> The optics of equating a terrorist organization on the one hand with a democratic state with functioning judicial system and accountability for any crimes committed on the other hand by putting them in the same press release is pretty bad for the court.
I don't think anyone is actually doing that, though. The leader of a terrorist group and the leader of a democratic state can both commit war crimes. We need not compare them directly or try to say which one of them is worse in order to acknowledge that fact. Putting them in the same press release (this isn't a press release, though; this is a CNN article) seems fairly natural to me, since both are actors in the same conflict, regardless of how it started.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
You don't need direct orders to target civilians. You merely need negligence or a lack of care that causes civilian deaths in excess of what is "necessary" (ugh) to achieve the military objectives. I personally believe that Israeli forces have been indiscriminately killing civilians in Gaza in a way that would constitute war crimes, and apparently that just means I'm in agreement with the ICC.
> On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
Again, it is perfectly possible to acknowledge that two different parties have committed war crimes, even though they've done so in completely different ways, and the organizations they represent are completely different.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because that's not against international law. Even if it was, your question here is just whataboutism.
I don't think anyone is actually doing that, though. The leader of a terrorist group and the leader of a democratic state can both commit war crimes. We need not compare them directly or try to say which one of them is worse in order to acknowledge that fact. Putting them in the same press release (this isn't a press release, though; this is a CNN article) seems fairly natural to me, since both are actors in the same conflict, regardless of how it started.
> I'm all for investigating if there were any orders of directly targeting civilians being given to the Israeli military, etc, but that's a pretty far fetched assumption in my opinion.
You don't need direct orders to target civilians. You merely need negligence or a lack of care that causes civilian deaths in excess of what is "necessary" (ugh) to achieve the military objectives. I personally believe that Israeli forces have been indiscriminately killing civilians in Gaza in a way that would constitute war crimes, and apparently that just means I'm in agreement with the ICC.
> On the other side you have what's a pretty clear case of a large scale terror attack against innocent civilians.
Again, it is perfectly possible to acknowledge that two different parties have committed war crimes, even though they've done so in completely different ways, and the organizations they represent are completely different.
> In addition, why doesn't the ICC look into Egypt's conduct of refusing to allow civilians to flee from this conflict?
Because that's not against international law. Even if it was, your question here is just whataboutism.