All for this. If the Americans say the evidence against this unit is credible, sanctions against the unit is the least that should happen, followed by sanctions against anyone that knew about it and protected the unit.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders have applauded the US for passing a vital €89 billion aid bill which has been struggling to make it through the House of Representatives for months....
Two western proxies, Israel and Ukraine, holding off two supermember states of the modern Axis of Evil/Group of Friends: Russia and Iran. Gaza and the West Bank are to Iran what Belarus and Crimea are to Russia, just further along; Russia already has a working nuclear weapons program and have parked nukes in Belarus and taken over reactors in Crimea. Nobody is going to let Iran get that far. Russia says they are fighting fascism, too. Why do you believe it when Iran says it but not Russia?
Nah I don’t see it that way at all. Gaza’s political and community leaders put their kids in harm’s way and and then celebrate their deaths as “martyrs,” which is just coded speech for “human shields used by fanatical warlords to increase the human price of Israel’s strikes against Hamas members and the hundreds of miles of tunnels they built under neighborhoods and schools.” Lying about it to everyone and coming to the international community with crocodile tears is the only weapon for Hamas and it’s many pan-Islamist ideological allies, other than straight up hostage-taking, indiscriminate rocket attacks, mass shootings, and suicide bombings.
Hamas would scuttle the tunnels and surrender if they had any concern about human lives in Gaza, other than their own. Maybe Gaza could have elections and international ports of entry again, bring in all the food and medicine they want, you know, if they had a legitimate legal system and government, if they ever even one single time treat a war criminal as a criminal instead of as a hero, maybe they could develop an economy based on something other than spending everything on weapons to kill Jews while the entire population is malnourished and living philanthrope-to-philanthrope.
Don’t need to think Israel is the heroes to understand, as a country, it has redeeming qualities.
They should start demonstrating their commitment to humanity by condemning Hamas, condemning the October 7 attacks, and then by pursuing the war criminals in their own ranks for a while, instead of offering support and shelter.
Your comment reminded me of one of those times Trump’s campaign manager, former attorney or something was charged with crimes, and then Trump pretended he didn’t even know the person.
I am not strongly opposed the West Bank having UN membership but they have work to do. I could be convinced they’re on their way. I haven’t seen much evidence of that.
What part don’t you understand? Israel was going to invade Rafah either way. Might as well try and get something out it that may not save another 10,000 Gazans, but perhaps will prevent hot open war, saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the process.
Sounds like this deal was misreported anyway because according to some commenters Israel has struck Iran.
I don’t think the Israelis consider them to be separate matters.
Avoiding the hot war with Iran in exchange for something Israel was going to do anyway, was the US’s position. I guess we will see how many lives it would have saved since Israel is bombing right again right now.
I just don’t see it that way. I suppose long-term it trends that way but in the short term, it’s a very well armed vassal state with a form of government and civilian populatiom worth preserving.
To me it’s like this: Israel has all the ordinance and warheads it would need to turn the Middle East into smoldering ruin from Tehran to Cairo. That’s a vassal state that is more dangerous to humanity if the reigns of American (and international) support are removed. If Israel and Iran know the US won’t back up Israel, then it stops being a vassalary war and starts being a hot, open war. I don’t know how many deaths it would take to convince me an unprotected Israel is safer for humanity than the current one but it’s a hell of a lot more than low-mid five figures. I’m thinking of the safety and rights of millions of lives. I think an open war with Iran would lead to an unprecedented humanitarian and refugee catastrophe that would result in a cascade of failed states enveloping the mideast and eastern Europe, at minimum.
At the same time, Israel has all the institutions it needs right now to vote Bibi and his right wing fanatic friends out of office and I have hope the Israeli people will do that very soon. Democracy is too rare and precious to cede. Democracy is the path to lasting peace and human rights. Say that in Hamas territory and see if you don’t get stoned to death in front of a raucous crowd. So I’m not ready to feed it to the wolves.
That’s a novel legal theory. I understand it has a lot of traction in fundraising circles and in nonprofits, and among interested associates of Tehran.
Until a court of competent jurisdiction applies the law and a prosecutor charges and secures a conviction of someone, who isn’t South African, it’s literally a novel legal theory.
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Yeah it’s been going up. Makes sense. Arguably not enough for how much stress that job is. Of course it comes with a free house and that has a bowling alley in it, and escape hatches for hookers.
Considering the dude has been in the Senate since dinosaurs were on the planet during which time he could partake legally in inside trading and he had access to much of the world’s confidential information and a long list of people volunteering to do him favors.
Elaboration by request: It’s a tiny amount of money that only sounds like a lot to the 99%. Relative to his wealth, this post is a sad reminder of the dragon’s-hoard of wealth he still has and the desolation caused by aquiring it. I want to eat this whole mother fucker and I’d settle for like half, but I am certainly not uplifted by a bite of pinky toe.
Edit: Okay, it’s uplifting that he is saying this and encouraging good citizenship. It’s a paltry amount and I won’t be pleased by it.
Yes they built 500 mi of tunnels in an area only 25 miles wide. They put them under the homes of their families and friends and hold their families and friends to stay there and keep working, keep living, don’t mind the terror tunnels under your house.
That’s called using entire cities as human shields.
Then they told people the evacuations were a hoax and instead of leaving their building after getting a phone call from the IDF saying it’s about to be bombed, people should go stand on the roof instead.
I will watch it. I’ve seen it in my feed before but never clicked it. My education on this comes from two influential professors, one I had for constitutional law, who was an expert on constitutional history and theory and had been an envoy to South Africa to help write their new Constitution, and the other was unofficial liason between certain folks in the US government and Arafat and the PLO, which had no official relations. To me, the lack of popular consent of the governed is the sine qua non of Apartheid, that means the victims are a political but popular majority citizens of the country. Those are the things that make it so evil and so abhorrent, to me anyway, and it’s how I’ve come to understand it, both in terms of how it came to be and the reforms that ended it.
Apartheid is said to be an “aggravated form of racial discrimination.” Racial discrimination is against international law on its own, by itself. Apartheid, in which the minority political bloc purported to rule over the unconsenting majority, based solely on race, is something way, way more dastardly and offensive to humanity, mainly because it is antithetical to democratic governance, which the the only think that even leads toward peak humanity, if not the greatest human achievement.
Meanwhile, although a suspect class for which heightened scrutiny of potential racial discrimination is warranted, nationality and citizenship status are sometimes perfectly just grounds for policies that are facially neutral but discriminatory as applied. For example, how many suicide bombers have to cross the border from the same place before you restrict certain people’s rights based on national origin or immigration status, how many rockets do they have to import and launch at your people before you start inspecting their deliveries?
Still not ready to feed a democracy to Iran. Israel isn’t going to let it happen without a fight, and that will be a bloodbath that makes the entirety of the hostilities from 1948 to date look like a pleasant afternoon.
Nah, even though no nation or individual has ever been indicted, let alone convicted, for apartheid crimes, outside of South Africa, I’m coming around to the idea that my understanding of the definition of apartheid is ill-founded. It doesn’t hurt at all but it is difficult to recognize. I’m only informed by my own education and experience, which on this were pretty on point, primary sources. I read a nice law review article this morning about the modern South African indictments under modern positive international law, but it focuses on jurisdictional and procedural rather than substantive law, since obviously they were South Africans and thus it wasn’t a new application of the substantive law.
Maybe you can help by describing the feature or features of “apartheid” under the statutory or customary international law definition of your choice that distinguishes apartheid from mere racial discrimination? What makes apartheid “aggravated” discrimination instead of regular discriminstion?Something that really gets to the meat of whether the international custom against apartheid, which led to the Rome Statute (which says in Article II “as practiced by South Africa”).
I fundamentally disagree that discrimination based on national origin and immigration status is on the same level as discrimination based on race. Every country discriminates based on national origin and immigration status; while doing so is always suspect, it is often perfectly acceptable and uncontroversial.
I also fundamentally believe that an evil policy duly enacted into law by a popular majority is less evil than the same policy forced onto the majority without consent. The latter is obviously a crime against humanity. Again, racial discrimination is already against international law.
So I’m still not ready to feed Israel to Iran and write off the only country in the middle east capable of granting legitimate human rights, and that’s the one that elects its leaders and not the one that hears voices and describes democratic ideals as infidelity to the word of Dog. I am hopeful for the Israeli people that they can and will strive toward democracy, and that is hope for humanity, since caliphates and imamates are not legitimate sources of positive law.
That’s the language you need to quote because that’s the language I’m talking about, it qualifies the whole thing. You’re reading it out. That’s not how reading law works. All words have their usual meaning. No words are superfluous.
Bud…yes, similar policies against any other racial group as practiced in South Africa.
When a court of law with competent jurisdiction somewhere find someone outside of South Africa guilty of apartheid, then you have a leg to stand. Until then, there’s a reason nobody has been charged outside of South Africa, and that’s because the practices in South Africa were if a fundamentally different character than those in Israel, chiefly, based on immigration status, not race, and secondly, against non citizens, not citizens.
Try and keep up slow poke, it’s irrelevant because it’s a wall of text everyone here talking about this has already read. You don’t need to constantly link things to me that I’ve already seen.
The Rome Statute says “as practiced in South Africa.”
That means it’s about policies that are of the same character and kind as they had in South Africa.
The defining policies of Apartheid are simply not present in Israel, so you must agree you are making a stretch.
But in that quote he’s literally saying that the UN recognized the plight of people in Palestine and in South African apartheid, and then ended the system of apartheid.
What does that say about the system in Palestine?
This is not evidence of Nelson Mandela stating that the situation in Israel is literally apartheid.
At best it is a presuppossed, vague comparison.
Yes, it is unjust. That doesn’t mean it is Apartheid. Hey Charlie
Nobody is disputing that people compare it. I’m also not disputing that there is a hyper modern converted effort to define Israel as an Apartheid state.
You’re supposed to be providing evidence that as originally understood and as codified into law, Israel is literally an apartheid state.
Citing people who made comparisons is not evidence on this point nor is citing modern sources who, I am suggesting, have been misled or miseducated.
Maybe I am he one that was miseducated. Maybe the statutory codification of the international crime of apartheid was meant to be broad enough to include Israel even though it lacks the hallmark policies of Apartheid but I am not persuaded so far.
Back to your Mandella quote, the part about the world putting an end to Apartheid, and doing things like codifying it into international law. That began in 1973. In 1969, the UN had just adopted the convention against racial discrimination.
By your edtimation, what are the distinguish features as between the racial discrimination convention and he apartheid convention?
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