domain:sotonye.substack.com
I would like to understand the pro-Israel position better
Coleman Hughes puts the case for the Israel beautifully in this 2 minute video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZloHekt7WLo
I don't think the Israel-Palestine conflict can be understood without considering the facts that (1) Hamas, and the Palestinian people in aggregate, are strategically committed to genocide against the Jewish people, and (2) Hamas, with the enthusiastic support of the Palestinian people, deliberately embeds themselves into the civilian population in such a way that the cannot be brought to justice without high civilian casualties. If you don't believe those two things, then the "occupation" looks unjust, and the Palestinian "civilian" casualties look morally outrageous. If you do believe those things, then Israel is taking just and necessary steps to defend themselves. So everything hinges on that.
The objective of genocide is stated in Hamas's 19988 charter. In the early 2000's, the ruling party of Palestine was Fatah, a terrorist organization. Before the 2006 elections, Fatah renounced terrorism as a tactic, but Hamas did not. Subsequently, Hamas became more popular and they won 74 seats in Palestinian parliament, compared with Fatah's 45. Since then Hamas has controlled the schools and media in Gaza and the Palestinian population has become even more fanatical.
If you are continuously denied justice in an existential matter, though, I don't think it's at all an alien viewpoint that you are morally entitled to do whatever you find appropriate to seize justice for yourself,
In the abstract, this is the case for Palestine. If you look at it in a vacuum, it makes sense, but I don't think we should look at it in a vacuum. We should compare the response of Hamas and the Palestinians to the way they have been treated to the responses of other groups who have been treated similarly and how they reacted. We don't see Korean suicide bombers in Japan, Jewish suicide bombers in Germany, Tibetan suicide bombers in China, Armenian suicide bombers in Azerbaijan, Finnish suicide bombers in Russia, etc., etc., etc. We didn't see this kind of terrorism from Ukraine and Crimea when they were occupied by the Soviet Union, and we didn't see it by the Jews themselves when they were occupied by Rome. When somebody says "how would you feel if...", the very fact that they have to make up this hypothetical means that they cannot think of a historical example of a morally justified campaign of terror against a civilian population by an allegedly oppressed civilization. And the reason there are no examples is that in the real world, civilized people do not respond to oppression with campaigns of terror targeted at the murder of civilians on the other side. In a hypothetical, you might imagine that they do, or that you would -- but you wouldn't and they don't.
sun_the_second
11m ago
I'd be tempted to answer with "first_time?.png" if I were Jewish.
Dean
17m ago
Either you believe in an international rules-based order or you don’t.
To believe in an international rules-based order, you have to believe that there are actual rules, or else it's an arbitrary vibes-based order. And while I do like my vibing, the text of the Rome Statute of the International Court is easily accessible and free online.
Not to spoil too much in advance, but the scope of the ICC has limits. There's a reason the preamble to the Rome Statute of the International Court starts with 'The States Parties to this statute' (distinguishing them from States not party to the statute), and emphasizes '
Emphasizing in this connection that nothing in this Statue shall be taken as authorizing any State Party to intervene in an armed conflict or in the internal affairs of any State.
(No, there is no definition of what 'intervene' means in this context. Which means the prohibition is as small, or large, as you want or can get away with.)
But preambles are fluff. Other limits are baked into the law and include where it may exercise its functions and powers-
Article 4 - Legal status and powers of the Court 2. The Court may exercise its functions and powers, as provided in this Statute, on the territory of any State Party and, by special agreement, on the territory of any other State.
- and preconditions on the exercise of ICC jurisdiction.
Article 12 - Preconditions to the exercise of jurisdiction
- A State which becomes a Party to this Statute thereby accepts the jurisdiction of the Court with respect to the crimes referred to in article 5.
- In the case of article 13, paragraph (a) or (c), the Court may exercise its jurisdiction if one or more of the following States are Parties to this Statute or have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with paragraph 3: (a) The State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred or, if the crime was committed on board a vessel or aircraft, the State of registration of that vessel or aircraft; (b) The State of which the person accused of the crime is a national.
- If the acceptance of a State which is not a Party to this Statute is required under paragraph 2, that State may, by declaration lodged with the Registrar, accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court with respect to the crime in question. The accepting State shall cooperate with the Court without any delay or exception in accordance with Part 9.
To wit- by the very rule creating the ICC, the ICC's jurisdiction is explicitly conditional, not universal. It is conditional on a state becoming a party to the Statute, or having accepted the jurisdiction of the Court over the matter (either in general or for the specific issue). If these preconditions are not met, the ICC as a court does not have jurisdiction.
Simply as a principle, the ICC does not have universal jurisdiction. That is a matter of international law.
Now, that's not the end of the matter as it relates to Israel, but it the start of a very significant snarl that will generally require you to presume a conclusion in order to resolve.
Claims of ICC jurisdiction over the Israeli-Hamas conflict hinge on Article 12 Para 2, subparagraph (a), 'The State on which the territory of which the conduct in question occurred.' This is the 'if it occurs on the territory of a State that is a member of the ICC, the ICC has jurisdiction' approach. The ICC position is that the State of Palestine is a member, as of 2015. This gives it the jurisdiction over the territory of it's member, the State of Palestine. What is the territory of the State of Palestine? Well, the ICC position is that it's jurisdiction territorially extends to the West Bank (which is under Israeli military occupation), Eastern Jerusalem (which is annexed by Israel), and the Gaza Strip.
Of course, this itself brings back issues going back to the jurisdiction. Setting aside the first two, the jurisdiction over the Gaza Strip is based on the claim of the ICC-acknowledged State of Palestine, which was admitted in 2015.
Except, of course, that the State of Palestine- as represented by the PLO that is the West Bank signatory- not only wasn't a recognized sovereign state in 2015 by inclusion into the United Nations (which is the primary international organization the ICC text aligns it with in terms of seeking information), it wasn't even in control of the Gaza Strip as a de facto state. The PLO was thrown out of the Gazan Strip- and thrown off buildings in the Gaza Strip- in 2007, nearly a decade before the ICC accession.
In other words, the ICC granted itself jurisdiction of territories not on the basis of the international law, but on the basis of internal decision on grounds of admitting a state not recognized by the United Nations as a sovereign state that said state had lost before joining the ICC. The international law basis of this conclusion is, well, as convincing as it needs to be if you're convinced.
Moreover, even the Article 12-Para B route of jurisdictions runs into the issue that the jurisdiction of actors/territories runs into the questions of jurisdiction of applicable crimes.
Article 5 - Crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court The jurisdiction of the Court shall be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. The Court has jurisdiction in accordance with this Statute with respect to the following crimes: (a) The crime of genocide; (b) Crimes against humanity; (c) War crimes; (d) The crime of aggression.
This is obviously contested given the hyperbolic propaganda surrounding the conflict, but in a very short form the death tolls we're seeing versus the firepower used are not really consistent with genocidal practices in other contexts unless you stretch the term genocide to it's lesser scopes and extremes that lose moral relevance due to overuse, and the arguments on war crimes typically run into the issue that the laws of war do not actually prohibit targeting military objectives even when civilian casualties are incurred (a common vibes-based misunderstanding).
The category of crime most relevant to the ICC in the context of the Israel incursion into Gazi might be the crime of aggression, which covers all the banal evils of war-
Article 8 - Crime of aggression
- For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.
- For the purpose of paragraph 1, “act of aggression” means the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, in accordance with United Nations General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, qualify as an act of aggression: (a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof; (b) Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State; (c) The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the armed forces of another State; (d) An attack by the armed forces of a State on the land, sea or air forces, or marine and air fleets of another State; (e) The use of armed forces of one State which are within the territory of another State with the agreement of the receiving State, in contravention of the conditions provided for in the agreement or any extension of their presence in such territory beyond the termination of the agreement; (f) The action of a State in allowing its territory, which it has placed at the disposal of another State, to be used by that other State for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third State; (g) The sending by or on behalf of a State of armed bands, groups, irregulars or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed force against another State of such gravity as to amount to the acts listed above, or its substantial involvement therein
...except that the very same Rome Statute establishing the ICC explicitly forbids that.
Article 15 - Exercise of jurisdiction over the crime of aggression 5. In respect of a State that is not a party to this Statute, the Court shall not exercise its jurisdiction over the crime of aggression when committed by that State’s nationals or on its territory.
Which, in turn, is why the lawfare opposition to Israel in the ICC has to frame issues in terms of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes- because those are the only categories of crimes that the ICC could potentially have jurisdiction of. If one buys the jurisdiction-via-signatory state argument that extends the ICC jurisdiction from the PLO-based West Bank to the Israeli-annexed Eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Except, of course, that the generally accepted internal status of the West Bank is that it is under Israeli military occupation- which goes back to Article 8, which defines the Crime of Aggression
Article 8 - Crime of Aggression
- For the purpose of this Statute, “crime of aggression” means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.
- For the purpose of paragraph 1, “act of aggression” means the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, in accordance with United Nations General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, qualify as an act of aggression: (a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting from such invasion or attack, or any annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof;
...which returns, again, to the question of jurisdiction.
For the ICC Jurisdiction chain to hold coherently, Israel must not be in a crime of aggression in its military occupation of the West Bank, despite having been accused of illegally occupying Palestine for over a half century, so that there can be a sovereign state of Palestine based in the West Bank to be a signatory state of the ICC, so that said state of Palestine can have territory for the ICC to have jurisdiction over. Said territory was determined by the ICC according to itself, absent any UN-recognized territorial state, to extend to the West Bank, which the nominal State of Palestine did not hold or govern for nearly a decade prior to its accession, so that the ICC may have jurisdiction of crimes against humanity / war crimes / genocide, but not crimes of aggression, in the current conflict between two belligerents, of whom neither are signatories of the Rome Statute.
This is, shall we say, just a little tenuous.
The fact that America supports international governance when and only when it gets to be in charge makes it look cynical and prevents people cooperating with it.
And that's a Good Thing(TM). Much of international law is inapplicable or inappropriate for many parts of the international community, and it would be immoral to force nation-states to be governed by agreements they did not agree to. There's a reason most international arbitration bodies- including the ICC- have clauses that they only apply to non-members if non-members assent for specific situations.
The Americans, much like the Europeans and everyone else in the international relations sphere, are very consistent that they are only bound by international agreements they have agreed to be bound by. That agreement may be a concession, conditional, or even coerced to some degree (though not by all measures), and a lack of agreement may be condemned, but the agreement is required due to the principles of sovereignty involved.
As such, it is quite normal and accepted for states to not only advocate for other people to come in agreements and be bound by international laws they themselves wouldn't want to be a part of- see the non-European support for the European Union accession of various states, or the various environmental conferences- but also seeks exceptions or refuse to partake in other states agreements.
The premise of the rules-based order is not, and never has been, that states are subject to agreements they haven't been party to. Rather, it's been that reneging or violating agreements that one is party to offers basis for action against a state. Not-entering an agreement has always been a different, and generally preferable, state than agreeing to and then breaking international law.
I don’t know why you’re assuming that Israel advocates necessarily believe that Palestinian resistance / violence / revenge is “morally wrong”. I certainly don’t. I fully agree that the Palestinians have a ‘right to resist’ settler colonialism (which is what Israel is) to no lesser degree than the American Indians or Australian aboriginals or indigenous Hawaiians did and do.
Nevertheless, part of waging this kind of war ought to be an implicit acceptance of vae victis, of victor’s justice. The Palestinians have waged three failed wars against the Jews. If they are crushed, utterly, if they are oppressed now then that, too, is the law of the jungle. Their honor prevents them from accepting the peace that some other native peoples once did; so be it. The Palestinians are not the first people to be replaced in their corner of the Levant; they may not be the last. So it goes.
I don't think that this original wrong has been made right to the Palestinians
Has the original wrong been made right to Native Americans? Remember, “they got a lot of welfare/casino money/etc” is an unsuitable argument according to you (eg. Bill Gates’ servant), and their participation in democracy (ie the right to vote/US citizenship) is also laughably insufficient given their tiny minority status at 2% of the population means that they are effectively under permanent rule by Europeans and other settlers, and have next to no say in national politics.
The truth is that Churchill was right about settler colonialism. It is the law of the universe, it is no moral harm. The perverse thing is not population replacement, which is historically commonplace, it is the replacement of a successful, high performing population with a less successful, lower performing one. You seemingly consider this argument illegitimate; it is not. Is it wrong for Donald Trump to support Norwegians migrating to the US but oppose Somalis doing so? I don’t think so.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
23m ago
Our preference for salt is much easier to explain. Sodium is an essential mineral, and getting enough of it is important for all terrestrial animals that are not obligate carnivores.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
28m ago
Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
But, as I've argued before, there is no neutral definition of what constitutes an "inflammatory" claim. The claims that count as inflammatory for you depend on the particular ideological viewpoint you've adopted. So it would at least be good to specify the viewpoint from which you're judging a particular claim as inflammatory.
I personally don't think there's anything inflammatory at all about "women love a killer". Regardless of whether the claim is true or false, I don't view it as a slight against women, or a failing on their part. Plausibly it could be taken as a relatively natural corollary of a Darwinian/Hobbesian view of life.
I'm aware that my view on this particular question may be unusual, and in the framing of say, polite upper middle class Western society, most people would view this as an inflammatory claim. But if "polite upper middle class Western society" is going to be the frame of reference that we use for judging claims as inflammatory on TheMotte, shouldn't we be modding a lot more posts than we already are? Every time HBD comes up for example, a number of posters write under the assumption that HBD is true. But HBD would be considered to be an extremely inflammatory complex of claims by most people in the West today. Is no one allowed to post under the assumption that HBD is true unless they include a link to a list of HBD 101 resources laying out the supporting evidence?
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
29m ago
From what I know about Azeris, they do prefer dump truck bottoms.
Ethan
Quality assurance
38m ago
Interestingly, the president Jimble episode is really disliked on the smiling friends subreddit. But the trailer for episode 3, Alan's Adventure, has a really funny bit where he argues with the store worker.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
44m ago
owning the libs (nobody cares who ADL or JIDF are here, of course, or even knows them - it's mainly that the left has traditionally been pro-Palestine for anticolonial/(post-)pro-Soviet reasons, so the enemy of my enemy thinking has quite naturally directed right-wingers to be pro-Israel
This works both ways, and for any point between the extremes. I really don't think there's a position on the issue that you can take, that doesn't own the libs in some fashion.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
54m ago
Insofar as I've seen it here, the three main reasons to be pro-Israel are:
- religiousness (religious right might not be a potent force here but there are a number of people matching that category, and they tend to be evangelical and fervently pro-Israel)
- owning the libs (nobody cares who ADL or JIDF are here, of course, or even knows them - it's mainly that the left has traditionally been pro-Palestine for anticolonial/(post-)pro-Soviet reasons, so the enemy of my enemy thinking has quite naturally directed right-wingers to be pro-Israel
- related to above, pro-Americanism and the idea that to be America's best pal, especially now, also requires supporting Israel.
As /u/2rafa says below the Israel supporters tend to be center-right or right-wing, even among the center-left the sort of fervent Zionism one might encounter in Democrats or Labour is basically non-existent here and the explicitly anti-semitic far-right is a minimal force.
How many levels of tiresomeness are you on?
On hand I do sympathize, but after a decade of listening to how cis-straight-white-males are responsible for all of society's ills, I'm tempted to ask you to take a number, and go to the end of the queue.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
adoration for murderous, rapey barbarians
Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat. Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
Women love a killer
Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.
This post is actually a pretty clean example of exactly what we don't want people posting, here. I am familiar with the evidence I would expect you to provide in support of each of your claims, but you didn't actually do so. And even if you had, your rhetoric simply comes in too sweeping and too hot. The tone is all wrong; you're not discussing a culture war topic, you're waging culture war.
You've stacked some AAQCs which have somewhat shielded you, but the number of warnings for low effort booing on your account is getting cumbersome. This time it's a three day ban.
2rafa
1hr ago
The Iraq and Afghan wars weren’t major drivers of mass immigration to Europe. The demographic/sectarian situation in Syria was inherently unstable before Saddam’s overthrow because of the Alawite control of the system, increasing overpopulation and rising immigration from the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa were well underway, Maghrebi immigration to France was a many decades old phenomenon, as was Turkish, Kurdish and Albanian immigration to Western Europe and Pakistani and Bangladeshi migration to the UK and some other Western European countries.
People who would never say the word repatriation and talk about how migrants have to come here legally will happily cheer on bombing Gaza because they just want to see the cousins of their migrants get killed.
Most hardcore pro-Israel supporters in Western Europe are on the center or hard right. I suppose they’re often not radically pro-repatriation/remigration which is a relatively niche policy position as of today, but most people who are implicitly for it (like Zemmour) are also pro-Israel.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
The article doesn’t mention a single gentile Zionist among the group, which is statistically improbable. We don’t know if all of these billionaires are Zionists definitionally (“Israel is the divine homeland of Jews”), but we at least know they are all Jewish. They may believe that Israel is not a divinely-decreed homeland while still being driven to lobby for the Jews that are in Israel and for the Jews on college campuses.
But maybe a word like “institutional Judaism” or “structural Judaism” would be better terminology to use? “Mainstream Judaism” even? It’s good to recognize that not every Jewish person supports Israel, but it’s also blindness to ignore that the vast majority of Jewish institutional power and influence is behind Israel. On a resource-level basis, how many Jewish billionaires are openly against Israel? Maybe 1 or 2? Could it be that 96% of Jewish capital throws its support behind Israel, or something like that?
2rafa
1hr ago
Yeah it seems to be aimed at women which is why it’s strange, because most women know all this.
2rafa
1hr ago
Yeah I meant in the US, sorry for not clarifying; it’s not uncommon in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, although strangely it isn’t universal even there (some Bantu populations seem to have much more even obesity rates). I’d also add that there might be a difference between societies in which women are more obese (perhaps because they’re more sedentary) but in which the ‘beauty ideal’ is still relatively skinny and societies in which men’s preference is actually for overweight women.
No_one
1hr ago
I don’t think any straight women are unaware of this fact
It's not aimed at men.
Forgotpassword
1hr ago
Hell if someone's fired a sleeper ship at us at the point of our first radio waves and it's not going to get here till some arbitrary future year I don't really consider it of major concern.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
Aside from the fact that it appeals to the doomers, why?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1hr ago
I'm "Pro-Palestine" in the sense that I find the most defensible solution to the conflict would be two states on 1949 borders, PA in charge of the whole State of Palestine (undemocratically if necessarily), right to return to those who actually have been expelled but not to descendants, resettlement with compensation to descendants in their current countries of habitation, and international security guarantees to the two countries in a suitable way. Furthermore, I find that Israel and its policy of settlement are chiefly responsible for this not being achieved and the onus would be on Israel to take most of the steps to actualize this.
I do not base this on any moral claims on either party but simply on my understanding of what would be the most consistent solution in lieu of the international law; clearly no matter what historical injustices were perpetrated to establish Israel, its existence is fait accompli at this point, and the forceful ending of a generally internationally recognized state would have drastic international consequences. At the same time, the one question I've never seen Israel defenders answer in a proper way is; considering that Israel has in fact never claimed that West Bank and Gaza belong to it, who do they belong to? Israel still, in some weird vague way? Then why isn't it claiming them, or offering the inhabitants citizenship? Egypt and Jordan?
But those countries recognize them as a part of the State of Palestine. To some "Hamastan", in case of Gaza? Hamas is not claiming independence for Gaza. Are they completely out of jurisdiction by any state? This does not apply to any other part of the Earth apart from Antarctica, covered by an international treaty, and has not itself been defined by a treaty, so clearly this claim is just an attempt to create a new international status to some territory for the specific purpose of benefitting Israel.
The only answer that seems consistent would be that the territories are already a part of the State of Palestine, the Western countries are hypocritical in not recognizing it, and the only task would be making this situation into an internationally accepted reality. At the same time, it seems unlikely that this would happen strictly in this form, but one has to have some starting point to try and figure it all out.
Forgotpassword
2hr ago
Personally I feel the entire anti-colonial case is entirely overblown. Independent Palestine likely equates to Lebanon 2.0, or another oil-poor Arabic mediocrity. Whilst I think it'd be better for all involved if Israel were located in Madagascar or the Northern Territory of Australia, that is not the case. They're certainly acting in a way inconsistent with modern Western ethics, but the vast majority of pro-Palestine Westerners would find living in independent Palestine to be a lot harder than living in 2024 Israel.
I also feel that if a return to a sufficient level of realpolitik and putting Western interests first is ever going to be pulled into the Overton window at this point, it's going to be through supporting Israel and hoping that the media eventually pivots away from the anti-colonialist meme. I fail to see the personal good of supporting Palestine, I fail to see how independent Palestine is a better lifestyle for practically anybody involved and I feel that this is potentially the lynchpin issue that will help to restore sanity to the world as a whole.
OliveTapenade
2hr ago
Haven't you noticed by now?
Anything done by anyone Jewish, or any cause that might be interpreted as positive for Israel, is inherently sinister and evil.
It really is quite tiresome.
sun_the_second
2hr ago
What's the gag?
Presumably if one could have reported the experience without naming the perpetrator (or making it obvious who it was), but chose not to.
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