The 188th commandment says to wipe out Amalek completely, male and female, young and old, sparing none, since evil has no future. Livestock too.

Maimonides elaborates that when the Jewish people wage war against Amalek, they must request the Amalekites to accept the Seven Laws of Noah and pay a tax to the Jewish kingdom. If they refuse, they are to be executed.

There are more moderate interpretations, but this discussion is about Ashkenazi fundamentalists.

> At some point Netanyahu will be out of power.

I wish and hope that's true.

But I think some of your analysis is really incorrect, unfortunately.

> He's been voted out of office before.

Yes, he was out of power for about a year of the last 15 or so years, and got back into power.

> He's in trouble politically.

True, and I hope it stays that way. However the elections are still two years away, there doesn't seem to be any pathway to forcing the elections to happen sooner, and he is gaining ground, not losing it. It is very much a possibility that he holds on to power.

> He promised a short, victorious war over Gaza, and got into a long major war against Iran and more countries instead.

I'm not sure he actually promised a short war. That said, the war against Lebanon is probably the most successful thing he's done in terms of restoring his power. It's entirely possible that acting more aggressively against more enemies is a winning strategy for him.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

This basically reads as completely wrong to me. Almost every politician on every side of the aisle in Israel has condenmed the ICC. The intrusion into Israeli sovereignity is a big blow to Israel, implying that Israel's democracy isn't trusted to hold people accountable by ourselves.

Even if privately opposition leaders would want Netanyahu gone, giving him up would be suicide politically.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

That seems very unlikely. If the next gov really hates him they might prosecute him domestically (the things he is accused of are all illegal under israeli law), but i can't imagine they would hand him to the icc.

Not just because that would look bad, but also because icc is supposed to be a court of last resort only to be used where domestic courts fail.

"instead" ?!

There was already a cold war with Iran before Oct 7, and many warned it could pop any moment. It could be said to the detriment of Netanyahu that he ignored that and didn't want this on his watch. Iran was priming and planning for a moment where a joint Hezbollah-Hamas ground invasion would have put the Israeli military to a stress beyond its means, and with many thousands casualties on the first day. It would have happened sooner or later if it wasn't for the Hamas independent action.

Also, on Oct 2023 he and other officials said it is going to be a long battle from the beginning. He never once promised this to be short. And also, a clear victory from a long war gets him more electorates, so he aligns his own victory with Israel's.

It will not happen to that next administration would turn over Netanyahu to the ICC. Even if they wanted to, he would seek asylum in the U.S. Embassy and he would certainly be granted asylum.

One thing I've learned these past 20 years: when an awful political leader seems to obviously be undergoing a downfall and on their way out of power, you can be sure they'll be there 20 years later. And they'll outlive all of us too, even if they're already geriatric.

> The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC

The next person to win a fight for a most exclusive position may decide it should be of substantially less value.. But usually only as a tactic to get the position.

>The next government might decide to turn him over to the ICC simply to get him off the political stage.

I thought it was the USA that makes these decisions

International crime or not, the long war with Iran like the long war with Russia is not a choice by Biden/netanyahu. It is always Iran here … can Iran promise a short one. Russia will as well. Just no Isreal or Ukraine.

I have no idea how to resolve this. It is a mess. But one side needs to be PC and the other side was constrained to do this and that. When is icc warrant on putin and get him really arrested.

We hope for peace, rule based … but that is hope. One side disarming will not help.

>What this really does is remove the ICC's authority.

Not yet. The UK and Italy both declared that they would be legally obligated to abide by the decision, which is unprecendented and historic in itself. Sure, Netanyahu could call their bluff and go to these places, and if they backpedal, then it would undermine the ICC's authority like you said. But Netanyahu would have to call their bluff for that to happen, or they would have to do an about-face before he arrives.

But until then, I would suggest that even the fact that just two well known western democracies quickly backed the ICC's authority (regardless of what they thought of the ruling) just gave the ICC more authority than it ever had before.

The UN mediation and general work in Palestine was objectively a failure.

Korea... it preserved South Korea's dictator in power, which allowed for a modern democratic and prosperous South Korea to happen. Back then it was little more than protecting the US-backed dictator against the Soviets-backed one. Both were pretty terrible and murderous.

The Nuremberg Trials were backed by the most force the world had ever known! And even then, the Allies wiped their ass with the rules (that they mostly made up ex post facto) and grabbed any Nazis that were useful and plenty that were not. Even putting aside all the Paperclip scientists, who absolutely knew what they were involved with, the US took plenty of SS officers - Otto von Bolschwing, Klaus Barbie, Alois Brunner, etc. Everyone violated their own “rules” left and right and occasionally, if they could be bothered, made up justifications later. This is not a controversial view: in fact the contemporary British opinion was that you can’t make up laws ex post facto and the Nazis should just be executed. The Soviets anticipated a show trial and their “judges” did nothing before phoning Moscow first. The Nuremberg trials were the 1940s legal equivalent of Calvinball.

To the mediators, I’m unsure why that would be an example. We’ve had mediators for a very long time and UN mediation is only the latest flavor of that.

> Nuremberg Trials

They were effectively arbitrary show trials.

I mean a tiny proportion of nazi war criminals were ever prosecuted and the (covertly pro-nazi) West German government pardoned pretty much everyone who weren’t executed in a handful of years.

Also the Soviets (and even the Allies) continued doing whatever they wanted with no consequences.

Of course at least establishing a clear precedent was a huge achievement.

No, Putin's decision to launch the full-scale invasion in 2022 is what "got us" the war in Ukraine right now.

None of his claimed grievances in regard to the CFE Treaty amount to casus belli, by any rational metric. And they certainly weren't the core of what ultimately moved him to make that decision. They were just another part of his giant smokescreen, basically.

As his Deputy Foreign Minister put the matter, quite succinctly:

   Bondarev also recalled that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov screamed at US officials, including First Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, stating that ”[Russia] needs Ukraine” and that Russia will not ”go anywhere without Ukraine” during a dinner amidst the bilateral US-Russian strategic stability talks in Geneva on January 10, 2022.[67] Bondarev added that Rybakov vulgarly demanded that the US delegation ”get out with [their] belongings [to the 1997 borders]” as US officials called for negotiations.

Justice is self hypnosis and self idealization that settles in when there is plenty to go around. If there isn't its just a threatening word , whose values is mostly "we get you all when the good times roll back around ." Which they usually don't do unless there are major scientific breakthroughs generating surplus and a amnesty after armistice.

"The ICJ is at least holding out against that future."

ICJ? Are you implying that what I said, implied or inferred was against the ICC?

Let me be clear, I nether said, meant nor inferred any of those things. In fact I'm in favor of the ICC despite the fact it's a paper tiger in areas where it's most needed.

Edit: that said, like many, I've some criticisms all of which other comments have echoed. Like most things the ICC is a compromise in an imperfect world, it's better than nothing though.

Merely getting "declared" is not enough — North Korea "declares" itself to be a democracy — what matters is actually doing it.

The relevance of the ICC etc. is rooted in how much people actually do, not just say.

Apologies, typo, ICJ -> ICC

Now I'm wondering if airspace spreads out horizontally from the coast the same way that shipping rights do.

I'd assume so, but a quick skim-read didn't tell me either way.

If it does, then they'd pick between going through Spanish or Moroccan airspace, because the straights of Gibraltar are narrow enough you can see Africa from Gibraltar.

> If you mean to imply that Europe is somehow going to shoot down their planes if they fly over that’s obviously absurd.

Shoot down? No.

Force them down? There's precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident

You will find that you'll get much better discussions if you do some introspection on how you might misinterpret someone when you think someone says something that you think is 'obviously absurd'. Why would they say something that is obviously absurd?

Maybe it is more revealing that you jump to the obviously absurd interpretation rather than the even more obvious, and not absurd one?

> Presumably if they get invited to Europe it will be with assurance from the state that nothing happens to them.

I believe ICC members are obligated to enforce its warrants, which is why Putin couldn't attend BRICS in South Africa last year. And this applies to almost all the western world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court

So no, it's not toothless.

"Invitations" for government officials are pretty much invitations in name only.

Many of the emails of Assad and his government have been leaked and show in great detail how various governments interact with each other. And how Assad ran his country by forwarding NYT articles...

The typical route to the US from Israel passes over much of Europe.

And yet not all pieces of paper are believed to be equal. Some pieces of paper will buy you a loaf of bread and others will buy you a tank full of gas. The difference lies in the magic squiggles printed on the pieces of paper. In other words, the belief that a certain number value equals a fair exchange for a physical good or service. This is a consensual belief. If an extra 0 appeared magically overnight on every piece of paper, what has changed? People will believe they have “more” than they did before. If instead of magic, the government announced a policy of reissuing recycled bits of paper that have had an extra zero printed on them, would people believe they had “more”?

Bear in mind that most of the time, sanctions not only prevent you from doing business with the sanctioned entity, but also with any other entity that's doing business with them.

I think you are agreeing with that. There is not some international law that says countries must deal.with countries they don't want to. It's a national thing.

Geography is the problem not technology.

> Even immediately after 9/11, I think most Americans would not have signed on to a campaign of total war in Afghanistan with multiple millions dead.

This falls clearly under 'not wanting to'.

> bombing them to nothing did not help; we probably need to bomb them some more' comes from.

To be clear, bombing is not colonizing. Colonizing entails undoing the current culture and replacing it with your own. You don't replace culture with bombs, but rather by taking the young people, educating them in America, and then shipping them back a la Britain (among other things). You have to do this for several decades, or maybe even a century, maybe multiple centuries.

> However, Pax Americana did, at least initially, at least give semblance of established rules working

Sure... Such was in the interest of America

The double edged sword is that proving an ongoing crime maybe stops it from unfolding but anything other than a conviction is presented as an endorsement and encouragement to continue. That could be fine if there's really no crime, not so fine if the crime just couldn't be proven.

Considering here the old adage that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. They both lead to the same verdict from a court of public opinion point of view, and realistically the same consequences from a court of justice.

That higher standard sounds similar to "Double reasonableness" from British tax law.

"Double reasonableness" is used to delete tax advantages for certain things which you say were correctly exempt from taxation or attracted significant tax advantages but the government alleges you were in fact just generally avoiding paying tax and whatever you were doing doesn't count. It's not a crime to have mistakenly believed you didn't owe tax, but, if a court finds against you, you would now owe the back tax, plus potentially penalties.

The "double" comes from a requirement that not only can the reasonable person (say, a juror) not think of any way that what you're doing isn't just avoiding tax, but they can't even imagine any other reasonable person who thinks what you were doing made sense for another reason beside avoiding taxes either.

The idea is this only triggers for people who are very obviously dodging tax, so that their scheme sounds completely ludicrous unless it is explained that they hoped to avoid taxation, rather than just being a slightly eccentric thing to do which happened to have tax benefits when they did it.

"I buy and sell used cars" makes you a used car dealer. No reason you shouldn't take advantage of used car tax treatments which are a significant benefit.

"I let somebody else do all the buying and selling" OK, I guess you just own the business? Nothing wrong with that, small business, entrepreneurship, excellent.

"I don't own the business or anything, I just get the advantageous tax treatment". Huh, well it's very good of the people actually doing the transactions to let you benefit while they go without, very generous indeed, but at least you're ensuring a healthy market in used cars.

"Oh, there's just one car. That car is just bought and sold over and over again to make up the amount of money I requested". See, now that's ludicrous, why would anybody believe you had some reason to do this except to avoid paying taxes?

> I think the recommendation also included extermination, which is similar to genocide, but also does not require intent, but I think the voted against that.

Persecution is the charge probably most similar to genocide minus a lot of the intent requirements (which was granted). The requirements for extermination (which was rejected) is basically they have to be resposible for > 50 illegal deaths (not sure on the exact number, but somewhere in the double digits). The icc granted the murder charge, which is the lesser version of exterminatin when it is only < 50 ish deaths.

I had a look at the democrats who support the recent "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act". I had a look at 10 of them. 7 of them had substantial donations from AIPAC. The others were soon up for re-election.

I am not American, but why oh why are you not rooting in the streets? That is just soooo effed up. This is just one of so many issues, and AIPAC is a just a part of the problem. It is just so obvious that U.S. politicians are up for purchase.

Well, I apologize for the misreading, certainly!

> normal position people take when it comes to Palestine

out of curiosity, where are you from?

sympathy for the Palestinian liberation struggle is very common where I live (despite what our government says and does)

I walked past the offices of Medcins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders) incidentally across the road from the very good new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, with posters in the windows imploring “no bombardment of hospitals in Gaza”.

The numbers are absurdly small, if hospitals were still operational, their employees not subject to extrajudicial killing from the occupation authorities and the facilities themselves not subject to bombardment.

Data from these killing fields is probably going to be far, far worse than we believe, once the dust has settled.

This is a really good independent report on the death toll:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> But the problem is that Israel's style of warfare is (intentionally or not) blurring the distinction between those numbers, by using methods of combat that have exceptionally high rates of collateral damage.

I'm not sure that is true. Urban combat is notoriously bloody, and other conflicts of this nature have seen similar orders of magnitude deaths.

Additionally, civilian deaths are not neccesarily indicative of war crimes. Certain types of collateral damage are allowed where others are not (rules are complex and quite frankly oblivious), so you would also have to separate the legal collateral damage from the illegal collateral damage.

> The most extreme instances of this are the deliberate withholding of aid, both in the "total siege" in the beginning of the war, as well as operations like now in the north.

Well that allegation is the main basis for this warrant. However so far it seems like only a very small porportion of the deaths are attributable to that practise. To the point where so far the icc found that there wasnt enough evidence for a charge of extermination. I think about roughly 15 people have to die for it to be considered extermination. So it seems like so far there isn't evidence that a significant number of deaths in this conflict are related to that method of war. Of course new evidence can always come to light later. (Its important to note that siege warfare is still a warcrime even if nobody dies. The counter side is israel would probably try and argue (for the recent activity at least) that they gave civilians an opportunity to evacuate and thus it wasn't directed at civilians).

> the problem is that Israel's style of warfare ... The most extreme instances

Yep. The complication is, the Strip is close to being totally dependent on Israel, and yet chose war. I doubt any other country ruled by right-wingers, with that much power over their already (diplomatically, economically, socially) cornered enemy, would have acted any differently. I guess, the sequence of events reeks of desperation & despair from all sides and has ended up exposing one & all.

Hmm, good point. I'm not 100% sure i agree - i think it depends on what the conditions were, there could be non-bargaining conditions, but you've convinced me that is a plausible way to read it.

> Parties to conflict are expected to facilitate aid, not just allow it, and definitely not set conditions.

I think they are allowed to set some conditions, they just can't be arbitrary or prevent aid. Like they can set conditions around checkpoints, inspections, where aid can enter the country, as long as it isn't arbitrary or impedes the aid. (Obviously the ICC is implying something much different than those types of conditions)

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule55

If we are going to discuss the diplomatic and international implications of the ICC, it is important to note that the security—and even the continued existence as independent, sovereign entities—of the countries supporting the court is overwhelmingly reliant on the U.S. military umbrella. Without this protection, their sovereignty would quickly be at risk.

As a follow-up to [2], even more interesting is the text of covered persons:

"military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand"

The challenge wasn't based on exactly that, they were trying to argue that a treaty palestine signed with israel precluded palestine from giving icc juridsiction that it didn't have itself.

That said, if it ever gets to trial, the defendants will almost certainly try to challenge it on that basis.

Realistically though i think the chance of that type of challenge succeding is unlikely. International courts generally are above domestic law. They probably have a better chance of convincing the court that palestine isn't a state and thus cannot sign the rome statue (which is also a long shot imo)

Good thing that's not how laws are formed - "your" not recognizing authority doesn't mean "you" haven't committed the war crimes or other illegal act that international organization has charged you with; so far it's worked that veto power can immediately suppress action even when the rest of the organized-civilized world is against you, where so far most international organizations have been for theatre - but where we have an opportunity for them to finally have teeth.

> Court deciding earlier in a 2-1 decision that Palestine is a state, the PA is the legitimate government of Palestine, and that Gaza is territory under its jurisdiction.

I think you are overstating it. They made a provisional decision, but just for the purpose of if the investigation can go forward. The decision does not decide whether or not palestine is a state in general, and if this ever goes to trial the defendants can still challenge this decision.

Straw man argument. I didn't make the claim the ICC accused the ICC of genocide, however Netanyahu is now at minimum now officially wanted for war crimes.

ICC and ICJ are different, yes.

The proof you provide is very shallow, and with no real relevance or weight as an argument point - when it's known that the US and Israel have veto powers, as an example, that most international organizations currently are theatre without teeth - and so that's essentially why it's "fairly unprecedented."

Now Netanyahu has done enough blatantly, what's argued by some to be the most video/photographed-recorded genocide in history, the hierarchy and people resource hierarchy of the ICC hasn't fallen to Israeli political pressure (or whatever other tactics Mossad is known to use to try to get their way).

Once again, your final point is more neutral - where you could only really honestly say that if in a vacuum, if you're not looking behind the scenes with how much pressure Israel has put publicly and privately on members of the ICC to not file nor then issue charges, etc.

> a free, rights-protecting nation has no basis for an agreement [between any two or more states] with a dictatorship that routinely violates peoples' rights.

Wikipedia quote: "States and non-state actors may choose to not abide by international law, and even to breach a treaty but such violations, particularly of peremptory norms, can be met with disapproval by others and in some cases coercive action ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to war."

I think isolating bad actors can be a limited solution to the absence of physical power/not wanting to start a way, which ultimately as you rightly state corresponds to a situation of absence/breakdown of law that is best avoided.

I'm using "criminals" as a short-hand for "the worst of the worst in terms of rights-violating countries and dictatorial regimes" which is what you initially said.

If there is no such thing as international law, then what "rights" are these countries violating?

> When you have multiple nations that operate independently, each with their own laws and rules, all you can do is get them to agree to certain things, as long as they have some basis upon which to enter into an agreement.

It sounds like you do think all countries should be 'invited to the table' unless they fail to meet a standard which you yourself don't think exists. Confusing.

> We're dealing with the concept of "International Law", which is largely understood as agreements / treaties amongst different countries.

Well this is true of a lot of international law, it doesn't apply here. The ICC largely deals with things that are preemptory norms which apply regardless of if you sign the treaty.

I think you are correct that the US service members committed some fucked up war crimes in Iraq. But many service members faced justice in the US for those crimes. And I'm not persuaded that those crimes were widespread, relative to the scale of the military engagement.

Your statement seems to imply that the Iraq War was unusually bad in terms of war crimes. If so, you should be able to give several examples of 21st century conflicts which you're confident had fewer war crimes committed per capita. Can you do so?

The way I see it, there are two rough hypotheses here:

Hypothesis 1: The US is an unusually evil country which has a harmful effect on world affairs. Its actions in Iraq exemplify this. The recent trend towards US isolationism is good, since isolationism will diminish its pernicious effects on world affairs.

Hypothesis 2: War crimes and violations of the laws of war are ubiquitous in conflict. The international treaties prohibiting them were well-intentioned but largely fruitless. The psychology of war drives soldiers to commit war crimes, and/or the incentives to commit war crimes are too strong. The US has a free press, and has systems in place to prosecute service members who commit war crimes, so you hear more about war crimes committed by the US than by other countries. But the per capita rate of the US committing war crimes may actually be lower than average.

What evidence is available that lets us differentiate between these hypotheses?

There's jurisdiction questions there since neither Iraq nor the US are Rome Statute signatories, however Palestine is a signatory.

Or can't be overruled with the veto power of the 5 permanent member states.

"International Law" is a joke if China, Russia, France, UK, and US can unilaterally decide not to enforce it.

Regardless of whether a group of politicians use it maliciously or not - Antisemitism exists and happens all the time. It has not "lost its value", and if it has then so has western society.

Why would it matter? I don't think we should ever justify Islamophobia based on the actions of Islamic states or other Islamic groups; by the same token we should never justify antisemitic hate crimes regardless of our views on Israel.

This comment is just disingenuous. You know that isn’t what they meant.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/16/ukraine-must-i...

"A controversial Amnesty International report asserted that Ukrainian military tactics put civilians in danger. Video footage has since been published suggesting that Ukrainian troops may have executed surrendering Russian officers in the town of Makiivka. Back in 2019, the International Criminal Court (ICC) determined that Ukrainian forces committed possible war crimes against Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine.

To be clear: none of these allegations draws moral or legal equivalency between the acts of Ukrainian and Russian forces. Any alleged crimes committed by Ukrainian officers pale in comparison to the aggression and barbarity Russian forces have demonstrated in Ukraine. But all atrocities must be accounted for, not just those of one’s enemies."