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
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.
Ok so we're country of week. I am South African, currently live here, and have lived here for almost all my life, feel free to ask any questions about the country and I'll do my best to answer them.
What do all the people who used to be in favour of apartheid do now? Do their children dislike them for their prior (or even current) views? I'm interested in how Israeli society might be shifted by a Palestinian victory, given that the vast majority of Israelis still seem to be very much in favour of genocide. As I understand it, most (white) South Africans were also in favour of apartheid until it ended under all that pressure, so South Africa proves it can be done, but I wonder about the specifics of getting from A to B on a more societal level.
How long do you predict the current party to remain in power, riding on the coattails of Mandela? Is there a sense of exhaustion building, or does it still have a good decade or more left?
What the hell is going on with the electricity blackouts? What is causing it? It seemed like they solved it but then went right back into load-shedding.
Any up-and-coming exciting political figures or parties?
What are the opinions or views on Lesotho and Eswatini? The latter is the last absolute monarchy in Africa, which I thought was pretty curious.
They mostly sit and moan in their retirement villages about how much better the country was in the past and how the world is upside down and say heinously racist crap. I definitely dislike these people and spend as little time as possible with them.
The ANC might scrape over 50% in the next elections, and even if they don't, they'll definitely still get the most votes and will remain in power through a coalition for this election cycle, at least. A decade is a reasonable prediction, our opposition parties suck so the ANC will be around for a while.
Electricity blackouts were never solved, that was just government officials talking nonsense while the electricity demand was low during the December holidays. It's caused by neoliberal austerity measures from the 2000s where the government refused to spend on building new power stations and maintenance, absurd levels of corruption and theft, and the State Owned Enterprise responsible for electricity generation (Eskom) running out of money.
Not really, there's a gaping hole in SA politics. There's obviously your big players in the populist left with the EFF, the liberation party in the ANC, and the white liberal DA. Biggest news is that ex president Zacob Zuma split from the ANC started his own political party named after the MK (armed wing of the ANC during liberation struggle). Because of this, everyone is desperately scrambling to try secure the Zulu vote in Kwazulu-Natal (Zuma's stronghold politically). Zuma was probably one of the most corrupt world leaders, not in scale but in the brevity of his corruption.
As for Eswatini, local socialist and communist organisations support communists and socialists there protesting against the monarchy. There was military intervention in Lesotho in the 90s by the ANC, but other than that not much else. Non interventionism seems to be the government policy towards both countries, and good relations with Lesotho are important due to the Lesotho Highlands Water project. Though there is xenophobia against people from Lesotho because they are stereotyped as Zama Zamas (illegal miners), who are involved in all kinds of gang violence. Every now and then some idiot like Herman Mashaba says we should make Lesotho and Eswatini part of South Africa.
Is bunny chow as good as it looks?
Yes, very much so. It's delicious. South African Indian food is amazing, I used to live near an Indian restaurant/takeaway place and would order something every weekend because it was delicious and the prices were great, cheaper than all the fast food places even.
How much popular support does the ICJ genocide case have?
Would people support giving Palestine diplomatic and material aid or to impose sanctions on the occupiers?
What is the state of communism in South Africa?
Any significant labour struggles?
What does the average south African think about the imperial core?
Does the South African policy of aligning with BRICS enjoy popular support?
Any weird brainworms that South African liberals have?
The ICJ case has all the popular support, the only people that oppose it are those who I call "temporarily embarrassed Europeans" or "apartheid beneficiaries". They make up a small minority of the population, but are unfortunately very vocal.
People would support giving aid to Palestine, I know that some groups already do, it's just a question of weather South Africa is in a position to do such on a large scale. We're still a poor global south country after all.
State of communism is weird in South Africa. The SACP, and a lot of big communist organisations, are still invested in stagism or two stage theory, which explains their alliance with the ANC. Others think that it's time for the next revolutionary stage.
There's always labour struggles, strikes, protests and political action in South Africa, because the state of the working class is not great. Just yesterday a community near where I lived attempted to close a major road to protest their living conditions.
The media propaganda push in films and pop culture by the imperialist triad countries (US, Europe, Japan) is very successful in making their countries look good, I know a lot of weebs that want to live in Japan because of anime (despite them being black and Japan being very racist towards black people), many that see the US as nice and relate with mainstream black culture in the US, or admire Europe. At the same time though, people are very much aware of the imperialism carried out by these countries in the past and present and heavily dislike it, and are are also very aware of racism in the USA and the bigger European countries. So there is still a heavy dislike of that. It's complicated. Though I do know of those that were privileged enough to go to Europe for school trips, temporary work or vacation, and left disillusioned due to the racism they faced.
Yes BRICS enjoys popular support. Many in South Africa still admire Russia due to the Soviet support in the fight against apartheid. In conversation, people openly suggest supporting Russia against Ukraine and so forth. China is more complicated, buy I think most prefer them to the imperialist powers of Europe and the USA.
Look up Democratic Alliance (DA) and Action SA supporters to see South African liberal brainworms. Rise Mzanzi supporters for radical liberal brainworms. DA brainworms is standard white liberal stuff, action SA adds a bit of weird black christian nationalism with liberal economics.
Whats your opinion on the EFF? Are they good, bad or just ok
Ok would be the most accurate assessment. The leadership is very corrupt and policy wise there is not much consistency and it's mainly left wing populism, but at the same time they are not red fascists or anything like that. Most of the fear mongering around the EFF is fake news and usually white supremacist propaganda. They are definitely the biggest "left wing" voice in South Africa, and I have to admire the EFF's ability to make all the worst people in the world angry at them, just by stating basic truths about South Africa.
Would I vote for them? No, but I can understand why people do.