Image is of legal adviser to Israel's foreign ministry Tal Becker and British jurist Malcolm Shaw at the ICJ hearing.
The ICJ case against Israel might not achieve much for the Palestinian cause directly, given that Israeli politicians have explicitly stated that the Hague will not stop them - and I believe them. The Resistance will be what stops them, and they are doing quite well for themselves. Hezbollah has hit highly sensitive and important Israeli military sites over the last couple weeks, and in general persist in several border attacks every day. The battles in Iraq and Syria also continue. Hamas remains largely intact, and is successfully forcing Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip to retreat, and other parts of the Gazan Resistance are continuing to battle down in Khan Yunis. And, last but not least, Yemen is firmly dedicated to the blockade, warding off another ship literally minutes before I started writing this paragraph.
What the ICJ is battling over isn't Palestine and Israel - not really - but the legitimacy of international law itself, and to what degree victimized countries can rely on it to solve problems, versus needing to take more militant routes for justice. In a weird sense, it might be an L for Israel either way. If international law sides with Palestine, then when Israel refuses to stop, it will invalidate international law. If international law sides with Israel, then it will invalidate international law. There is no conceivable way for the West to come out of this looking good.
The South African portion detailing Israeli atrocities against Gaza was largely ignored by the western media. They have instead, obviously, decided to focus on the Israeli portion. Their defense appears to amount to "We didn't do it, Hamas did it. And if we did do it, it doesn't matter, because that's just urban warfare for you. Please get this whole thing thrown out on a very dubious technicality so we don't have to advance to the next stage."
From Craig Murray, who has been physically going to the Hague:
It is important to realise this. Israel is hoping to win on their procedural points about existence of dispute, unilateral assurances and jurisdiction. The obvious nonsense they spoke about the damage to homes and infrastructure being caused by Hamas, trucks entering Gaza and casualty figures, was not serious. They did not expect the judges to believe any of this. The procedural points were for the court. The rest was mass propaganda for the media.
...I am sure the judges want to get out of this and they may go for the procedural points. But there is a real problem with Israel’s “no dispute” argument. If accepted, it would mean that a country committing genocide can simply not reply to a challenge, and then legal action will not be possible because no reply means “no dispute”. I hope that absurdity is obvious to the judges. But they may of course wish not to notice it…
What do I think will happen? Some sort of “compromise”. The judges will issue provisional measures different to South Africa’s request, asking Israel to continue to take measures to protect the civilian population, or some such guff. Doubtless the State Department have drafted something like this for President of the court Donoghoe already.
I hope I am wrong. I would hate to give up on international law. One thing I do know for certain. These two days in the Hague were absolutely crucial for deciding if there is any meaning left in notions of international law and human rights. I still believe action by the court could cause the US and UK to back off and provide some measure of relief. For now, let us all pray or wish, each in our way, for the children of Gaza.
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The Country of the Week is South Africa! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
I mean car attack bad, cause it hurts some random people
Nope Israeli are occupiers and valid military targets, not “random people”. Israel is a fully militarized war society. Only children and the mentally handicapped have any excuse or protection, or the extreme minority of anti-Zionist Israelis who are sabotaging Israel as much as they can internally or spying for the resistance (can’t be more than 1% of the population)
More than 1% of the population votes for the communist party. It's not as bad as that.
If you were really a leftist, you would leave their country.
No? That would only strengthen jewish ultranationalists.
In general yes, however as leftist solution is not genocide-back, but rather peace and reconciliation, i dont find it in anyway good.
In other words, if they have rammed 1000 members of their knesset it would have been less bad than 17 people on the street.
Leftists shouldnt forget what political violence is smh. Hit appropriate targets and you get local support, do indiscriminate violence, and you get condemnation and hate
Acts of revolutionary struggle and wars of decolonization are not genocide. Once Israel dissolves or surrenders they can be given forgiveness if they cooperate with the new secular egalitarian society, but first their entire project must be strategically defeated in a permanent way. Until that happens though they are engaged in warfare, killing your occupiers in armed struggle is not “genocide back”. It’s revolutionary struggle. “Occupier” is not a race or protected class.
I don’t want to hear any white western whinging about “peace and reconciliation” until after victory. While the war is ongoing we do not hug our enemy.
Israeli occupiers will never give the armed Palestinian resistance “support” ever, not until Palestine wins. Then once they are in power there might be some Israeli comprador sellouts willing to play ball and swap to the winners side.
Did you think it was white genocide when boers were targeted and murdered in apartheid South Africa too? Were Native Americans doing “genocide back” when they raided white colonies and put them to the torch?
Please read Fanon
Can you please come yell at the liberal west asians on twitter getting angry over western leftists celebrating the successes of the axis of resistance it’s very fucking annoying. Not actually of course no one should be on twitter but these fucking doomers are so annoying and they are ruthlessly using identity politics to get away with it
I am well familiar with these types of worms
There's a song by غرباء للفن الاسلامي called عشاق الثار which specifically about these attacks, fun song if you understand arabic, they even clown on Gadi Isenkot
I wouldn't target random Israelis mainly because manpower is scarce. But each and every Israeli citizen should live in fear and understand that this doesn't stop until their government surrenders. The master's family doesn't get to feel safe and peace just because they don't interact with the slaves in the fields. Besides, is it not the master's fault for putting his family in danger?
Local support? Lol
In my opinion, Palestinian resistance makes a lot of leftists and liberals wince because it's "current." If this was some 1910 account of Vietnamese people blowing up a cafe that killed 20 French people including a French grandma, I'm 99% positive that most people would not even think about the ages involved and simply say "this is what happens when you colonize and dehumanize a people." But because this resistance is in full color and HD, people become more hesitant. Understandably so, but this is the reality of political violence. It is not some fantasy where you get to always stand valiantly with the sun shining down on you. In a war where one side fundamentally sees you as non-human, you will need to decide when that side must experience terror.
It would have been "less bad" (better) in the sense that taking out higher ranking zionists is even better. It would be better for a military action to take out 17 generals (let alone 1000) than 17 privates, but all are valid acts of war.
I blame the Israeli government. If they simply stopped bombing and occupying land, none of this would happen.
no sympathy for colonisers
Propaganda and colonizer lies make insane criminal ass behaviour get okayd, like if a group of armed men came into idk Brussels and started killing people and kicking them out of their homes then inviting people to live there, idk what they'd get labeled as because I can't even imagine it happening without the group being nuked or someshit, but these same "civilized" europeans do it in their colony in a scale beyond comprehension and wow they're civilians and "soldiers who were forced to do it". Like why go there and why are you still there? Thinking about colonizers makes me short circuit
seeing leftists get upset at the thought of smol bean zionists getting killed, in numbers that are no where near what's been done to palestinians, is so embarassing
I kind of agree. Though I'd walk the line a little differently than just "bad" and a little differently than the people who seem to be outright condoning it.
Generally just attacking a bunch of random people isn't good. It might be difficult to ensure there aren't children among them, for example. And though chances are small, you could get someone who is actually aiding the resistance. There aren't many such people, so taking one out would be a real shame. Although the segregation enacted by apartheid makes it much easier to target colonizers rather than just any ol' random sampling of people from the whole population, it's better to be able to target oppressors even more specifically.
Che Guevara wrote about terrorism as a tactic in Guerilla Warfare, condemning it pretty harshly except in the most extreme of cases, and I tend to agree.
All of that said, there's a difference between condemning an act and not condoning it. In the face of the extreme, acute, and ongoing genocide, it's hard to find fault in the resistance committing violent acts against (likely) oppressors, even if they aren't all as well-planned and principled as we might like.
We also don't know the context here, from the little info posted (not to mention, no source cited). Who even committed the act? Was it done in a moment of desperation (e.g. someone about to be nabbed by cops)? Was it targeted in any way (e.g. was it against some pro-genocide rally, or against a pro-liberation rally, or a bunch of IDF troops, or...)? Was it intended to be specifically targeted at an individual or smaller group, and didn't go off as planned (keeping in mind that such an attack has a very high likelihood of not going off as planned)?
In all, I think I'd probably default—given the little information known here—to: It's not something I'd generally choose to do, and even if it wound up just taking out a bunch of reactionary colonizers, it's probably a shame other tactics weren't (possibly couldn't) be used, but at the moment it's kind of just a random fact to file away and revisit if more information is ever encountered.
settlers aren't random people