The UN has a few words of condemnation for Israel.
The top court for the United Nations on Friday ordered Israel to take measures to prevent and punish direct incitement of genocide in its war in Gaza, although it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire in a case brought forth by South Africa.
“The state of Israel shall… take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of the genocide convention,” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said.
In a sweeping ruling, a large majority of the 17-judge panel of the ICJ voted for urgent measures which covered most of what South Africa asked for with the notable exception of ordering a halt to Israeli military action in Gaza.
The court ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the genocide convention and also ensure that its troops do not commit any genocidal acts in Gaza.
It’s something. It may be a rather ineffectual finger-wagging, but they openly state what’s obvious: Israel is a genocidal state that is killing and starving and depriving the people of Gaza of basic humanitarian aid, and should stop. Stop right now.
Unfortunately, we all know what the top genocider would say about that. Netanyahu says nuh-uh.
“The charge of genocide levelled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent people should reject it,” said Netanyahu.
“Our war is against Hamas terrorists, not against Palestinian civilians,” he added. “We will continue to facilitate humanitarian assistance and to do our utmost to keep civilians out of harm’s way, even as Hamas uses civilians as human shields.”
All 26,000 (so far) dead Palestinians were Hamas terrorists, I guess. Including the 10,000 dead children?
Somebody should explain to Netanyahu that even if they win on the body count score, even if they were to kill every Palestinian, they’d still lose the moral conflict, and the PR campaign. I know I’ll be voting against support for Israel whenever I get a chance.
Remember, well over a million civilians were killed in Vietnam, while about 60,000 Americans died. Who won that war?
If you read the case against them, you knew this ruling was obviously going to happen, which is why Israel didn’t waste any time trying to claim they weren’t committing genocide and focused on trying to justify it instead, which is like if, say, Bernie Madoff said “your honor, all those rich idiots who gave me money deserved to be ripped off” — it was totally irrelevant to the charge, and no answer to the vast array of damning evidence.
We now get to see answers to a number of interesting questions:
1. Whether any of the signatories of the Rome Statute (which does not include Israel or the US… or Russia, so we’re in good company) are going to place those obligations above treaty obligations with the US (which, providing arms to Israel, is going to be a rogue state if Israel does not stop)
2. Whether any of the signatories of the Rome Statute will place those treaty obligations above economics
3. Whether the US will make a naked threat of violence (with the same fake reluctance that Democrats of Biden’s kidney always have when they willingly and actively push for right-wing policy goals)
4. Whether Israel will act on the threats they’ve made a few times (including within the last month) to react with nukes against Europe if they don’t get their way
5. Whether Israel being officially considered to be in violation of the Geneva conventions will actually (as it reasonably should, but might not because of the threat of the US) bring in new attacks from its neighbors — note that Israel has already been bombing basically all of its neighbors in the last few months, and only the threat of retaliation has kept this from escalating
Gee, it’s almost as though Biden, by encouraging and arming Israel, has plunged us into a totally unnecessary rapidly-escalating international debacle with a completely new threat of setting off WWIII. Great job, all you people who supported him.
No different than Dumb Idiot Ken Ham saying, “All those 20 billion sinners who didn’t listen to Noah’s warning deserved to drown in the Flood.”
“Losing the moral conflict” even if every Palestinean is dead? “Voting against support for Israel”? Absolutely fuck this lib shit. I suppose if me and all my family is genocided (which is literally happening to us right now in Ohio and other states in the US and around the world) you’ll go “oh well, at least I was on the right side of history, I always voted for Democrats!”
Organize, advocate for, and TAKE meaningful direct action against these fascists, or shut the fuck up. None of us give a shit about how moral you were if we’re dead while you and other “allies” still live and work within systems upholding white supremacy.
“Remember, well over a million civilians were killed in Vietnam, while about 60,000 Americans died. Who won that war?”
Otto: Shut up. We didn’t lose Vietnam. It was a tie!
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
I don’t believe the 26000 killed stat. I find it almost impossible that aggressive military operations, mass exodus, and food, electricity, water, and medication shortages have not led to increased mortality. The true figure might be many factors larger.
Love the idea of the “decent people” of the world being in favour of genocide.
Who won that war?
As Noam Chomsky (remember him?) pointed out a few years later, hardly any American teenagers ended up busting their butts 10 hours for $2 every day in sweatshops to make sneakers for Vietnamese teenagers.
Shorter answer: Nike.
PZ, the fact that you think Netanyahu or his too many supporters give a fuck about morality is worrisome.
You are smarter than that, and you know how it works better than that.
Those are authoritarian xenophobes.
Netanyahu cares only about staying in power, avoiding his legal problems and perhaps leaving his legacy.
His supporters care only about “Team Us powerful!!” and about being cruel to feel more powerful, to have someone kick down to.
Tomorrow’s Holocaust Day. First time I won’t be commemorating it. I can’t play Klezmer anymore either, I just haven’t the heart for it, even though the exemplars of that music knew nothing of the Holocaust, or Gaza, neither Nifty Brandwein (who survived, being in USA) nor the untold numbers of the European kapelye who the Nazis (many not German) sought out.
I might play Beym Rebn in Palestina just once. It’s how it should have been, and how it can be yet, but probably not while I’m living. With the Rabbi in Palestine- a dignified, almost ecstatic gasner nigun (walking pace tune)- neighbours, different but respected.
Vietnam is a poor analogy. It was a foreign civil war started by a 3rd party colonizer.
For something more apples to apples, consider the US’s history with native tribes. Concentration camps, depriving the people of basic necessities of life, constant violent harassment, and even open warfare – all roughly equivalent with Israel/Palestine. How did that turn out?
Israel seems determined to prove that the Holocaust can happen everywhere. Israel isn’t just lost, it was a mistake in the first place.
Biden has to deal with American evangelicals who rabidly support Israel. ( Im not sure why they hate Jews) He’s gonna hem and haw for a while over this. For me I’m still not voting for any one who supports republican/ evangelical talking points . Lesser of 2 evils to vote for Biden over this issue. Anything is better than trump . Sometimes I wish Randy Rainbow was really running for president . That video was cute!
The Nazis were very good teachers and Israel was a good student. Unfortunately it learned how to carry out a genocide, not how to avoid one.
Just because Israel has more than 3000 tanks while Palestine has none, the Israeli air force has nearly 600 jets while Palestine doesnt have an air force, the Israelis have over 1000 artillery pieces while Palestine has none, and Israel has a standing army of of nearly 170K active members and nearly 500K reservists, Palestine has no standing army. If Israel wants to attack Hamas, they have every right to defend themselves, but they dont have the right to indiscriminately kill civilians. Israel contends that Hamas is using the Palestinians as human shields to protect themselves, I say Israel makes that excuse to use the Palestinians as human shields to excuse their murders of civilians. They put them in ghettos, then they bomb them into the stone age. Im sorry, but if thats not genocide then genocide doesnt exist anymore.
Thank you so much PZ for highlighting the ICJ case. There’s rarely any other atheist bloggers besides you who cared about the Palestinians.
Surely. Jerry Coyne must be hopping mad right now over the hearing!
@1 no, the Israeli defense is, “We’re not doing what we’re doing, as we’re the ones doing it”.
The, “look what you made us do,” excuse seems a bit stretched at this point. Murder is murder. They are the Nazis now.
@#5, lotharloo:
That’s the last official number, which is now extremely out of date because the Israelis blew up the department which was in charge of keeping records so all deaths in recent weeks have been unofficial which is a great excuse to pretend they didn’t happen. (That sounds like a joke, but it’s true.) (It also ignores deaths from secondary causes like starvation, preventable illness, and lack of water, because if you die from any of that, rather than by being shot or blown up, it doesn’t count even by the official numbers.)
@#12, brightmoon:
Those people are already going to fight him every inch of the way on everything he does on every other issue and vote for Trump. The idea that it’s even remotely sensible for Democrats to kowtow to them is ridiculous, but it is an article of faith in the Democratic Party that there’s a huge pool of Republicans who are just waiting for the Democrats to move far enough to the right to switch parties. There’s no evidence for this; on the contrary Trump demonstrated very thoroughly that there’s nobody in the Republican Party who is capable of considering anything “too extreme”. We’re supposed to believe the idea more or less because Clinton won in 1992 by moving rightward (extremely so, for the time). The fact that Clinton got less of the popular vote in 1992 by percentage than Trump in 2016 or 2020, and still couldn’t pull off an actual majority even as an incumbent with all the advantages that that entails, isn’t permitted to be mentioned. Nor the fact that exit polls in 1992 showed that Perot spoiled the election and without him Bush would have won by a large margin. Instead, every establishment Democrat spends all their time in office trying desperately not to offend the now-basically-imaginary center-right, usually by kicking the left in the teeth repeatedly. Biden, as a founding member of the racist, right-leaning Democratic Leadership Council, is certainly not going to buck that trend.
The well beyond Revisionist Bibi right gets to deny Palestinian statehood and the trend now is full scale erasure of Palestinian identity. Works for Bibi. Hamas was a great counter to a viable Palestinian sovereignty.
What happened to people at the music festival, Jewish people at the hands of Hamas terrorists, cannot be forgiven either. That was horrific. The cynical side of me thinks it was expected and fodder for what is happening now. I am disgusted by Hamas, their dumbfuck US and Euro sympathizers, and the Israeli war hawks who get to transform the West Bank into Judea and Samaria now because the US religious right and their synergy with Israel lobbyism.
I feel the same about Cuban exilio lobbyism because I actually know what the fuck is the deal. Fuck them all.
Biden has to deal with American evangelicals who rabidly support Israel.
He also has to deal with the utter lack of any plausible alternative policy. Israel is in conquest mode, their present policy has taken on its own momentum, and they probably don’t have the political will to stop themselves or change course. And even if the US were to zilch Israel out of our foreign-aid budget and break off all diplomatic relations with Israel, what good would it do on the ground? Also, supporting Israel and their current actions is seriously bad for legitimate US interests; but would dumping Israel be any better for us? It would certainly free us up (sort of) to focus more on Ukraine; but it wouldn’t make the Middle East any more peaceful or stable. So, really, what the fuck can Biden do, other than speaking out more clearly about the motivations of all the various parties in this conflict?
Raging Bee@20,
Without American money, arms and diplomatic support, Israel might not have to stop slaughtering Palestinians immediately, but it couldn’t continue very long, and would have to seek an alternative to its current genocidal policies. Action could be taken in the UNSC to impose economically crippling sanctions (China and Russia would obviously vote for them, the UK and France would go along). The plain fact is, Biden is complicit in war crimes and (per the ICJ decision) at least potential genocide.