweeting that is Bosnian, so likely she is referring to that discrepancy.

The German federal govt releases a statement saying the genocide accusation against Israel has "no basis whatsoever" and that it intends to intervene as a third party in the ICJ hearing.

No reference to Palestinians, just "Israel's operation in Gaza."https://t.co/pTDvcZlsrH

— Ruairí Casey (@Ruairi_Casey) January 12, 2024

Genocide experts on the case

I think of the Hague as meaning more the ICC because I tend to think of 'the Hague' as referring to bringing war criminals to trial (as in when people say X should be extradited to the Hague) and explicitly to do with humanitarian law unlike the icj. Despite the icj being the far more long standing court I think most people tend to hold this association as primary.

I only managed to watch Shaw today and found some of the submission to be almost surreally unconvincing, but winning legal arguments often have similar casuistic inversions so I would be interested in the views of someone with expertise to explain why he continually sought to assert that hammas are guilty of genocide in the context that genocide is so highly specific it can very rarely be applied and to do so undermines it's singular place within humanitarian law. I wondered if this was because the argument otherwise suggested that existing case law meant that article one could never be enforced but that is very idle speculation.

Sorry I wrote on my phone which apparently doesn't allow punctuation or separate sentences

Of the ICJ's 192 cases, there have been 4 main groups of cases in the ICJ under the Genocide Convention so far.

Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Yugoslavia (and later Croatia v. Serbia) were the first genocide cases brought there. Gambia v. Myanmar (Rohingya), Ukraine v. Russia and South Africa v. Israel are ongoing.

Since the Serbia genocide cases are the only ones that have reached conclusion, that is probably what she means.

I understood that and agree with you that 'the Hague' as a descriptor is unhelpful because it could potentially refer to either and some people may have arbitrary reasons for assuming it refers to one in cases where it means to refer to the other. It's also very funny how news sites explainer type pages all become aware of the same ambiguities in their reporting in unison.

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

I don’t expect anything from this trial but this was good to see stated.

LIVE UPDATES: Israeli deputy AG says statements from far-right figures calling for intentional civilian harm in Gaza contradict Israeli policy, amount to a criminal offensehttps://t.co/OusEhfFEeV

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) January 12, 2024

I only managed to watch Shaw today and found some of the submission to be almost surreally unconvincing, but winning legal arguments often have similar casuistic inversions so I would be interested in the views of someone with expertise to explain why he continually sought to assert that hammas are guilty of genocide in the context that genocide is so highly specific it can very rarely be applied and to do so undermines it's singular place within humanitarian law. I wondered if this was because the argument otherwise suggested that existing case law meant that article one could never be enforced but that is very idle speculation.

― plax (ico), Friday, January 12, 2024 9:06 AM bookmarkflaglink

I watched part of the opening statement, Malcolm Shaw and the next 3 or 4 counsel that followed him. Admittedly I haven't read Israel's written submission and I'm not suggesting I have expertise.

This in in the framework of a legal case that seeks both a legal finding of genocide and remedies - provisional remedies to prevent genocide, as well as punishment of genocide.

Like a lot of legal strategies, it can be doing multiple things at once. My interpretation of that specific aspect of Shaw's presentation you're asking about was to emphasize that "genocide" under the Convention is a term of legal art with a very specific intent, and to contrast Hamas' 10/7 attack and stated mission to destroy Israel with Israel's stated intention to separate civilian from military targets.

they found thousands of unmarked graves for indigenous children near residential schools all over canada btw. like 2 years ago. https://t.co/yknDfbgFgy

— سماح | 🧚🏾‍♀️support palestinians (@samah_fadil) January 13, 2024

[a long post edited down to a single observation]: there is no correlation between Trudeau’s denial of SA’s case for genocide in Gaza and the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. It’s a pithy little QT but it’s not-correct; Trudeau’s head-in-the-sand re Gaza is indicative of something present-tense and darker than “this PM has a history of ignoring genocides”

I would be interested in the views of someone with expertise to explain why he continually sought to assert that hammas are guilty of genocide in the context that genocide is so highly specific it can very rarely be applied and to do so undermines it's singular place within humanitarian law.

There’s a pretty convincing argument that genocide, as intended by the definition, is more common than people generally acknowledge but, that aside, it has typically been interpreted in a fairly narrow way. Going into a refugee camp and killing everyone because they’re Palestinian would likely be considered genocide. Going into a refugee camp and killing everyone because you have decided they might be Hamas supporters would not. Killing everyone with the aim of forcing people in all the other camps, and towns / cities, to flee to Egypt so you can expand your settlements into their land wouldn’t either. Neither would killing everyone because you have decided they might pose a threat in the future, even if they aren’t now. These are all crimes against humanity and grievous, prosecutable violations of international law, but they’re not considered genocidal acts. I would guess Shaw’s argument is that Hamas kills Israelis because they’re Israelis.

Yet there is the continual denial that Israelis kill Palestinians because they are Palestinians, a denial which is totally contradicted by objective facts

(nor’t arguing with you obv, just stating a salient point)

many people would disagree with that statement. I myself am ambivalent about it. I think there is a lot of prejudicial hate that flows both ways.

The report seems to pretty much present things as I have though, which is that, if you say a bunch of things that sound genocidal and then your army kills a lot of people, it's not exactly a leap to read genocidal intent into it whether or not the numbers reach genocidal proportions. There's no "but October 7 was really extra bad" exception where you no longer have a responsibility to refrain from that. So even if the ultimate goal wasn't really truly genocide, it's hard to take Israel's complaints about the action against it seriously. And the statements of leaders (including Bibi and Gallant, not only the more "fringe" people like Smotrich and Ben Gvir) are going to have a strong impact on how the army fights the war, in a situation where tensions and anger are already going to be extra high. The last thing soliders need to hear in that situation is "the restraints are off."

Namibia telling Germany to fuck off.

Namibia rejects Germany’s Support of the Genocidal Intent of the Racist Israeli State against Innocent Civilians in Gaza

On Namibian soil, #Germany committed the first genocide of the 20th century in 1904-1908, in which tens of thousands of innocent Namibians died in the most… pic.twitter.com/ZxwWxLv8yt

— Namibian Presidency (@NamPresidency) January 13, 2024

[a long post edited down to a single observation]: there is no correlation between Trudeau’s denial of SA’s case for genocide in Gaza and the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada. It’s a pithy little QT but it’s not-correct; Trudeau’s head-in-the-sand re Gaza is indicative of something present-tense and darker than “this PM has a history of ignoring genocides”

― remember how much your mother loves you (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 13 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

I took it as an observation. The West isn't wired to support Palestinians, partly because how they treat minorities and how they became the state they are (in this case Canada).