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.

The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week's thread is here.

Israel-Palestine Conflict

If you have evidence of Israeli crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

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.

    • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]M
      ·
      8 months ago

      The propaganda this time around is different and worse than what we've experienced in the Ukraine War, so we haven't really built up the antibodies for it as a site yet. Ukrainian propaganda was characterized by being overbearing and bombastic - the "Go fuck yourself" incident with the Russian ships; the Ghost of Kiev; the promises of a counteroffensive that would take Crimea; missiles and drones hitting the Kerch bridge and even Moscow; etc. Whereas Zionist propaganda is much more insidious and calculated; almost soothing. "Oh, of course we knew about October 7th in advance. Do you think our surveillance networks and AI didn't catch it? Obviously we know where Hamas' tunnels are, and we're dealing with them as we speak. We're not only getting the hostages back, but we're going to eradicate Hamas while we do so. Of course we aren't feeling any effects from Yemen's blockade; don't you see the trucks from the UAE bringing us goods? We're winning - in fact, we've already won, and the Palestinians have already lost."

      It's "AMERICA UKRAINE, FUCK YEAH!" in the first instance, and a siren song of hopelessness in the second. I refuse to look at Zionist propaganda and accounts as much as possible because of it, and stick to material reality rather than discussing narratives as much as is feasible. Because, again, once you put the earplugs in and block out the narratives, you can see with your very eyes that the tunnel network is still intact and hasn't been collapsed by bunker busters or flooded by seawater; no hostages have been freed by Israeli soldiers; Hezbollah is indeed dealing major damage to northern settlements and military installations and keeping settlers internally displaced; Yemen is indeed keeping the blockade in place regardless of western rhetoric; and in general, the Resistance continues to attrit the Zionist entity to its logical conclusion of defeat.

      The Hamas missile strikes on Sderot and Tel Aviv at the Ninth Hour of Glory are like a daily heartbeat, while the Zionist surgeon tells you that the patient is dead.

      • zed_proclaimer [he/him]
        ·
        8 months ago

        Liberals who are sympathetic to Palestine only consume this type of media I've noticed, the weepy and resigned defeatism that talks about how sad everything is and massive death tolls. The panicked updates of gore and terror and dead kids. They never positively mention Palestinian armed resistance, and try to believe the Yemen and Palestine situations are different and have little connection. There is no hope for them, to them Palestine is already dead and they are seeing them, hearing them and understanding their traumas. Violence from Iran, Yemen, Hezbollah is all condemned or ignored.

        Entirely missing is the context of the rest of the world isolating US and Israel further every day, of Israel being broken down, the cracks starting to show. The bravery and victories of the fighters.

    • carpoftruth [any, any]M
      ·
      8 months ago

      100-com

      Totally true, we need to be mindful of not falling for glamourous misinformation that is fun to believe or think about, as well as not getting sucked into the clout chasing bullshit of being the first to post about "breaking news". Literally nothing of consequence would occur if every event on the newsmega was discussed a week after it happened. Taking the time to vet stories/wait for confirmation is valuable.