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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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.
In cope news, here's a three part Bloomberg series about ukraine. The first part is about what the US could have/should have done differently. I'm going to focus on the meat of this series, such as it is, not every bit of brainworms.
spoiler
Part 1 - what could the US have done differentlyThe two prescriptions by the author are one - more aid earlier, but they recognize that this wouldn't be any guarantee (read, it wouldn't have really made a difference). The second is this:
Setting aside the escalatory risk of defacto making ukraine part of NATO, this was not logistically possible. The US did not have forces disposed to execute a land campaign in ukraine. Mobilizing forces does not happen at the drop of a hat. It would have taken US and allies 3 to 6 months to rally a meaningful force to be ready in ukraine. Setting that aside, the end of March 2022 was the best time to negotiate peace, evidenced by the ceasefire/peace treaty that was scuttled by the US/UK. In a parallel universe, if NATO had pushed peace rather than undermining it, this probably would have happened. The threat to both Russia and ukraine of direct US involvement if peace didn't happen would provide even more push to this.
In short, the author of this article suggests only one thing the US could have done differently, and that would have been tacking an ultimatum onto the extant Peace negotiations. Of course, the author doesn't mention these negotiations at all.
Ukraine’s Desperate Hour: The World Needs a Russian Defeat
This article is mostly doom and gloom about the western order. It is generally directionally accurate though with many missing pieces, most notably the deindustrialization of Europe, the proliferation of military industrial capacity and technology transfers between Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and the continued erosion of support for the west in the global south. The article ends with the following:
In other words, absolutely no lessons learned from the abject failures of 2022-2023, only doubling down on the same maximalist objectives with no strategy to get there. When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Part 3 - Ukraine’s Desperate Hour: Victory (of a Sort) Is Still Possible
This part is forward looking. The author admits that 2024 is going to be ugly for ukraine as they "can't win a decisive victory in 2024." instead, the author recommends weathering the storm on the ground and seeking victory via pinprick strikes on the black sea navy, Crimea, sabotage in Russia, and seizing Russia's foreign reserves. The article does not mention the difficulties and reluctance of the euros on that, but does question whether such a step would erode the dollar's reserve status.
The final strategy described is the same as 2022/2023 - build a new army so that they can do another counteroffensive in 2025.
Note that there is literally no discussion of where the materiel, personnel and money for such a 4th (5th?) army might come from, no discussion of industrial capacity, and no discussion of how to build such an army without it being destroyed by kinzhals before it gets to the front. Also, no discussion of what Russia's actual objectives are beyond "being bad & conquering ukraine". The failure to discuss what an enemy's actual objectives and values are means that durable peace is impossible. The only thing that can be conceived of is endless hammering with one's only tool.
Liberal hindsight is definitely not "20/20". Like the target is gigantic, and close, and you actually have to work really hard to miss it. And yet....
Also, I'm sure Russia will just sit idly by and be content to watch Ukraine build this massive strategic advantage it needs to be victorious in the future. SMH. Hold that thought, Putin. I'll be right back....
It would come from another near neighbour to russia. Poland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania make the most sense as candidates. They would have to drag them into the war.
The best candidate for them is the one that's not currently in NATO, because dragging it into a war would not mean the rest of NATO is forced to engage also.
There is no requirement for other NATO countries to engage if one member country sends troops to aid Ukraine, since they wouldn't be acting out any kind of defensive action in that situation.
I fully see that as a way for the US to weasel their way out of triggering article 5 while still strongarming the Baltics into war.
I'm not sure Russia will regard it the same way. If a NATO country is involved, they will regard it as a war with NATO. Unless they back away from that because they don't want to escalate, which isn't implausible tbh.
Yeah article 5 nuke war baby! Bloomberg, Mr. Wall Street terminal guy would love that. Can we this prick?
Forever wars baby! However the pre planned idea is to build it up until 2050ish according to Friedman's Next 100 years. All this shit is planned and time tabled. Death Stars and Japanese / Turk alliance doing another Pearl Harbor - IN SPACE
Some is harder to find but something like 200b is in Belgian banks I think.