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.

The main lesson of the Holocaust is: if someone is saying he is going to kill you, you believe him and act accordingly.

Let's for the sake of argument assume you're correct and these were just words. How come at least 200k civilians in Gaza are dead as the result?

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> 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.

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>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.

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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.

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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.

The effectiveness, and moreover the underlying sincerity of these "warnings" have been widely and severely criticized. Meanwhile, the IDF has gone right on bombing people even when they went to areas they were told would be "safe". At the end of the day -- they're just lip service, basically.

Gaza evacuation warnings from IDF contain many errors, BBC finds - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68687749

Israel's warning system and evacuation alerts leave Gaza residents confused - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/israel-gaza-map-block...

They Were Told They Were in a Safe Area. Then Came the Missiles - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/15/world/middleeast/israel-h...

I understand where you're coming from, and the need to put pieces together so that the image of oneself or their identity is acceptable.

However, while doing that, you're just ignoring the number of killed people. Unfortunately, there's no way to assemble that kind of image of Israel in this situation, where it's not red in blood of Palestinian civilians. Not to say that it's any different on the other side, and not engaging with any justifications for either side - just pointing out that you're ignoring some large and ugly parts of reality in how you represented your view of the situation.

It’s not war in terms of international law if it’s internal. Not clear cut that it’s not internal, but there’s nuance.

They don't always warn. There's many different people in IDF with different opinions, some want to warn first, others don't.

Ironically the IDF are probably most guilty of making tiktok footage that causes long term damage to people's views of Israelis.

The charges in question are that of targeting hospitals and hindering aid from reaching Gaza. Netanyahu and Gallant are being charged with the policy of targeting hospitals and hindering aid. The videos we have of people dying are only related to the crime if they show how hospitals or aid convoys were targeted. Of which we have plenty. For example the flour massacre is only one of many instances of aid being targeted which resulted in hundreds of civilians dying. And the fact the the four massacre was not an isolated incident, but followed a pattern of other links in the aid chain being targeted or otherwise prevented from being delivered to civilians is a very good argument for that this is actually a policy, of which Netanyahu and Gallant are guilty.

The charges are not of war crimes, but of crimes against humanity. A war crime is an event which individual soldiers or commanders, or generals are guilty of. Crimes agains humanity is criminal policy which politicians are charged for.

There's video that comes out every single day of dead children and civilians. Those buildings are civilian and not empty.

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> I disagree that there is an incredible amount of video evidence of war crimes that are relevant here.

You can disagree with the facts all you like; it won't change them. Those videos and statements exist, whether you believe in them or not. You can see them on Twitter, on TikTok, on Instagram, or YouTube.

And there's more every single day.

Even France admits it might not arrest Netanyahu. From an NPR article:

“And in France, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry said the country would act "in line with the ICC's statutes," but as to whether it would arrest Netanyahu if he entered France, the question was "legally complex."

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/g-s1-35169/icc-israel-hamas-a...

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.

> Israel was massively radicalized by October 7th

Israel had been locking Gaza in a total blockade for 17 years (with talk of "keeping them on a diet"), plus had bombed Gaza multiple times resulting in more than 5000 deaths (= 5 October 7ths- they called this "mowing the lawn". During these bombing campaigns we have pictures of Israelis enjoying the show from afar from observation points with food and drinks).

In the meanwhile they enforced an apartheid regime in the West Bank, building new settlements for hundreds of thousands of residents, and launching pogroms to drive away the Palestinian population.

So no, it wasn't Oct 7th that radicalised them.

It is telling that you also mention "better economy" and "comfortable life", but not "equal rights" or "self-government" or any such thing. Even with animals in the zoo one doesn't think that all they need is being well-fed.

Myself, I have no sense of what it's like in Israel right now, but I have noted several times that the October 7th attack was proportionally worse to Israel than 9/11 was to the US, so I can easily believe that this had a similar impact on the national psyche.

That said, I do often read comments and news articles claiming that Netanyahu's government is unpopular within Israel, and that he only maintains his position by the support of the… well, there's not a polite way to describe the attitudes of the settlers who take land that isn't in Israel and then demand Israel defend them, nor those who demand violence while claiming their religious beliefs prohibit serving in the armed forces even though everyone else has conscription.

Not confident of that popularity though, as Googling gets me an extraordinarily broad range of popularity scores.

That said:

> But ultimately, October 7th killed any chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, for a long long time.

Did any chance of a peace live before?

The Israeli PM who signed the Oslo Accords, Yitzhak Rabin, was shot by a far-right-wing Israeli extremist for signing them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

A large portion of the Palestinian population also opposed it.

I agree that what the IDF is doing to Palestinians, now and for a long time is very tragic, and it's also tragic how many of their own people and fellow soldiers they (IDF) killed on Oct 7th.

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Which atrocities? What wasn't shown on mainstream media?

In my experience, most of what mainstream media claimed initially around atrocities was proven to be categorically false - up to and including the president of the USA going on live TV and lying about having seen evidence of baby killing, with staffers having to sheepishly and quietly release a "that didn't happen" statement later.

Of course these retractions happened later, and Israel's explicit and planned messaging of atrocities, inhuman animal behavior, etc had its desired effect of riling people up to support a genocidal assault after a single successful counterattack from an impoverished people at war for generations.

The IDF and elected islraelis officials were openly genicidal and bragged about killing civilians. It wasn't just random people.

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The situation is very heterogeneous: not all Israelis are okay with what their government does, and are increasingly outspoken against it.

Not all Israelis are Jewish: note also that substantial numbers of Israelis are of Arab background, some with relatives (or fellow Muslims) in Palestine. Most of non-Jewish Israelis oppose the military measures. (But there are even a few that are upset that they cannot serve in the IDF because Arab Israeli citizens are not trusted enough to serve in Israel's military - in violation of equal treatment of cizitens.)

Not all Jews are in favor of Israels military action: in particular among the most religious people, there is a division between those disgusted by Israel's own military action (c.f. Rabbi David Weiss at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FNtMV2i8-8 ) and those right-wingers that even volunteer to become settlers in areas cleared by bulldozers from Palestinian homes in violation of the law (UN resolution 2334, Fourth Geneva Convention).

What is clear and undisputable is the power asymmetry between Israel and Palestine.

I've also struggled with looking at the tweets of the investors of our startup. When they were denying the first (of many) hospital bombings, I started thinking about finding a new job.

Does anyone have an original, in English or in Hebrew of what he said? Not a news source retelling or worse - translation

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Tell us about the West Bank, then. What is happening there right now and how it relates to Hamas?

I do think there's evidence, plenty of, that Israel is doing its best to expel the Palestinians.

I don't pretend to understand how it's to be a country surround by enemies, and there's a lot of history there that explain all of this. But the current facts - all the destruction in Gaza - can't be justified, ever.

You say that ICC has no investigative power. But ONU has people on the ground and has been denouncing Israel for months...

> The majority of Israeli would like to find some sort of win win solution where everyone can live in peace. The majority of Palestinians don't see any solution that includes Jewish people living in the region.

[citation needed] Because your equivalent on the other side would say it is exactly the other way around, and both of you would feel unarguably right. So unless you base your claim here on a neutral trusted source I would file that away as someone's gut feeling that may be part of a political bubble.

Your palestinian counterpart could point out the same, as far as I know more than three quarters of the palestinians alive today did not vote for Hamas, since they were kids when that vote took place in 2006. Your Palestinian counterpart could point to the fact that their people are unarguably more restricted than an Israeli citizen living in the same area or to the fact that their territories got smaller over the decades which is surprising given your statement about a lack of Isreali ambition to drive them away — did the Palestinians voluntarily gift that land away or how did that happen?

Now sure, in reality this conflict is much more complex, and the history of the Palestinian territories has to do with repression, terrorist responses, constant military intervention, settler ambition and so on. But if — in effect — you drive the other people out, even if "you don't want to", you are driving them out, period. And for that you just have to look at a timeline of the border over the history of the region, without bothering yourself about all complexity, which in this conflict is abused by both sides as an excuse.

Todays younger generations in the West perceive Israel as the stronger force (and it is) and as such feel that Isreal has a moral duty to de-escalate the conflict. Now that 80% of the Gaza strips population is displaced and this is the conflict with the most dead children than any other recent conflict¹, taking about not wanting to drive them away seams a tad bit cynical — one could infer from that they are not to be driven away, but to be erradicated.

In any way this will mark the sad point in history where the decline of support for Isreals ambitions in the West started and Isreal won't even see it coming, since their own perspective on the conflict is skewed by their own propaganda. A support Isreal both needs and given its early history also deserved. But taking it too far has consequences.

And as someone who grew up with 3 brothers: It is for the stronger one to stop the conflict and act with controlled force. And Isreal is the stronger one and right now it is beating the smaller brother into a bloody bulp in stupid rage as the rest of the world watches in absolute horror.

¹: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-child...

You are aware that there are international laws regulating what an occupying force is and isn't required to do?

Not letting civilians in occupied areas starve is one of the laws.

And this is very basic occupational law, if you don't know that maybe consider lowering your voice on the issue in the future?

https://www.icrc.org/en/law-and-policy/occupation

It's not serious to suggest that Israel did not supply any food or water to the Palestinians when in fact it supplied plenty.

After sufficient arm-twisting from the Biden administration, it did.

But until that point - it withheld. And quite intentionally and forthrightly so:

   “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.

   “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.

Why would every major humanitarian organization be anti-Israel? It doesn't make any sense.

Besides, it's a straw man to say the claim is that no food or water is being supplied. The accusation is not that no supplies are provided. The accusation is that Israel obstructs supplies.

> The US, who has closer knowledge of what's going on on the ground, says Israel has not committed war crimes.

There are many actors with knowledge of what happens on the ground. Taking Israels closest ally to be the final judge of this claim is ridiculous.