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.
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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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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.
🇾🇪 Ansarallah Political Bureau member, Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti: — My message to the people of Western countries.
If another group of humans were subjected to the injustice that the Palestinians are subjected to, we would take action to support them, regardless of their religion and race.
Taking action to support the oppressed on earth, regardless of its risks, is a true test of human morality at the level of individuals and nations, and whoever does not take action to stop the crimes of genocide that we witness daily in Gaza, this means that he has lost his humanity.
Moral and human values are fixed and do not change with the race and religion of the person who benefits from their existence, and dealing with them selectively means losing them.
The expansion of the hegemony of the ruling Zionist cabal in Washington, London, and some other Western capitals, and its control over global decisions, has caused many tragedies throughout the world, starting from South America in the west to the farthest part of Asia in the east.
The reason is dealing with moral values with extreme selectivity that amounts to schizophrenia, to the point that the US Secretary of State declared support for the genocidal massacres committed by Israel under the pretext that they share the same values of freedom and democracy, even though the existence of Israel deprived the Palestinian people of the right to live in their land, and this is the greatest violation of the values, freedom and democracy.
If the Western peoples, led by the American and British people, do not move to restore their humanity, then the tragedies caused by their governments outside their borders will spread to their countries, and the rise of the extreme right and the war in Ukraine are one of those indicators.
We are not hostile to the American or British people, but rather to the ruling Zionist gang that takes advantage of the capabilities of Western countries, which they did not realize, to suppress the freedom of other peoples and conspire against them.
The Zionist gang's ability to mislead people exceeds its military capabilities, so victory over it on the awareness front is more important than victory over it on the military front.
The Zionist gang misled public opinion to justify the occupation of Iraq under the pretext of the existence of chemical weapons and the presence of Al-Qaeda, and when it was proven that these claims were false, it disavowed responsibility for the tragedies that befell Iraq simply with one word, “We made a mistake,” in order to continue causing more tragedies.
During the occupation of Iraq, I was living in the Netherlands, and I personally witnessed the state of awareness among Western peoples opposing the occupation, which exceeded 70%. This event was sufficient to create a permanent awakening that would result in profound positive changes at the level of the structure of the ruling elite in Western countries and at the level of the structure of the international system, except The Zionist gang resorted to bringing in Al-Qaeda members and creating a suitable environment for its growth in Iraq as a front for resistance ,to stir up strife among the people, which constituted a shock and a state of confusion for the anti-war activists, who were waiting for the launch of a moral and conscious Iraqi resistance, and then they saw Al-Qaeda committing the most heinous crimes.
Today, we reassure all the free people of the world that the extent of the courage of the Yemeni people in confronting the Zionist gang, is the extent of their adherence to moral and humanitarian values and their unlimited willingness to sacrifice, in order to achieve a just peace that guarantees the dignity, safety and security of all countries and peoples.
The first step towards achieving this goal is serious Western popular action to put pressure on the Zionist gang to first paralyze its ability to harm the Western citizen who opposes it, and work to expose its crimes and the falsity of its claims, until stopping the crimes of genocide in Gaza, allowing the entry of food, medicine and fuel to its besieged population.
Western peoples must draw inspiration from the experience of the Yemeni people in steadfastness in the face of the huge Zionist military machine.
(from the RNN telegram)
Beautiful but we need to be DEPRIVED
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