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.
The weekly update is here on the website.
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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The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
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.
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We aren’t talking about a country in the Global South, which is bombed and then chastised for not having gay rights. We are talking about the communist party of an EU member state. The much simpler explanation here is that whoever wrote and then greenlit that communiqué has brainworms.
Here in Brazil we even have meme parties that are more reactionary than Hitler, but are called something along the lines of Communist Part of the Working Poor or whatever.
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No, but TBF Greece is only a step or two up from that in terms of how they are exploited by Europe and other countries near the top of the imperial hierarchy. Yanis Varoufakis basically said Ukraine shouldn’t want to join the EU because they’d wind up like Greece: a local dumping ground for European debt and other neoliberal excrement.
Of course, I don’t see that as an excuse for homophobia and other bigotry. Just a side note about “not the Global South”.
Putting the degrees of exploitation aside, that phrase goes onto say ‘which is bombed, and then chastised for not having gay rights’. That’s the big difference.
One thing is having your political system focused entirely on current and ongoing american occupation and NATO bombing campaigns. Of course if you’re living under a NATO war effort then it might be hard to organize for human rights. Especially if the forces which resist enemy aggression happen to be of a religious or social conservative nature. Another thing entirely is having your political system revel in far-right brainworms.
I’m brazilian, our congress has been in the hands of the far-right for as long as I can remember. I recognize that Brazil’s material conditions are worsened by financial exploitation by the US, and that americans had a direct hand in spreading neopentecostalism here. Nonetheless, the forces involved here do not want for context or justification. They are racists, homophobes and mysoginists because that’s what they believe in, and they’d still believe those things if the country was as rich as Greece or even Germany.
The people who wrote that communiqué have their agency. And either they genuinely believe the things they said, or they feel it is politically expedient to say those things.
Certainly. Though TBF a lot of good organizing for gay and other social equality does happen in the Global South where folks are bombed and couped and have the death squads sent to rampage. And I think that’s another part of the dynamic: ignoring the organizing and social progress that is made, even if it isn’t recognized yet in electoral politics (thanks, in large part, to U.S./NATO knowing its easiest to control state hierarchies from the top, just like liberals tend to subvert organizations like non-profits and even unions when those entities are hierarchical).
And, in my view, that’s only further condemnation of these people. Was Greece hyper exploited by Germany due to the Euro-zone? Yes. But it’s still a relatively well off country, a member of NATO, the West, and of the EU. There no death squads killing pro LGBT communists in Greece. Then why do these communists talk about the ‘right to fatherhood and motherhood’ like they are evangelical ‘’‘family defenders’‘’? The way I see it, it’s because they believe that.
The context here is not that these are smol beans trying to ward off pink imperialism. Pink imperialism was not the banner of the Troika. The real context is that these people exist in an Europe that continues to move ever farther towards the right.
Yep. 100% agree.
The KKE is basically grown in a vat itself
It’s not a valid excuse.
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