demagogue on 12/10/2024 at 21:41
Your example was an unarmed MMA fighter and two armed assailants but go on.
If you're talking about the law of armed conflict ... well I guess I should have done this ages ago as a public service.
Everybody is an armchair lawyer in this debate. The most authoritative legal word is in these three sets of documents.
1. The HRC Commission of Inquiry finding Hamas responsible for war crimes and the IDF responsible of war crimes and crimes against humanity (much worse in terms of sentencing & scope): (
https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/06/1150946) press version #1, (
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g24/086/64/pdf/g2408664.pdf) COI Report #1, (
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/immense-scale-gaza-killings-amount-crime-against-humanity-un-inquiry-says-2024-06-12/) press version #2, (
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/262/79/pdf/n2426279.pdf) COI Report #2 ... Well here are all the (
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/co-israel/index) COI docs since I can't curate them for here just now.
2. The ICJ Advisory Opinion finding Israel's occupation in the West Bank illegal: (
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-pre-01-00-en.pdf) press version, (
https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176) summary version, (
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/186/186-20240719-adv-01-00-en.pdf) the Advisory Opinion
3. This isn't an authoritative decision yet, but here's the basic status of the ICJ genocide claim: (
https://www.humanrightsnetwork.org/publications/genocide-in-gaza) genocide claim, I mean in terms of how an independent process would do the analysis by the book. And here are the (
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192/provisional-measures) ICJ Provisional Orders and proceedings records for the record, which anyway tells you the writing on the wall.
The thing to know about this is that Israel isn't even trying to defend itself according to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. They're speaking as if the legal standard is the Holocaust, which is effective for their domestic audience, but makes it likely the ICJ is going to rule against them. I say that just as a lawyer predicting the outcome of a process without a dog in the race -- because they're not even bothering to give the justices a legal defense (it's not sure they could win it even with their best defense anyway), and it looks like they're setting the grounds for rejecting a decision against them because the ICJ must be anti-semetic.
If someone actually wanted to debate these issues, the right way to do it is find and quote the relevant language in these decisions, and then we can talk about the issues involved in that. For example, just to take #2, even some of the dissents aren't really debating that parts of the occupation activities are illegal on the actual standards; there's a debate if it amounts to apartheid, etc.
But one thing to note is that the disproportionate killings of civilians aren't really much part of the legal claims involved anyway. Talking about them is important, but not really a central issue here. Actions evincing the Israel government's intent and targeting of civilians beyond military strikes near residential areas per se tend to have more legal significance as far as a crime against humanity or genocide goes, etc.
I mean there are two discussions happening, the debate in the public sphere about people's personal feelings of ethics and then the legal debate which is better captured by the above documents at least as the right starting point.
Subjective Effect on 12/10/2024 at 22:07
My example was about playing by the same rules.
demagogue on 12/10/2024 at 22:32
Yes, the COI covers that ground, if that's what you wanted to actually talk about.
I think I edited that in later. (I wasn't sure when the first post happened, how much if any of the part after the first line or two got in then vs. in an edit.)
I recognize that a lot of people don't have the time or capacity to read and digest that much, though, which is fine.
People can still talk about things based on their intuitions.
But ideally that's how these things should at least get started.
Edit: I was giving the press release or summary versions which are much shorter and easier to follow for that reason.
Starker on 12/10/2024 at 23:45
The argument that Palestinians have moral failings doesn't work on me. Some people have likewise tried to argue that I shouldn't talk about human rights for the Palestinians, because they are anti-semitic, homophobic, etc. But, here's the thing... I don't believe in human rights for specific groups because of who these groups are. Who they are is irrelevant for me. I don't think gay people should have rights because they are gay, trans, etc. I don't particularly care or understand what it means to be gay, trans, etc, as it doesn't really concern me personally. I believe they should have rights because they are human.
So, coming from that standpoint, the argument that Palestinians deserve no rights and that their culture should be destroyed because they have carried out acts of vandalism against the cultural heritage of other people just seems like alien thinking for me, sort of a blue and orange morality, if you will. In the end, it seems no different than an argument from blood -- that Palestinians should be punished because of their blood, not because of who they are as individuals.
Subjective Effect on 12/10/2024 at 23:47
Quote Posted by Starker
the argument that Palestinians deserve no rights and that their culture should be destroyed because they have carried out acts of vandalism against the cultural heritage of other people just seems like alien thinking for me
Who is making this argument and where? Because it sure as hell isn't me.
Starker on 12/10/2024 at 23:51
Your answer to cultural destruction in Palestine was that you don't care. So you do condone it.
Also, I mean, seriously... if your answer to, "Cultural destruction of Palestine is a crime," is, "Palestinians have no respect for cultural heritage on the other side," what am I to think?
Subjective Effect on 13/10/2024 at 00:31
I don't condone it and don't think it should happen, but that's what I think about all such types of destruction. It's part of the history of humanity and should be preserved, but when it's the destruction of things belonging to people who destroy the heritage of others, I find their whining about it hypocritical and therefore idiotic. I still don't think it should happen.
Starker on 13/10/2024 at 00:36
The question isn't whether Palestinians in part or in whole are "whining about it". The issue is that it's happening on a widespread scale. Also, there's the fact that the destruction of churches and mosques and other historical and religious sites concerns more than just Palestinians in Gaza.
And, of course, it concerns how Israel is conducting itself. By your very logic, they would have no right to "whine about" any vandalism of their cultural sites either.
Subjective Effect on 13/10/2024 at 00:49
But Israel isn't vandalising the sites - they are collaterally damaged. So it's not the same, at all.
Again - Israel held to a different standard. Their accidental damage of things is somehow equal to someone else's intentional and deliberate damage.
Clown world.
SD on 13/10/2024 at 02:26
Quote Posted by Nicker
It's all very well putting a
1948 no-blame before date on things, but the inter-tribal wars in that region have been going on for millennia. The Brits just took advantage of the old rivalries, like they did during the partition of India, creating arbitrary, artificial territories and reigniting old feuds. Ultimately they assuaged their guilt over allowing the Holocaust in Europe by exporting it to the outskirts of what they considered civilization. You know, where the coloured people live.
That's a real cop out. You can't just write everything off as ancient tribal conflicts. Romans, Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Rashiduns, Ottomans, Crusaders, and anyone else who ever had designs on the "Holy Land" were all colonisers and interlopers. They had no business being there, because it wasn't their land. Jews never had designs on anyone else's land. They weren't out to construct an empire, unlike the people who conquered them.
The Holocaust was the last straw for the community, and here we are today, with the Jewish people exercising sovereignty over their ancestral territory for the first time in more than 2,000 years. In a sane world we would be celebrating the most succcessful act of decolonisation in human history, but instead everyone is mourning because Jews managed to break out of the box marked 'victim' that the world had placed them in. Extraordinary.
Nor, for that matter, can you lay blame on the British. They inherited Palestine from the Turks after WWI, at the behest of the League of Nations. What sparked the conflict in the modern age, and ultimately led to partition, was Arab attacks upon Jews. It was the United Nations which eventually proposed the division; most of the land allocated to the Jews was the Negev desert. The ultimate irony is that many of the Arabs in the region were recent immigrants who had come to Judea because of the opportunities afforded by returning Jews. And those "coloured people" are no more coloured than Jews are.
Worth remembering too that the Nazis and the Palestinian leadership conspired to expand the Holocaust to the Levant.
(
https://jcpa.org/article/palestinians-arabs-and-the-holocaust/)
