Biden has already called the indictment "outrageous." [1]. The U.S. Secretary of State has also spoken out against the indictment [2].
Needless to say, they're backing him, and the ICC can't arrest Netanyahu. At worst, the U.S. government will sanction ICC officials as they did under the Trump administration.
I personally can't believe the ICC is equating the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government. What a shameful organization.
The Biden situation is predictable and calls into question the strategy behind the ICC arrest warrants.
First things first: neither the Polizio di Stato, the Garda, nor the RCMP are actually going to arrest Sinwar or Netanyahu. The practical impact of the warrants will be (at least in the near term) negligible.
Concurrently: unlike the ICC Genocide case, which is difficult and unlikely to succeed, the ICC war crimes warrants are probably broadly going to be seen as strong and compelling. Reporting has Biden and his team maneuvering for months to keep any kind of supply lines open to Gaza; he knows firsthand that some of these charges have validity.
But the USA is Israel's most important ally; further, reporting suggests that Biden's team has been the only thing between the current situation and abyss that would kill 3-5x as many civilians. That pushback only functions because of soft power (Israel would not depend on US arms suppliers for indiscriminate bulk bombing, massed land incursions, or supply blockades).
What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront. You can't really do diplomacy wth a world leader while at the same time saying (or implying) that they belong in the Hague.
There's a general vibe where people want international justice to work in simple moral terms, where everyone just lays the truth as they understand it out, a tribunal sorts out the details, and the chips fall as they may. But international law absolutely doesn't work that way; for similar reasons, Assad won't be charged by the ICC for killing half a million Syrians (Syria is not a signatory to the ICC).
Once you accept that the court is fundamentally political, you're left asking: are the politics of this move effective? Will they hasten an end to the conflict, or save lives?
Either way: once the warrants were announced, I think you could have taken bets on what Biden (or literally any other American president in the last 50 years, or any major party candidate for the presidency) would have said, and all the money would be on exactly this. We're not signatories to the ICC to begin with!
(I think Netanyahu is a criminal; the Hague is fine with me, though I think it's more likely he'll do his time in Maasiyahu after the Israelis convict him once his coalition falls apart).
However, Israel is not the USA's most important ally.
The US is not really an ally of Israel at all. The NATO countries are.
Japan and South Korea are. They have US troops and bases. The US does not send troops to fight in Israel's wars. The US just sends money.
Right, my point is that we're most important external input to Israel's decision-making process, not that we depend on them (beyond the political fact that the US electorate broadly supports Israel as an enterprise, and ranks the Gaza war at the bottom of important issues).
Israel was one of the US most important assets in the Middle East. At that time, gas/oil ran the world and it was the energy source. The US is simply stuck with that baggage. Meanwhile China is building solar like there is no tomorrow and essentially creating and monopolizing the new energy source.
> What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront.
He didn't have to say anything about the substance. He could even use them as leverage in negotiations without publicly saying anything about the substance, by conditioning US efforts to get the UNSC to hold them in abeyance (which it explictly can!) conditioned on a cease-fire and concrete steps on aid.
Would it work? Probably not. Would it be better for the US interestd broadly than getting nothing at all while undermining the credibility of an institution that the US, while not a member of, has found practically and diplomatically useful in a number of past cases? Absolutely yes.
> We're not signatories to the ICC to begin with!
We have shut up about, or actively supported, the ICC in many cases, and given the US public nominal goal of a two-state solution demonstrating that international institutions are willing to take on abused on both sides of the conflict without ignoring the legitimate interests or rights of people on either side is something the US ought to be backing rather than burning down.
Everything you're pitching here seems predicated on the idea of breaking off all practical diplomacy with Netanyahu. Which, if you think you can topple Netanyahu, sure, but I imagine there are career diplomats telling the administration that moves like these are as likely to bolster Netanyahu's position as they are to hasten his ouster.
Certainly it is not my contention that the US is consistent with respect to the ICC.
It's a bad situation. I genuinely think that the administration is playing the best it can with the cards it was dealt. I think we're all clear what the counterfactual other administration would be doing.
If it weren't for a large portion of the American public having religious motivation (evangelical protestantism) to support Israel unconditionally, no matter what, then the US would be able to exert considerable pressure on Israel, for instance by threatening to cut off Israel as Israel has been cutting off Gaza. No more arms shipments, no more UN Security Council vetos of any anti-Israel resolution, etc.
But of course this is politically impossible for the US. Near half of the US population would throw an absolute fit.
Evangelicals are a small component of the electorate relative to Israel's support (they're like a quarter of the population, and, of course, they're locked in completely to the opposition party; Democrats don't meaningfully campaign for evangelical votes.)
But unconditional support for Israel is a rare topic with mostly bipartisan agreement from the leadership class. The disagreement from the public is very likely more correlated with age than with the party someone supports.
> Near half of the US population would throw an absolute fit.
But a large chunk of the population is already throwing a fit, and given the spread in views among different age groups, that's a growing chunk of the population.
If by this you mean they're throwing a fit over Israel and Gaza, no, I don't think polling bears this out at all. Even within the context of the schools themselves, protesters are small minorities of the students and faculty. A large chunk of the media is throwing a fit, to be sure!
I think the best way to sum up public opinion from what we know given polling and on-the-ground numbers is that Americans just don't much care about this. We care. But as is so often the case, caring about this issue makes us the weird ones.
The situation is ripe for a new political party that isn't wed to zionism. Opposition to zionism is growing on both the left and the right, particularly among young people, but neither had a party to represent this.
No lasting and significant opposition to Zionism will ever take root. To boil it down to a jingoist set of phrases understandable by the masses would require overt antisemitism.
I.. think I disagree. In a sense, Trump technically laid a foundation for that with a rather clever MAGA phrase. Regardless of what you think about him, his policy or his stance on anything, he showed that there are phrases could be utilized to tap into that section with little effort and are not as easily dismissed.
Now.. those could be attacked as overly nationalistic, but that is a separate discussion.
<< No lasting and significant opposition to Zionism will ever take root.
I think I agree despite (n)'ever' being a really long time. A year is eternity in politics and this year is already pretty crazy. I honestly can't say it is impossible.
I'm hoping that the last year or so will finally deliver a replacement for American FPTP - the Republicans are split between RINOs and MAGA devouts, and the democrats are split too between the centrist and progressives too.
I don't know if it'll actually happen, but this is probably the most likely path towards it, if there is one.
The RINOs are moving towards the welcoming arms of Democrats and the "progressives" don't have a home anywhere as they are barely even tolerated in the Democratic party.
Normally you'd think at least one of the parties would adapt to appeal to the younger generations. Unfortunately I think there is some truth to the idea that Israeli influence is very strong in D.C., so neither party has so much as offered an olive branch to the young.
What the heck does "Opposition to Zionism" even mean? Opposing Zionism is the same as opposing the Irish desire to have Ireland, or the Kiwi desire to have New Zealand.
I suspect you don't know what Zionism is, because otherwise your message makes no sense.
There are at least two dozen countries in that area (mid east) of the world who are, constitutionally and in practice, ethnostates. Their constitution explicitly states that they are an "Arab state" and that their laws are based on Sharia law. Just Google for and read the constitutions of those countries in the Arab league, for example Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Syria, etc. And then there is Iran.
Those who actively claim they are opposed to Israel because it is an ethnostate but are not also actively calling for these other states to be dismantled need to explain why that is not anti-semetic.
There is also the related question on those opposed to Israel because it is a "European settler/colonial" state. A significant majority (66%) of Israel consists of brown people. 25% of Israel is not Jewish, and of the rest (the Jewish population), at least half of those are indigenous to that area, and are, from a racial perspective, just as "non-white" as anyone else from that area.
There are a couple things that set Israel apart from the other countries you listed. Israel gives Jews specifically enumerated privileges, such as a right to citizenship. It also implements an apartheid system in the West Bank — territory it occupies in violation of international law — in which Israelis and Palestinians are subject to two different legal systems. It has withdrawn from Gaza, of course, but it still exerts a high degree of control over it, such as an air and sea blockade.
I don’t know why you think the current demographics of Israel preclude it from being a settler/colonial state. There is a formal effort to attract Jewish settlers. Just a few months ago, there was literally an event in my hometown advertising property in the West Bank to Jewish prospective residents.
Regarding the West Bank/Gaza: My opinion is that settlements should be removed and there needs to be a path to a Palestinian state. An act of good faith would be to remove the settlements unilaterally, unfortunately, that did not work out too well in Gaza. Advertising West Bank property to Jews is, in my opinion, abhorrent, as well as making a bad situation worse.
On what happens in Israel, all Israeli citizens have equal rights. All countries have rules on who can become citizens. Yes, Israel is unique (I think) in the reasons for citizenship. Israel is also unique in its needs for survival. I am not sure if there are other differences, there could very well be.
On the settler/colonial issue: What I find most interesting about this is how vehement many people are in my country (US) on Israel being a settler/colonial state, when, almost without exceptions, they are the ones living on Native land, using Native resources, and participate in a conspiracy to eradicate Native culture (this is anyone in the US who is not a Native American), and are therefor themselves settler/colonists, while it is the Jews who are native to the middle east, whether the 50% who are Mizrahi or the other 50% who are returning to the land their ancestors were kicked out of.
And the Palestinians are also native to that area. The fundamental issue is: Can there be a compromise where each of these peoples get a land of their own, or is the idea of a Jewish state anywhere is what at some point of time was Dar A-Islam unacceptable.
> On the settler/colonial issue: What I find most interesting about this is how vehement many people are in my country (US) on Israel being a settler/colonial state, when, almost without exceptions, they are the ones living on Native land, using Native resources,
The US is undeniably a settler culture. I am outraged at the actions of my ancestors [1] who played a part in that culture. Just because I'm descended from reprehensible people doesn't mean I'm precluded from complaining about reprehensible people today.
> and participate in a conspiracy to eradicate Native culture (this is anyone in the US who is not a Native American), and are therefor themselves settler/colonists
Not saying that the US in the past hasn't been genocidal, but many of the people complaining about Israeli settler culture today are also broadly supportive of current Native American rights issues, which is the opposite of participating in a conspiracy to eradicate their culture.
> while it is the Jews who are native to the middle east, whether the 50% who are Mizrahi or the other 50% who are returning to the land their ancestors were kicked out of.
And here comes the special pleading. What Israel is doing in the West Bank is seizing land from extant landowners, transferring it to a favored landowners, and turning the former landowners into second-class citizens. This is exactly the kind of policy that people complain about in settler colonies. Claims of it's-our-ancestors'-land-from-centuries-ago don't fly in international law (see also Russia's diplomatic failure to assert this vis-a-vis its invasion of Ukraine), and it certainly doesn't justify forcible expropriation of land from current landowners.
[1] Indeed, my great-x-I-don't-remember-how-many grandfather participated in the Cherokee Strip land rush, so this is literally personal ancestry in play here, rather than vague reference to historical US ancestry.
You appear to agree with the parent commenter about the practical matter at hand: they believe existing settlements in the West Bank need to be dismantled, as do you. At this point, do we even reach the question of whether there's special pleading happening?
The subtext here (clear from the invocation of the Mizrahim) is existential arguments against the the state of Israel as construed in its conventionally recognized borders. In that sense, the "settler colonial" notion is complicated and unavailing.
But you and the preceding commenter would seem to agree with the common argument that settlements in the West Bank are a direct, probative, and actionable instance of unjust settler colonialism.
("parent commentator")
yes, any settlements outside the pre-67 borders should be dismantled, they are wrong, and criminal, and will never allow for peace. Anyone responsible for this should be removed and banned from power, at the bare minimum. I would go further - dismantle the settlements, and let the Palestinians do whatever they want with the land - West Bank and Gaza. give them a state. Will that solve the problem ? No, there will be further wars, but at least we get past this issue.
this is a practical matter - both Palestinians and the Jews have claims going back a long way to all that land (rivertosea), but (during the Palestinian Mandate) they just kept massacring each other, so the governing power gave up and there was a roughly even split of the land (1/2 of the 30% left after 70% went to Jordan), and that just needs to be good enough for either side, even if neither are satisfied
Wars have consequences. 13 centuries of Islamic rule came to an end in 1917, and the Ottoman Empire lost and was dismantled. Land was given back roughly along the lines of past histories, not perfectly, but nothing is.
right of return ? well, at least as many Mizrahi Jews in Israel and other countries could claim that from the nearby countries, but that is about as likely and practical to happen as reversing the Nakba. Wars have consequences.
Why stop at reversing 1948 ? Why not just go back another 30 years and reassemble the Ottoman Empire ? I am sure that would make everyone happy.
For me, minimal requirement of anti-Zionism is the right of return to the Palestinians—and their descendants—who were displaced in the Nakba. Israel is allowed to exist, but it is not allowed to manipulate the demography which favors a single ethnic group. In other words, the anti-Zionism seeks to dismantle Israel as an ethnostate.
I don’t see how this is more fundamentally complicated than other settler-colonial enterprises. The inclusion of the Mizrahim is no different from e.g. when the British did settler colonialism in Northern Ireland (then Ulster) by granting very favorable land deals and work to Scots. No doubt many (if not most) of the Scots were of Gaelic ancestry. That fact doesn’t change the dynamic at all. The Ulster Plantation is a schoolbook settler colonial project, which was wrong and evil in every way possible. What mattered is that the English demanded a certain culture would come up on top, that the Scottish immigrants were not Catholic, spoke English (not Scottish Gaelic; and certainly not Irish), and that they behaved like the English when after they settled stolen land.
This is a false dilemma, you don’t need an ethnostate to protect your rights. Having an ethnostate by definition your privileges comes at the cost of other people’s civil rights. Jewish civil rights should be protected by the same democratic institutions as everyone else’s. If you have a fear of a certain ethnic group gaining equal political rights, what does that say about you?
Regarding the right of return for the Jewish people displaced from the countries surrounding Israel, sure, I’m in favor. As far as I know, the discriminatory laws which pushed a lot of the exodus have long since been repealed and families who fled to Israel don’t face nearly the same level of discrimination as Palestinians wanting to return to their homeland. (Reparations still need to be payed and Iraq could probably step up their game and re-issue citizenships to their emigrants).
That said, the tit-for-tat mentality is not helpful here. Yes, the Jewish emigrants (particularly from Iraq) deserve reparations for passed wrongs, but whether they get that or not should not affect whether Palestinians are granted their basic right of return, and the dismantling of all Israels’ ethnocratic policies.
Nobody is getting reparations, Mizrahim Israelis do not want a right of return to Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen, nor would they be welcome there (Ansar Allah's first "official" action was to expel Jewish people from Sa'dah), and Israel itself is premised on being a homeland for the Jewish people. Maybe we're just kibitzing, and that's fine, but if we're being serious we should probably give some consideration to our actual constraints.
Is Israel an ethnostate (or an ethno-religious state, if that's your jam)? It rhymes with one, for sure. But if that's the case, so is Japan. I have never once seen a protest in North America against Japanese ethnocentrism. At least I understand why Israel is structured this way (it was founded within 1-2 Kendrick Lamar album release dates of the liberation of the concentration camps).
There's some innuendo in your post --- "what does that say about you" --- are you prepared to field the same kind of innuendo directed back at you? Because Israelis and Jewish supporters of Israel in the west notice and point out that Israel is held to a different standard.
A reasonable answer to that is that Israel has spent 20 years working to prevent a 2-state solution, and effectively occupying Gaza while slowly colonizing the West Bank. That's fair! But criticism of Israel's modern day activities have a tendency --- as they did here --- to bleed into critiques of the premise of Israel itself.
The standards here are proportional to the crimes. Japan does not have a policy of racialized demography. They have not e.g. expelled the Ainu from parts of Hokkaido, prevent the Ryukyu people from moving to Honshu (though there is plenty of historic wrongs here that needs addressed; and yes, Japan is criticized for that). Japanese Americans which want to immigrate to Japan need to go through the same immigration process as Korean Americans, etc.
The demographic policies of Israel are way worse than any other democracy, which is why people criticize Israel harder, and why anti-Zionism is a global political movement. People protested Apartheid South Africa for the same reasons, and is the reason why anti-Apartheid became a global political movement.
Understanding why Israel maintains their ethnocratic policies is no justification for it. I’m sure you can also understand why F.D. Roosevelt ethnically cleansed the West Coast of Japanese Americans during World War 2. But that was still a human rights disaster. Thankfully, that policy was reversed and the victims were given the right of return. Palestinians were not so lucky. Anti-Zionists like my self want Palestinians to get that minimum level of justice. If there was still a Japanese exclusion zone on the West Coast, I would for sure be protesting that.
There is a Palestinian American living in my community, she would like to at least visit the birthplace of her grandparents. But she cannot, Israel’s ethnocratic policies won’t let her. If Israelis are uncomfortable living in a place which gives her racial group equal rights, then I’m just gonna say it, they are racists, and they should not be given an ethnostate to keep their comforts.
I don't think you're correct about this. I think Japan is both much more racist than you think it is, and Israel less (both are deeply problematic in this regard, though it should be clear by now that I have far more sympathy for Israel [within its 1967 borders] than Japan). Have you talked to an American long-term resident of Japan about this? I've heard stories that knocked me on my ass.
There's nothing practical to be said about this stuff. Everybody in the world is racist. It is a strength of the west, and of the US in particular, that we pay so much attention to it. There's no "should" about Israel, only "is". Israel is a nuclear-armed state with a thriving, self-sustaining economy and one of the world's better regarded militaries. If you want to call it an ethnostate, that's fine (I will then call Japan an ethnostate as well). I don't like ethnostates either. But it is what it is: the history and purpose to which Israel --- which, unlike Japan, at least nominally proscribes racism! --- is designed is profound. It's not going anywhere.
I'm fond of pointing out that you'd have a stronger argument that Texas be returned to the Coahuiltecans. Texan settlers hadn't just survived the Holocaust. There was no large scale exchange of populations, with Tamaulipecan tribes somehow finding reservoirs of Germans and Czechs to expel from Nuevo Leon. But, again: nobody is protesting this.
I would say my position is this: to litigate the existence of Israel itself is to surrender any hope, at least rhetorically, of self-determination for Palestinians on any Palestinian land.
> I'm fond of pointing out that you'd have a stronger argument that Texas be returned to the Coahuiltecans.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the minimal requirements of Anti-Zionists is that the Palestinians which were displaced in the Nakba be granted the right of return. I personally don’t care if there are two states, one called Israel and the other Palestine. But for the state which ends up being called Israel should grant those it displaced the right of return. Texas does not exclude Coahuiltecans from visiting Texas. Texas does not control its demographics with racialized exclusions (I know some Texas politicians would like that, but they are not allowed; and if they were allowed, there would be riots).
I know Japan has a lot of problems with racism. Japan also has a history of being settler colonialist. They’ve even committed a couple of genocides in the past. What sets Israel apart though is they continue and maintain their policies of racialized demography. Japan used to do that (particularly in Korea, but also in Ryukyu), but they don’t any more. Today Japan recognizes the Ainu as a distinct indigenous minority group. They recognize the Ryukyu people as a subgroup (though honestly they need to recognize them as a minority group). They don’t exclude the Ainu nor the Ryukyu from any parts of Japan. They don’t have a policy prevents them from gaining political influence. etc. Stating that Japan has ethnocratic policies similar to those of Israel is lying at best.
For Israel to exist as an independent democratic country besides Palestine in a two state world which meets the minimal requirements of anti-Zionism, they need to relinquish these ethnocratic policies. A good start would be to sign and ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (like Japan has). They don’t have to grant citizenship to every Palestinians, but they must at the very least allow free travel between the two states, and they must allow those which were displaced in the Nakba to have the option of dual citizenship. Recognizing that Israel did settler colonialism and apologize for it would be appreciated as well (Japan has yet to do that).
A viable path forward that gives displaced Palestinians self-determination is to return Israel to its 1967 borders, dismantling the West Bank settlements, and facilitating an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and in Gaza, with air and sea ports and trade, if not with Israel (though: it would) then with any other state that would trade with them.
A non-viable path forward is demand the repatriation of millions of non-Jewish people to right one half of a wrong (not that it would matter if you could somehow right the other half) done in the 1940s and 1950s. Israel will not allow it to happen. No imaginable Israeli leadership of any ideology or party would allow it. Israel's allies won't allow it to happen, but that doesn't matter.
The Arab world was (is, really) in the verge of normalizing relations with Israel, premised on the viable solution I outlined above. It is not in fact a requirement of the Arab world that Israel accept a Palestinian/Arab majority in its 1967 borders.
What's frustrating about this is not the concern that Palestinians might somehow succeed in the non-viable cause (I don't like ethnostates either?) but rather a certainty that it can't happen, any more than Mexicans will gain as-of-right dual citizenship and free travel into their original Texan lands, and the knowledge that the pursuit of that doomed cause comes at the cost of generations of Palestinian lives deprived of self-determination on any terms because western philosophizers oppose what they see as half-measures.
Hey, I don’t oppose to this as a viable path forward and neither do many anti-Zionists. However I do think this is a half measure which will result in a continued struggle for justice among Palestinians. This would be similar to the Anglo-Irish treaty which history has shown us was actually not a good solution.
If they would have the foresight to include guaranteed civil rights for Arabs living in Israel and a Political avenue for the unification of Palestine which could be executed in a couple of generations, perhaps the worst of the mistakes of the Anglo-Irish treaty could be averted.
What made the Anglo-Irish treaty so disastrous for Northern Ireland were in fact racialized policies and discriminatory practices which denied civil rights and political representation for one group so that the other group could exert their dominance. If a two state solution repeats that, all I can say, is “I told you so”.
> The Arab world was (is, really) in the verge of normalizing relations with Israel, premised on the viable solution I outlined above.
The political class in most of the Arab world is not Anti-Zionist.
To me, with this definition, being "anti-Zionist" makes about as much sense as being "anti-Texan". And, aesthetically, I get it! My wife is from Houston! I've had to go there! But it's not a position I can understand taking seriously. There are multiple ongoing urgent problems, and none of them involve granting millions of people dual citizenship to Israel (or Texas).
I understand and can take seriously a narrower "anti-Zionist" definition that pushes back on "Greater Israel" ideology that impedes Palestinian self-determination.
But what we're talking about here is basically: "I reject the premise of the state of Israel". To which, and I mean this respectfully, the only reasonable response I can see is "it's good to want things, I guess".
(It's fine if we just intractably disagree; it would be weird if any two people here never did.)
And I'm not picking on them - tons of countries are like that, and that's fine as long as they ensure equality of all citizens, which Ireland, New Zealand, and Israel have all done.
I didn’t know about the “White New Zealand Policy”, but it seems to have been rolled back in the 80s. Ireland is not the same as Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.
I assume you chose the word “citizen” carefully, so let’s just imagine that in a hypothetical Palestinian state — whether alongside or unified with Israel — Palestinians would enjoy the same rights as Israelis, unlike today.
Anyway, obviously you aren’t picking on them for any of that, and I’m not super interested in debating it. I’m just answering your question about what “opposition to Zionism” means.
"let’s just imagine that in a hypothetical Palestinian state — whether alongside or unified with Israel — Palestinians would enjoy the same rights as Israelis, unlike today."
If/when there is a Palestinian state, there is no basis to assume that they would enjoy the same rights as Israelis. It would be their own state, and their rights are determined by them. For example, Syrians do not have the same rights of Israelis, and Israelis do not have the same rights as Syrians.
Currently, Israeli Palestinians (Israeli Arabs) have the same rights of Israeli Jews.Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza do not have those same rights.
I could have worded that better. In a hypothetical one-state solution, they would enjoy the same rights; in a hypothetical two-state solution, as you say, it would be a nonissue.
Regardless, you have correctly identified one of the core things that anti-Zionism opposes: in Israeli occupied territory, there is currently de jure discrimination against an indigenous ethnic minority population.
I agree that there is discrimination in the occupied territories. I also have the personal view that Israelis should not be in the occupied territories (the settlements), and that there needs to be a clear path to a Palestinian state. Clearly, simply removing the settlements and withdrawing from Gaza without a better plan was not sufficient.
I also do not understand what this has to do with anti-Zionism in that Zionism is the notion that the Jews have a right to a homeland, and not be relegated as a people to the hims of others. Yes, there is an occupation of West Bank/Gaza, however, I would not deny the right of the Persians to have an Iran, even though I am very much against their current government, and they have taken over control and created misery in other countries (Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and are attempting to do so in Iraq and Syria).
You can be against the current government of Israel, you can be against occupation (as many people, including Israeli's are), but to be against the existence of a Jewish state (anti-Zionism) without being against an Egyptian state, a Persian state, a Jordanian state, etc is singling out the Jews, and needs to be called what it is.
Obviously no group is monolithic, but I would define Zionism not as notion that Jews have the right to a homeland but a political movement to create and support a Jewish ethnostate, which (in its current form) is predicated on the dispossession of and discrimination against an indigenous population. These are specific, enumerable things that set Israel apart from other Middle Eastern countries, and until they are addressed I don’t believe it’s fair to describe anti-Zionism as “singling out the Jews”.
"predicated on the dispossession of and discrimination against an indigenous population"
I am unaware of anything like this in Israel's laws. I assume what you mean by this is the Nakba, which happened after Israel's creation, and as a result of a war declared by the Arabs with the stated intent on destroying the new nation. About 650k-700k Arabs fled/forced/chosen to move out due to that war. Those who stayed ended up with lives comparable to that of their fellow Jewish citizens, I do not see much in the way of discrimination for those who stayed.
Also, as a result of that war, 850k-900k Jews fled/forced/chosen to move out of the surrounding nations. These people were forced out of their homes and their lands simply because they were Jews.
Many, many indigenous people were dispossessed during those times, no nation in that area has clean hands. If you want to single out Israel, that is your right and prerogative, but if you want to be fair (which you do not have to be) you should do some research and understand that many middle eastern countries have dispossessed and discriminated against their indigenous populations. Some did it because they were attacked, some did it just "because"
The section on NZ refers to a set of racist policies that ended in the 1980s and are now thoroughly discredited. Are you sure you want to cite it as a comparator to Israel?
Same with Norther Ireland. Parent links to policies of Northern Ireland aimed at minimizing Catholic’s political powers, including via controlling the demographics. History has shown these policies to be very wrong and very much the reason for the Troubles.
Historically this region suffered from settler colonialism where Britain encourage Protestants to move into the area. If you wanted to make a comparison to anti-Zionism, then the Nationalist‘s fight for civil rights and political representation is much more apt, then Protestant hardliners wanting to keep the demographics in their favor in order for continue suppress the rights of Norther Irish Catholics.
Ironically, the IRA were not afraid to use terrorism to further the nationalistic cause (similar to a certain Palestinian resistance movement), and when the British tried to defeat them militarily (including via occupation) it only made matter worse. What did work however was stopping these policies which stripped Catholics from their civil rights, and granting them a political avenue for their prospects. Turns out that if you have political means for your goals, you are less likely to use terrorism.
I suspect above poster wrote zionism as a way to refer to neo-zionism, since people often mistakenly call nzo-zionist proponents that way.
The gist of the idea is that zionism is a "dead" ideology already, since it has reached its goal of creating a state. The remaining question about it is whether Israel should adhere to post-zionism or to neo-zionism.
Most people in the west opposing the current situation would probably fall in the post-zionist category if they were told about the concept.
Zionists don't control American foreign policy any more than does motherhood, apple pie, or General Mills breakfast cereals --- they are all just things that the American public is aligned on. Israel enjoys broad support in both parties, and that's in part because the voters of those parties support Israel.
Except unlike all of those things, explicitly Zionist organizations spend millions of dollars lobbying and campaigning. For example, AIPAC alone has spent almost $2 million to unseat Jamal Bowman in his race against George Latimer, whom AIPAC themselves recruited. [1].
“Controls American foreign policy” is hyperbolic; I don’t think support for Israel would just collapse if those orgs vanished. But come on, comparing Zionism to “motherhood” and “apple pie” is disingenuous.
That's a weird thing to oppose considering most parties see the control running exactly the other way. The US needs Israel more than Israel needs the US.
Honest question: why does the US need Israel? Or, to put it another way, what concrete help or advantages has Israel given the US over the last few decades?
Even in the (ill-conceived and disastrous) Iraq and Afghanistan wars other ME nations produced a lot more help than Israel did.
More complex answers involve having an allied county in an area with a lot of Russian influence.
The history is long and complex, but keep in mind Israel ran all by itself for decades, and defended itself in multiple wars, without any US help. It was when Russia started helping Egypt that the US recruited Israel. It was not the other way around.
For a while when Russia seemed powerless people started questioning the relationship, but after Ukraine it was re-energized.
Other answers are cultural: Israel is very similar to the US and Europe, same equal rights for citzens, same democracy, same culture of freedom. And the US is allied with all countries that are similar to it.
Nothing would happen. Israel has defended itself from multiple wars without US help, if anything Israel's enemies are weaker than they were in the past.
Weirdly enough it's actually Israel's enemies that benefit from the US - without the US Israel would just do what it needed to to stay safe, and never mind if the other country is hurt. Israel would not care, because their own security comes first.
With the US Israel is like "fine, we'll do the bare minimum".
This is also why all those people who what the US to stop helping Israel are so incredibly foolish. If Israel felt less secure they would fight with even greater ferocity. If you want Israel to stand down make them feel very very secure.
First, there's $330b of financial support since 1946. Access to advanced weapon systems since 1962. Crucial intelligence + diplomatic support in all the big wars (56/67/73); crucial munitions support, and an offer to send a large numbers of ground troops in 73. Solid and almost unquestioning diplomatic support (or acquiescence) of essentially every action Israel has taken since 67 (no matter how provocative or ultimately detrimental to its own interests), backed by the assurance of automatic UNSC veto of course.
In the current operation, you've got 2 carriers parked offshore along with other assets in the region; special access to fuel depots and arms caches (that even Ukraine doesn't get); technical support from U.S. companies like Google, etc.
The idea that Israel fights its wars "without US help" just ludicrous.
Meanwhile, in return -- Israel just doesn't provide all that much. The U.S. supports Israel mostly for ideological regions (such as the kindling that it provides to the apocalyptic fantasies of the Christian Right) and to please other domestic political constituencies; and yes, out of a legitimate sense of moral responsibility since the Holocaust -- but not because it really needs Israel to be around (in the sense that it needs the UK, Germany, Japan, etc). It objectively needs countries like Sweden and Turkey more than it needs Israel.
Completely cut off from U.S. aid -- it would survive of course, but under significantly diminished circumstances. In particular it would have to give up the Greater Israel project -- which it of course needs to do anyway, but it would have to do so much sooner, and in an abrupt, violatile way leaving it in a much less secure position than it would like to find itself shunted into.
If you want Israel to stand down make them feel very very secure.
This is of course the mantra we've hearing since 67. And which brought us to the place we're in now.
This is all extremely weak. The Biden administration could stop the war today by calling Netanyahu and saying they will cut off aid and protection guarantees if they don't. Reagan has actually done so in the past.
Everything else is domestic politics, and personal convictions for Biden. But Israel will not continue this war if the USA tells them to stop it. They are far too dependent on USA aid for it.
Edit: here is the full quote about the events in 1982:
2 P.M. (8 A.M., New York time) -The Israeli Cabinet meets. A message from President Reagan arrives, expressing ''outrage'' and, reportedly threatening to halt the Habib mission. The Cabinet decides to end the raids and order new ones only if they are ''essential.''
4 P.M. (10 A.M., New York time) -President Reagan tries for hour to call Mr. Begin but cannot get through. 4:50 P.M. (10:50 A.M., New York time) - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia calls Mr. Reagan. 5 P.M. (11 A.M., New York time) -A new cease-fire goes into effect in west Beirut. 5:10 P.M. (11:10 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Reagan reaches Mr. Begin for 10-minute telephone call. 5:40 P.M. (11:40 A.M., New York time) - Mr. Begin calls President Reagan to say that a ''complete cease-fire'' had been ordered.
The domestic political situation was different. Begin’s grip on power at the time seems like it was tenuous, the economy was in bad shape and the war had escalated out of control. It even seems that Begin wasn’t fully aware of what was going on in Lebanon. Netanyahu has already stated that they’ll continue without US support.
Sure, Netanyahu claims this in front of the cameras, but when the specter of delays in US aid was actually hanging in the air, Israeli officials were painting a very different picture [0]:
> Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yuli Edelstein said that when he was on Capitol Hill last week, he told all of his interlocutors that the aid “is extremely urgent.”
> “This is aid for immediate needs, not for something we’ll use in a matter of years,” he emphasized to JI on Thursday.
The clear reality is that Israel, while extremely high tech, just doesn't have anywhere near the necessary production of ammunitions and weapons to act in this war without US aid. Especially if the USA and EU countries were to prohibit weapons shipments entirely (as they clearly should for any country currently engaging in a genocide).
Even the recent successful defense against the Iranian retaliation required direct US and French assistance, it wasn't possible with Israeli forces and equipment alone.
Israel is currently dependent on external munitions suppliers, which do not necessarily need to include the US. Israel did leverage US assistance to shoot down Iran's drone attack, but it also leveraged Arab state cooperation. It is probably not the case that Israel is existentially dependent on US military aid. It's worth remembering, though, that Israel wants that aid, and also wants the tacit endorsement of the United States, and is acutely aware that one of our two political parties is more committed to Israel's current leadership than the other; read anything they say with a grain of salt.
If the US and EU countries were to cut Israel off, what other options does it have? Russia is already importing various weapons, a good part of them from Iran, who will absolutely cut them off if they start helping Israel. India and Pakistan are not sympathetic to Israel. Arab countries will feel internal pressures if they become major suppliers to Israel. Who is then left? Would China really wade into this conflict, and endanger their own relations with the Arab world?
Their second largest trading partner is the second largest munitions supplier in the world. Further: the Arab world is not in fact aligned against Israel. They are much more concerned about Iran than they are about Palestine.
None of this is going to happen, because everybody involved is aware that Israel would be sustainable after a realignment away from the west. Everything gets worse for everybody (except China) after that occurs, so it won't be allowed to occur.
(It's further mooted by the fact that opposition to Israel is largely an Internet phenomenon; Israel enjoys broad, bipartisan popular support in the US, Gaza is at the very bottom of polled issues in order of importance to the electorate, and a very significant chunk (possibly more than half) of people rating Gaza as important support Israel.)
I did not say that the Arab world is united against Israel. However, there is significant anti-Israeli public sentiment everywhere in the Arab world, even more so than against Iran. Even if Arab leaders are not as sensitive to public sentiment as more democratic countries, they can't easily ignore it entirely, and becoming the main supporter of Israel is not a comfortable domestic position for any Arab leader.
Also, you are grossly misrepresenting public opinion in the USA and the EU. In the USA there is a significant and extremely vocal minority, especially among the Democratic party base, that deeply care for the genocide in Gaza. This has been visible in the major student protests, and in the significant protest votes in Democratic primaries (>10% undecided in some states!). And given the extremely tight election, this is very likely to cause issues for Biden. Now, whether reversing support for the genocide would cause larger issues is debatable, but I think unlikely - as most of the avid Israel-can-do-no-wrong supporters are not going to vote against Trump anyway.
In Europe the situation is even more difficult for the pro-genocide camp, as the population, especially in Western Europe, and doubly especially among the significant Arab, Pakistani, Indian, Turkish, and North African immigrants, is much more sensitive to the issue of colonial genocide.
The student protests, which are for obvious reasons not representative of the whole population, are themselves numerically a small portion of the faculty and staff at the institutions they're taking place at. Excellent recent examples of this: repeated instances of walkouts or sit/stand protests at commencement ceremonies, where everyone involved is arranged out on a field, almost as if to make these kinds of tallies easy to make (but serious tallies of protests at Columbia, Chicago, and UCLA have also been made). It just doesn't take a lot of people to make a lot of noise.
The "10% undecided" thing is a statistical null result, mirroring the last Democratic reelection campaign (Obama's, against Romney), which didn't include any attempted organized effort to lodge protest votes with "undecided" and still ran up those counts.
Polling --- Pew is a good place to start --- shows Israel below every other "major" issue, even among 18-29 year olds --- except (ironically) student debt. The issue gets less important as you go up in age brackets into cohorts that actually turn out and vote.
The groundswell of support for Palestine in America is, I believe, largely an Internet phenomenon. It's easy to forget that we're the weird people who tune in to this stuff. Most people just live their lives, and, for reasons that are straightforward to understand, care a lot more that a 12 pack of Diet Coke got weirdly expensive than about whatever is happening across the world. We have the same problem marshaling support for Ukraine!
> What else can Biden say in this situation? He cannot both assent to the validity of the ICC charges and continue negotiating with Israel for things like US-built supply piers on Gaza's seafront. You can't really do diplomacy wth a world leader while at the same time saying (or implying) that they belong in the Hague.
He doesn't have to do diplomacy with them. He could call their bluff. He could unilaterally start delivering food and dare anyone to stop him. If Israel starts killing "3-5x as many civilians" he could declare war on Israel.
All of these are things he could do. Won't. But could.
The US Navy can unilaterally establish supply operations by sea almost anywhere in the world. If a carrier group sailed in and started setting up a port in Gaza to deliver food, there's no chance Israel would be able to do anything about it.
Right, this is like an Orson Scott Card fantasy. Which, don't let me yuck your yums or anything, but no, this isn't really a possible scenario. Israel will be an Article 5 NATO member before it is a military adversary of the United States (neither thing will happen, but if we're betting on impossible scenarios.)
I agree that the scenario is quite unlikely but I brought it up to dispute an argument you made: That, as the US has to negotiate with Israel, they have to go against the ICC.
My point is that the US could "assent to the validity of the ICC charges". The "fantasy" is several unlikely escalations away after that, and even that scenario is something that the US could deal with.
So ruling out that they go against the ICC because they have to, we can conclude that they go against the ICC because they want to.
The US doesn't even assent to the validity of the ICC itself, let alone the recent charges. If the whole argument is an attempt to dispose of the question of whether the US cooperates with, recognizes, or cares about the ICC, that question is disposed of: the US does not. I think the Hague Liberation bill is silly and performative, but let the record show that we have a statute obligating us to invade the Hague if the ICC breathes on us the wrong way.
Something like half the world's population doesn't acknowledge the ICC. And the ICC hasn't covered itself in glory over the last 20 years --- the Darfur fiasco being the most obvious example.
All this just brings me back to: the ICC charges are a political act (fair enough! politics matter!) and should be evaluated on their political effectiveness. The predictable result of the charges: the leader of the only political party in the US that even ostensibly cares about Palestine disavowed the charges. How'd that help?
I think that "an enforced naval military blockade of Gazan seafront since 2007" is a more accurate phrasing of that state of affairs than "Israel's leaders may object...".
> reporting suggests that Biden's team has been the only thing between the current situation and abyss that would kill 3-5x as many civilians
Um. What?
Biden's team vetoed UN calls for a ceasefire three times.
Biden's team has delivered how many billions of dollars of weapons in the last 8 months?
Biden's team has consistently and repeatedly lied in front of the whole world, saying that they see "no evidence" of genocide. This, during the most documented mass murder in all history. This, despite clear and unequivocal genocidal statements from Israeli leadership, media, and populace.
How many people have resigned from his team now, saying they can't have this much Palestinian blood on their hands any more? To claim that Biden has prevented deaths in the last 8 months is breathtaking. At every juncture he and the team he still has have been complicit.
I think this here is what Hilary Clinton was talking about recently... she got panned in the media for it, but I'm pretty sure she was right (and I'm by no means a fan).
You seem to be saying in your above comment that Biden's only possible choice is to appease Israel to hopefully get some humanitarian concessions from them. This is probably true due to the reality of American domestic politics, but if we ignore that then other choices are obvious. Treat Israel as we once treated South Africa. Force regime change by isolating them.
Yes, that is what I am saying. Cutting off arms sales to Israel will not prevent a supply blockade of Gaza or a Rafah invasion, both of which are issues that the US has publicly campaigned on --- we don't know what other red lines the US has set up, or how much worse this could yet become. Contrary to popular belief, it's not at all clear that Israel is dependent on the US militarily; we're a small part of their defense budget.
I think domestic politics are certainly a factor, but not a big one in an ICC case, because Americans, to a first approximation, do not give a shit about the ICC; further, we aren't a party to the ICC, so it's not as if the administration is being asked to do something or help adjudicate.
I want to say again that I think this particular case is well-founded. But an ICC warrant against the leader of a non-signatory is fundamentally a political act, and while I don't take issue with the stated intent of that act, I don't get the theory of change behind it.
I put it to you directly: what good comes of this while Netanyahu remains in power?
Bush's settlement policies didn't work at all. West Bank settlements drastically increased in the years following that showdown. Can you look at a graph and spot the point where Bush "brought Israel in line"?
(I kind of like Bush 1, at least as a competent operator with some discernible principles, and think Israeli settlement of the West Bank is abhorrent).
I think that's unlikely to be true. I think it's a self-serving western myth that Israel, with one of the largest economies and the best trained and resourced military in the region (see the Arab States performance vs. the IRGC in Syria and Yemen for counterexamples) is a US-dependent proxy. The west tried to ice Russia out of supplies for the Ukranian invasion, and that didn't work despite near-unanimity. Israel will just buy bombs from China, which is their next largest trading partner after us. We will lose all influence over Israeli policy, at least until [insert US partisan political argument here].
(I also think it's not at all clear that serious policymakers in Israel "want Gazan land", let alone need it; the messianic nutballs bolstering Netanyahu's coalition are, to put it mildly, not representative of mainstream Israel policy thinking.)
A reminder that we're just talking about this stuff here; this is HN, not the UN Security Council. If we're going to have threads like this here, we're going to have to accept that we're having curious conversations, not high-stakes deliberations. So: I can be wrong about all of this stuff, and I'm glad to hear why. But we're not going to solve Israel/Gaza on a thread.
(You didn't say anything to prompt that disclaimer, it's just a stress reaction from previous threads).
I think the biggest thing the US is doing for Israel is discouraging regional actors from getting involved. If the US took no position here either way, the conflict would probably turn into a proxy war pretty quickly. Whether you think that's good or not depends on your viewpoint. I personally prefer that the states in the area, even if they don't necessarily directly represent the Palestinians, negotiate the conflict because they have to deal with the fallout on their own borders/politics.
Being able to purchase weapons from the US also gives them significant political latitude internally. When a significant amount of your economy and government spending goes to making weapons, you're going to affect domestic budgets, which will make coalition building much harder especially in a country with as many small parties as Israel. We see this in Russia as well but because Russia is not democratic when it comes to defense allocation, it simply throws its dissidents in jail or encourages them to leave.
Or just make them themselves. That seems fully within their capabilities if push comes to shove. After all, we are talking about bombs not fighter jets.
> (I also think it's not at all clear that serious policymakers in Israel "want Gazan land", let alone need it; the messianic nutballs bolstering Netanyahu's coalition are, to put it mildly, not representative of mainstream Israel policy thinking.)
And yet are regularly re-elected. And have been for decades.
It is not the case that the ultra-right fringe parties like Jewish Power had governing power for decades. It's a parliamentary system, weirdos get elected to the Knesset, but the governing authorities --- at least prior to Netanyahu, and even during Sharon's time! --- were normies, not neo-Kahanist terrorists. It's easy to find lots and lots of political analysis about why this has happened, much of it having to do with the probability that Netanyahu could wind up imprisoned (for things having nothing to do with Gaza) once he fails to assemble a governing coalition.
This dynamic – a political leader trying to run away from justice – has, historically been a very common way in which states fail; which is why a lot of people who pay close attention to such things are very concerned about the state of US democracy.
I believe that 'tptacek's point could be summarized as "the facts are, in a real sense, not material to this conversation, as we are operating entirely with the domain of realpolitik rather than morality".
Biden, in _theory_, could say to Israel that "continued arms supplies are contingent on surrendering Netanyahu and Gallant to The Hague immediately", but a) it's not at all clear that that would work, b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse, and c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
I hate all of that too, and it doesn't speak well of us as a society or species, but what _should_ happen and what _would_ happen are two very different things.
> tptacek's point could be summarized as "the facts are, in a real sense, not material to this conversation
Tptacek is demonstrating this well by editing the part of the comment I quoted, then acting confused. However, I don't subscribe to the idea that facts are not material to discussions involving claims of fact.
The claim Biden is preventing deaths in Gaza while sending the bombs that are killing them and vetoing ceasefire resolutions left right and center, even against the will of his own voters, would require stronger evidence than has been provided.
Also, international law, including the Genocide Convention, is binding on all signatory states. 'Realpolitik' is not a defense for complicity in genocide.
However, let's look at your abc points, ignoring international law for the moment:
a) it's not at all clear that that would work
We've skipped past the issue, which is that we shouldn't be sending arms at all at this point. We also have other leverage which hasn't been used yet - sanctions, trade restrictions, etc.
b) in the near term it probably causes Israel to make the situation on the ground in Gaza even worse
This has merit - Israel did threaten to use more unguided bombs if the arms flow stopped. Too bad Biden's people vetoed the UN ceasefire resolutions three times, against the will of basically the entire planet. What about the realpolitik of that loss in our global standing?
c) it would come with serious domestic political repercussions in an election year.
Believe it or not, and despite tptacek's claims above that most people don't care, polls in fact show that significantly more registered Democrats disapprove of Biden's handling of the situation in Gaza (sending arms) than approve, and that this is affecting their vote [0].
> "This issue is a stone-cold loser for Biden," said Douglas Schoen, a pollster and strategist who reviewed the Reuters/Ipsos poll results. "He's losing votes from the left, right and center."
The 'political repercussions' case is pretty flimsy [0].
Bigger picture - this disagreement seems fundamentally rooted in conflicting political philosophies, as alluded to above. More facts are not going to change that.
An example... "'Realpolitik' is not a defense complicity in genocide." Says who? I mean I agree with you on the face of things, but who gets to decide what genocide means? And what does it mean for international law to be "binding on all signatory states"? Some view overconfidence in this notion as Wilson's great and lasting mistake.
Unfortunately, there is no compiler that can adjudicate these types of questions for us.
Realpolitik is a defense. The ICC issues a verdict that your committing war crimes, and are to be put to death. Your 10 carrier strike group, says you aren't, therefore you are not put to death. Proving that the court of the carrier strike group is superior to the court of the ICC.
Maybe your court of carrier strike group says the ICC judges are committing war crimes, issues a warrant for their arrest, the SEAL team executes the warrant against the fugitives from justice, and tries, convicts and executes them.
If you still think realpolitik isn't a defense, look at a practitioner of it like Kissinger, ask yourself why Pinochet, et al, were tried, but say Kissinger was not for Operation Condor.
You need to make a distinction between positive (what-is) claims and normative (what-ought) claims. When you say realpolitik is a "defence", whether or not it is actually used as a "defence" in reality is disconnected on the validity of that position as a moral fact.
Outside of a courtroom, and ignoring all international law and externalities, sure. Within the Hague, or the parts of the world where international justice is respected, not so much.
> the court of the carrier strike group is superior to the court of the ICC.
Until your 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms. Or no country wants to trade with you any more, because you can't be trusted and their citizens are furious.
Or until China utterly dominates you economically and geopolitically, because they invested in growth instead of carrier groups. Or until you're stretched too thin on too many fronts and no one wants to help any more, or any of the other unintended (possibly world-ending) consequences of our wilful and belligerent disrespect of long established international law.
... But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
This still is not quite grappling with the fundamental issue imo
Realpolitik, in the sense Morgenthau and Kissinger understood it, absolutely takes into account management of public opinion and risks related to violation of international standards. It just does not only take those into account in decisions related to national interests.
> But the claim that "Biden actually saved lots of Palestinians from dying" because of the "realpolitik" of the situation is silly. The claim that Kissinger actually saved lives by coordinating assassinations so that South America didn't need to be bombed into submission would be farcical, and so is this.
This is stated as a fact and dismissed on the basis of a tacit moral argument rather than reasoning. Why would the claim be silly? I see no reason for those statements to be cast aside as un-addressable or 'farcical'.
On the other hand...
> 10 carrier strike group gets fucked up by Yemeni drones, or Iranian swarms
If this were possible Houthi drones would have done it already (against a single carrier).
> because they [China] invested in growth instead of carrier groups
China has been investing heavily in their military for three decades [0]. And we will see about that growth part... it is not looking so rosy for Xi currently.
You are advocating for extrajudicial killing, which is a war crime, and you are advocating for targeting civilian groups based on the believes that they are destined to do crime in the future?
This is an extremely racist opinion. And I would go so far as call it genocidal speech. This post needs to be removed from HN.
The killing of combatants and combatant support personnel without judicial authorization is not in fact a war crime. The term you're looking for here is hors de combat, which was coined specifically to separate out the people who can't be extrajudicially killed during a war.
I don't understand the preceding comment well enough to defend it or to see the racism in it; there is context I am probably missing.
> From the river to the sea what is the only flag you see?
In it’s most favorable interpretation is a call to keep Palestinians subjugated and stripped of political and civil rights. This speech has been used to promote a Jewish ethnostate, which is in fact racist, and in the worst cases this speech is used to advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from their land.
At best this is an advocacy for a racist policy, at worst this is genocidal speech.
> Well, the IDF is executing lots of war criminals, even future ones in Gaza ;)
I can’t take this any other way then the author is stating that killing of innocent civilians in Gaza is justified because otherwise they were destined to become war criminals.
This kind of speech was very common among people justifying police brutality and neighborhood crackdown against black people in the USA. It is extremely racist as it stipulates that Palestinians, by merit of being Palestinians, are inherently bad people and deserve to die.
It was the precious reference (backed by a smiley no less) to how the good the current operation is at killing "future" war criminals -- obviously referring to minors. Who are also just as obviously being collectively subject to air strikes for the crime of being you-know-what.
It was a truly disgusting comment, actually. Unfortunately "frank" and deeply revelatory expressions of this sort are by no means unusual in the sphere of public discourse that supports the current operation in Gaza. From the highest levels down.
The reality of life is my dads apartment was bombed by the US when he was growing up. War sucks. It’s not racist but you can’t let Hamas run things, that’s just the way it is.
Sometimes it sucks when your apartment is in the same town as a ball bearing factory.
The Air Force didn’t give anyone a weeks heads up either, what the IDF is doing is so far from a war crime it’s not even funny.
>Biden's team vetoed UN calls for a ceasefire three times.
"Calls for ceasefire" that didn't include "calls to release the hostages", to say nothing of the fact that Hamas leadership had already been shouting they would "repeat October 7th again and again until the final destruction of Israel" and so on.
It's really not in Israel's interests to hamper any aid if it ever was. There's no need to coerce on this point. Biden could have gone 'Yay ICC!' and still got cooperation here.
Israel has three alternatives:
Option 1: Do a real siege (never tried. Gaza has less malnutrition deaths than Cali according to their own figures, and besides everything would have been over months ago if it did. That's the real weakness with the ICC case).
Option 2: Provide aid yourself (expensive).
Option 3: Let other people do it for you and not pay for it.
Obviously the optimal choice is the last one. The real differences between US and Israel are elsewhere (e.g. delusional postwar planning by both sides).
It's a PR play ultimately, they can't just say "Netanyahoo is a war criminal, K thx bai". That would call the court's judgement into question for a lot of people. If massacring civilians and aid workers is a war crime, then yeah, he's a war criminal, but they have to also address the elephant in the room, that Hamas is also wantonly committing war crimes and is calling for even more even though they're significantly less powerful in this dynamic.
I don't like this "but Hamas is worse" rethoric. War crimes are ware crimes, you're not allowed to commit them because the other side is worse than you.
This may be how things played out after the second world war, but it's a horrible standard to live by. If the ICC has any integrity, they won't take "but they started it" as an excuse.
Under the Geneva conventions, yes, but the Rome statute only copies select passages of the Geneva convention, and I don't believe the "we can commit war crimes as long as you don't promise not to commit war crimes" is part of what's copied.
The Rome Statute does allow foe the ICC to convict according to the Geneva conventions as well, but the exemptions therein don't necessarily apply.
First of all, "In cases not covered by this Protocol or by other international agreements, civilians and combatants remain under the protection and authority of the principles of international law derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity and from the dictates of public conscience." (Article 1, second paragraph, Additional Protocol I.)
Second, both Israel and Palestine have signed the main conventions. Israel with reservations, and have not signed AP I and II. Palestine have signed all of them, unconditionally.
Since both are signatories, they are both bound by the conventions even if the other party breaks them.
It should also be noted that the geneva conventions have passed into customary international law. They apply even to countries that haven't signed them.
> Aren't you? I thought the Geneva convention and similar treaties all require reciprocity.
No, i don't think so.
To quote the fourth geneva convention (fourth convention is the part related to treatment of civilians):
> Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.
For the same reason they didn't issue a warrant against the Israel government over the past twenty years: the conflict spiraled out of control months ago.
In 2019, the ICC got involved following the 2014 Gaza war and concluded that war crimes were taking place (on both sides, in different ways), but they concluded that they lacked jurisdiction. Investigations has been ongoing ever since.
You're not wrong, but the world is imperfect and they're forced into this weird role of being both a political institution and an "international court" which, as constructs go, doesn't make a lot of sense.
Short of going full "one world government" or the next best thing, "team america world police" you can't really violate state sovereignty even if someone is doing atrocities so instead you need to convince key players or a critical mass that something should be done. If successful, you can then tighten the screws on that person as fast as you can get all the relevant bureaucracies moving.
By combing these warrants into a single press release they've completely lost any legitimacy.
There were no "screws needed" to issue an arrest warrant against Hamas months ago. Yet they didn't.
They should have issued arrest warrants years ago against Hamas for deliberately firing into civilian territory. It's an easy case to make, no one at all claims Hamas didn't do that.
But, nope, they did not issue any warrant.
No, they only issued a warrant against Hamas to pretend like they have some balance in trying to issue a warrant against Netanyahu.
It's no longer Netanyahu on trial, it's actually now ICC that is on trial. If the ICC actually grants the warrant against Netanyahu they have proven themselves to be a bunch of clowns with no legitimacy.
Yeah, again, you're not wrong. While I'd maybe call that position a bit idealistic, it is really weird that they didn't go after various people earlier. That said, they don't have their own carrier strike group so they have to generate international cooperation. The US is already kinda iffy on the ICC's existence because they've called out our war criminals before and, for reasons I don't fully understand, that's a problem. The whole thing is very...contrived I guess?
A big complication is that on the one hand you have an identifiable army, on the other hand you have something akin to a militia/guerrilla where combatants and non-combatants are hard to ID often because one person can be both. When you have a resistance it get further muddied because like in WWII France, the resistance was civilians. So you can be a civilian and a combatant.
Things like what Milosevic or what Janjaweed leaders do are identifiable.
International law looks at this differently. There's a huge difference between targeting civilians and striking genuine military targets that have civilian human shields, especially after issuing a warning and taking reasonable precautions. The first is a war crime, the second is actually allowed by Geneva conventions. The phrase “killing civilians” throws these differences out of the window and simply shouldn't be used in intelligent conversion about this topic.
> There's a huge difference between targeting civilians and striking genuine military targets that have civilian human shields
Even in the latter case, the cost to civilian lives has to be proportional to the the military value/lives saved long-term by ending the threat. This is not proportional: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
But unfortunately, the latter case does not account for all that we've seen in the last few months and years. There's been plenty of "targeting civilians" too
As far as i understand, Israel disputes much of this (not that civilians have died, but that it has been non porpotional). ICC is innocent until proven guilty, so its going to take more evidence than anonoymous leaks to get a guilty verdict.
Additionally they werent charged on the basis of unporportionality afaik, i think all the charges are based around failing to let in enough food aid, causing a famine.
> i think all the charges are based around failing to let in enough food aid, causing a famine
No, starvation is only one of the alleged offences: "the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza"
I guess we'll have to wait and see what the case is when it gets to trial. The legal report https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-p... makes it sound like the primary thing is alleged use of starvation, with other attacks being in the context of that (with the caveat that other charges are still under investigation):
> The Prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister
of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, on the basis that they
committed the war crime of ‘intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of
warfare’ under article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the ICC Statute. The Prosecutor also seeks to
charge the two suspects with various other war crimes and crimes against humanity
associated with the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare under articles
7 and 8 of the ICC Statute
> especially after issuing a warning and taking reasonable precautions
Ahh, yes, like when the IDF told Gazan civilians by evacuation order to move to the south of Gaza because they were going to intensify bombing in the north.
And then increased bombing of southern Gaza by 85% in the next 10 days...
Does anybody look at it like that though? If a sibling of yours was accidentally killed in a car accident would you consider that to be the equivalent as somebody deliberately running down your sibling? While the end result is the same the intent is different.
Maybe you could argue Israel is not accidentally doing this, but collateral damage of civilians will almost always happen regardless of how careful attacks are planned. I don't think there has ever been a war that occurred in such a densely packed area that has had no civilian causalities.
Then you disagree with international law and common sense. If my siblings are killed with a rocket that targeted a hospital turned a weapon silo, I would blame those who put the weapons there, not those who launched the rocket.
> But there is version of this where weapons at the hospital are removed by force, without bombing it.
Version A (what happens now): Israel calls everybody in the vicinity of the hospital, gives them time to evacuate. Then Israel strikes the hospital with a missile without a warhead. Then Israel actually bombs it.
Version B (what you suggest): IDF storms in with guns blazing.
What version, in your opinion, will result in more civilian deaths?
The Israeli army would use their miliary assets on the ground. They invaded and established a temporary occupying force to deal with Hamas, so resources other than air are available.
The air force can hit the targets required around the hospital to allow an easier time for ground forces. Reach the hospital, and use those ground forces to secure it.
They already use ground assets. Your plan needs more detail. When the IDF ground forces enter a hospital hallway where Hamas terrorists have positioned hostages in front of them and behind them, what should the IDF do? N.B.: the terrorists are shooting at them.
What do you imagine that demonstrates aside from that it is possible for mistakes to occur? Especially when you're fighting an enemy for whom it is an advantage for you to kill its own population for the propaganda value.
And what makes you think the IDF is so discerning in their targets? They attacked the USS Liberty with the intention of killing everyone aboard knowing it was a US vessel and they've been continuously killing tens of thousands of women and children, they also purposely target and kill journalists
These things are easily googlable yet you haven't bothered to do the slightest bit of reading before dismissing the claims outright. Even the US president had said that the attack on the Liberty was 100% intentional while knowing it was a US vessel
I didn't realize that western values included apartheid regimes oppressing people. The examples show that this has been going on for a lot longer than Hamas has existed and that Israel is always the aggressor
Are you fine with Israel knowingly and purposefully attacking and killing US naval officers?
First you said I was spewing bullshit which implies falsehoods, but now the things I claim are true but they're just fine? That's nuts
You say they share western values, does that include freedom of the press? Do we kill journalists purposefully in the western world? Which values, precisely, are you referring to? Because I don't see them
Unless you mean to say that they aren't Muslim, which is what I see from a lot of the Zionist crowd
Not to mention, it isn't about the values of Hamas but the value of the lives of the Palestinian people. Israel has been oppressing and killing them for decades
While I understand your point about the optics of it, optics should play no role in determining whether somebody is guilty of war crimes. When optics are a primary factor, war crime laws are a tool the powerful use to punish the weak.
I have my issues with the ICC, but they are supposed to enforce international law impartially.
These warrants were released simultaneously even though Hamas broadcast the footage immediately after Oct 7. (The footage of the man being decapitated with a hoe was even shown live from the UN, before the news cut off the broadcast.)
The real issue with the warrants isn't 'equating'. It's the political point to cover two deeper issues:
First, that Biden admin and others can't escape culpability for any such claim if it's considered credible. Second, the dubious factual basis (trucks were allowed in all the time; temporary port and air supply obviously with Israel's approval; the very low malnutrition death count according to Gaza health ministry's own reports).
The first made the admin's reply inevitable. The second made it even more likely, but it's a too complex point for PR I guess, so they went with 'equating'.
Biden technically has authority to invade the Netherlands if they arrest any member of the military or government of Israel under the American Service-Members' Protection Act since Israel is a major non-NATO ally.
>I personally can't believe the ICC is equating the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government. What a shameful organization.
I agree 100%! Over the past year, Israel has caused orders of magnitude more innocent deaths by terrorist actions (as outlined in the warranted issued here), has a much higher civilian death rate during military operations (Oct 7 was around 60%, while IDF's battles have been higher, with both sides hiding military targets within civilian areas) and should be taken far more seriously, as their support from other national aggressors like the US makes them far more dangerous.
Needless to say, they're backing him, and the ICC can't arrest Netanyahu. At worst, the U.S. government will sanction ICC officials as they did under the Trump administration.
I personally can't believe the ICC is equating the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government. What a shameful organization.
1- https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
2- https://www.state.gov/warrant-applications-by-the-internatio...